The Project Gutenberg eBook, Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers, Edited by Esther Singleton This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers Editor: Esther Singleton Release Date: January 7, 2006 [eBook #17478] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 ***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GREAT PICTURES, AS SEEN AND DESCRIBED BY FAMOUS WRITERS*** E-text prepared by Juliet Sutherland, Leonard Johnson, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net/) Transcriber's notes: Bracketted lower case letters refer to notes at the end of the text{a} At the end of this text I have provided some links to Internet sites which have more information about some of the artists, some of which may have color images similar to the ones presented in this book. ii FISHERMAN PRESENTING THE RING TO THE DOGE GRADENIGO. BORDONE. Great Pictures As Seen and Described by Famous Writers EDITED AND TRANSLATED By ESTHER SINGLETON AUTHOR OF "TURRETS, TOWERS, AND TEMPLES" AND TRANSLATOR OF "THE MUSIC DRAMAS OF RICHARD WAGNER" With Numerous Illustrations NEW YORK DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY Copyright, 1899 By Dodd, Mead and Company Preface iii iv v The cordial reception of "Turrets, Towers, and Temples" has encouraged me to hope that a welcome may be given to a book treating the masterpieces of painting in a similar manner. Great writers and literary tourists have occasionally been inspired to record the impressions of their saunterings among galleries and museums. The most interesting of these, not necessarily professional, I have tried to bring together in the following pages. My object has been not to make a selection of the greatest pictures in the world, although many that have that reputation will be found here, but rather to bring together those that have produced a powerful impression on great minds. Consequently, when the reader is disturbed at the omission of some world-famous painting, I beg him to remember my plan and blame the great writers instead of me for neglecting his favourite. My task has not been a light one. A few words of rapturous admiration are constantly to be met with in the pages of art- lovers, but a sympathetic study of a single work is rarely found. General comment of a given artist's work is also plentiful, while discriminating praise of individual canvases is scanty. The literary selection has, therefore, involved a great deal of research. From time to time the relative popularity of painters shifts strangely, but no matter what inconstant fashion may dictate, or what may be the cult of the hour, certain paintings never lose their prestige, but annually attract as many pilgrims as Lourdes or Fusi-San. Of modern painters I have only included Turner and Rossetti. It is interesting to compare the example I have chosen from Rossetti with Leonardo's "Monna Lisa." Pater has admirably brought out, without dwelling too much upon it, the charm that is eternal in her face as well as the fantastic imagination of the great artist who created her for all time. He says: "The fancy of a perpetual life, sweeping together ten thousand experiences, is an old one.... Certainly Lady Lisa might stand as the embodiment of the old fancy, the symbol of the modern idea." In a similar sense Lilith the siren, the Lorelei, the eternal enchantress, in her modern robe, is the embodiment of a new fancy, the symbol of the ancient idea; and just here across four centuries the thoughts of two great artists meet. The types of beauty and women in this book offer no little suggestion to the fancy. From Botticelli's "La Bella Simonetta," and Raphael's "La Fornarina," through all the periods of painting the model has been a great influence upon the painter's work, and upon this point nearly every essayist and critic represented in these pages dwells. In many of the essays, such as Pater's on Botticelli, and Swinburne's on Andrea del Sarto, the author strays away from the painting to talk of the painter, but in doing this he gives us so thoroughly the spirit of that painter that a fuller light is thrown upon the picture before us. I have included a few criticisms by modern French critics, MM. Valabrègue, Lafond, Giron, Guiffrey, and Reymond, recognized authorities upon the artists whose works they describe; and I have selected Fromentin's valuable essay on "The Night Watch," feeling sure that this thoughtful criticism would interest even the enthusiastic admirers of this enigmatical work. I have been careful to take no unnecessary liberties with the text. In the translations from Gruyer, Goethe, Fromentin, and others, which were unfortunately too long to be included entire, I have not allowed myself to condense, but only to cut. This is true, also, of the English extracts. E.S. New York, September, 1899. Contents The Fisherman Presenting the Ring to the Doge Gradenigo Bordone 1 Théophile Gautier. The Birth of Venus Botticelli 5 Walter Pater. The Queen of Sheba Veronese 16 John Ruskin. The Last Judgment Michael Angelo 18 Alexandre Dumas. vi vii viii ix Magdalen in the Desert Correggio 27 Aimé Giron. Banquet of the Arquebusiers Van der Helst 33 William Makepeace Thackeray. L'Embarquement Pour l'Île de Cythère Watteau 38 Edmond and Jules de Goncourt. The Sistine Madonna Raphael 45 F.A. Gruyer. The Dream of St. Ursula Carpaccio 58 John Ruskin. The Descent from the Cross Rubens 62 Eugène Fromentin. Bacchus and Ariadne Titian 71 I. Charles Lamb. II. Edward T. Cook. The Coronation of the Virgin Fra Angelico 77 Théophile Gautier. Judith Botticelli 80 Maurice Hewlett. The Avenue of Middelharnais Hobbema 88 Paul Lafond. The Dance of the Daughter of Herodias Andrea del Sarto 93 Algernon Charles Swinburne. Adoration of the Magi Fabriano 98 F.A. Gruyer. Portrait of Georg Gisze Holbein 101 Antony Valabrègue. Paradise Tintoret 106 John Ruskin. Aurora Guido Reni 114 I. Charlotte A. Eaton. II. John Constable. The Assumption of the Virgin Titian 119 Théophile Gautier. The Night Watch Rembrandt 124 Eugène Fromentin. The Rape of Helen Gozzoli 138 Cosmo