Part 15

By far the best represented of all the masters at the Spanish school is Bartolomé Estéban Murillo (1618?-1682). He was born at Seville, of poor parents, and studied as a boy under Juan del Castillo. Forced before he had reached manhood to gain his livelihood, he took to manufacturing artistically worthless devotional pictures on saga-cloth, for sale at the weekly fairs in the poor quarter of Seville. This early practice of rather mechanical production, and the habit, acquired by necessity, of working to please the public, clung to him in after life and are responsible for much that the modern mind finds distasteful in his art—a certain sickly sentimentality that often takes the place of real sentiment, and an artificiality of arrangement even where the types are realistic renderings of the people among whom he spent his days.

With his small savings from the proceeds of his crude popular pictures Murillo proceeded to Madrid, where Velazquez assisted him by deed, advice, and example, though the two artists were probably never in the relation of master and pupil. After about two years thus profitably spent at Madrid, Murillo returned to Seville, where he continued to work until his death in 1682, and rose to the very summit of fame and popularity. At his best Murillo was a colourist of great charm and a technician of the rarest skill. His art is most admirable where he adheres most closely to the realistic tradition of his country. It is scarcely to be credited that the same hand which produced so many vaporous and vapid Madonnas is responsible for a picture painted with such superb breadth and incisive vigour as _The Young Beggar_ (No. 1717), which is almost worthy of the brush of Velazquez in his Sevillan period. The decidedly unsavoury subject is made acceptable by the consummate artistry of the treatment.

“THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION”

It is not, however, to pictures of this type that Murillo owed his widespread popularity. Generations of enthusiastic admirers have stood in silent awe before his large painting of _The Immaculate Conception_ (No. 1709, Plate XXVI.), which is certainly one of the best of innumerable versions of the same subject—the Virgin standing on a crescent moon, with ecstatic gaze, and hands pressed to her breast, and surrounded by swarms of joyous angel-children—painted by Murillo to meet an apparently insatiable demand. There is something of real ecstasy in this conception. To find a similar _morbidezza_ of pigment one must turn to certain famous works by Andrea del Sarto: it is a quality which is generally conspicuously absent from Spanish painting and which, if carried a step farther, as it sometimes was carried by Murillo, would result in fuzzy vapidness. This famous picture has the distinction of being the most costly purchase ever made for the Louvre, the price paid for it at the Marshal Soult sale in 1852—that is many years before American competition had established the vastly enhanced standards of value which now prevail—being as much as 615,300 fr., or £24,612.

[Illustration: PLATE XXVI.—MURILLO

(1618?-1682)

SPANISH SCHOOL

No. 1709—THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION

(La Conception immaculée de la Vierge)

The Virgin, wearing a white robe with a blue mantle over her left shoulder, has her hands crossed over her breast; she is standing in the hollow of a two-horned crescent, and gazing heavenwards. About twenty-one cherubs and ten heads are seen in different parts of the composition.

Painted in oil on canvas.

9 ft. 0 in. × 6 ft. 3 in. (2·74 × 1·90.)]

Apparently of earlier date is the other version of the same subject at the Louvre. This _Immaculate Conception_ (No. 1708) is not painted in the same spirit of exaltation as the version just described, but has a happy passage of realistic character-painting in the six kneeling figures on the left. On the right two angels carry a scroll with the inscription IN PRINCIPIO DILEXIT EAM. The picture was painted in 1656-57 for the Church of Santa Maria la Blanca at Seville, and was carried off to France, with many other of the master’s works, by Marshal Soult.

