Part 17

_Rubens_ (Flemish: 1577-1640). _See_ 38.

"It is interesting to observe the difference in the treatment of this subject by the three great masters, Michael Angelo, Rubens, and Tintoret.... Rubens and Michael Angelo made the fiery serpents huge boa-constrictors, and knotted the sufferers together with them. Tintoret makes ... the serpents little flying and fluttering monsters, like lampreys with wings; and the children of Israel, instead of being thrown into convulsed and writhing groups, are scattered, fainting in the fields, far away in the distance. As usual, Tintoret's conception, while thoroughly characteristic of himself, is also truer to the words of Scripture. We are told that 'the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people, and they _bit_ the people'; we are not told that they crushed the people to death. And, while thus the truest, it is also the most terrific conception.... Our instinct tells us that boa-constrictors do not come in armies; and we look upon the picture with as little emotion as upon the handle of a vase, or any other form worked out of serpents, when there is no probability of serpents actually occurring" (_Stones of Venice_: Venetian Index, "Rocco, Scuola di San," No. 24).

61. LANDSCAPE WITH FIGURES.

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

The history of this picture is curiously interesting. It belonged to Sir George Beaumont, who valued it so highly that it was, we are told, his travelling companion. He presented it to the National Gallery in 1826, but unable to bear its loss begged it back for the rest of his life. He took it with him into the country, and on his death, two years later, his widow restored it to the nation. Sir George Beaumont was not the only artist who thought highly of this little picture. Constable, we are told, "looked back on the first sight of this exquisite work as an important epoch in his life.... It is called _The Annunciation_; but the spring by which the female is seated, and the action of the angel who points to the buildings in the distance, leave little doubt that Claude's intention was to represent the first flight of Hagar from the presence of her mistress" (Leslie's _Life of Constable_, 1845, p. 6).

62. A BACCHANALIAN DANCE.

_Nicolas Poussin_ (French: 1593-1665). _See_ 39.

This picture, one of Poussin's masterpieces, is probably one of four Bacchanals painted for Cardinal Richelieu:--

Whence came ye, jolly Satyrs! whence came ye, So many, and so many, and such glee? Why have ye left your forest haunts, why left Your nuts in oak-tree cleft?-- "For wine, for wine we left our kernel tree; For wine we left our heath, and yellow brooms, And cold mushrooms; For wine we follow Bacchus through the earth; Great god of breathless cups and chirping mirth! Come hither, lady fair, and joined be To our mad minstrelsy!"

KEATS: _Endymion_.

63. LANDSCAPE WITH FIGURES.

_Annibale Carracci_ (Eclectic-Bologna: 1560-1609). _See_ 9.

This picture was originally in the Giustiniani Palace at Rome; hence the figures are supposed to represent (as stated on the frame) Prince Giustiniani and his attendants returning from the chase.

64. RETURN OF THE ARK FROM CAPTIVITY.

_Sebastien Bourdon_ (French: 1616-1671).

This picture was a great favourite with Sir Joshua Reynolds, to whom it once belonged. He cited it, together with a picture by Salvator Rosa, to the students of the Academy (Discourse xiv.) as an instance of the "poetical style of landscape," calling particular attention to the "visionary" character of "the whole and every part of the scene." The subject is the return of the ark by the Philistines to the valley of Bath-shemesh, as described in I Samuel vi. 10-14. The painter was one of the original twelve _anciens_ of the old French Academy of painting, of which he died rector; he had formerly been painter to Queen Christina of Sweden, to whose country he had fled as a Protestant.

65. CEPHALUS AND AURORA.

_Nicolas Poussin_ (French: 1593-1669). _See under_ 39.