Monkhouse Monna Lisa Leonardo da Vinci 142 Walter Pater. The Adoration of the Lamb Van Eyck 154 Kugler. The Death of Procris Piero di Cosimo 168 I. Edward T. Cook. II. John Addington Symonds. The Marriage in Cana Tintoret 172 John Ruskin. Madame de Pompadour De la Tour 177 Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve. The Hay Wain Constable 184 C.L. Burns. The Surrender of Breda Velasquez 191 x xi Théophile Gautier. The Immaculate Conception Murillo 196 Aimé Giron. St. Francis before the Soldan Giotto 202 John Ruskin. Lilith Rossetti 212 Algernon Charles Swinburne. Adoration of the Magi Dürer 215 Moriz Thausing. Marriage A-la-Mode Hogarth 218 Austin Dobson. The Madonna of the Rocks Leonardo da Vinci 234 Théophile Gautier. Beatrice Cenci Guido Reni 239 Percy Bysshe Shelley. The Transfiguration Raphael 249 Mrs. Jameson. The Bull Paul Potter 256 Eugène Fromentin. Corésus and Callirhoé Fragonard 262 Edmond and Jules de Goncourt. The Market-Cart Gainsborough 268 Richard and Samuel Redgrave. Bacchus and Ariadne Tintoret 273 Hippolyte Adolphe Taine. Bacchus and Ariadne 278 Anonymous. La Cruche Cassée Greuze 280 Théophile Gautier. Portrait of Lady Cockburn and Her Children Reynolds 282 Frederic G. Stephens. St. Cecilia Raphael 287 Percy Bysshe Shelley. The Last Supper Leonardo da Vinci 289 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. The Children of Charles I. Van dyck 300 Jules Guiffrey. The Fighting Téméraire Tugged to Her Last Berth to be Broken Up, 1838 Turner 306 John Ruskin. Spring Botticelli 313 Marcel Reymond. Illustrations Bordone Fisherman presenting the Ring to the Doge Gradenigo Venice Frontispiece xii xiii FACING PAGE Botticelli The Birth of Venus Florence 6 Veronese The Queen of Sheba Turin 16 Michael Angelo The Last Judgment Rome 18 Correggio Magdalen Dresden 28 Van der Helst The Banquet of the Arquebusiers Amsterdam 34 Watteau L'Embarquement pour l'Île de Cythère Paris 38 Raphael The Sistine Madonna Dresden 46 Carpaccio The Dream of St. Ursula Venice 58 Rubens The Descent from the Cross Antwerp 62 Titian Bacchus and Ariadne London 72 Fra Angelico The Coronation of the Virgin Paris 78 Botticelli Judith Florence 80 Hobbema The Avenue of Middelharnais London 88 Andrea del Sarto The Dance of the Daughter of Herodias Florence 94 Fabriano The Adoration of the Magi Florence 98 Holbein Portrait of Georg Gisze Berlin 102 Tintoret Paradise Venice 106 Guido Reni Aurora Rome 114 Titian The Assumption of the Virgin Venice 120 Rembrandt The Night Watch Amsterdam 124 Gozzoli The Rape of Helen London 138 L. da Vinci Monna Lisa Paris 142 Van Eyck The Adoration of the Lamb Ghent 154 Piero di Cosimo The Death of Procris London 168 Tintoret The Marriage in Cana Venice 172 De la Tour Portrait of Madame de Pompadour Paris 178 Constable The Hay Wain London 184 Velasquez The Surrender of Breda Madrid 192 Murillo The Immaculate Conception Paris 196 Giotto St. Frances before the Soldan Florence 202 Rossetti Lilith Rockford, Del. 212 Dürer The Adoration of the Magi Florence 216 Hogarth The Marriage A-la-Mode London 218 L. da Vinci The Madonna of the Rocks Paris 234 Guido Reni Portrait of Beatrice Cenci Rome 240 Raphael The Transfiguration Rome 250 Paul Potter The Bull The Hague 256 Fragonard Corésus and Callirhoé Paris 262 Gainsborough The Market-Cart London 268 Tintoret Bacchus and Ariadne Venice 274 Greuze La Cruche Cassée Paris 280 Reynolds Portrait of Lady Cockburn and her Children London 282 Raphael St. Cecilia Naples 288 L. da Vinci The Last Supper Milan 290 Van Dyck Portrait of the Children of Charles I. Turin 300 Turner The Fighting Téméraire London 306 Botticelli Spring Florence 314 GREAT PICTURES DESCRIBED BY GREAT WRITERS THE FISHERMAN PRESENTING THE RING TO THE DOGE GRADENIGO (BORDONE) xiv 1 THÉOPHILE GAUTIER This picture, which represents a gondolier returning the ring of Saint Mark to the Doge, treats of a legend, an episode of which Giorgione, as we shall see in the next hall, has also painted in a somewhat singular manner. Here is the story in a few words: One night while the gondolier was sleeping in his gondola, waiting for custom along the canal of S. Giorgio Maggiore, three mysterious individuals jumped into his boat and bade him take them to the Lido; one of the three persons, as well as he could be distinguished in the darkness, appeared to have the beard of an apostle and the figure of a high dignitary of the Church; the two others, by a certain sound as of armour rubbing beneath their mantles, revealed themselves as men-at-arms. The gondolier turned his prow towards the Lido and began to row; but the lagoon, so tranquil at their departure, began to chop and swell strangely: the waves gleamed with sinster lights; monstrous apparitions were outlined menacingly around the barque to the great terror of the gondolier; and hideous spirits of evil and devils half man half fish seemed to be swimming from the Lido towards Venice, making the waves emit thousands of sparks and exciting the tempest with whistling and fiendish laughter in the storm; but the appearance of the shining swords of the two knights and the extended hand of the saintly personage made them recoil and vanish in sulphurous explosions. The battle lasted for a long time; new demons constantly succeeded the others; however, the victory remained with the personages in the boat, who had themselves taken back to the landing of the Piazzetta. The gondolier scarcely knew what to think of their strange conduct; until, as they were about to separate, the oldest of the group, suddenly causing his nimbus to shine out again, said to the gondolier: "I am Saint Mark, the patron of Venice. I learned to-night that the devils assembled in convention at the Lido in the cemetery of the Jews, had formed the resolution of exciting a frightful tempest and overthrowing my beloved city, under the pretext that many excesses are committed there which give the evil spirits power over her inhabitants; but as Venice is a good Catholic and will confess her sins in the beautiful cathedral which she has raised to me, I resolved to defend