Part 2

=Mr. Ruskin's Notes.=--It had often occurred to me, as a student of Mr. Ruskin's writings, that a collection of his scattered notes upon painters and pictures now in the National Gallery would be of great value. I applied to Mr. Ruskin in the matter, and he readily permitted me to make what use I liked of any, or all, of his writings. The generosity of this permission, which was supplemented by constant encouragement and counsel, makes me the more anxious to explain clearly the limits of his responsibility for the book. He did not attempt to revise, or correct, either my gleanings from his own books, or the notes added by myself from other sources. Beyond his general permission to me to reprint his past writings, Mr. Ruskin had, therefore, no responsibility for this compilation whatever. I should more particularly state that the pages upon the Turner Gallery in the Second Volume were not even glanced at by him. The criticisms from his books there collected represent, therefore, solely his attitude to Turner at the time they were severally written. But, subject to this deduction, the passages from Ruskin arranged throughout the following pages will, I hope, enable the _Handbook_ to serve a second purpose. Any student who goes through the Gallery under Ruskin's guidance--even at second-hand--can hardly fail to obtain some insight into the system of art-teaching embodied in his works. The full exposition of that system must still be studied in the original text-books, but here the reader may find a series of examples and illustrations which will perhaps make the study more vivid and actual.

=Attribution of Pictures.=--In the matter of _attributions_, the rule, in the successive editions of this Handbook, has been to follow the authority of the Official Labels and Catalogues. Criticism has been very busy of late years with the traditional attribution of pictures in our Gallery, and successive Directors introduce their several, and sometimes contradictory, opinions on such points. Thus more than One Old Master hitherto supposed to be represented in the Gallery has been banished, and others, whose fame had not previously been bruited abroad, have been credited with familiar masterpieces. Thus--to notice some of the changes made by Sir Edward Poynter (Catalogue of 1906)--among the Venetians, Bastiani and Catena have come into favour. To Bastiani was given the picture of "The Doge Giovanni Mocenigo" (750) which for forty years has been exhibited as a work by Carpaccio; that charming painter now disappears from the National Gallery. To Catena is attributed the "St. Jerome" (694), which for several decades had been cited as peculiarly characteristic of Bellini. To Catena also is given the "Warrior in Adoration" (234). In this case Catena's gain is Giorgione's loss. But elsewhere Giorgione has received compensation for disturbance. To him has been given the "Adoration of the Magi" (1160), which some critics attributed to Catena. The beautiful "Ecce Homo" (1310), which was sold as a Carlo Dolci and bought by Sir Frederick Burton as a Bellini, was ascribed by Sir Edward Poynter to Cima. One of the minor Venetians--Basaiti, who enjoyed a high reputation at the National Gallery--was deprived of the pretty "Madonna of the Meadow" (599), which went to swell the opulent record of Bellini. Among the Florentines, a newcomer is Zenobio Macchiavelli, to whom is attributed an altar-piece (586) formerly catalogued under the name of Fra Filippo Lippi. Cosimo Rosselli, hitherto credited with a large "St. Jerome in the Desert" (227), now disappears; it was labelled "Tuscan School," and was any one's picture. The attribution of pictures belonging to the group of the two Lippis and Botticelli is still very uncertain. A note on these critical diversities will be found under No. 293. Among alterations in other schools we may note the substitution of Zurbaran for Velazquez as the painter of "The Nativity," No. 232; the attribution to Patinir, the Fleming, of a landscape formerly labelled "Venetian School" (1298); and the discovery of Jacob van Oost as the painter of a charming "Portrait of a Boy" (1137), which, but for an impossibility in the dates, might well continue to pass as Isaac van Ostade's.

Such were the principal changes made in the ascriptions of the pictures during Sir Edward Poynter's directorate. His successor, Sir Charles Holroyd, has recently made many others, as shown in the following list:

97 (_P. Veronese_), now described as "after Veronese."