None of the "learned" Poussin's pictures in the Gallery shows so well as this how steeped he was alike in the knowledge and in the feeling of Greek mythology. Cephalus was a Thessalian prince whose love of hunting carried him away at early dawn from the arms of his wife Procris (see under 698). Hence the allegorical fable of the loves of Cephalus and Aurora, the goddess of the dawn, and her attempt to rival Procris in his affections. Cephalus here half yields to Aurora's blandishments, but a little Cupid holds up before him the portrait of his wife and recalls her love to his mind. Behind is Aurora's car, in which she is drawn by the white-winged Pegasus across the sky. But Pegasus, with that intermingling of many ideas which is characteristic of all Greek myths, is also "the Angel of the Wild Fountains: that is to say, the fastest flying or lower rain-cloud, winged, but racing as upon the earth."[85] Hence beside him sleeps a river-god, his head resting on his urn. But the mountain top is tipped with dawn; and behind, one sees a Naiad waking. Farther still beyond, in a brightening horizon, the form of Apollo, the sun-god whose advent follows on the dawn, is just apparent, his horses and his car melting into the shapes of morning clouds.[86]

66. A LANDSCAPE: AUTUMN MORNING.

_Rubens_ (Flemish: 1577-1640). _See_ 38.

Rubens "perhaps furnishes us with the first instances of complete, unconventional, unaffected landscape. His treatment is healthy, manly, and rational, not very affectionate, yet often condescending to minute and multitudinous detail; always, as far as it goes, pure, forcible, and refreshing, consummate in composition, and marvellous in colour" (_Modern Painters_, vol. i. pt. ii. sec. i. ch. vii. § 15). Notice especially the sky. "The whole field of ancient landscape art affords, as far as we remember, but one instance of any effort whatever to represent the character of the upper cloud region. That one instance is the landscape of Rubens in our own Gallery, in which the mottled or fleecy sky is given with perfect truth and exquisite beauty" (_ibid._, vol. i. pt. ii. sec. iii. ch. ii. § 9). Rubens's skill in landscape was partly due to fondness for the scenery he depicted. This picture was painted when he was at Genoa, but it is a purely Flemish scene--a broad stretch of his own lowlands, with the castle of Stein, it is said, which was afterwards his residence, near Mechlin, in the background, with Flemish waggon and horses fording a brook, and with a sportsman in the immediate foreground, carrying an old-fashioned firelock, intent on a covey of partridges.[87] "The Dutch painters are perfectly contented with their flat fields and pollards; Rubens, though he had seen the Alps, usually composes his landscapes of a hayfield or two, plenty of pollards and willows, a distant spire, a Dutch house with a moat about it, a windmill, and a ditch" (_ibid._, vol. iii. pt. iv. ch. xiii. § 20). The Dutch painters agreed, in fact, with the Lincolnshire farmer in Kingsley's _Alton Locke_, whom Ruskin goes on to quote: "None o' this here darned ups and downs o' hills, to shake a body's victuals out of his inwards," but "all so vlat as a barn's vloor, for vorty mile on end--there's the country to live in!"

This picture is one of four "seasons." (Spring is in the Wallace collection at Hertford House, Summer and Winter are in the Royal collection at Windsor.) It was presented to the nation by Sir George Beaumont. The painter Haydon, describing a visit to Sir George at Coleorton, writes:

"We dined with the Claude and Rembrandt before us, breakfasted with the Rubens landscape, and did nothing morning, noon, or night but think of painting, dream of painting, and wake to paint again." The picture is referred to also by Wordsworth in a very interesting passage. "I heard the other day," he writes to Sir George Beaumont, "of two artists, who thus expressed themselves upon the subject of a scene among our lakes: 'Plague upon those vile enclosures!' said one; 'they spoil everything.' 'Oh,' said the other, 'I never _see_ them.' Glover was the name of this last. Now, for my part, I should not wish to be either of these gentlemen, but to have in my own mind the power of turning to advantage, wherever it is possible, every object of Art and Nature as they appear before me. What a noble instance, as you have pointed out to me, has Rubens given of this in that picture in your possession, where he has brought, as it were, a whole country into one landscape, and made the most formal partitions of cultivation, hedgerows of pollard willows, conduct the eye into the depths and distances of his picture: and thus, more than by any other means, has given it that appearance of immensity which is so striking" (_Memorials of Coleorton_, ii. 135).

67. THE HOLY FAMILY AND ST. GEORGE.

_Rubens_ (Flemish: 1577-1640). _See_ 38.

