Part 10

"I have seen many cities in my life, and drawn not a few; and I have seen many fortifications, fancy ones included, which frequently supply us with very new ideas indeed, especially in matters of proportion; but I do not remember ever having met with either a city or a fortress _entirely_ composed of round towers of various heights and sizes, all facsimiles of each other, and absolutely agreeing in the number of battlements. I have, indeed, some faint recollection of having delineated such a one in the first page of a spelling book when I was four years old; but, somehow or other, the dignity and perfection of the ideal were not appreciated, and the volume was not considered to be increased in value by the frontispiece. Without, however, venturing to doubt the entire sublimity of the same ideal as it occurs in Claude, let us consider how nature, if she had been fortunate enough to originate so perfect a conception, would have managed it in its details. Claude has permitted us to see every battlement, and the first impulse we feel upon looking at the picture is to count how many there are. Nature would have given us a peculiar confused roughness of the upper lines, a multitude of intersections and spots, which we should have known from experience was indicative of battlements, but which we might as well have thought of creating as of counting. Claude has given you the walls below in one dead void of uniform gray. There is nothing to be seen or felt, or guessed at in it; it is gray paint or gray shade, whichever you may choose to call it, but it is nothing more. Nature would have let you see, nay, would have compelled you to see, thousands of spots or lines, not one to be absolutely understood or accounted for, but yet all characteristic and different from each other; breaking lights on shattered stones, vague shadows from waving vegetation, irregular stains of time and weather, mouldering hollows, sparkling casements: all would have been there; none indeed seen as such, none comprehensible or like themselves, but all visible; little shadows and sparkles, and scratches, making that whole space of colour a transparent, palpitating, various infinity"[49] (_ibid._, ch. v. § 7).

(4) Lastly, the picture entirely ignores truth of _mountains_. And this in two ways. First, there is a total want of magnitude and aerial distance:--

"In the distance is something white, which I believe must be intended for a snowy mountain, because I do not see that it can well be intended for anything else. Now no mountain of elevation sufficient to be sheeted with perpetual snow can by any possibility sink so low on the horizon as this something of Claude's, unless it be at a distance of from fifty to seventy miles. At such distances ... the mountains rise from the horizon like transparent films, only distinguishable from mist by their excessively keen edges and their brilliant flashes of sudden light; they are as unsubstantial as the air itself, and impress their enormous size by means of this aerial-ness, in a far greater degree at these vast distances, than even when towering above the spectator's head.[50] Now, I ask of the candid observer if there be the smallest vestige of an effort to attain, if there be the most miserable, the most contemptible, shadow of attainment of such an effect by Claude? Does that white thing on the horizon look seventy miles off? Is it faint or fading, or to be looked for by the eye before it can be found out? Does it look high? Does it look large? Does it look impressive? You cannot but feel that there is not a vestige of any kind or species of truth in that horizon; and that however artistical it may be, as giving brilliancy to the distance (though as far as I have any feeling in the matter it only gives coldness), it is, in the very branch of art on which Claude's reputation chiefly rests, aerial perspective, hurling defiance to nature in her very teeth. But there are worse failures in this unlucky distance.... No mountain was ever raised to the level of perpetual snow without an infinite multiplicity of form. Its foundation is built of a hundred minor mountains, and from these, great buttresses run in converging ridges to the central peak.... Consequently, in distant effect, when chains of such peaks are visible at once, the multiplicity of form is absolutely oceanic; and though it is possible in near scenes to find vast and simple masses composed of lines which run unbroken for a thousand feet or more, it is physically impossible when these masses are thrown seventy miles back to have simple outlines, for then these large features become mere jags and hillocks, and are heaped and huddled together in endless confusion.... Hence these mountains of Claude having no indication of the steep vertical summits which are characteristic of the central ridges, having soft edges instead of decisive ones, simple forms instead of varied and broken ones, and being painted with a crude raw white, having no transparency, nor filminess, nor air in it, instead of rising in the opalescent mystery which invariably characterises the distant snows, have the forms and the colours of heaps of chalk in a limekiln, not of Alps" (_ibid._, sec. iv. ch. ii. §§ 8, 9).

13. THE HOLY FAMILY.

_Murillo_ (Spanish: 1618-1682).

