ised Goruell University Library Sthaca, Nem York BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME OF THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND THE GIFT OF HENRY W. SAGE 1891 ornell University Library ne hundred masterpieces of painting, ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING ‘00 ¥ NAVA AM HavyunoLoHa WOaSAN NATNVVH (S991) NAIYAV LS JO SUAHOUV AHL AO SYAOAIO AHL JO NOINATY STIVH SNVUA ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING BY JOHN LA FARGE AUTHOR OF ‘‘THE HIGHER LIFE IN ART,” ‘““GREAT MASTERS,” ETC. oS WITH ILLUSTRATIONS LONDON HODDER & STOUGHTON 1912 PRINTED IN GARDEN CITY, Ne Y4 0 A ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN To Grace E. Barnes, a friend in deed, in memory of help in this very work. Dated Butler Hospital, September 30, 1910. PREFACE Tue contemplation of art is a form of study of the history of man and a very certain one. Its records are absolutely disinterested from any attempt at proving anything. All the more certain is the testimony of what we usually call art—that is to say, the representation of fact and feeling by the image of these facts—when it contradicts our usual beliefs derived from literature or what is called history and the record of opinions. In such a view it makes an accurate manner of measuring. And, besides, the work of plastic art records in the same way as real life does the mass of feelings that belong to the moment of its production. It is all the more accurate that it is confused like life itself. We have felt this when we have looked at monuments of the past, which bring up, unspoken and without details, the habit of life and the manner of thinking of the people among whom the work grew. The work of art also grows slowly. As it used to take a long time to build a cathedral, as even a painting is the result of much combination of thought, so is there time to have the work accumulate the many impressions which the artist has received, and which he places in his work vil vii ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING without being aware of the multitude of impressions which he has received, and which he hands to us. He hands them to us with a greater unconsciousness than is given to us by the forms of writing. He is not suspected of intentions; perhaps he has none. The tyrant, who is the subject of the congratulations and praises of the poet and the clergyman and historian, is handed down to us in the bare fact of his nature by the portrait painter of whom he has no suspicion. For similar reasons, the greater forms of art are not affected by fashion, which belongs only to the few, and the record of human life is, therefore, deeper and more continuous. We see man as he was from the beginning, carried through many changing forms, which in the written record are made to appear more important and less transient than they really are. We gain, therefore, through plastic art, the most sin- cere of all expressions by document, because of its dealing with external facts, and its giving us innumerable statements which are not meant to be given, and which the sincerity of the artist unconsciously places before us. We are slowly beginning to recognize these facts, and to understand that the record of art passes beyond the record of the historian. It does so because it is not a useful record; it does not live from necessity, but from choice, and it avoids the pressure of necessity. PREFACE ix We obtain from the work of art parallel and different statements. We learn how our ancestors — that is to