On the left are the usual incidents of a "Riposo," or Repose in Egypt. St. Joseph is asleep, and the mule browses on the bank of the stream, while John the Baptist and attendant angels play with the Lamb. The Holy Child is on its mother's knee, and to them St. George is presenting his proselyte, the heathen princess whom he had saved from the dragon (see under 16). The dragon, now bridled with her girdle, follows her meekly, and St. George, as he introduces her to the mysteries of Christianity, plants the banner of the Faith. With the holy mother is St. Mary Magdalen--a penitent sinner herself, like the heathen princess, whom she now ushers into the Holy Presence.

Such appears to be the subject. As for the manner in which it is treated, it is interesting to know that the figures are portraits of the painter himself and his family. Rubens "is religious, too, after his manner; hears mass every morning, and perpetually uses the phrase 'by the grace of God,' or some other such, in writing of any business he takes in hand; but the tone of his religion may be determined by one fact. We saw how Veronese painted himself and his family as worshipping the Madonna. Rubens has also painted himself in an equally elaborate piece.[88] But they are not _worshipping_ the Madonna. They are _performing_ the Madonna, and her saintly entourage" (_Modern Painters_, vol. v. pt. ix. ch. vi. § 9).

68. A WOODY LANDSCAPE.

_Gaspard Poussin_ (French: 1613-1675). _See_ 31.

The scene is the beautiful avenue of oaks, called the "Galleria di Sopra," which skirts the upper margin of the Lake of Albano. Ruskin refers to this picture in illustration of his thesis that Turner's "truth of vegetation," in his representation of the exceeding intricacy of nature, is not to be paralleled among the old painters, and least of all in Gaspard Poussin with his regular "tree-patterns." The picture before us is "a woody landscape," which in nature would be a mass of intricate foliage--

"a mere confusion of points and lines between you and the sky.... This, as it comes down into the body of the tree, gets closer, but never opaque; it is always transparent, with crumbling lights in it letting you through to the sky; then, out of this, come, heavier and heavier, the masses of illumined foliage, all dazzling and inextricable, save here and there a single leaf on the extremities: then, under these, you get deep passages of broken irregular gloom, passing into transparent, green-lighted, misty hollows ... all penetrable and transparent, and, in proportion, inextricable and incomprehensible, except where across the labyrinth and mystery of the dazzling light and dream-like shadow, falls, close to us, some solitary spray, some wreath of two or three motionless large leaves, the type and embodying of all that in the rest we feel and imagine, but can never see.

"Now, with thus much of nature in your mind, go to Gaspard Poussin's 'View near Albano.' It is the very subject to unite all these effects, a sloping bank shaded with intertwined forest. And what has Gaspard given us? A mass of smooth, opaque, varnished brown, without one interstice, one change of hue, or any vestige of leafy structure, in its interior, or in those parts of it, I should say, which are intended to represent interior; but out of it, over it rather, at regular intervals, we have circular groups of greenish touches, always the same in size, shape, and distance from each other, containing so exactly the same number of touches each, that you cannot tell one from another. There are eight or nine and thirty of them, laid over each other like fish-scales; the shade being most carefully made darker and darker as it recedes from each until it comes to the edge of the next, against which it cuts in the same sharp circular line, and then begins to decline again, until the canvas is covered with about as much intelligence or feeling of art as a house-painter has in marbling a wainscot, or a weaver in repeating an ornamental pattern. What is there in this, which the most determined prejudice in favour of the old masters can for a moment suppose to resemble trees? It is exactly what the most ignorant beginner, trying to make a complete drawing, would lay down; exactly the conception of trees which we have in the works of our worst drawing-masters, where the shade is laid on with the black lead and stump, and every human power exerted to make it look like a kitchen grate well polished"[89] (_Modern Painters_, vol. i. pt. ii. sec. vi. ch. i. §§ 16-19).

A further "untruth of vegetation" is the perpetration of the bough at the left-hand upper corner. This is--

"a representation of an ornamental group of elephants' tusks, with feathers tied to the end of them. Not the wildest imagination could ever conjure up in it the remotest resemblance to the bough of a tree. It might be the claws of a witch, the talons of an eagle, the horns of a fiend; but it is a full assemblage of every conceivable falsehood which can be told respecting foliage, a piece of work so barbarous in every way, that one glance at it ought to prove the complete charlatanism and trickery of the whole system of the old landscape painters" (_ibid._, § 7).