Bartolomé Estéban Murillo, the most widely popular of the Spanish painters, was himself sprung from the "people." He was born of humble parents in Seville, and his earliest attempts at art were pictures for fairs. He is also believed to have supplied some of the Madonnas which were shipped off by loads for the convents in Mexico[51] and Peru. A turning-point in his artistic career came, however, when a certain Pedro de Moya came into the studio of Murillo's uncle, Castillo. De Moya had been studying under Van Dyck in London. Van Dyck's style was a revelation to Murillo, who determined forthwith to start off on the grand tour. First, however, he went to Madrid, where Velazquez helped him greatly. His studies there were so successful, and his popularity became so great, that the foreign journey was abandoned. He married a lady of fortune, his house became a centre of taste and fashion, commissions poured in upon him, and in 1660 he formed the Academy of Seville. His life was as pious as it was busy. He was often seen praying for long hours in his parish church, and in his last illness (which was brought on by his falling, in a fit of absence of mind, from a scaffold) he was carried every day to pray before Pedro Campaña's "Descent from the Cross." "I wait here," he said to the sacristan who asked one day if he were ready to go, "till the pious servants of our Lord have taken him down."

Murillo was thus one of the last sincerely religious painters--a class which, "after a few pale rays of fading sanctity from Guido, and brown gleams of gipsy Madonnahood from Murillo, came utterly to an end" (_Modern Painters_, vol. v. pt. ix. ch. iv. § 4). But it was "_gipsy_ Madonnahood": there is an entire want of elevation in his religious types, and the peasants whom he painted as beggars or flower-girls he painted also as angels or Virgins. This mingling of the common with the religious alike in subject and treatment was no doubt a principal reason of his great popularity in his own country.[52] His vulgarity of treatment in his favourite beggar subjects is best seen in the Dulwich Gallery; of his religious style, the pictures here are characteristic examples. There is a certain "sweetness" and sentimentality about them which often makes them immensely popular. The French in particular are subject to a _furore_ for Murillo, his "Immaculate Conception," now in the Louvre, having been bought in 1852 for £23,440--the largest sum ever given up to that time for a single picture.[53] With children, too, Murillo is nearly always a great favourite. A maturer taste, however, finds the sentiment of Murillo overcharged, and the sweetness of expression an insufficient substitute for elevation of character. "His drawing," says Ruskin, "is free and not ungraceful, but most imperfect and slurred to give a melting quality of colour. That colour is agreeable because it has no force or severity; but it is morbid, sunless, and untrue. His expression is sweet, but shallow; his models amiable, but vulgar and mindless; his chiaroscuro commonplace, opaque, and conventional; and yet all this is so agreeably combined, and animated by a species of wax-work life, that it is sure to catch everybody who has not either very high feeling or strong love of truth, and to keep them from obtaining either" (Letter to Dean Liddell, given in the _Memoir_ by H. L. Thompson, p, 224.)[54] "Murillo," says a more appreciative critic, "who assimilated least of foreign elements, had become the most international of all Spanish painters; for he possessed the art of winning the favour of all, the gift of a language intelligible to all times and peoples, to all classes and even to aliens of his faith" (Justi: _Velazquez and his Times_, p. 236). One charm his pictures have which no criticism is likely to take away: they are all stamped with the artist's individuality; there is never any mistaking a Murillo.

This picture--known as the Pedroso Murillo, from the Pedroso family, in whose possession it remained until 1810--is one of the painter's last works, painted when he was about sixty. The look of childlike innocence in the head of the young Christ is very attractive, although the attitude is undeniably "stagey." The heads of the Virgin and St. Joseph also are good instances of Murillo's plan of "supplying the place of intrinsic elevation by a dramatic exhibition of sentiment" (W. B. Scott). The picture is characteristic of what is known as Murillo's third, or _vaporoso_, manner. His first manner is called _frio_, or cold; his second warm, or _calido_, and the third, from its melting softness, _vaporoso_. The first style is generally spoken of as lasting up to 1648, the second up to 1656, but he did not so much paint in these different manners at different times as adapt them to the different subjects severally in hand.

14. SEAPORT: THE QUEEN OF SHEBA.

_Claude_ (French, 1600-1682). _See_ 2.

This seaport--inscribed in the right corner _La Reine de Saba va trouver Salamon_,--is one of Claude's masterpieces. Like its companion, the picture was painted in 1648 for the Duke of Bouillon. "The spectator," says Sir Edward Poynter, "may almost imagine that he feels the freshness of the early morning, and the breeze which sends the crisp waves rolling in from the open sea, while the limpid purity of the sunlit atmosphere and the sparkle of the sun on the water, not only invite sympathy with the more exquisite aspects of nature, which is, perhaps, the highest achievement of this art, but are expressed with a simplicity and perfection of execution which surpass all the works of other painters in which similar effects have been attempted" (_The National Gallery_, i. 192). The picture which Turner selected to vie with this is not one of his best, but Ruskin makes a point out of Claude's poverty of invention in the details. The queen is starting for a distant expedition, and was going in great state (she went "with a very great company, and camels that bare spices, and gold in abundance, and precious stones"); yet the prominent incident in the picture is the carrying of one schoolgirl's trunk. She is going by sea, and is setting out in the early morning (for the sun is represented only a little above the horizon);[55] yet has no wraps, nor even a head-dress. For the rest, Ruskin notices the tameness of Claude's waves and a certain conventionality in his treatment of ships and seaports generally. "A man accustomed to the broad, wild sea-shore, with its bright breakers, and free winds, and sounding rocks, and eternal sensation of tameless power, can scarcely but be angered when Claude bids him stand still on some paltry chipped and chiselled quay, with porters and wheel-barrows running against him, to watch a weak, rippling, bound and barriered water, that has not strength enough in one of its waves to upset the flower-pots on the wall, or even to fling one jet of spray over the confining stone"[56] (_Modern Painters_, vol. i. pt. ii. sec. i. ch. vii. § 5). Claude's ships, too, and his conception of seaports generally, show a strange want of true imagination:

"His ships, having hulls of a shape something between a cocoanut and a high-heeled shoe, balanced on their keels on the top of the water, with some scaffolding and cross-sticks above, and a flag at the top of every stick, form perhaps the _purest_ exhibition of human inanity and fatuity which the arts have yet produced. The harbours also, in which these model navies ride, are worthy of all observation for the intensity of the false taste which, endeavouring to unite in them the characters of pleasure-ground and port, destroys the veracity of both. There are many inlets of the Italian seas where sweet gardens and regular terraces descend to the water's edge; but these are not the spots where merchant vessels anchor, or where bales are disembarked. On the other hand, there are many busy quays and noisy arsenals upon the shores of Italy; but queens' palaces are not built upon the quays, nor are the docks in any wise adorned with conservatories or ruins. It was reserved for the genius of Claude to combine the luxurious with the lucrative, and rise to a commercial ideal, in which cables are fastened to temple pillars, and lighthouses adorned with rows of bean-pots" (_Harbours of England_, pp. 17, 18). Notice, lastly, the "atrocious error in ordinary perspective" in the quay on the left of which the figure is sitting with his hand at his eyes[57] (_Modern Painters_, vol. i. pt. i. sec. i. ch. v. § 5, pt. ii. sec. vi. ch. ii. § 1).

15. ECCE HOMO!

_Correggio_ (Parmese: 1494-1534). _See under_ 10.

"Then came Jesus forth, wearing the crown of thorns, and the purple robe. And Pilate saith unto them, _Behold the Man!_"--_Ecce Homo!_ (John xix. 5). Over the domain of tragedy Correggio--with his pretty grace and sentimentality--had little sway. In this respect he has been called "the Rossini of painting. The melodies of the _Stabat Mater_ are the exact analogues in music of Correggio's voluptuous renderings of grave or mysterious motives" (Symonds: _Renaissance_, iii. 248). Thus here it is rather a not-unpleasant feeling of grief than any profound sense of sorrow or resignation that the painter expresses; but within these limits the picture is a very effective one. "The features of Christ express pain without being in the least disfigured by it. How striking is the holding out of the fettered hands, as if to say, 'Behold, these are bound for you!' The Virgin Mary, who, in order to see her son, has held by the balustrade which separates him from her, sinks with grief into the arms of Mary Magdalene. Her lips still seem to tremble, but the corners of the mouth are already fixed, it is involuntarily open; the arched eyelids are on the point of covering the closing eyes; the hands with which she has held fast let go the balustrade" (Waagen: _Treasures of Art in Great Britain_, i. 327). To the right is a Roman soldier, robust and rugged, yet with a touch of pity in his look; whilst to the left, standing just within the judgment hall, is Pilate, the Roman proconsul, with a mild look of self-satisfaction on his face--as of the man who "washed his hands" of the affair and left the populace to do with Christ as they would.

This picture (which is supposed to have been painted in 1521) was formerly in the possession of the Counts Prati of Parma, and subsequently in the Colonna Palace at Rome. It was purchased of the Colonna family by Sir Simon Clarke, who, finding it impossible to take it out of Italy, sold it to Murat, then King of Naples. It was purchased, as already related, with No. 10 by Lord Londonderry in 1834.

16. ST. GEORGE AND THE DRAGON.

_Tintoretto_ (Venetian: 1518-1594).