her from this peril of which she was ignorant, by the aid of these two brave companions, Saint George and Saint Theodore, and I have borrowed thy boat; now, as all trouble merits reward, and as thou hast passed a boisterous night, here is my ring; carry it to the Doge and tell him what thou hast seen. He will fill thy cap with golden sequins." So saying, the Saint resumed his position on the top of the porch of Saint Mark's, Saint Theodore climbed to the top of his column, where his crocodile was grumbling with ill-humour, and Saint George went to squat in the depths of his columned niche in the great window of the Ducal Palace. The gondolier, rather astonished, and he had reason enough, would have believed that he had been dreaming after drinking during that evening several glasses too many of the wine of Samos, if the large and heavy golden ring studded with precious stones which he held in his hand had not prevented his doubting the reality of the events of the night. Therefore, he went to find the Doge, who was presiding over the Senate in his cap of office, and, respectfully kneeling before him, he related the story of the battle between the devils and the patron saints of Venice. At first this story seemed incredible; but the return of the ring, which was in very sooth that of Saint Mark, and the absence of which from the church treasury was established, proved the gondolier's veracity. This ring, locked up under triple keys in a carefully-guarded treasury, the bolts of which showed no trace of disturbance, could only have been removed by supernatural means. They filled the gondolier's cap with gold and celebrated a mass of thanksgiving for the peril they had escaped. This did not prevent the Venetians from continuing their dissolute course of life, from spending their nights in the haunts of play, at gay suppers, and in love-making; in masking for intrigues, and in prolonging the long orgy of their carnival for six months in the year. The Venetians counted upon the protection of Saint Mark to go to paradise and they took no other care of their salvation. That was Saint Mark's affair; they had built him a fine church for that, and the Saint was still under obligations to them. The moment selected by Paris Bordone is that when the gondolier falls on his knees before the Doge. The composition of the scene is very picturesque; you see in perspective a long row of the brown or grey heads of senators of the most magisterial character. Curious spectators are on the steps, forming happily-contrasted groups: the beautiful Venetian costume is displayed here in all its splendour. Here, as in all the canvases of this school, an important place is given to architecture. The background is occupied by fine porticos in the style of Palladio, animated with people coming and going. This picture possesses the merit, sufficiently rare in the Italian school, which is almost exclusively occupied with the reproduction of religious or mythological subjects, of representing a popular legend, a scene of manners, in a word, a romantic subject such as Delacroix or Louis Boulanger might have chosen and treated according to his own special talent; and this gives it a character of its own and an individual charm. Voyage en Italie (Paris, new ed., 1884). 2 3 4 5 THE BIRTH OF VENUS (BOTTICELLI) WALTER PATER In Leonardo's treatise on painting only one contemporary is mentioned by name—Sandro Botticelli. This pre-eminence may be due to chance only, but to some will rather appear a result of deliberate judgment; for people have begun to find out the charm of Botticelli's work, and his name, little known in the last century, is quietly becoming important. In the middle of the Fifteenth Century he had already anticipated much of that meditative subtlety which is sometimes supposed peculiar to the great imaginative workmen of its close. Leaving the simple religion which had occupied the followers of Giotto for a century, and the simple naturalism which had grown out of it, a thing of birds and flowers only, he sought inspiration in what to him were works of the modern world, the writings of Dante and Boccaccio, and in new readings of his own of classical stories; or if he painted religious subjects, painted them with an undercurrent of original sentiment which touches you as the real matter of the picture through the veil of its ostensible subject. What is the peculiar sensation, what is the peculiar quality of pleasure which his work has the property of exciting in us, and which we cannot get elsewhere? For this, especially when he has to speak of a comparatively unknown artist, is always the chief question which a critic has to answer. In an age when the lives of artists were full of adventure, his life is almost colourless. Criticism indeed has cleared away much of the gossip which Vasari accumulated, has touched the legend of Lippo and Lucrezia, and rehabilitated the character of Andrea del Castagno; but in Botticelli's case there is no legend to dissipate. He did not even go by his true name: Sandro is a nickname, and his true name is Filipepi, Botticelli being only the name of the goldsmith who first taught him art. Only two things happened to him, two things which he shared with other artists—he was invited to Rome to paint in the Sistine Chapel, and he fell in later life under the influence of Savonarola, passing apparently almost out of men's sight in a sort of religious melancholy which lasted till his death in 1515, according to the received date. Vasari says that he plunged into the study of Dante, and even wrote a comment on the Divine Comedy. But it seems strange that he should have lived on inactive so long; and one almost wishes that some document might come to light which, fixing the date of his death earlier, might relieve one, in thinking of him, of his dejected old age. THE BIRTH OF VENUS. Botticelli. He is before all things a poetical painter, blending the charm of story and sentiment, the medium of the art of poetry, with the charm of line and colour, the medium of abstract painting. So he becomes the