THE “BIRTH OF THE VIRGIN”

Another picture that formed part of the loot taken by Napoleon’s general and was taken in 1855 from his son, the Duke of Dalmatia, in liquidation of a debt of £6000, is _The Birth of the Virgin_ (No. 1710). The National Gallery in London owns a small preliminary study for this painting, which was executed in 1655 for Seville Cathedral. The centre is occupied by a beautifully disposed group of four women and four winged heavenly visitors attending to the Infant’s bath; in the background on the left St. Anne, raised in her bed, is receiving visitors, and on the right are seen two attendants airing linen at a fireplace. The strange assemblage, in which the earthly and the heavenly are without incongruity brought into such close contact that one of the boy-angels is actually occupied with a dog, is completed by another four angels floating in the air above the Infant. In composition, distribution of light and shade, and in harmonious blending of mellow colour this picture ranks among Murillo’s highest achievements. According to Cean Bermudez, the roundness, beauty of shape, and rosy complexion of the waiting-woman’s arm in the foreground “excited the jealous envy of the ladies of Seville.” It is interesting to note that before its acquisition by the Louvre the _Birth of the Virgin_ was brought to England in 1823, when the owners vainly tried to find a purchaser.

“THE ANGELS’ KITCHEN”

Yet another deservedly famous work by Murillo, removed from a Franciscan convent at Seville by the insatiable greed of Marshal Soult, is the now extensively restored large picture known as _The Miracle of San Diego_, or _The Angels’ Kitchen_ (No. 1716). The composition is divided by two large figures of angels into two halves. On the left two knights of Calatrava are shown in by a Franciscan brother and behold St. Diego in prayer miraculously raised into the air and surrounded by a flood of light. On the right the angels are occupied with the preparation of the repast for which the Saint has sent his prayer to the Virgin. A Franciscan is watching the scene from the distance with a gesture of amazement. Here again the real and the supernatural are blended with unaffected naïveté, the unity of the contending elements being established by the masterly rendering of light and atmosphere. An account of the miracle is given on a cartouche in the foreground; whilst a piece of paper on the left holds the signature

BART-EST. MURILLO, 1646.

_The Angels’ Kitchen_ was bought from the despoiler’s heirs for £3420.

_The Virgin of the Rosary_ (No. 1712), unlike the majority of Murillo’s representations of the Mother of God, has scarcely a trace of spiritual exaltation, but is merely a handsome type of a happy and contented Spanish mother. The folds of her outer garment are arranged in florid and meaningless profusion.

_The Holy Family_ (No. 1713), also known as _The Virgin of Seville_, is a genuine and characteristic, though strangely overrated work by the master, and bears the signature

BARTOLOM DE MURILLO F. HISPAN.

_The Virgin in Glory_ (No. 1711) is, to say the least, of doubtful authenticity. The small companion pictures, _Christ in the Garden of Olives_ (No. 1714) and _Christ at the Column and St. Peter_ (No. 1715), are painted on marble, to which fact they owe the unpleasant coldness of their colouring.

In the La Caze Room are two portraits, _The Poet Quevedo_ (No. 1718) and _The Duke of Ossuña_ (No. 1719), which the official Catalogue ascribes to Murillo. Quite apart from the fact that the artist was only six years of age when the Duke of Ossuña died, the quality of the painting does not justify these attributions. Like the head of Philip IV. in the same room, they were probably painted by Escosura, a late-nineteenth-century Spaniard

THE SCHOOL OF MADRID

We must now return to Madrid, where the example of Velazquez had inspired a fairly numerous group of able painters without particular genius, whose art, being entirely derivative, carried within itself the germ of decay and sank to complete insignificance before the close of the century. The most distinguished artist of this group is Juan Bautista del Mazo, who has already been referred to as the author of the _Meeting of Thirteen People_ and probably of the _Philip IV. in Hunting Costume_. So well did he succeed in appropriating his father-in-law’s style that his best works have frequently passed under his illustrious master’s name.

Another important painter of the Madrid school is Carreño de Miranda (Nos. 1614-1685), who benefited by Velazquez’s patronage, became painter of the Palace in 1669, and Court Painter and Assistant Seneschal in 1671. Although in his later years he devoted himself largely to subject pictures which are distinguished by a warmer colouring than most of the productions by the Madrid school of the period, he achieved his greatest successes as a portrait painter. He was considerably influenced by the paintings of Van Dyck, which he had occasion to study in the royal palaces. His large _St. Ambrose distributing Alms_ (No. 1702), in the La Caze Gallery, is a hurriedly executed work which does not show his art to the best advantage. It figured in the sale of the Soult collection, when it failed to realise £20.