say, all mankind — lived, externally, and their ideas concerning that external life; what things they did to carry on the form of their civilization, what shapes of building they used, and how they liked to have their life, in and out, ordered; what their ideas were of propriety and behaviour. But we also get what were their desires, their aspirations, their ideas concerning matters of feeling, of the higher life, and their relation to a life beyond. Thus we know what they thought of life; we know also what they thought of death. We have before us the mirror of life at a given moment. It is with this impression of art being the mirror of life that I have selected certain works of the art of painting, choosing, as far as possible, such as might well be called masterpieces, or works of extraordinary merit, partly because the greater works carry on more thoroughly the life of all mankind, apart from small fluctuations of fashion or disturbances which are evanescent, however important they have seemed for a time. I have tried in the comments to connect these works with the life of their time, and while insisting that they have not merely dropped off as fruit from a tree, but are the results of much effort and personal study, application, experience, and knowledge of humanity, I have tried to show that they are x ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING inseparable from the heart of the moment. I have tried to divide and classify them in some way by a reference to the currents of perpetual sentiments, of ideas which man has always had, under many different forms, and which have had in these works an expression — sometimes, indeed, for the first time after indefinite centuries. I have avoided any very strict technical explanations. I have shown some of the larger points in the construction of each work, according to the perpetual laws which belong to the special art I have chosen to illustrate. It is often unjust to a public to ask it to enter into the minor points of art, which it is incapable of appreciating, and which are often debatable points. Too many critics indulge in discussion of smaller technical points which at various times are debated, sometimes violently opposed, and very often finally accepted forever. I have tried, however, to so write from a long experience in the study of art that a student, or any one sensitive to the impression of a work of art, might learn more about its methods, its ori- gins, and the special circumstances which have helped to make it; the personality of the maker, the habits of his time, and those matters which allowed him freedom or tied him down. I hope, in this way, to help to dissipate false ideas which limit our enjoyment of the work of art and which also limit and cramp our mental action. The study of art is a PREFACE xi great education. I have, of course, used the word art as it is usually narrowed down to certain forms of plastic repre- sentation and ornament. Of course we know, or we ought to know, that art is a human function used by every one, more or less, even where plastic art is forbidden by religion or prejudice, or does not exist from habit. The nations which have objected to certain forms of plastic art have carried art into expression very fully, through ceremonies and dress, even into the minutest details, as we know by the story of the Bible and the habits of all churches; as also, for instance, the manner through which the monastic orders of the Middle Ages, during an efflorescence of plastic art, objected to the distractions of the