illustrator of Dante. In a few rare examples of the edition of 1481, the blank spaces left at the beginning of every canto for the hand of the illuminator have been filled as far as the nineteenth canto of the Inferno, with impressions of engraved plates, seemingly by way of experiment, for in the copy in the Bodleian Library, one of the three impressions it contains has been printed upside down and much awry in the midst of the luxurious printed page. Giotto, and the followers of Giotto, with their almost childish religious aim, had not learned to put that weight of meaning into outward things, light, colour, every-day gesture, which the poetry of the Divine Comedy involves, and before the Fifteenth Century Dante could hardly have found an illustrator. Botticelli's illustrations are crowded with incident, blending with a naïve carelessness of pictorial propriety three phases of the same scene into one plate. The grotesques, so often a stumbling-block to painters who forget that the words of a poet, which only feebly present an image to the mind, must be lowered in key when translated into form, make one regret that he has not rather chosen for illustration the more subdued imagery of the Purgatorio. Yet in the scene of those who go down quick into hell there is an invention about the fire taking 6 7 hold on the up-turned soles of the feet, which proves that the design is no mere translation of Dante's words, but a true painter's vision; while the scene of the Centaurs wins one at once, for, forgetful of the actual circumstances of their appearance, Botticelli has gone off with delight on the thought of the Centaurs themselves, bright small creatures of the woodland, with arch baby faces and mignon forms, drawing tiny bows. Botticelli lived in a generation of naturalists, and he might have been a mere naturalist among them. There are traces enough in his work of that alert sense of outward things which, in the pictures of that period, fills the lawns with delicate living creatures, and the hill-sides with pools of water, and the pools of water with flowering reeds. But this was not enough for him; he is a visionary painter, and in his visionariness he resembles Dante. Giotto, the tried companion of Dante, Masaccio, Ghirlandaio even, do but transcribe with more or less refining the outward image; they are dramatic, not visionary painters; they are almost impassive spectators of the action before them. But the genius of which Botticelli is the type usurps the data before it as the exponents of ideas, moods, visions of its own; with this interest it plays fast and loose with those data, rejecting some and isolating others, and always combining them anew. To him, as to Dante, the scene, the colour, the outward image or gesture, comes with all its incisive and importunate reality; but awakes in him, moreover, by some subtle structure of his own, a mood which it awakes in no one else, of which it is the double or repetition, and which it clothes, that all may share it, with sensuous circumstances. But he is far enough from accepting the conventional orthodoxy of Dante which, referring all human action to the easy formula of purgatory, heaven, and hell, leaves an insoluble element of prose in the depths of Dante's poetry. One picture of his, with the portrait of the donor, Matteo Palmieri, below, had the credit or discredit of attracting some shadow of ecclesiastical censure. This Matteo Palmieri—two dim figures move under that name in contemporary history—was the reputed author of a poem, still unedited, La Città Divina, which represented the human race as an incarnation of those angels who, in the revolt of Lucifer, were neither for God nor for his enemies, a fantasy of that earlier Alexandrian philosophy, about which the Florentine intellect in that century was so curious. Botticelli's picture may have been only one of those familiar compositions in which religious reverie has recorded its impressions of the various forms of beatified existence—Glorias, as they were called, like that in which Giotto painted the portrait of Dante; but somehow it was suspected of embodying in a picture the wayward dream of Palmieri, and the chapel where it hung was closed. Artists so entire as Botticelli are usually careless about philosophical theories, even when the philosopher is a Florentine of the Fifteenth Century, and his work a poem in terza rima. But Botticelli, who wrote a commentary on Dante and became the disciple of Savonarola, may well have let such theories come and go across him. True or false, the story interprets much of the peculiar sentiment with which he infuses his profane and sacred persons, comely, and in a certain sense like angels, but with a sense of displacement or loss about them—the wistfulness of exiles conscious of a passion and energy greater than any known issue of them explains, which runs through all his varied work with a sentiment of ineffable melancholy. So just what Dante scorns as unworthy alike of heaven and hell, Botticelli accepts, that middle world in which men take no side in great conflicts, and decide no great causes, and make great refusals. He thus sets for himself the limits within which art, undisturbed by any moral ambition, does its most sincere and surest work. His interest is neither in the untempered goodness of Angelico's saints, nor the untempered evil of Orcagna's Inferno; but with men and women in their mixed and uncertain condition, always attractive, clothed sometimes by passion with a character of loveliness and energy, but saddened perpetually by the shadow upon them of the great things from which they shrink. His morality is all sympathy; and it is this sympathy, conveying into his work somewhat more than is usual of the true complexion of humanity, which makes him, visionary as he is, so forcible a realist. It is this which gives to his Madonnas their unique expression and charm. He has worked out in them a distinct and peculiar type, definite enough in his own mind, for he has painted it over and over again, sometimes one might think almost