Part 20

At first our eyes are astonished; with the exception of three or four halls, the apartments are low and small. The Hall of Council of the Ten and those surrounding it[28] are gilded habitations, insufficient for the figures that dwell therein; but after a moment one forgets the habitation and sees only the figures. Power and voluptuousness blaze there, unbridled and superb. In the angles nude men, painted caryatides, jut out in such high relief that at the first glance one takes them for statues; a colossal breath swells their chests; their thighs and their shoulders writhe. On the ceiling a Mercury, entirely nude, is almost a figure by Rubens, but of a more gross sensuality. A gigantic Neptune urges before him his sea-horses which plash through the waves; his foot presses the edge of his chariot; his enormous and ruddy body is turned backwards; he raises his conch with the joy of a bestial god; the salt wind blows through his scarf, his hair, and his beard; one could never imagine, without seeing it, such a furious _élan_, such an overflowing of animal spirit, such a joy of pagan flesh, such a triumph of free and shameless life in the open air and broad sunlight. What an injustice to limit the Venetians to the painting of merely happy scenes and to the art of simply pleasing the eye! They have also painted grandeur and heroism; the mere energetic and active body has attracted them; like the Flemings, they have their colossi also. Their drawing, even without colour, is capable by itself of expressing all the solidity and all the vitality of the human structure. Look in this same hall at the four _grisailles_ by Veronese--five or six women veiled or half-nude, all so strong and of such a frame that their thighs and arms would stifle a warrior in their embrace, and, nevertheless, their physiognomy is so simple or so proud that, despite their smile, they are virgins like Raphael's Venuses and Psyches.

[Illustration: BACCHUS AND ARIADNE. _Tintoret._]

The more we consider the ideal figures of Venetian art, the more we feel the breath of an heroic age behind us. Those great draped old men with the bald foreheads are the patrician kings of the Archipelago, Barbaresque sultans who, trailing their silken simars, receive tribute and order executions. The superb women in sweeping robes, bedizened and creased, are empress-daughters of the Republic, like that Catherina Cornaro from whom Venice received Cyprus. There are the muscles of fighters in the bronzed breasts of the sailors and captains; their bodies, reddened by the sun and wind, have dashed against the athletic bodies of janizaries; their turbans, their pelisses, their furs, their sword-hilts constellated with precious stones,--all the magnificence of Asia is mingled on their bodies with the floating draperies of antiquity and with the nudities of Pagan tradition. Their straight gaze is still tranquil and savage, and the pride and the tragic grandeur of their expression announce the presence of a life in which man was concentrated in a few simple passions, having no other thought than that of being master so that he should not be a slave, and to kill so that he should not be killed. Such is the spirit of a picture by Veronese which, in the Hall of the Council of the Ten, represents an old warrior and a young woman; it is an allegory, but we do not trouble ourselves about the subject. The man is seated and leans forward, his chin upon his hand, with a savage air; his colossal shoulders, his arm, and his bare leg encircled with a cnemis of lions' heads protrudes from his ample drapery; with his turban, his white beard, his thoughtful brow, and his traits of a wearied lion, he has the appearance of a Pacha who is tired of everything. She, with downcast eyes, places her hands upon her soft breast; her magnificent hair is caught up with pearls; she seems a captive awaiting the will of her master, and her neck and bowed face are strongly empurpled in the shadow that encircles them.

Nearly all the other halls are empty; the paintings have been taken into an interior room. We go to find the curator of the Museum; we tell him in bad Italian that we have no letters of introduction, nor titles, nor any rights whatsoever to be admitted to see them. Thereupon he has the kindness to conduct us into the reserved hall, to lift up the canvases, one after the other, and to lose two hours in showing them to us.