great art of stained glass, painted walls, and melody and colour and pomp of all kinds. They were doing what later the Quakers did, or the Puritans, in their whitewashed places of meeting, wherein the simplicity they sought for was merely a manner of expression through art. I repeat that I have chosen masterpieces or beautiful examples, not only because they are beautiful, which in itself is all-sufficient, but because they escape, in that way, the touch of the bad taste of fashion — that is to say, of momentary intentions. I have been obliged to be very arbi- trary in the divisions, self-imposed, made to limit and direct a choice in so few examples as one hundred. But I have xii ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING tried to make these divisions very different in intention, with the hope of covering a larger field of life and of art. It would be impossible to cover the entire subject with any manner of division to which some other division could not be added. For most of the divisions which I have chosen — or which are imposed upon me by the facts — the whole number of subjects might often be inadequate. But, to use an antique illustration, if one corner of the field is adequately described, it is for the interested reader or student to find out for himself and fill the others. CONTENTS PREFACE CHAPTER I. II. ITI. IV. Vv. VI. VII. VIII. IX. X, XI. XII. XITI. XIV. XV. XVI. XVII. XVIII. XIX. XX. X XI. XXII. PORTRAITS OF CIVIC LIFE— Part One PORTRAITS OF CIVIC LIFE—-Part Two WAR DREAMS OF HAPPINESS PORTRAITS OF CHILDREN TRIUMPHS— Part One TRIUMPHS— Parr Two ALLEGORIES—Parr OnE. ALLEGORIES— Parr Two. ALLEGORIES—Parr THREE THE PRIMITIVES—THE FLEMISH UNKNOWN PORTRAITS PORTRAITS OF FASHION — Part One PORTRAITS OF FASHION—Parr Two. THE ROMANTIC SCHOOL—Parr OnE THE ROMANTIC SCHOOL—Parrt Two . SACRED CONVERSATIONS —Parr One. SACRED CONVERSATIONS — Part Two. SACRED CONVERSATIONS— Part THREE ANNUNCIATIONS— Part OnE. ANNUNCIATIONS—PartTwo. THE MADONNA-— Part ONE 105 121 137 151 169 181 195 205 219 231 247 267 Q77 291 305 CHAPTER XXIXTI. XXIV. XXV. XXVI. XXVIT. XUXVITI. X XIX. XXX. XXXI. CONTENTS THE MADONNA—PartTwo . THE SADNESS OF CERTAIN PORTRAITS —Part One THE SADNESS OF CERTAIN PORTRAITS —Part Two THE SADNESS OF CERTAIN PORTRAITS —Part TREE. ; 5 : ‘ : 5 THE SADNESS OF CERTAIN PORTRAITS —Part Four THE STANZE OF THE VATICAN THE BORGIA ROOMS—Parr One _, THE BORGIA ROOMS—Part Two THE BORGIA ROOMS—Part THreEer PAGD 319 331 339 347 355 361 371 383 395 ILLUSTRATIONS REUNION OF THE OFFICERS OF THE ARCHERS OF ST. ADRIEN. FRANS HALS Frontispiece PORTRAITS OF CIVIC LIFE FACING PAGE THE BANQUET OF THE CIVIC GUARD OF AMSTERDAM. BARTHOLOMEUS VAN DER HELST 4 THE NIGHT WATCH. REMBRANDT . ‘ ° ; ‘ . ‘ . ‘ ; iz THE REGENTS OF THE HOME OF THE AGED AT HAARLEM. FRANS HALS . ‘ ‘ 20 THE REGENTS OF THE HOSPITAL OF 8T. ELIZABETH AT HAARLEM. FRANS HALS : 22 THE SYNDICS OF THE CLOTH MERCHANTS OF AMSTERDAM. REMBRANDT . ‘ ‘ 26 WAR THE SURRENDER OF BREDA. VELASQUEZ ; : ‘ : P ‘ ‘ 82 THE DEATH OF NELSON. TURNER. i , t ‘ : ’ 2 ‘ : 40 NAPOLEON AT THE BATTLE OF EYLAU. GROS . : ‘ ; ‘ ‘ ; . 40 DREAMS OF HAPPINESS PASTORAL CONCERT. GIORGIONE. : : ; : : : E A . 48 THE GARDEN OF LOVE. RUBENS . : : ‘ D : : ; s . 48 TAKING SHIP FOR CYTHERA. WATTEAU ' : : 7 : ; z . 56 THE LOVELY LAND. PUVIS DE CHAVANNES . , ; , ; ‘ ‘ ‘ 56 PORTRAITS OF CHILDREN KO-BO-DAI-SHI. NOBUZANE . : ; 7 ‘ : ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘ 64 THE MAIDS OF HONOUR. VELASQUEZ . ‘ ‘ ‘ 3 . A é y 64 THE INFANTE DON BALTHAZAR CARLOS. VELASQUEZ ‘ ‘ ; ¥ ‘ ‘ 68 ST. JOHN THE BAPTIST. MURILLO. F i j : : 4 ‘ i . 