mechanically, as a pastime during that dark period when his thoughts were so heavy upon him. Hardly any collection of note is without one of these circular pictures, into which the attendant angels depress their heads so naïvely. Perhaps you have sometimes wondered why those peevish-looking Madonnas, conformed to no acknowledged or obvious type of beauty, attract you more and more, and often come back to you when the Sistine Madonna and the virgins of Fra Angelico are forgotten. At first, contrasting them with those, you may have thought that there was even something in them mean or abject, for the abstract lines of the face have little nobleness and the colour is wan. For with Botticelli she too, though she holds in her hands the "Desire of all nations," is one of those who are neither for God nor for his enemies; and her choice is on her face. The white light on it is cast up hard and cheerless from below, as when snow lies upon the ground, and the children look up with surprise at the strange whiteness of the ceiling. Her trouble is in the very caress of the mysterious child, whose gaze is always far from her, and who has already that sweet look of devotion which men have never been able altogether to love, and which still makes the born saint an object almost of suspicion to his earthly brethren. Once, indeed, he guides her hand to transcribe in a book the words of her exaltation, the Ave and the Magnificat, and the Gaude Maria, and the young angels, glad to rouse her for a moment from her dejection, are eager to hold the inkhorn and support the book; but the pen almost drops from her hand, and the high cold words have no meaning for her, and her true children are those others, in the midst of whom, in her rude home, the intolerable honour came to her, with that look of wistful inquiry on their irregular faces which you see in startled animals—gipsy children, 8 9 10 11 such as those who, in Apennine villages, still hold out their long brown arms to beg of you, but on Sundays become enfants du chœur with their thick black hair nicely combed and fair white linen on their sunburnt throats. What is strangest is that he carries this sentiment into classical subjects, its most complete expression being a picture in the Uffizi, of Venus rising from the sea, in which the grotesque emblems of the middle age, and a landscape full of its peculiar feeling, and even its strange draperies powdered all over in the Gothic manner with a quaint conceit of daisies, frame a figure that reminds you of the faultless nude studies of Ingres. At first, perhaps, you are attracted only by a quaintness of design, which seems to recall all at once whatever you have read of Florence in the Fifteenth Century; afterwards you may think that this quaintness must be incongruous with the subject, and that the colour is cadaverous, or at least cold. And yet the more you come to understand what imaginative colouring really is, that all colour is no mere delightful quality of natural things, but a spirit upon them by which they become expressive to the spirit, the better you will like this peculiar quality of colour; and you will find that quaint design of Botticelli's a more direct inlet into the Greek temper than the works of the Greeks themselves even of the finest period. Of the Greeks as they really were, of their difference from ourselves, of the aspects of their outward life, we know far more than Botticelli, or his most learned contemporaries; but for us, long familiarity has taken off the edge of the lesson, and we are hardly conscious of what we owe to the Hellenic spirit. But in pictures like this of Botticelli's you have a record of the first impression made by it on minds turned back towards it in almost painful aspiration from a world in which it had been ignored so long; and in the passion, the energy, the industry of realization, with which Botticelli carries out his intention, is the exact measure of the legitimate influence over the human mind of the imaginative system of which this is the central myth. The light is, indeed, cold—mere sunless dawn; but a later painter would have cloyed you with sunshine; and you can see the better for that quietness in the morning air each long promontory as it slopes down to the water's edge. Men go forth to their labours until the evening; but she is awake before them, and you might think that the sorrow in her face was at the thought of the whole long day of love yet to come. An emblematical figure of the wind blows hard across the grey water, moving forward the dainty-lipped shell on which she sails, the sea "showing his teeth" as it moves in thin lines of foam, and sucking in one by one the falling roses, each severe in outline, plucked off short at the stalk, but embrowned a little, as Botticelli's flowers always are. Botticelli meant all that imagery to be altogether pleasurable; and it was partly an incompleteness of resources, inseparable from the art of that time, that subdued and chilled it; but his predilection for minor tones counts also; and what is unmistakable is the sadness with which he has conceived the goddess of pleasure as the depository of a great power over the lives of men. I have said that the peculiar character of Botticelli is the result of a blending in him of a sympathy for humanity in its uncertain condition, its attractiveness, its investiture at rarer moments in a character of loveliness and energy, with his consciousness of the shadow upon it of the great things from which it shrinks, and that this conveys into his work somewhat more than painting usually attains of the true complexion of humanity. He paints the story of the goddess of pleasure in other episodes besides that of her birth from the sea, but never without some shadow of death in the grey flesh and wan flowers. He paints Madonnas, but they shrink from the pressure of the divine child, and plead in unmistakable undertones for a warmer, lower humanity. The same figure—tradition connects it with Simonetta, the mistress of Giuliano de' Medici—appears again as Judith returning home across