I have never had greater pleasure in Italy; these canvases are now standing before our eyes; we can look at them as near as we please, at our ease, and we are alone. There are some browned giants by Tintoret, with their skin wrinkled by the play of the muscles, Saint Andrew and Saint Mark, real colossi like those of Rubens. There is a Saint Christopher by Titian, a kind of bronzed and bowed Atlas with his four limbs straining to bear the weight of a world, and on his neck by an extraordinary contrast, the tiny, soft, and laughing _bambino_, whose infantine flesh has the delicacy and grace of a flower. Above all, there are a dozen mythological and allegorical paintings by Tintoret and Veronese, of such brilliancy and such intoxicating fascination that a veil seems to fall from our eyes and we discover an unknown world, a paradise of delights situated beyond all imagination and all dreams. When the Old Man of the Mountain transported into his harem his sleeping youths to render them capable of extreme devotion, doubtless it was such a spectacle that he furnished.

Upon the coast at the margin of the infinite sea, serious Ariadne receives the ring of Bacchus, and Venus, with a crown of gold, has come through the air to celebrate their marriage. Here is the sublime beauty of bare flesh, such as it appears coming out of the water, vivified by the sun and touched with shadows. The goddess is floating in liquid light and her twisted back, her flanks and her curves are palpitating, half enveloped in a white, diaphanous veil. With what words can we paint the beauty of an attitude, a tone, or an outline? Who will describe the healthy and roseate flesh under the amber transparency of gauze? How shall we represent the soft plenitude of a living form and the curves of limbs which flow into the leaning body? Truly she is swimming in the light like a fish in its lake, and the air, filled with vague reflections, embraces and caresses her.

_Voyage en Italie_ (Paris, 1866).

FOOTNOTES:

[28] Painted by Veronese and by Zelotti and Bazzaco under his direction.

BACCHUS AND ARIADNE

ANONYMOUS

Titian's magnificent pictures in the Ducal Palace were, all but one, destroyed by fire the year after his death; but his impetuous rival, Tintoretto, is abundantly represented there. With regard to _him_, as usual, our admiration for frequent manifestations of extraordinary power is but too commonly checked and chilled by coarse, heavy painting, and the unexpressive wholly uninteresting character of many of his allegorical or celestial groups, which seem introduced merely as exercises or exhibitions of technical skill, rather than as appeals to our imagination or finer feelings.... On the whole you are again tempted to be somewhat out of conceit with Tintoretto, till you pause in the Ante Collegio, or guard-room, before a picture of his so poetically conceived and admirably wrought, indeed so pleasing in all respects, that you wonder still more at the dull, uninteresting character of so many of the others. Yes, here _Il Furioso_ Tintoretto, leaving ostentatious, barren displays of technical power, has once again had the gentleness and patience to make himself thoroughly agreeable. Ariadne, a beautiful and noble figure, is seated undraped on a rock, and Bacchus, profusely crowned with ivy, advances from the sea, and offers her the nuptial ring; whilst above, Venus, her back towards you, lying horizontally in the pale blue air, as if the blue air were her natural couch, spreads or rather kindles, a chaplet or circlet of stars round Ariadne's head. Here, those who luxuriate in what is typical, may tell us, and probably not without truth, that Tintoretto wished to convey a graceful hint of Venice crowned by beauty and blessed with joy and abundance. Bacchus arising from the sea well signifies these latter gifts, and the watery path by which they come to her; and the lonely island nymph to whom he presents the wedding-ring, may be intended to refer to the situation and original forlornness of Venice herself, when she sat in solitude amidst the sandy isles of the lagune, aloof from her parental shores, ravaged by the Hun or the Lombard. The pale yellow sunshine on these nude figures and their light transparent shadows, and the mild temperate blue of the calm sea and air, almost completing the most simple arrangement of the colouring of the picture, are still beautiful, and no doubt were far more so before its lamentable fading, occasioned, it seems, by too much exposure to light; you feel quite out of doors, all on the airy cliffs, as you look on it, and almost taste the very freshness of the sea-breeze.

_The Art Journal_ (London, 1857).