68 TRIUMPHS THE GLORY OF VENICE. VERONESE : ; i ‘ 5 ee Ds . i 76 VENICE ENTHRONED. VERONESE . : : : ; ‘ . ‘ 4 3 76 THE GLORY OF VENICE. TINTORETTO . : ; : ‘ : i ‘i , 80 HENRY IV DECIDING UPON HIS FUTURE MARRIAGE. RUBENS . ‘ . 7 ‘ 92 MARRIAGE OF HENRY IV AND MARIE DE MEDICIS. RUBENS . , . 3 . 92 xV Xv1 ILLUSTRATIONS FACING PAGF. MARIB DE MEDICIS AT PONT-DE-CE. RUBENS . : 3 ‘i ; : ‘ . 96 THE ACCESSION OF LOUIS XIII. RUBENS i ‘ z ‘ ‘ ’ . . 100 THE TRIUMPHAL ENTRY OF HENRY IV INTO PARIS. RUBENS . a ‘ , . 100 ALLEGORIES MYSTIC MARRIAGE OF ST. CATHERINE. CORREGGIO 108 SPRING. BOTTICELLI . . i : ‘ é 108 THE SHEPHERDS OF ARCADIA. POUSSIN. 5‘ 1 - F ; 116 THE STORY OF FERTILITY (AN OFFERING TO THE GODDESS OF LOV =. TITIAN . ‘ . 124 ECHO AND NARCISSUS. POUSSIN . Z ei : é ‘ r ‘ % 124 ST. ANTHONY OF PADUA. MURILLO ‘ § ‘ Z » £52 ASTRONOMY (THE CHALDEAN SHEPHERDS), LYRIC POETRY tumsenms), 2 ELECTRICITY. PUVIS DE CHAVANNES . ‘ ¥ z ‘ 3 9 ‘ - ‘ 140 ST. GENEVIEVE WATCHING OVER PARIS. PUVIS DE CHAVANNES . . ; 144 PEACE. PUVIS DE CHAVANNES . ‘ ‘ ‘ és ; ' j ‘ 144 SLEEP. PUVIS DE CHAVANNES . ‘ 7 ‘ 144 THE FLEMISH PRIMITIVES WORSHIP OF THE LAMB (CENTRAL PANEL). HUBERT AND JAN VAN EYCK . 160 WORSHIP OF THE LAMB (THE TWO LEFT PANELS). HUBERT AND JAN VAN EYCK . 160 WORSHIP OF THE LAMB (THE TWO RIGHT PANELS). HUBERT AND JAN VAN EYCK . 160 THE VIRGIN AND CHILD, ST. DONATIAN AND CANON VAN DER PAELEPROTECTED BY ST. GEORGE. JAN VAN EYCK z s Z ‘ : . 164 THE MYSTIC MARRIAGE OF ST. CATHERINE ss Commeuan: PANEL OF commune), MEMLING. 164 UNKNOWN PORTRAITS PORTRAIT OF A MAN. MESSINA . - ‘ A é ‘ i : é . 170 THE CONDOTTIERE. MESSINA ‘ ‘ ‘ : ‘ P é - » “LIZ PORTRAIT OF A MAN. THOMAS DE KEYSER . ’ ‘ 3 ; : ; ; Az EPHRAIM BONUS. REMBRANDT , ‘ és . ‘ 2 < . 2 . 176 “THE YOUNG MAN IN BLACK.” XVI CENTURY FLORENTINE SCHOOL i r , 176 PORTRAITS OF FASHION CHARLES I OF ENGLAND. VAN DYCK . .. ‘ ‘ ‘ é ‘ 184 CLARA EUGENIA REGENT OF THE NETHERLANDS. VAN DYCK . ‘ é . . 184 BEATRICE DE CUZANCE. VAN DYCK i 5 ‘ ‘ 184 HIS PORTRAIT. VAN DYCK . , ‘ s d . ‘ A * 184 MAHOMET II. BELLINI. ’ f i . ‘ a i , ‘ . 200 LORD HEATHFIELD. REYNOLDS ‘ Fi r "i ‘ ‘ i ‘ 200 LADIES DECORATING A TERM OF HYMEN. REYNOLDS * . 200 ILLUSTRATIONS MRS. SIDDONS. GAINSBOROUGH MASTEB LAMBTON. LAWRENCE THE ROMANTIC SCHOOL DANTE AND VIRGIL CROSSING THE STYX. DELACROIX ABDUCTION OF REBECCA. DELACROIX : : . THE DEFEAT OF THE CIMBRI AND TEUTONS BY MARIUS. DECAMPS HAMLET AND THE GRAVE DIGGER. DELACROIX . . SACRED CONVERSATIONS JESUS CHRIST AND A DEVOTEE. MORETTO DA BRESCIA . . THE MADONNA OF THE FISH. RAPHAEL. . . . . A SACRED ALLEGORY. BELLINI . . . . ST. CECILIA. RAPHAEL s « . . . . MADONNA AND ST. JEROME. CORREGGIO 3 . . MADONNA AND SAINTS. MANTEGNA . é . ST. BASIL DICTATING HIS DOCTRINE. HERRARA . THE DISPUTE ON THE TRINITY. ANDREA DEL SARTO . . THE INFANT JESUS WITH ST. JOHN AND ANGELS. RUBENS MARRIAGE OF ST. CATHERINE. LOTTO * ° . . . MADONNA, CHILD, TWO SAINTS AND AN ANGEL. LOTTO . . MADONNA, CHILD, ST. JOHN AND ST. CATHERINE. TITIAN . MADONNA, CHILD, AND ST. CATHERINE. VAN DYCK ANNUNCIATIONS ANNUNCIATION. PISANELLO . . . . . . AN ANGEL APPEARS TO ST. URSULA. SCHOOL OF COLOGNE ANNUNCIATION. FRA ANGELICO ANNUNCIATION. FIROENZO DI LORENZO . . ° ANNUNCIATION. FERRARI 3 . . . . . ANNOUNCING TO THE VIRGIN HER COMING DEATH. LIPPI . : . THE MADONNA MADONNA OF THE ANNUNCIATION. GIOTTO DI BONDONE MADONNA OF THE STAR. FRA ANGELICO . e . MADONNA AND CHILD. LIPPI . . : . : . MADONNA AND CHILD AND ST. ANNE. LEONARDO DA VINCI : . . “3 MADONNA OF THE MAGNIFICAT. BOTTICELLI . . . ADORATION OF THE SHEPHERDS. BOTTICELLI. . . MADONNA AND CHILD, SCULPTURE : . : . THE VIRGIN ADORING THE INFANT CHRIST. CORREGGIO . . . . PORTRAITS OF SADNESS PENCIL PORTRAIT OF HIMSELF. LEONARDO DA VINCI PORTRAIT OF HIMSELF. REMBRANDT . . . , . . . xvil FACING PAGE 200 200 . 