the hill country when the great deed is over, and the moment of revulsion come, and the olive branch in her hand is becoming a burthen; as Justice, sitting on a throne, but with a fixed look of self-hatred which makes the sword in her hand seem that of a suicide; and again as Veritas in the allegorical picture of Calumnia, where one may note in passing the suggestiveness of an accident which identifies the image of Truth with the person of Venus. We might trace the same sentiment through his engravings; but his share in them is doubtful, and the object of this fragment has been attained if I have defined aright the temper in which he worked. But, after all, it may be asked, is a painter like Botticelli, a second-rate painter, a proper subject for general criticism? There are a few great painters, like Michael Angelo or Leonardo, whose work has become a force in general culture, partly for this very reason that they have absorbed into themselves all such workmen as Sandro Botticelli; and, over and above mere technical or antiquarian criticism, general criticism may be very well employed in that sort of interpretation which adjusts the position of these men to general culture, whereas smaller men can be the proper subjects only of technical or antiquarian treatment. But, besides those great men, there is a certain number of artists who have a distinct faculty of their own by which they convey to us a peculiar quality of pleasure which we cannot get elsewhere, and these, too, have their place in general culture, and have to be interpreted to it by those who have felt their charm strongly, and are often the objects of a special diligence and a consideration wholly affectionate, just because there is not about them the stress of a great name and authority. Of this select number Botticelli is one; he has the freshness, the uncertain and diffident promise which belongs to the earlier Renaissance itself, and makes it perhaps the most interesting period in the history of the mind; in studying his work one begins to understand to how great a place in human culture the art of Italy had been called. Studies in the History of the Renaissance (London, 1873). 12 13 14 15 16 THE QUEEN OF SHEBA (VERONESE) JOHN RUSKIN This picture is at Turin, and is of quite inestimable value. It is hung high; and the really principal figure—the Solomon, being in the shade, can hardly be seen, but is painted with Veronese's utmost tenderness, in the bloom of perfect youth, his hair golden, short, crisply curled. He is seated high on his lion throne; two elders on each side beneath him, the whole group forming a tower of solemn shade. I have alluded, elsewhere, to the principle on which all the best composers act, of supporting these lofty groups by some vigorous mass of foundation. This column of noble shade is curiously sustained. A falconer leans forward from the left-hand side, bearing on his wrist a snow-white falcon, its wings spread, and brilliantly relieved against the purple robe of one of the elders. It touches with its wings one of the golden lions of the throne, on which the light also flashes strongly; thus forming, together with it, the lion and eagle symbol, which is the type of Christ, throughout mediæval work. In order to show the meaning of this symbol, and that Solomon is typically invested with the Christian royalty, one of the elders by a bold anachronism, holds a jewel in his hand in the shape of a cross, with which he (by accident of gesture) points to Solomon; his other hand is laid on an open book. THE QUEEN OF SHEBA. Veronese. The group opposite, of which the Queen forms the centre, is also painted with Veronese's highest skill; but contains no point of interest bearing on our present subject, except its connection by a chain of descending emotion. The Queen is wholly oppressed and subdued; kneeling, and nearly fainting, she looks up to Solomon with tears in her eyes; he, startled by fear for her, stoops forward from the throne, opening his right hand, as if to support her, so as almost to drop the sceptre. At her side her first maid of honour is kneeling also, but does not care about Solomon; and is gathering up her dress that it may not be crushed; and looking back to encourage a negro girl, who, carrying two toy-birds, made of enamel and jewels, for presentation to the King, is frightened at seeing her Queen fainting, and does not know what she ought to do; while lastly, the Queen's dog, another of the little fringy paws, is wholly unabashed by Solomon's presence, or anybody else's; and stands with his forelegs well apart, right in front of his mistress, thinking everybody has lost their wits; and barking violently at one of the attendants, who has set down a golden vase disrespectfully near him. Modern Painters (London, 1860). 17 THE LAST JUDGEMENT (MICHAEL ANGELO) ALEXANDRE DUMAS While Michael Angelo worked upon his Moses, Clement VII., following the example of Julius II., would not leave him alone for a moment. It was a trick of all these Popes to exact from the poor artist something different to what he was doing at the time. To obtain some respite, he was forced to promise the Pope that he would occupy himself at the same time with the cartoon of The Last Judgment. But Clement VII. was not a man to be put off with words; he supervised the work in person, and Buonarroti was obliged to pass continually from the chisel to the pencil and from the pen to the mallet. The Last Judgment! Moses! these are two works of little importance and easy to do off-hand! And yet he had to. His Holiness would not listen to reason. One day it was announced to Michael Angelo that he would not receive his accustomed visit: Clement VII. was dead. The artist breathed freely just during the Conclave. The new Pope, Paul III., had nothing more pressing to do than to present himself in Buonarroti's studio, followed pompously by ten cardinals. The newly-elected Pope was easily recognized there! THE LAST JUDGMENT. Michael Angelo. "Ah!" said the Holy Father, in a tone of firm decision, "I hope that henceforth the whole of your time will belong to me, Maestro Buonarroti." "May your Holiness deign to excuse me," replied Michael Angelo, "but I have just signed an engagement with the Duke of Urbino, which forces me to finish the tomb of Pope Julius." 