215, 216 (_School of T. Gaddi_), now assigned to _Lorenzo Monaco_ (_see_ 1897).

227 (_Florentine School_), now assigned to _Francesco Botticini_ (a Tuscan painter of the 15th century).

276 (_School of Giotto_), now assigned to _Spinello Aretino_; for whom, _see_ 581.

296 (_Florentine School_), now assigned to _Verrocchio_; _see_ below, p. 262.

568 (_School of Giotto_), now assigned to _Angelo di Taddeo Gaddi_, a pupil of Giotto's chief disciple, Taddeo Gaddi (for whom, _see_ p. 211).

579 (_School of Taddeo Gaddi_), now assigned to _Niccolo di Pietro Gerini_, a painter of Florence who was inscribed in the guild in 1368 and died in 1415. Our picture is dated 1387.

579A (_School of Taddeo Gaddi_), now assigned to Gaddi's pupil, _Giovanni da Milano_.

581 (_Spinello Aretino_), now assigned to _Orcagna_; for whom, _see_ 569.

585 (_Umbrian School_), now assigned to "School of _Pollajuolo_"; for whom, _see_ 292.

591 (_Benozzo Gozzoli_), now described as "School of Benozzo."

592 (_Filippino Lippi_), now assigned to _Botticelli_; _see below_, p. 294 _n._

599 (_Giovanni Bellini_), now re-assigned to _Basaiti_; _see below_, p. 299.

636 (_Titian_ or _Palma_). After a period of ascription to Titian, this portrait is now re-assigned to _Palma_; _see below_, p. 315.

650 (_Angelo Bronzino_), now assigned to his pupil, _Alessandro Allori_ (Florentine: 1535-1607).

654 (_School of Roger van der Weyden_), now assigned to _School of Robert Campin_; for whom, _see_ 2608.

655 (_Bernard van Orley_), now ascribed to _Ambrosius Benson_; born in Lombardy, painted in Bruges, living in 1545.

658 (_after Schongauer_), now assigned to _School of Campin_. The picture ascribed to the "Master of Flémalle," as referred to in the text (p. 328), is now No. 2608 (also now assigned to Campin).

659 (_Johann Rottenhammer_), now assigned to _Jan Brueghel, the younger_ (1601-1667), a scholar of Brueghel, the elder.

664 (_Roger van der Weyden_), now assigned to _Dierick Bouts_; for whom, _see_ 2595.

670 (_Angelo Bronzino_), now described as "School of Bronzino."

696 (_Flemish School_), now assigned to _Petrus Cristus_; for whom, _see_ 2593.

704 (_Bronzino_), now described as "School of Bronzino."

709 (_Flemish School_), now assigned to _Memlinc_; for whom, _see_ 686.

713 (_Jan Mostaert_), now assigned to _Jan Prevost_ (Flemish: 1462-1529), a painter of Bruges and a friend of Albert Dürer.

714 (_Cornelis Engelbertsz_), now assigned to _Bernard van Orley_; for whom, _see_ 655.

715 (_Joachim Patinir_), now assigned to _Quentin Metsys_; for whom, _see_ 295.

750 (_Lazzaro Bastiani_), now described as "School of Gentile Bellini"; for whom, _see_ 1213.

774 (_Flemish School_), now assigned to _Dierick Bouts_; for whom, _see_ 2595.

779, 780 (_Borgognone_), now described as "School of Borgognone."

781 (_Florentine School_), now attributed to _Botticini_.

782 (_Botticelli_), now described as "School of Botticelli."

808 (_Giovanni Bellini_), now assigned to _Gentile Bellini_; _see below_, p. 422 _n._

916 (_School of Botticelli_), now assigned to _Jacopo del Sellaio_; for whom, _see_ 2492.

943 (_Flemish School_), now assigned to _D. Bouts_.

1017 (_Flemish School_), now assigned to _Josse de Momper_; _see below_, p. 489.