208 212 220 224 236 236 240 248 248 256 256 258 260 268 270 272 272 280 280 284 292 296 300 310 312 312 314 320 320 S24 324 332 332 xv ILLUSTRATIONS PACING PAGE PORTRAIT OF HIMSELF. TITIAN. é : ; ; : : z E . 832 PORTRAIT OF HIMSELF. MICHELANGELO. : 4 ; : ; ‘ - . $32 PORTRAIT OF AN UNKNOWN MAN. LOTTO (IMPERIAL MUSEUM) ‘ ‘5 ‘ . 840 PORTRAIT OF AN UNKNOWN MAN. LOTTO. (BORGHESE GALLERY) 5 . $40 PORTRAIT OF AN UNKNOWN MAN. LOTTO. (DORIA GALLERY) ‘ ; . . 840 JULIUS II. RAPHAEL . ‘ 4 ; ; , : ‘ : 3 ‘ . 3848 BIXTUS IV GIVING AUDIENCE. MELOZZO DA FORLI : ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘i . 848 THE MASS OF BOLSENA. RAPHAEL 7 a i 4 ‘ 5 ‘ ‘ . 848 HEAD OF POPE JULIUS Il. FROM “THE MASS OF BOLSENA.” RAPHAEL. ; . 348 THE STANZE OF THE VATICAN HELIODORUS CAST OUT OF THE TEMPLE. RAPHAEL ‘ a ‘ . 362 POPE JULIUS Il. FROM ‘‘HELIODORUS CAST OUT OF THE TEMPLE.” RAPHAEL . . 862 HELIODORUS CAST OUT OF THE TEMPLE. DELACROIX : . j ‘ . . 862 THE BORGIA ROOMS THE RESURRECTION. PINTURICCHIO : ‘ é Z : ‘ : . . 372 ALEXANDER VI. FROM ‘“‘THE RESURRECTION.” PINTURICCHIO ‘ » Biz HEAD OF ALEXANDER VI. FROM “‘THE RESURRECTION.” PINTURICCHIO : . 372 THE DISPUTE OF ST. CATHERINE. PINTURICCHIO . a i ‘ . 884 8T. CATHERINE FROM “THE DISPUTE OF ST. CATHERINE.” PINTURICCHIO . 884 DJEM AND PALEOLOGOS, FROM “THE DISPUTE OF 8ST. CATHERINE.” PINTURICCHIO 384 PERSONAGES FROM “‘THE DISPUTE OF ST. CATHERINE.” PINTURICCHIO : . 884 THE ANNUNCIATION. PINTURICCHIO ‘ : ‘ . : : . 896 THE VIRGIN AND ANGEL FROM “THE ANNUNCIATION.” PINTURICCHIO . : . $96 PORTRAITS OF CIVIC LIFE — PART ONE ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING I PORTRAITS OF CIVIC LIFE — PART ONE IESE paintings are representations of the civic life of a oublican nation, a nation largely of traders, who freed their tle country in the protracted struggle against the greatest wers of the world, and whose art mainly consists in the rtraiture of their citizens and the landscape in which they ed. It should be eminently interesting to us because many ways we are the representatives of their ideas and > derive from them certain influences. The art of Holland ring this time of intense struggle has almost no representa- m of the scenes of war and of final triumph. But we have e personal records of the men who carried out this great sistance to its final end. When a scene is represented, it one of peace. The daily, the private, the domestic habits re the subjects of the painters, notwithstanding, or to the slusion of what made the anxiety and the grandeur of their untry. The landscapes, in the same way, are all of peace. ie roads seem safe, and open-air pleasures keep their urse. Hunting and fishing seem uninterrupted; no war 3 4 ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING disturbs the villages. The weather is all that changes th even course of life. Meanwhile, on the farthest seas, war : carried, continuous invasions are the rule; within goes on perpetual political struggle, increased by religious discorc Barneveldt is decapitated in 1619, and the brothers De Wit are massacred in 1672. War is permanent with Englanc and the Dutch fleet threatens the existence of London; Spai and France attack Holland and invade it. Within fifty year three treaties of peace have to be