18 19 "What!" exclaimed Paul III.: "for thirty years I have had a certain wish and now that I am Pope I cannot realize it!" "But the contract, Holy Father, the contract!" "Where is this contract? I will tear it up." "Ah!" exclaimed in his turn the Cardinal of Mantua, who was one of the suite, "your Holiness should see the Moses which Maestro Michael Angelo has just finished: that statue alone would more than suffice to honour the memory of Julius." "Cursed flatterer!" muttered Michael Angelo in a low voice. "Come, come, I will take charge of this matter myself," said the Pope. "You shall only make three statues with your own hand: the rest shall be given to other sculptors, and I will answer for the Duke of Urbino's consent. And now, Maestro, to the Sistine Chapel. A great empty wall is waiting for you there." What could Michael Angelo reply to such an emphatic wish expressed so distinctly? He finished in his best style his two statues of Active Life and Contemplative Life—Dante's symbolical Rachel and Leah—and not wishing to profit by this new arrangement to which he was forced to submit, he added fifteen hundred and twenty-four ducats to the four thousand he had received, to pay with his own gains for the works confided to the other artists. Having thus terminated this unfortunate affair, which had caused him so much worry and fatigue, Michael Angelo was at last enabled to occupy himself exclusively with the execution of his Last Judgment, to which he devoted no less than eight to nine years. This immense and unique picture, in which the human figure is represented in all possible attitudes, where every sentiment, every passion, every reflection of thought, and every aspiration of the soul are rendered with inimitable perfection, has never been equalled and never will be equalled in the domain of Art. This time the genius of Michael Angelo simply attacked the infinite. The subject of this vast composition, the manner in which it is conceived and executed, the admirable variety and the learned disposition of the groups, the inconceivable boldness and firmness of the outlines, the contrast of light and shade, the difficulties, I might almost say the impossibilities vanquished, as if it were all mere play, and with a happiness that savours of prodigy, the unity of the whole and the perfection of the details, make The Last Judgment the most complete and the greatest picture in existence. It is broad and magnificent in effect, and yet each part of this prodigious painting gains infinitely when seen and studied quite near; and we do not know of any easel-picture worked upon with such patience and finished with such devotion. The painter could only choose one scene, several isolated groups, in this appalling drama which will be enacted on the last day in the Valley of Jehoshaphat, where all the generations of man shall be gathered together. And yet, admire the omnipotence of genius! With nothing but a single episode in a restricted space, and solely by the expression of the human body, the artist has succeeded in striking you with astonishment and terror, and in making you really a spectator of the supreme catastrophe. At the base of the picture, very nearly in the centre, you perceive the boat of the Inferno, a fantastic reminiscence borrowed from Pagan tradition, in accordance with which first the poet and then the painter were pleased to clothe an accursed being with the form and occupation of Charon. "Charon with the eyes of burning embers gathering together with a gesture all these souls, and striking with his oar those who hesitate."1 It is impossible to form an idea of the incredible science displayed by Michael Angelo in the varied contortions of the damned, heaped one upon the other in the fatal bark. All the violent contractions, all the visible tortures, all the frightful shrinkings that suffering, despair, and rage can produce upon human muscles are rendered in this group with a realism that would make the most callous shudder. To the left of this bark you see the gaping mouth of a cavern; this is the entrance to Purgatory, where several demons are in despair because they have no more souls to torment. This first group, which very naturally attracts the spectator's attention, is that of the dead whom the piercing sound of the eternal trumpet has awakened in their tombs. Some of them shake off their shrouds, others with great difficulty open their eyelids made heavy by their long sleep. Towards the angle of the picture there is a monk who is pointing out the Divine Judge with his left hand; this monk is the portrait of Michael Angelo. The second group is formed of the resuscitated ones who ascend of themselves to the Judgment. These figures, many of which are sublime in expression, rise more or less lightly into space, according to the burden of their sins, of which they must render account. 20 21 22 The third group, also ascending to the right of Christ, is that of the Blessed. Among all these saints, some of whom show the instrument of their execution, others the marks of their martyrdom, there is one head especially remarkable for beauty and tenderness: it is that of a mother who is protecting her daughter, turning her eyes, filled with faith and hope, towards the Christ. Above the host of saints, you see a fourth group of angelic spirits, some bearing the Cross, others the Crown of Thorns,— instruments and emblems of the Saviour's Passion. The fifth group, parallel to the fourth which we have just pointed out, is composed of angels; such, at least, they seem to be by the splendour of their youth and the aërial lightness of their movements; and these also bear, as if in triumph, other emblems of the divine expiation—the column, the ladder, and the sponge. Above these angels, on the same plane as the saints and to the left of Christ, is the choir of the