Far more typical of its author’s best manner is _The Burning Bush_ (No. 1703) by Francisco Collantes (1599-1656), a Madrid painter who studied under Vincente Carducho, but was influenced by Bassano. He was an excellent colourist, especially in his landscape paintings with small figures. His most famous picture is _The Vision of Ezekiel_, formerly at the Buen Retiro Palace and now in the Prado Gallery.

Juan de Arellano (1614-1676), the painter of the _Flowers_ (No. 1701), worked at Madrid, unknown and in abject poverty, until at the age of thirty-six he began to devote himself to flower-painting, a branch of art in which he developed considerable skill, and rose to great popularity.

Yet another Madrid painter who is but indifferently represented at the Louvre by a still life of _Fruit and Musical Instruments_ (No. 1720) in the La Caze collection, is Antonio Pereda (1599-1669). Although a contemporary of Velazquez and working in the same city, he was not appreciably influenced by that master. He was a pupil of Pedro de las Cuevas, and his style shows certain affinities with Ribera. His works are rarely to be met with outside the galleries and churches of his own country.

The end of the seventeenth century marked the complete decadence of the Spanish school, which was precipitated and received its final seal by the advent in 1692 of the Neapolitan Luca Giordano, whose rare facility in the production of showy, flashy, meretricious works earned for him the sobriquet “Fa Presto,” and whose prodigious success was a powerful incentive to emulation. More fatal even than the influence of Luca Giordano was that of the German artist Raphael Mengs, an uninspired eclectic who became Court Painter to Charles III., and who is referred to in the chapter dealing with the German pictures at the Louvre.

GOYA

In this time of complete stagnation the fascinating personality of Francisco Goya y Lucientes (1746-1828) flashes like a bright meteor through the dark night of Spanish art. Goya takes a unique position in the art of his country—or, indeed, of the world. He was as much the last of the old masters as he is the first of the moderns. A man of fiery temperament, impulsive, unruly, opposed to authority, he was terribly unequal in his performance. It is as unnecessary to state who were his masters as it is impossible to speak of his style in general terms, for there probably never was an artist who worked in so many different styles, experimented in so many different mediums, and treated so vast a range of subjects as Goya. He was a creature of moods, and changed his method of painting as easily as his political allegiance from Bourbon to Bonaparte and back again to Bourbon.

His four pictures at the Louvre are without exception portraits, and do not therefore illustrate his highly developed sense of the dramatic. But they serve admirably to show his active protest against the classicist affectation prevalent at his time, and his return to the healthy realism which is the heritage of his race. The _Portrait of F. Guillemardet, Ambassador of the French Republic to Spain_ (No. 1704), is an admirably honest piece of portraiture, dignified but perfectly natural in pose, strong in expression and pleasing in colour. It was bequeathed to the Louvre by Guillemardet, together with the _Young Spanish Woman_ (No. 1705) in a black mantilla, standing with crossed arms against a pearly-grey landscape background. The seated half-figure of the rather corpulent _Young Spanish Woman_ (No. 1705A) was bought at the Kums sale at Antwerp for £1276; and the portrait of _Don Perez de Castro_ (No. 1705B) was acquired in 1902 for £1200. Goya was an isolated figure in Spanish art of the time. He left no “school,” but his influence was one of the leading factors in the rise of the modern movement in France.

THE DUTCH SCHOOL

We have already followed the development of the early Flemish or Netherlandish art during the fifteenth century, and observed how it eventually passed under the Italianising influences which are unmistakable in the pictures of Barend van Orley (1495?-1542) and his contemporaries. The early painters of Holland as distinct from Flanders cannot be traced with any certainty much farther back than Albert von Ouwater (fl. 1420-1460), who worked at Haarlem from 1430 to 1460. As we have already seen, the early Flemish painter, Gerard David (1460?-1523), was born at Ouwater, which may well have had its school of painters. Neither Albert von Ouwater, who is represented to-day by a single work, the _Raising of Lazarus_ in the Berlin Gallery, nor his unidentifiable contemporary who painted the _Exhumation of St. Hubert_, in the National Gallery (No. 783), are included in the collection of pictures at the Louvre.