69. ST. JOHN PREACHING IN THE WILDERNESS.

_Pietro Francesco Mola_ (Eclectic-Bologna: 1612-1668).

Mola, a native of Milan, and the son of an architect, studied first at Rome and Venice, but afterwards at Bologna--returning ultimately to Rome, where he held the office of President of the Academy of St. Luke. "There is," says Sir Frederic Burton, "a certain idyllic character in Mola's works which renders them extremely attractive and of more artistic value than the majority of works produced in his day."

The wild figure of the Baptist is well contrasted with the turbaned Pharisee and the rest of his audience:--

The last, and greatest, herald of Heav'n's King, Girt with rough skins, hies to the desert wild: There burst he forth--"All ye whose hopes rely On God! with me amidst these deserts mourn; Repent! repent! and from old errors turn." Who listen'd to his voice, obey'd his cry? Only the echoes, which he made relent, Rung from their flinty caves--Repent!--repent!

DRUMMOND OF HAWTHORNDEN: _Flowers of Zion_.

The preacher places his right hand on his heart as if to attest his own sincerity, while with his left he points to the Saviour, who is seen approaching in the distance: "This is he of whom I said, After me cometh a man which is preferred before me, for he was before me."

70. CORNELIA AND HER JEWELS.

_Padovanino_ (Venetian: 1590-1650).

Alessandro Varotari was born at Padua, from which town he derived the name by which he is generally known. He was the son of a Veronese painter, but went early to Venice, where he became a student and imitator of the works of Titian and Paolo Veronese. His masterpiece is the "Marriage at Cana" in the Academy at Venice. He painted children well, and often introduced them into his pictures.

Cornelia, a noble Roman lady, daughter of the elder Scipio Africanus, and mother of the Gracchi, was visited by a friend, who ostentatiously exhibited her jewels. Cornelia being asked to show hers in turn, pointed to her two sons, just then returning from school, and said, "These are my jewels."

71. A PARTY OF MULETEERS.

_Jan Both_ (Dutch: 1610-1662).

Jan Both, born at Utrecht, was one of the first "Italianisers" in landscape. He was the son of a glass painter, who gave him his first lessons in drawing; he afterwards became the pupil of Abraham Bloemaert. As soon as he was old enough to travel, he set out with his brother Andries for Italy. Unlike Rubens, who even at Genoa painted only the Netherlands, Both adopted Italian scenery as his subject. At Rome he formed his style on that of Claude. The two brothers travelled, studied, and worked in Italy together. Jan excelled in landscape; the figures and cattle in his pictures were generally sketched by Andries. After some years at Rome, the brothers worked for a time at Venice; here Andries, having dined one evening not wisely but too well, fell from his gondola into the water and was drowned. This was a terrible blow to Jan, who returned to Utrecht in despair, where he survived his brother for some years, during which Poelenburgh took the place of Andries (see No. 209). In the year 1649 Jan was one of the chiefs of the Painters' Guild at Utrecht, and the inscription on an engraved portrait of him published in 1662 speaks of him as a "good and well-respected landscape painter." Both loved to paint abruptly-rising rocks, with mountain paths fringed with trees, and cascades or lakes in the foreground. His best works are distinguished by the soft golden tones of the declining day. Several good examples of this master are to be seen at the Dulwich Gallery.

A reminiscence, doubtless, of one of Both's journeys in the Italian lake district. One may recall the reminiscence of Italy by another northern traveller--

Know'st thou the mountain bridge that hangs on cloud? The mules in mist grope o'er the torrent loud, In caves lie coil'd the dragon's ancient brood, The crag leaps down and over it the flood: Know'st thou it, then? 'Tis there! 'tis there Our way runs; O my father, wilt thou go?

MIGNON'S song in _Wilhelm Meister_: Carlyle's translation.

72. LANDSCAPE WITH TOBIAS AND THE ANGEL.

_Rembrandt_ (Dutch: 1606-1669). _See_ 45.