LA CRUCHE CASSÉE

(_GREUZE_)

THÉOPHILE GAUTIER

One might say of Greuze, as of Hogarth, that the moral scenes which he represents appear to have been posed for and acted by excellent actors rather than copied directly from nature. This is the truth, but seen, however, through an interpretation and under a travesty of rusticity. All is reasoned out, full of purpose, and leading to an end. There is in every stroke what the _littérateurs_ call ideas when they talk about painting. Thus Diderot has celebrated Greuze in the most lyric strain. Greuze, however, is not a mediocre artist: he invented a _genre_ unknown before his time, and he possesses veritable qualities of a painter. He has colour, he has touch, and his heads, modelled by square plans and, so to speak, by facets, have relief and life. His draperies, or rather his rumpled linen, torn and treated grossly in a systematic fashion to give full value to the delicacy of the flesh, reveal in their very negligence an easy brush. _La Malédiction Paternelle_ and _Le Fils Maudit_ are homilies that are well painted and of a practical moral, but we prefer _L'Accordée du Village_, on account of the adorable head of the _fiancée_; it is impossible to find anything younger, fresher, more innocent and more coquettishly virginal, if these two words may be connected. Greuze, and this is the cause of the renown which he enjoys now after the eclipse of his glory caused by the intervention of David and his school, has a very individual talent for painting woman in her first bloom, when the bud is about to burst into the rose and the child is about to become a maiden. As in the Eighteenth Century all the world was somewhat libertine, even the moralists, Greuze, when he painted an Innocence, always took pains to open the gauze and give a glimpse of the curve of the swelling bosom; he puts into the eyes a fiery lustre and upon the lips a dewy smile that suggests the idea that Innocence might very easily become Voluptuousness.

[Illustration: LA CRUCHE CASSÉE. _Greuze._]

_La Cruche Cassée_ is the model of this _genre_. The head has still the innocence of childhood, but the fichu is disarranged, the rose at the corsage is dropping its leaves, the flowers are only half held in the fold of the gown and the jug allows the water to escape through its fissure.

_Guide de l'Amateur au Musée du Louvre_ (Paris, 1882).

PORTRAIT OF LADY COCKBURN AND HER CHILDREN

(_REYNOLDS_)

FREDERIC G. STEPHENS

The number of Reynolds's portraits of ladies has never been given, probably it cannot be ascertained with precision; it is beyond all question marvellous, but not less so is the variety of the attitudes in which he placed the sitters, that of the ideas he expressed, and of the accessories with which they are surrounded; to this end, and to show how successfully he fitted things together, background and figure, compare the portrait of _Elizabeth Hamilton, Countess of Derby_ splendidly engraved by W. Dickinson, with that of Lady Betty Delmé. It is the same everywhere.

We believe that Reynolds, of that English school of portrait-painters of which he was the founder, was the happiest in introducing backgrounds to his works; to him we are for the most part indebted for that aptitude of one to the other which has so great an effect in putting the eye and mind of the observer into harmonious relationship with what may be called the _motive_ of the portrait, which, indeed, elevates a mere likeness to the character of a picture, and affords a charming field for the display of art in pathos, which is too often neglected, if not utterly ignored, by Reynolds's successors. We think he exhibited more of this valuable characteristic than any other contemporary artist. Lawrence aimed at it, but with effect only commensurate to his success in painting. Of old, as before the Seventeenth Century in Germany and Italy, the art of landscape-painting _per se_ was inefficiently cultivated, at least expressed with irregularity, although occasionally with force enough to show that the pathos as well as the beauty of nature were by no means unappreciated or neglected to anything like the extent which has been commonly represented by writers on Art. Reynolds probably took the hint, as he did many others of the kind, from Vandyck, and gave apt backgrounds to his figures: between these painters no one did much, or even well in the pathetic part of the achievement. Since Reynolds, none have approached him in success. It will be understood that the object of these remarks is not to suggest for the reader's consideration who painted the best landscape backgrounds as landscapes, but who most happily adapted them to his more important themes. We believe Reynolds did so, and will conclude our remarks by another example. The landscape in the distance of _The Age of Innocence_ is as thoroughly in keeping with the subject as it can be: thus here are fields easy to traverse, a few village elms, and just seen above their tops the summits of habitations,--the hint is thus given that the child, all innocent as she is, has not gone far from home, or out of sight of the household to which she belongs....