Jacopo Robusti, called Tintoretto (the little dyer), from the trade of his father, is the last great master of the Venetian School and "the most imaginative of all painters." His artistic ambition was expressed in the line which he wrote on the wall of his studio: "The design of Michelangelo and the colouring of Titian." He engrafted (says Symonds) on the calm and natural Venetian manner "something of the Michelangelesque sublimity, and sought to sway by dramatic movement the romantic motives of the school." He conquers Michelangelo (says Ruskin) in his own field; "out-flies him in motion, outnumbers him in multitude, outwits him in fancy and out-flames him in rage." The imagination of Tintoret dwelt among the tragic and dramatic scenes in sacred history. While he conceived of these in the largest and most audacious spirit, his "imagination penetrative" extended to the minutest details, and his great works abound in those minor episodes which lend so much reality to a poet's conceptions. In his classical pictures, Tintoret combined with the sumptuous colour of Titian something of the mythopoeic faculty which enabled him to inspire the tales of ancient Greece with an intense vitality of beauty. In other of his pictures, effects of light and shade are the vehicle of his imagination. It was Tintoret (says Symonds) "who brought to its perfection the poetry of _chiaroscuro_, expressing moods of passion and emotion by brusque lights, luminous half-shadows, by semi-opaque darkness, no less unmistakably than Beethoven by symphonic modulations" (_Renaissance_, iii. 270). The intense vitality which characterises Tintoret's subject-pictures is conspicuous also in his portraits. They "render the man at his best, full of health and determination, and make us look back with amazement to a state where the human plant was in such vigour" (Berenson's _Venetian Painters_, p. 59). The picture now before us (16) may give some idea of Tintoret's power of imagination; and the decorative piece lately added to the Gallery (1313) is exemplary of another side of his genius. The Galleries at Hampton Court should also be visited by all admirers of Tintoretto. But it is only in Venice that this great master can properly be studied, and only in the works of Ruskin that any full appreciation of his powers is to be found.[58] One or two points, however, may profitably be mentioned which visitors who come across pictures by Tintoret in foreign galleries should bear in mind. First, he is the most unequal in execution of all painters. The Venetians used to say he had three pencils--one of gold, one of silver, and a third of iron. Annibale Carracci said of him that "if he was sometimes equal to Titian, he was often inferior to Tintoretto." Secondly, "when no one would pay for his colours (and sometimes nobody would even give him space of wall to paint on), he used cheap blue for ultramarine;" and he worked so rapidly, "and on such large spaces of canvas, that, between damp and dry, his colours must go, for the most part." Tintoret, from the rapidity of his execution, received the nickname of _il Furioso_; and Sebastiano del Piombo used to say that Tintoret could paint as much in two days as would occupy him for two years. Thirdly, Tintoret "is entirely unconcerned respecting the satisfaction of the public. He neither cares to display his strength to them, nor convey his ideas to them; when he finishes his work, it is, because he is in the humour to do so; and the sketch which a meaner painter would have left incomplete to show how cleverly it was begun, Tintoret simply leaves because he has done as much of it as he likes" (_Relation between Michael Angelo and Tintoret, passim_).

The well-founded pride which is thus stamped on Tintoret's art is conspicuous in his life. From the first he stood alone. His father had sent him as a boy to Titian's studio; but after ten days the master dismissed him. From this time forward the two men remained upon distant terms,--Tintoretto being indeed an ardent admirer of Titian, but never a friend, and Titian and his set turning the cold shoulder upon Tintoret. The slight passed by Titian upon the young Tintoret threw him back upon his own resources, and henceforth he pursued his own ideals, self-taught. He bought casts from the antique and from the works of Michelangelo; he devoted the day to painting, and in the night he made drawings from his casts. His persevering labour won for him in time a high position among the painters of Venice, and before he was forty he had become the acknowledged rival of Titian himself. For some years, however, he worked in poverty, often accepting commissions without pay, and when he became famous he often worked "for nothing." For years he painted in the Scuola di San Rocco--"a shrine reared by Tintoret to his own genius"--at the rate of 100 ducats a year. For his "Paradise" in the Ducal Palace, "the greatest picture in the world," he was asked to name his own price, but he left it to the State, and abated something from what they tendered. While the commission was still pending, Tintoret used to tell the senators that he prayed to God for it, so that paradise itself might perchance be his recompense after death. His exquisite "Three Graces" in the Ducal Palace was painted for fifty ducats. He lived aloof from the world, seldom leaving Venice. His house, on the Fondamenta de' Mori, is still standing, and there are stories told of the way in which his wife, the daughter of a Venetian nobleman, tried to guard against his unworldliness. When he left the house she would wrap up money for him in a handkerchief, and expected an account of it on his return. Tintoretto, it is said, had always to confess that he had spent it upon alms. He loved all the arts, and played the lute and various instruments, some of them of his own invention. He designed theatrical costumes, and was well versed in mechanics. He abounded in witty sayings, but no smile, we are told, ever hovered on his lips. He died at the age of seventy-six, leaving as the record of a long life, devoted with rare single-mindedness to his art, the remark that the art of painting was one which became ever increasingly difficult.