signed — 1648, 1678, 169 —-and the great war of the Spanish succession begins th next century; and nowhere do the paintings show in outwar expression that the permanent news has always been of wa: Now, in these pictures of peace, of jovial contentment, w see the portraits of the men who carried out this patrioti struggle. We know they are military men, more or less, b some portion of their costume, by the presence of sword ¢ flag, and, of course, by the record of who they were. Bu they are militiamen. And these pictures assert for us whe we rarely think of: that the standing army is a modern inver tion and was feared as an engine of despotism by the fre towns and the freer countries. Even as late as 1742 the gree warrior, Maurice of Saxony, writes out, as a dream, tk modern nation af the armv made in of the eitizens in ctate ‘OO VY NAVY AD Hd VUDOLO MA WVOUALSNV SWoOaASDI SMP CHQISNONW dO WOVAd AHL AO NOISVIONOD FHL JO NOLLVYIATAD NT ‘Sto WsSt ANO£ NO) NVGUSLSNV LO GUVAD OLAIO AML tO LANONVE FILL DSTA Ud NVA SOUNOTOHLUVEA PORTRAITS OF CIVIC LIFE 5 know that these country fellows are painted for us before or alter the service to which they were called. In one case their banquet occurs before their departure from Haarlem for the sieges of Hasselt and Mons, the eighteenth of October, 1622. If ever serene confidence was represented, it is told in these faces and attitudes, and their jovial enjoyment has also no sign of recklessness or disorderly forgetting. A certain so- briety persists through all the faces; most of them look like business men, whose types we still have with us, who will be ready at a moment to take up their steady work. Mean- while, they are together as friends, and good-fellowship relaxes faces which at other times must be fairly serious. It would be pleasant to give all these paintings as they hang together on the wall, each one affirming the accuracy of the others, having altogether a family air, that look which belongs to any given moment when people not only dress the same way but seem to conform to some special manner of look and bearing. Perhaps I had better choose the one whose merits as painting are perhaps the greatest, for the dates of these pictures run along for many years, from Frans Halls, beginning to paint beautifully, to a Hals whose execution is as wonderful as that of the greatest. Around him in Holland others paint well, and the great Rembrandt is painting so as to reach the highest levels. Surrounded by all this con- 6 ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING summate work, Hals still triumphs, and a something no Dutch, something that he might have brought from his nativ Flanders, gives to the paintings a look of enjoyment, of colou) of delight in the coursing of life which reminds one more c the enthusiasm of the Low Countries than of the phlegmati attitude of Holland. The photograph is there for us to loo. at, and it tells better than I can why John Cassz Loo is Col onel, as he sits facing us in the post of honour, to be paintec surrounded by the flag-bearers, two of whom are Jaco Hofland and Jacob Styn, the latter facing us also. No photo graph can give the glory of Captain John Schatter, who turn half toward us, gently smiling, as if posing only for a moment clad in red and yellow, with most astonishing sash of blu satin. Indeed, all the stuffs are wonderful, the lightness o the rufis, the heavy darkness of the velvets, all painted jus enough, not a trifle more than they should be, so that th varying matters represented has each its right importance that