[Illustration: PORTRAIT OF LADY COCKBURN AND HER CHILDREN. _Reynolds._]

It has been alleged that Reynolds never, or rarely painted the landscape backgrounds to his pictures, and that they were the work of Peter Toms, R.A., one of his ablest assistants, or of others who were more potent with that branch of Art than the President himself.... It is hard to deny to the mind which conceived the ruling idea of such pictures that honour which is assuredly due to some one, and to whom more probably than to the painter of the faces and designer of the attitudes, which are in such perfect harmony with the subordinate elements about them as to be completed only when the alliance is made. Without this alliance, this harmony of parts, half the significance of many of Reynolds's pictures is obscured. When we have noted this the result is at least instructive, if not convincing, that one mind designed, if one hand did not invariably execute, the whole of any important portrait by our subject.

Our own belief is, that whenever the landscapes or other accessories of his productions are essential to the idea expressed by the work as a whole, then undoubtedly Reynolds wrought these minor parts almost wholly, if not entirely, with his own brushes.

Few, if any, of Reynolds's family groups equals in beauty, variety, and spirit, the famous _Cornelia and her Children_, or rather _Lady Cockburn and her three Infants_,--a work so charming, that we can well conceive the feelings of the Royal Academicians of 1774, that long-past time, when it was brought to be hung in the Exhibition, and received with clapping of hands, as men applaud a successful musical performance, or the fine reading of a poem. Every Royal Academician then present--the scene must have been a very curious one--stepped forward, and in this manner saluted the work of the President; they did so, not because it was his, but on account of its charming qualities. Conceive the painters, each in his swallow-tailed coat, his ruffles and broad cuffs, his knee-breeches, buckles, long waistcoat, and the rest of his garments of those days, thus uniting in one acclaim. The reader may judge whether or not such applause was deserved by the picture, which tells its own story. The parrot in the background was occasionally used by Reynolds; see the portrait of Elizabeth, Countess of Derby, and the engraving from it by W. Dickinson.[29] It has been said that the only example of Reynolds's practice in signing pictures on the border of the robes of his sitters appears in _Mrs. Siddons as the Tragic Muse_; nevertheless, this picture of _Cornelia_ shows at least one exception to that asserted rule. The border of Lady Cockburn's dress in the original is inscribed in a similar manner thus:--"1775, Reynolds _pinxit_." The picture was begun in 1773, and is now in the possession of Sir James Hamilton, of Portman Square, who married the daughter of General Sir James Cockburn, one of the boys in the picture. It is noteworthy that all these children successively inherited the baronetcy; one of them--the boy who looks over his mother's shoulder--was Admiral Sir George Cockburn, Bart., on board whose ship, the _Northumberland_, Napoleon was conveyed to St. Helena. Sir James, the eldest brother, was afterwards seventh baronet; Sir William, the third brother, was eighth baronet of the name, was Dean of York, and married a daughter of Sir R. Peel. The lady was Augusta Anne, daughter of the Rev. Frances Ascough, D.D., Dean of Bristol, married in 1769, the second wife of Sir James Cockburn, sixth baronet of Langton, in the county of Berwick, M.P. She was niece of Lord Lyttleton. For this picture in March, 1774, Reynolds received £183 15s. This was probably the whole price, and for a work of no great size, but wealthy in matter, the amount was small indeed. It includes four portraits. After comparison of the facts that the engravings, by C.W. Wilkin, in stipple, and by S.W. Reynolds, mezzotint, are dated, on the robe as aforesaid, "1775," and its exhibition in 1774, the year in which it was paid for, we may guess that the signature and date were added by the painter after exhibiting it, and probably while he worked on it, with the advantage of having compared the painting with others in the Royal Academy. The landscape recalls that glimpse of halcyon country of which we caught sight in _The Infant Academy_--its trees, its glowing sky, are equally adaptable to both subjects. The picture was exhibited at the British Institution in 1843, and was then the property of Sir James Cockburn, Bart., whose portrait it contains.