1033 (_Filippino Lippi_), now assigned to _Botticelli_; _see below_, p. 494.

1048 (_Italian_), now assigned to _Scipione Pulzone_; _see below_, p. 505.

1078, 1079 (_Flemish School_), now "attributed to _Gerard David_"; for whom, _see_ 1045.

1080 (_School of the Rhine_), now assigned to _Flemish School_.

1083 (_Flemish School_), now assigned to _Albrecht Bouts_ (a son of D. Bouts), who died in 1549.

1085 (_School of the Rhine_), now assigned to _Geertgen Tot Sint Jans_ (Dutch: 15th century). This painter was a pupil of Albert van Ouwater; he established himself at Haarlem in a convent belonging to the Knights of St. John (whence his name, Gerard of St. John's). His works were seen and admired by Dürer.

1086 (_Flemish School_), now assigned to the "School of Robert Campin"; for whom, _see_ 2608.

1109A (_Mengs_). To this picture the number 1099 (noted in previous editions of this _Handbook_ as having been missed in the official numbering) is now given.

1121 (_Venetian School_), now assigned to _Catena_; for whom, _see_ 234.

1124 (_Filippino Lippi_), now described as "School of Botticelli."

1126 (_Botticelli_), now assigned to _Botticini_; _see_ on this subject p. 536 _n._

1160 (_School of Giorgione_), now assigned to _Giorgione_ himself.

1199 (_Florentine School_), now assigned to _Pier Francesco Fiorentino_; a Tuscan painter of the 15th century.

1376 (_Velazquez_), now "ascribed to Velazquez."

1412 (_Filippino Lippi_), now described as "School of Botticelli."

1419 (_Flemish School_), now assigned to _Early French School_. The picture formed part of a diptych; the companion picture was in the Dudley Collection (No. 29 in the sale catalogue of 1892, where an illustration of it was given). In this the choir of St. Denis is shown. There are two portraits by the same hand at Chantilly.

1433 (_Flemish School_), now assigned to _Roger van der Weyden_; for whom, _see_ 664.

1434 (_Velazquez_), now "ascribed to Velazquez," and it is added that the picture has been attributed to Luca Giordano (Neapolitan: 1632-1705).

1440 (_Giovanni Bellini_), now assigned to _Gentile Bellini_; for whom, _see_ 1213.

1468 (_Spinello Aretino_), now assigned to _Jacopo di Cione_, the younger brother of Andrea Cione (called Orcagna); he was still living in 1394.

1652 This picture has hitherto been assigned to the _British School_ (and therefore included in vol. ii. of the _Handbook_), and called a portrait of Katharine Parr. It is now discovered to belong to the _Dutch School_ and to be a "portrait of Madame van der Goes."

1699 (_Jan Vermeer_), now "attributed to Vermeer."

1842 (_Tuscan School_), now "attributed to _Stefano di Giovanni_," known as _Sassetta_ (Sienese: 1392-1450).

1870 "Angels with Keys," by _Sebastiano Conca_ (Neapolitan: 1679-1764). Lent by the Victoria and Albert Museum.

1903 (_Jan Fyt_), now assigned to _Pieter Boel_ (Flemish: 1622-1674), of Antwerp, who became official painter to Louis XIV.

It will be observed that critical fashions are unstable, and that in several cases Sir Edward Poynter's changes have been reversed. The recent alterations were made just as this edition of the _Handbook_ was going to press. The ascriptions in the body of my Catalogue remain, therefore, in conformity with the Official Catalogue of 1906 which embodied Sir Edward Poynter's views. The lists of painters and pictures at the end (Appendix I. and II.) have, on the other hand, been revised in accordance with Sir Charles Holroyd's alterations.

