Volume 1 — NUMERICAL CATALOGUE, WITH BIOGRAPHICAL AND DESCRIPTIVE NOTES (continued 4)

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

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

155. THE MONEY CHANGERS.

Teniers (Flemish: 1610-1694). See under last picture.

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

156. A STUDY OF HORSES.

Van Dyck (Flemish: 1599-1641). See 49.

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

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

157. A LANDSCAPE: SUNSET.

Rubens (Flemish: 1577-1640). See 38.

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

158. BOORS REGALING.

Teniers (Flemish: 1610-1694). See 154.

159. THE DUTCH HOUSEWIFE.

Nicolas Maes (Dutch: 1632-1693). See 153.

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

160. A "RIPOSO."

Mola (Eclectic-Bologna: 1612-1668). See 69.

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

161. AN ITALIAN LANDSCAPE.

Gaspard Poussin (French: 1613-1675). See 31.

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

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

163. VENICE: A VIEW ON THE GRAND CANAL.

Canaletto (Venetian: 1697-1768). See 127.

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

165. THE PLAGUE AT ASHDOD.

Nicolas Poussin (French: 1593-1665). See 39.

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

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

166. A CAPUCHIN FRIAR.

Rembrandt (Dutch: 1606-1669). See 45.

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

167. THE ADORATION OF THE MAGI.

Peruzzi (Sienese: 1481-1537). See 218.

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

168. ST. CATHERINE OF ALEXANDRIA.

Raphael (Urbino: 1483-1520). See 1171.

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

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

169. THE HOLY FAMILY.

Ludovico Mazzolino (Ferrarese: 1480-1528).

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

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

170. THE HOLY FAMILY.

Garofalo (Ferrarese; 1481-1559). See 81.

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

172. THE SUPPER AT EMMAUS.

Caravaggio (Naturalist: 1569-1609).

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

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

173. PORTRAIT OF A GENTLEMAN.

Bassano (Venetian: 1510-1592).

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

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

174. PORTRAIT OF CARDINAL CERRI.

Carlo Maratti (Roman: 1625-1713).

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

176. ST. JOHN AND THE LAMB.

Murillo (Spanish: 1618-1682). See 13.

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

177. THE MAGDALEN.

Guido (Eclectic-Bologna: 1575-1642). See 11.

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

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

179. VIRGIN AND CHILD ENTHRONED.

180. A PIETÀ.

Francia (Ferrarese-Bolognese: 1450-1517).

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

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

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

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

181. THE VIRGIN AND CHILD WITH ST. JOHN.

Perugino (Umbrian: 1446-1523). See 288.

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

184. PORTRAIT OF A YOUNG LADY.

Nicolas Lucidel (German: 1527-1590).

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

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

186. PORTRAITS OF JAN ARNOLFINI AND HIS WIFE.

Jan van Eyck (Early Flemish: about 1390-1440).

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

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

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

187. THE APOTHEOSIS OF WILLIAM THE TACITURN OF HOLLAND.

Rubens (Flemish: 1577-1640). See 38.

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

189. THE DOGE LEONARDO LOREDANO.

Giovanni Bellini (Venetian: 1426-1516).

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

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

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

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

190. A JEWISH RABBI.

Rembrandt (Dutch: 1606-1669). See 45, and also under 51.

191. THE YOUTHFUL CHRIST AND ST. JOHN.

Guido (Eclectic-Bologna: 1575-1642). See 11.

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

192. PORTRAIT OF HIMSELF.

Gerard Dou (Dutch: 1613-1675).

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

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

193. LOT AND HIS DAUGHTERS LEAVING SODOM.

Guido (Eclectic-Bologna: 1575-1642). See 11.

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

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

194. THE JUDGMENT OF PARIS.

Rubens (Flemish: 1577-1640). See 38.

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

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

195. A MEDICAL PROFESSOR.

Unknown (German School).

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

196. SUSANNAH AND THE ELDERS.

Guido Reni (Eclectic-Bologna: 1575-1642). See 11.

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

197. A WILD BOAR HUNT.

Velazquez (Spanish: 1599-1660).

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

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

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

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

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

198. THE TEMPTATION OF ST. ANTHONY.

Annibale Carracci (Eclectic-Bologna: 1560-1609). See 9.

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

199. LESBIA AND HER SPARROW.

Godfried Schalcken (Dutch: 1643-1706).

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

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

G. R., from Catullus, iii.

200. THE MADONNA IN PRAYER.

Sassoferrato (Eclectic: 1605-1685).

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

202. DOMESTIC POULTRY

Melchior de Hondecoeter (Dutch: 1636-1695).

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

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

203. CONVENTUAL CHARITY.

William van Herp (Flemish: 1614-1677).

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

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

204. DUTCH SHIPPING.

Bakhuizen (Dutch: 1631-1708).

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

205. ITINERANT MUSICIANS.

J. W. E. Dietrich (German: 1712-1774).

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

206. THE HEAD OF A GIRL.

Jean Baptiste Greuze (French: 1725-1805).

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

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

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

207. THE IDLE SERVANT.

Nicolas Maes (Dutch: 1632-1693). See 153.

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

208. THE FINDING OF MOSES.

Bartholomew Breenbergh (Dutch: 1599-1659).

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

209. THE JUDGMENT OF PARIS.

Both and Poelenburgh (Dutch). See under 71 and 955.

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

210. VENICE: THE PIAZZA DI SAN MARCO.

Francesco Guardi (Venetian: 1712-1793).

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

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

211. A BATTLE-PIECE.

Johan van Huchtenburgh (Dutch: 1646-1733).

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

212. A MERCHANT AND HIS CLERK.

Thomas de Keyser (Dutch: 1596-1667).

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

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

213. THE VISION OF A KNIGHT.

Raphael (Urbino: 1483-1520). See 1171.

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

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

Goethe, tr. by Carlyle (Past and Present).

214. CORONATION OF THE VIRGIN.

Guido (Eclectic-Bologna: 1575-1642). See 11.

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

215, 216. VARIOUS SAINTS.[115]

School of Taddeo Gaddi (Florentine: 1300-1366). See also (p. xix)

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

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

218. THE ADORATION OF THE MAGI.

Ascribed to Peruzzi (Sienese: 1481-1536).

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

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

219. THE DEAD CHRIST.

Unknown (Lombard School, 16th century).

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

221. HIS OWN PORTRAIT.

Rembrandt (Dutch: 1606-1669). See 45.

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

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

Jan van Eyck (Early Flemish: about 1390-1440). See 186.

See also (p. xxi)

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

223. DUTCH SHIPPING.

Bakhuizen (Dutch: 1631-1708). See 204.

224. THE TRIBUTE MONEY.

School of Titian. See under 4.

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

225. BEATIFIC VISION OF THE MAGDALEN.

Giulio Romano (Roman: 1498-1546). See 624.

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

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

School of Botticelli (1447-1510). See 1034.

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

227. ST. JEROME IN THE DESERT.

Florentine School (15th century).

See also (p. xix)

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

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

228. CHRIST AND THE MONEY-CHANGERS.

Bassano (Venetian: 1510-1592). See 173.

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