_English Children as painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds_ (London, 1867).

FOOTNOTES:

[29] Rather we should say, see the engraving only. The picture is one of the very few prime works by Reynolds which has disappeared without records of its loss.

ST. CECILIA

(_RAPHAEL_)

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

I have seen a quantity of things here--churches, palaces, statues, fountains, and pictures; and my brain is at this moment like a portfolio of an architect, or a print-shop, or a common-place book. I will try to recollect something of what I have seen; for indeed it requires, if it will obey, an act of volition. First, we went to the Cathedral, which contains nothing remarkable, except a kind of shrine, or rather a marble canopy, loaded with sculptures, and supported on four marble columns. We went then to a palace--I am sure I forget the name of it--where we saw a large gallery of pictures. Of course, in a picture gallery you see three hundred pictures you forget, for one you remember. I remember, however, an interesting picture by Guido, of the Rape of Proserpine, in which Proserpine casts back her languid and half-unwilling eyes, as it were, to the flowers she had left ungathered in the fields of Enna.

We saw besides one picture of Raphael--St. Cecilia; this is in another and higher style; you forget that it is a picture as you look at it; and yet it is most unlike any of those things which we call reality. It is of the inspired and ideal kind, and seems to have been conceived and executed in a similar state of feeling to that which produced among the ancients those perfect specimens of poetry and sculpture which are the baffling models of succeeding generations. There is a unity and a perfection in it of an incommunicable kind. The central figure, St. Cecilia, seems rapt in such inspiration as produced her image in the painter's mind; her deep, dark, eloquent eyes lifted up; her chestnut hair flung back from her forehead--she holds an organ in her hands--her countenance, as it were, calmed by the depth of its passion and rapture, and penetrated throughout with the warm and radiant light of life. She is listening to the music of heaven, and, as I imagine, has just ceased to sing, for the four figures that surround her evidently point, by their attitudes, towards her; particularly St. John, who, with a tender yet impassioned gesture, bends his countenance towards her, languid with the depth of his emotion. At her feet lie various instruments of music, broken and unstrung. Of the colouring I do not speak; it eclipses nature, yet has all her truth and softness.

_Letters from Italy. The Prose Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley_, edited by Harry Buxton Forman (London, 1880).

[Illustration: ST. CECILIA. _Raphael._]

THE LAST SUPPER

(_LEONARDO DA VINCI_)

JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE

We will now turn to _The Last Supper_, which was painted on the wall of the refectory of St. Maria delle Gratie in Milan.

The place where this picture is painted must first be considered: for here the knowledge of this artist is focussed. Could anything more appropriate, or noble, be devised for a refectory than a parting meal which the whole world will reverence for ever?

Several years ago when travelling we beheld this dining-room still undestroyed. Opposite the entrance on the narrow end on the floor of the hall stands the prior's table with a table for the monks on either side, all three raised a step above the ground, and now when the visitor turns around he sees painted on the wall, above the not very high doors, a fourth table, at which are seated Christ and His disciples, as if they also belonged to this company. It must have been an impressive sight at meal times when the tables of Christ and the prior looked upon each other like two pictures, and the monks found themselves enclosed between them. And, for this very reason, the artist's judgment selected the tables of the monks for a model. Also the table-cloth, with its creased folds, embroidered stripes, and tied corners, was taken from the linen-room of the monastery, while the dishes, plates, drinking-vessels, and other utensils are similarly copied from those used by the monks.

Here, also, no attempt was made to depict an uncertain and antiquated custom. It would have been extremely unsuitable in this place to permit the holy company to recline upon cushions. No! it should be made contemporary. Christ should take His Last Supper with the Dominicans in Milan.