=Additional Notes.=--In the _notes upon the pictures_, a large number of additional remarks have been introduced since this _Handbook_ first appeared. These, it is hoped, may serve here and there to deepen the visitor's impression, to suggest fresh points of view, to open up incidental sources of interest. Attention may be called, by way of example, under this head, to several notes upon the designs depicted on the dresses, draperies, and backgrounds of the Italian pictures. These designs, sometimes invented by the artists themselves and sometimes copied from actual stuffs, form a series of examples which illustrate the "art fabrics" of the best period of Italian decorative art, and which might well give hints for the decoration of textile fabrics to-day.[11] Another incidental source of interest in a collection of pictures such as ours, is the historical development of art as it may be traced in the several representations of the same subject by different painters, in successive periods, and in different schools. Such comparisons are instructive to those interested alike in the evolution of art and in the history of religious ideas. In the art of mediæval Christendom we find an unwritten theology, a popular figurative teaching of the sublime story of Christianity blended with the traditions of many generations. On the walls of the National Gallery we may see a series of typical scenes from the Annunciation to the Passion, from the childhood of Christ to His Death, Resurrection, and Ascension, together with ideal forms of apostles and saints. These pictures, contemplated in sequence and compared with one another, afford, as a writer in the _Dublin Review_ (October 1888) has pointed out, a large and interesting field for thought. Very interesting it is also to trace the different types which prevail in the different schools. Thus at Florence, the Madonna is a tender, shrinking, delicate maiden. At Venice, she is a calm, serene, and pure-spirited mother. The Florentine "handmaiden of the Lord" often wears a mystic, and almost always an intellectual air. The Venetian type, seen at its central perfection in Bellini, has a neck firm as a column; the child is nude and plays with a flower or fruit; grandeur of mien and a noble type of motherhood are the ideals the Venetian painters set before themselves. The Lombard Madonna is less spiritual and severe than the Florentine. A refined worldly beauty replaces here the poetic idealism of the Tuscan artists. With the Umbrian painters the model of the Madonna is usually a softly-rounded and very girlish maiden. A certain mystic pensiveness informs her features. Her feet tread this earth, but her soul is absorbed in the contemplation of the infinite.[12] A study of the successive characteristics of Raphael's Madonnas, passing from the vaguely divine to the frankly human, would form material for a volume in itself.[13] In another department of the painter's art, the comparative method of study is no less suggestive. It is one of the most curious points of interest in any large collection of pictures to notice the different impressions that the same elements of natural scenery make upon different painters. As figure painting came to be perfected, some adequate suggestion of landscape background was required. Giotto and Orcagna first attempted to give resemblance to nature in this respect. Subsequent painters carried the attempt to greater success, but it was long before landscape for its own sake obtained attention. When it did, the preferences of individual painters, now freed from conventionalism, found abundant scope, as we may see by pausing in succession before the flowery meadows of the "primitives," the "fiery woodlands of Titian," the savage crags of Salvator Rosa, the "saffron skies of Claude."[14] These are some of the incidental points of interest upon which additional notes have been supplied in recent editions. Many others will be discovered by the patient reader of the following pages.

=Notices of Painters.=--Lastly, the _biographical and critical notices_ of the painters have been revised and expanded since the first appearance of the book. Many have been re-written throughout, nearly all have been re-cast, and a good many references to pictures in other galleries and countries have been introduced. The important accession to the National Gallery of the Arundel Society's unique collection of copies from the old masters affords an opportunity even to the untraveled visitor to become acquainted, in some sort, with the most famous wall-paintings of Italy. Mr. Ruskin, by whose death the National Gallery lost one of its best and oldest friends, once expressed a hope to me that the notices of the painters given in this Handbook would be found useful by some readers not only as a companion in Trafalgar Square, but also for other galleries, at home and abroad. Nobody can know better than the compiler how far Mr. Ruskin's kindness led him in the direction of over-indulgence.

I can only hope that the later editions have been made--largely owing to the suggestions of critics and private correspondents--a little more deserving of the kind reception which, now for a period of nearly twenty-five years, has been given by the public to my Handbook.