GERARD OF HAARLEM

The influence of these painters and Dierick Bouts is seen in the rare works of Geertgen tot S. Jans, or Gerard of Haarlem (1465-1493) whose _Raising of Lazarus_ (No. 2563A) in this collection is an achievement of the highest order, and was purchased as recently as 1902 for £4000 from Baron d’Albenas, after having been for many years in Spain. This pupil or follower of the Ouwater master was a native of Leyden, and worked at Haarlem. He took his name from the commandery of the Knights of St. John at Haarlem for whom he worked, as we see from the careful inscription, “_Gerardus Leydanus pictor ad S. Io. Baptist. Harlem pinxt_,” on his triptych at Vienna.

Among his contemporaries were Cornelis Engelbrechtsen, who was born in 1468 at Leyden, where he died in 1533, and Lucas van Leyden (1494-1533). The latter played an important part as an engraver quite as much as a painter in the university town of Leyden, which now possesses his large _Last Judgment_ and became famous as the birthplace of Rembrandt in 1606. The Louvre possesses no picture by either Engelbrechtsen or Lucas van Leyden.

Jacob Cornelisz van Oostsanen (fl. 1470-1533) is also unrepresented here. Portraits by painters in this group are often confused, as in the case of the _Portrait of the Duke of East Friesland_, in the Oldenburg Gallery, which has been attributed to both Lucas van Leyden and Jacob Cornelisz. A pupil of the latter may have painted the _Cana of Galilee_ (No. 2640C). It is safe to assign to “the Master of the Female Half Figures,” the _Young Lady Reading_ (No. 2641C), which has a close analogy with the well-known picture in the Harrach collection at Vienna, representing half-length figures of three young ladies in crimson velvet dresses cut square at the neck, and singing to the accompaniment of a flute and a lute. The name of this painter is not known, but his pictures, which are neither numerous nor of any conspicuous merit, are easily recognisable.

To this period of transition and mediocre painting belongs Jan Scorel (1495-1562), whose _Portrait of Paracelsus the Doctor_ (No. 2567A) is inscribed:

“FORMOSO DOCTOR PARASELSUS,”

and is in every way superior to the _Portrait of a Man_ (No. 2641B), which is labelled with the name of Scorel, but catalogued as being by an unknown artist. From Scorel, a much travelled Dutch artist, who at one time worked at Nuremburg with Albrecht Dürer and visited Venice and the East, we naturally pass to Jan Mostaert of Haarlem. Mostaert of Haarlem is unrepresented at the Louvre, a remark which equally well applies to the anonymous “Pseudo-Mostaert,” who painted so much in his style that a large number of inferior productions have been credited to him from time to time. Pictures of this type vary so considerably that the name “Pseudo-Mostaert” is little more than a generic designation for unassignable Flemish and Dutch pictures of the middle of the sixteenth century; such pictures bear some relationship to the _Christ bearing His Cross_ (No. 2299), and the _Abraham’s Sacrifice_ (No. 2300), officially attributed to the little-known and quite negligible painter Alart Claeszoon (1498-1564) of Leyden.

SIR ANTONIS MOR

From Leyden we may pass to Utrecht, which was the birthplace of the much-travelled, distinguished, and cosmopolitan painter, Antonis Mor (1512-1578?). He was a pupil of Jan Scorel, but soon freed himself from the hard manner he acquired under that master by his study in Italy of the best works of the Venetians. Indeed, some of his pictures have passed as the work of Calcar, the pupil of Titian. Mor, or Moro, excelled as a painter of vigorous and truthful portraits, and the portraits and replicas he painted of Queen Mary are well known. The Prado Gallery at Madrid and the Vienna Gallery contain good examples of his art, and he is fairly well represented in the Louvre. While he was in the service of Philip II. of Spain he lived in much splendour, and was amply paid for his work. His close intimacy with the monarch induced him on one occasion to take the liberty of touching with a brush dipped in red paint the hand of the king. This serious breach of Court etiquette created a profound impression on the courtiers present; and, although the painter sued for pardon and obtained it from the king, he soon recognised that he had made himself obnoxious to the Inquisition, who asserted that Moro had got from the heretic English, while painting the portrait of Queen Mary, a charm that enabled him to bewitch the Spanish monarch. Being thus compelled to leave Spain, he settled in Antwerp, where he died between 1576 and 1578.