73. THE CONVERSION OF ST. PAUL.

_Ascribed to Ercole di Giulio Grandi_ (Ferrarese: died 1531).

The confused character of this picture is sufficiently shown by the fact that whilst the official designation is as above, other critics have called it the "Destruction of Sennacherib." For a masterpiece by Ercole, see 1119. The ascription to him of this inferior work is decidedly doubtful.

74. A SPANISH PEASANT BOY.

_Murillo_ (Spanish: 1618-1682). _See_ 13.

Look at this and the other little boy near it (176), and you will see at once the secret of Murillo's popularity. "In a country like Spain he became easily the favourite of the crowd. He was one of themselves, and had all the gifts they valued. Not like Velazquez, reproducing by choice only the noble and dignified side of the national character, Murillo could paint to perfection either the precocious sentiment of the Good Shepherd with the lamb by his side, or the rags and happiness of the gipsy beggar boy" (W. B. Scott's _Murillo_, p. 76)--

Poor and content is rich and rich enough.

75. ST. GEORGE AND THE DRAGON.

_Domenichino_ (Eclectic-Bologna: 1581-1641). _See_ 48.

Compare this conventional representation of the subject with the imaginative one by Tintoretto (16). Amongst points of comparison notice the absence of anything terrible in the dragon, the crowd of spectators (on the walls in the distance), St. George's helmet; and where is his spear?

76. CHRIST'S AGONY IN THE GARDEN.

_After Correggio_. _See under_ 10.

This is an old copy, or perhaps a replica, of the original picture in the possession of the Duke of Wellington at Apsley House. The treatment of the subject is remarkable, and characteristic of Correggio. "The angel hovers in mid-air with marvellous ease and lightness, and though he bears the healing message of approaching bliss, he cannot restrain his sense of pity. His face is at once radiant and sorrowful, expressing the mingled feelings with which he points on the one hand to heaven, on the other to the cross and crown of thorns. Christ, effulgent in his long straight robe and shining aureole, gazes upward with mournful resignation, the spasm of agony dying out of his face. The twilight landscape is calm and melancholy. The supernatural radiance sheds but a faint light on the grass and bushes, scarcely touching the figures of the sleeping disciples, and dying out completely in the dense foliage beyond. But in the distance a band of soldiers, scarcely visible by the faint glimmer of their torches, draws near, led by Judas, and over the mountains the sky whitens with the first pale streak of dawn" (Ricci: _Correggio: his Life, his Friends, and his Time_, p. 231). The effect of light, Mengs points out, is peculiar: "the radiance of the Saviour's face lights up the picture. But this radiance comes from above, as if from Heaven, while the angel is illuminated by the light reflected from the Saviour." It is interesting to compare Correggio's version of the agony with the earlier one by Bellini (726) and Mantegna (1417). The earlier pictures impress us, but the manner of impression is quite different. There is no attempt either in the Bellini or in the Mantegna to win our sympathy by the beauty of the human type. This, on the other hand, is of the essence of Correggio's art. "The figure of Christ and the Angel represent the dignity of perfect humanity; and Correggio makes the pathos of the expiatory sacrifice of Calvary turn upon this consideration. This is the strictly Renaissance point of view" (J. E. Hodgson, R.A., in _Magazine of Art_, 1886, p. 215).

The original picture has a legend attached to it. "Correggio," says Lomazzo, "was accustomed always to value his works at a very low price, and having on one occasion to pay a bill of four or five _scudi_ to an apothecary in his native city, he painted him 'Christ Praying in the Garden,' which he executed with all possible care." The picture was sold shortly afterwards for 500 _scudi_. It was subsequently in the royal collection at Madrid, and after the battle of Vittoria it was found in Joseph Bonaparte's carriage by one of Wellington's colonels. Wellington hastened to restore it to Ferdinand VII., who, not to be outdone in courtesy, presented it to the duke. The picture in our Gallery was part of the Angerstein collection.

77. THE STONING OF ST. STEPHEN.

_Domenichino_ (Eclectic-Bologna: 1581-1641). _See_ 48.

78.[90] LANDSCAPE WITH RUINS.

_Nicolas Berchem_ (Dutch: 1620-1683).