E. T. C.

_May 1912._

[Illustration]

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The Tate Gallery is ten minutes' drive or twenty minutes' walk from Trafalgar Square. It is reached in a straight line by Whitehall, Parliament Street, past the Houses of Parliament, Millbank Street, and Grosvenor Road.

[2] Mr. Ruskin himself was converted by the acquisition of the great Perugino (No. 288). In congratulating the Trustees on their acquisition of this "noble picture," he wrote: "It at once, to my mind, raises our National Gallery from a second-rate to a first-rate collection. I have always loved the master, and given much time to the study of his works; but this is the best I have ever seen" (_Notes on the Turner Gallery_, p. 89 _n._).

[3] See, for instance, Nos. 10, 61, 193, 195, 479 and 498, 757, 790, 896, 1131, and 1171.

[4] The exterior of the building is not generally considered an architectural success, and the ugliness of the dome is almost proverbial. But it should be remembered that the original design included the erection of suitable pieces of sculpture--such as may be seen in old engravings of the Gallery, made from the architect's drawings--on the still vacant pedestals.

[5] The several extensions of the Gallery are shown in the plan on a later page.

[6] The total number should thus be 28; but in the reconstruction four smaller rooms were thrown into two larger ones. The plan thus shows 25 numbered rooms and one called the "Dome."

[7] This sum only includes amounts paid out of Parliamentary grants or other National Gallery funds or special contributions.

[8] In 1894, however, an alteration was made in the Minute, and the responsibility for purchases was vested in the Director and the Trustees jointly.

[9] Sir William Gregory relates in his _Autobiography_ the following story: "In 1884, when the Trustees were endeavouring to secure some of the pre-eminently fine Rubenses from the Duke of Marlborough, Alfred Rothschild met me in St. James's Street, and said, 'If you think the Blenheim Rubenses are more important than your Dutch pictures to the Gallery, and that you cannot get the money from the Government, I am prepared to give you £250,000 for the Peel pictures; and I will hold good to this offer till the day after to-morrow.'"

[10] Of the 1170 pieces thus unaccounted for (the total number belonging to the Trustees being roughly 2870) the greater number are at Millbank. Others are on loan to provincial institutions (see App. II.).

[11] With this object in view, several of them have been published with descriptive letterpress by Mr. Sydney Vacher.

[12] These contrasts were worked out and illustrated by Mr. Grant Allen in his papers on "The Evolution of Italian Art" in the _Pall Mall Magazine_ for 1895.

[13] See _Raphael's Madonnas_, by Karl Károly, 1894.

[14] Ruskin's _Modern Painters_ is of course the great book on this subject. The evolution of "Landscape in Art" has been historically treated by Mr. Josiah Gilbert in a work thus entitled, which contains numerous illustrations from the National Gallery.

GUIDE TO THE GALLERY

AND

INTRODUCTIONS TO THE SCHOOLS OF PAINTING

The pictures in the National Gallery are hung methodically, so far as the wall-space and other circumstances will admit, in order to illustrate the different schools of painting, and to facilitate their historical study. Introductions to the several Foreign Schools of Painting, thus arranged, will be found in the following pages together with references to many of the chief painters in each school who are represented in the Gallery. Introductory remarks on the British School and British Painters will be found in Volume II.

At the present time (May 1912) the arrangement of the Gallery is in a transitional state, as some of the Rooms are still in process of reconstruction or rearrangement. When this work is finished, the arrangement of the whole Gallery will, it is expected, be as shown below:--

ARCHAIC GREEK PORTRAITS: North Vestibule.

ITALIAN SCHOOLS:-- _Early Tuscan_: North Vestibule. _Florentine and Sienese_: Rooms I., II., V. _Florentine (later)_: Room III. _Milanese_: Room IV. _Umbrian_: Room VI. _Venetian_: Room VII. _Venetian (later)_: Room IX. _Paduan_: Room VIII. _Venice, etc._: the Dome. _Brescian and Bergamese_: Room XV. _Bolognese_: Room XXV. _Late Italian_: Room XXIII.