just; the patriarchs, the prophets, the apostles, the martyrs, and the holy personages form this sixth group. The seventh is the most horrible of all and the one in which the art of Michael Angelo has displayed itself in all its terrific grandeur: it is composed of the rejected ones, overwhelmed by the decree and led away to punishment by the rebel angels. The very coldest spectator could not remain unmoved by this spectacle. You believe yourself in hell; you hear the cries of anguish and the gnashing of the teeth of the wretched, who, according to the terrible Dantesque expression, vainly desire a second death. The eighth, ninth, and tenth groups, occupying the base of the composition, are composed, as we have already said, of the bark of Charon, the grotto of Purgatory, and the Angels of Judgment, eight in number, blowing their brazen trumpets with all their might to convoke the dead from the four quarters of the earth. Finally, in the eleventh group, in the centre, very near the upper part of the picture, between the two companies of the blessed, and seated upon the clouds, the sovereign Judge with a terrible action hurls his malediction upon the condemned: "Ite maledicti in ignem aeternum." The Virgin turns away her head and trembles. On Christ's right is Adam, and on his left, St. Peter. They have exactly the same positions assigned to them by Dante in his Paradiso. This immense work was exhibited to the public on Christmas Day, 1541. It had cost eight years of work. Michael Angelo was then sixty-seven years old. Several anecdotes relating to this great picture have come down to us. It is related that the Pope, scandalized at the nudity of certain figures, a nudity which Daniele da Volterra was afterwards charged to clothe, sent word to Michael Angelo that he must cover them. Michael Angelo replied with his usual brusqueness: "Tell the Pope that he must employ himself a little less in correcting my pictures, which is very easy, and employ himself a little more in reforming men, which is very difficult." It is said that Maestro Biaggio, master of ceremonies to Paul III., having accompanied the Pope on a visit that His Holiness made to see Michael Angelo's fresco when it was about half finished, allowed himself to express his own opinion upon The Last Judgment. "Holy Father," said the good Messer Biaggio, "if I dare pronounce my judgment, this picture seems more appropriate to figure in a tavern than in the chapel of a Pope." Unfortunately for the master of ceremonies, Michael Angelo was behind him and did not lose a word of Messer Biaggio's compliment. The Pope had scarcely gone before the irritated artist, wishing to make an example as a warning for all future critics, placed this Messer Biaggio in his hell, well and duly, under the scarcely flattering guise of Minos. That was always Dante's way when he wanted to avenge himself upon an enemy. I leave you to imagine the lamentations and complaints of the poor master of ceremonies when he saw himself damned in this manner. He threw himself at the Pope's feet, declaring that he would never arise unless His Holiness would have him taken out of hell: that was the most important thing. As for the punishment, that the painter deserved for this dreadful sacrilege, Messer Biaggio would leave that entirely to the high impartiality of the Holy Father. "Messer Biaggio," replied Paul III. with as much seriousness as he could maintain, "you know that I have received from God an absolute power in heaven and upon the earth, but I can do nothing in hell; therefore you must remain there." While Michael Angelo was working at his picture of The Last Judgment, he fell from the scaffold and seriously injured his leg. Soured by pain and seized with an attack of misanthropy, the painter shut himself up in his house and would not see any 23 24 25 1 one. But he reckoned without his physician; and the physician this time was as stubborn as the invalid. This excellent disciple of Æsculapius was named Baccio Rontini. Having learned by chance of the accident that had befallen the great artist, he presented himself before his house and knocked in vain at the door. No response. He shouted, he flew into a passion, and he called the neighbours and the servants in a loud voice. Complete silence. He goes to find a ladder, places it against the front of the house, and tries to enter by the casements. The windows are hermetically sealed and the shutters are fast. What is to be done? Any one else in the physician's place would have given up; but Rontini was not the man to be discouraged for so little. With much difficulty he enters the cellar and with no less trouble he goes up into Buonarroti's room, and, partly by acquiescence and partly by force, he triumphantly tends his friend's leg. It was quite time: exasperated by his sufferings, the artist had resolved to let himself die. Trois Maîtres (Paris, 1861). FOOTNOTES: Dante, Inferno III. MAGDALEN IN THE DESERT (CORREGGIO) AIMÉ GIRON Correggio was a painter and a poet at the same time, interpreting Nature, flattering her, idealizing her, and realizing her creations in their double æsthetic expression, with undulating outlines and tender tones. His drawing was modelled and supple, with a certain vigour of line and a certain solidity of relief. He had a charming imagination of conception and a voluptuous grace in its accomplishment, which are requisites in the painting of women and children. He therefore excelled in rendering bambini. With a note-book in his hand, he studied them everywhere. This explains why his Loves and his Cherubs have such rare truth of mien, of flesh, and of life. His knowledge of anatomy is great and he foreshortens on canvas and ceiling astonishingly before the advent of Michael Angelo. His enchanting colouring, impasted like that of Giorgione, vivid as that of Titian, ran through the most delicate gradations and melted into the most elusive harmonies. Beneath his facile brush, soft and thick, the transparencies of the skin and the morbidezza of the flesh become ideal. He was the first to apply himsel...