The pictures of Mor, who was the contemporary of Titian, at different periods of his art bear traces of the Dutch, Spanish, and Flemish schools. He in turn also had an influence on the portrait painters of Spain half a century before the birth of Velazquez. The _Portrait of a Man_ (No. 2478), which is signed and dated:

“_ANT MORO pingebat, 1565_,”

was in the past held by some writers to bear the features of Sir Francis Drake, who was, however, at the date here given only twenty-one years of age. The two large paintings in the Duchâtel Bequest which pass as the _Portrait of Louis de Rio_ and _His Wife_ (No. 2480 and No. 2481) are, judging by the attitudes of the figures and the shape of the panels, the wings of a large altarpiece. _The Dwarf of Charles V._ (No. 2479) reminds us that the painter, while still young, was taken into the service of that emperor. _The Portrait of Edward VI. of England_ (No. 2481A) bears a very suspicious-looking inscription.

SPANISH OPPRESSION

The political events of the reign of Philip II. of Spain, the mistaken, mischievous, and oppressive policy he adopted with regard to his territory in the Netherlands, and the contempt with which he treated his Dutch subjects, soon alienated their sympathies; but the Duke of Alva by his harshness and bigotry incited them to frenzy. When he set forth in 1567, all hope of peace and mercy fled before him, and within a short period his tyranny and ferocity fanned the flame of rebellion, which after a struggle of eighty years was to end in the Peace of Münster of 1648. In that year Spain ignominiously surrendered, and the independence of the northern Netherlands was recognised. During the long period which elapsed between the Union of Utrecht in 1579 and the negotiations at Osnabrück and Münster in 1648 must have been destroyed innumerable religious pictures, the loss of which renders it almost impossible for us to estimate the full significance of artistic endeavour in Holland in the closing years of the sixteenth century.

A new era in Dutch history, social life and art was beginning to open out by the year 1612, when Abraham Blomaert (1564-1651) painted and signed his very large _Nativity_ (No. 2327), which was formerly attributed to Bernardino Fassolo. Blomaert’s _Portrait of a Man_ (No. 2327A) is also a signed work.

HISTORY AND PORTRAIT PAINTERS

Blomaert’s contemporary, Michiel Jansz Mierevelt (1567-1641), who was at one time Court painter to the Princes of Orange at The Hague, and was with undue flattery hailed as the “New Xeuxis of Delft,” is represented by the _Portrait of Olden Barnevelt_ (No. 2465) and three other portraits, one of which (No. 2466) is in a very bad state. Stiff but characteristic is the _Portrait of a Woman_ (No. 2534), which was painted by Jan van Ravesteyn (1572-1657) in 1633, while his initials are also found on a panel (No. 2535) which was commissioned of him in the following year. Although Gerard Verspronck (1600-1651) was many years his junior, and in 1641, in the period of his maturity, achieved the _Portrait of a Lady_ (No. 2576A), the top corners of which have been added, he painted on the lines of tradition, and showed little originality. He came under the influence of Frans Hals, under whose name his pictures often pass.

CORNELIS JANSSEN

Nor can it be said that the numerous portraits which Cornelis Janssen van Ceulen (1593-1664?) undertook in England, give signs of the new artistic impulse which was daily manifesting itself in Holland in the early works of Frans Hals. Janssen, who was baptized at the Dutch Reformed Church, Austin Friars, London, throve until the establishment in England of Van Dyck, before whom he quickly had to give way; although he withdrew to Kent and lived in retirement, he did not receive the Speaker’s warrant to pass beyond seas until 1643. That “Cornelius Johnson Picture Drawer” made use of pallid flesh tones and lifeless grey tones, is obvious from the two portraits (No. 2338 and No. 2339) exhibited in the Louvre.

The very modern looking _Portrait of a Young Man_ (No. 2303A), signed “D. BAILLY,” is officially held to be the work of a Leyden painter of that name who would appear to have been a contemporary of Cornelis Janssen.

FRANS HALS