SCHOOLS OF THE NETHERLANDS AND GERMANY:--

_Early Netherlands_: Room XI. _Later Flemish_ (Rubens, etc.): Room X. _Dutch_ (landscape: Ruysdael, etc.): Room XII. _Dutch_ (Rembrandt): Room XIII. _Dutch_: Room XIV. _German_: Room XXIV.

SPANISH SCHOOL: Room XVI.

FRENCH SCHOOL: Rooms XVII., XVIII.

BRITISH SCHOOLS:--

_Hogarth, etc._: Room XXII. _Reynolds, Gainsborough, etc._: Room XXI. _Romney, Morland, etc._: Room XX. _Turner_: Room XIX.

The rooms on the ground floor, hitherto occupied by the Turner Water-Colours (now for the most part removed to the Tate Gallery: _see_ Vol. II.), will be arranged with pictures of minor importance, with the Arundel Society's collection and other copies, and with photographs and other aids to study.

It should, however, be understood that the scheme of arrangement set out above is provisional, and may be modified. It is also possible that the numbering of the rooms may be altered. Should this be the case, the visitor would have no difficulty in marking the changes on the Plan.

[Illustration: PLAN OF THE ROOMS.

_W. Wilkins 1838_ _E. M. Barry 1876_ _Sir J. Taylor 1887_

VESTIBULE--_Florentine School._ ROOM I--_Florentine School._ " II--_Sienese School._ " III--_Florentine School._ " IV--_Schools of Lombardy and Parma._ " V--_Ferrarese and Bolognese Schools._ " VI--_Umbrian School._ " VII--_Venetian & Allied Schools._ " VIII--_Paduan School._ OCTAGON.--_Venetian School._ ROOM IX--_Paolo Veronese, etc._ " X--_Dutch School._ " XI--_Early Flemish School._ " XII--_Dutch School._ " XIII--_Flemish School._ " XIV--_Spanish School._ " XV--_German School._ " XVI--_French School._ " XVII--_French School._ EAST AND WEST VESTIBULES } _English_ ROOMS XVIII, XIX, XX, XXI} _School._ ROOM XXII--_Turner Gallery._ ROOM A--_Drawings._ ROOM B--_Pictures by Turner, etc._]

[Illustration]

THE EARLY FLORENTINE SCHOOL

"The early efforts of Cimabue and Giotto are the burning messages of prophecy, delivered by the stammering lips of infants"

(RUSKIN: _Modern Painters_, vol. i. pt. i. sec. i. ch. ii. § 7).

Give these, I exhort you, their guerdon and glory For daring so much, before they well did it. The first of the new, in our race's story, Beats the last of the old; 'tis no idle quiddit.

BROWNING: _Old Pictures in Florence_.

On entering the Gallery from Trafalgar Square, and ascending the main staircase, the visitor reaches the North Vestibule. What, he may be inclined to ask, is there worth looking at in the quaint and gaunt pictures around him here? The answer is a very simple one. This vestibule is the nursery of Italian art. Here is the first stammering of infant painting. Accustomed as we are at the present day to so much technical skill even in the commonest works of art, we may be inclined to think that the art of painting--the art of giving the resemblances of things by means of colour laid on to wood or canvas--is an easy one, of which men have everywhere and at all times possessed the mastery. But this of course is not the case. The skill of to-day is the acquired result of long centuries of gradual improvement; and the pictures in this vestibule bear the same relation to the pictures of our own time as the stone huts of our forefathers to the Gallery in which we stand. The poorness of the pictures here is the measure of the richness of others. To feel the full greatness of Raphael's Madonna (1171), one should first pause awhile before the earliest Italian picture here (564), the gaunt and forbidding Madonna by

Margaritone of Arezzo, With the grave-clothes garb and swaddling barret (Why purse up mouth and beak in a pet so, You bald old saturnine poll-clawed parrot?) (_R. Browning_).