nothing of all this show shall prevent your followin; out each portrait, understanding the character of each man and the completeness of his expression in what he is doing. As for instance, Captain Van Horn’s abstraction in being painted or looked at by us, prevents his noticing how Lieutenan Olvean is asking him to sign the register whose leaves ar PORTRAITS OF CIVIC LIFE 7 How well we know the anxious faces of Sergeant Cornelius Ham in the middle, and Sergeant Barent Mol on the right, who are waiting to be heard or to take some part. How sure I feel that I have seen them but yesterday here in New York. If not they, then their descendants; and how indiffer- ent (as indeed it is) the eye of the camera to what really makes the meaning of a face. And I confess to a pleasure in repeating these names of what must have been a good lot of men, who once upon a time held their own against great odds and knew also what were the pleasures of belonging to the famous company of militiamen, the Archers of St. Adrian. Once upon a time another painting was more famous than those of Hals’s —a similar subject —a banquet of the Civic Guard of Amsterdam, which took place on the sixteenth of June, 1648, in the great hall of St. Georgé Doelen to celebrate the conclusion of peace at Miinster. It was painted by Bar- tholomeus Van der Helst, who, though not a great man, has managed to do this work in such a way as to challenge all rivals. It is not beautifully painted, like those paintings of Hals’s, but it could not be, it is so conscientious, so really understood as a problem of making a big picture of many portraits and of skipping none, and of making each contribute to the play as he does to the banquet. As Thackeray once said: “Brave, meritorious, victorious, happy Bartholomeus, Ss ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING to whom it has been given to produce a masterpiece.” Part of its fame is owing certainly to its having been for years in a little room whose side it filled, just opposite the great Rem- brandt known as the “ Night-Watch.”’ Perhaps the prosaic side of the Van der Helst made more mysterious the other- wise evident meaning of the Rembrandt. For all that, it is a beautiful essay in prose alongside of which, if they could be put together, the paintings of Hals would look like triumphant songs. But within the rather sober unity, how charming are its details. On the right-hand side of the table Captain Wits, in health and good humour, holds the hand of Lieutenant Van Waveren, more delicate of build and colour, whose whiter hand rests gently on the heavier one of the captain. He is dressed in black velvet, and, like many others in the fashion of the day, he has not taken off his broad-brimmed hat with the white plume. On his knee he holds the great official drinking-horn, which will soon pass around the table for a loving-cup. The captain is perhaps beginning his complimentary speech; I fancy that I detect on the lips of Lieutenant Van Waveren that tremulousness which attends the listener about to answer: some of the diners are listening — those who are nearest to the head of the table. Farther on the necessities of food and drink are looked after. These gentlemen help each other and them- PORTRAITS OF CIVIC LIFE 9 selves. The long glasses are being filled with Rhenish for the toast now in order. ‘‘ William, the Drummer,” with his hat off, holding a great goblet, the company’s property, stands in front, to the left, bowing gently, in some consultation with the officer who, in front of us, cuts, or has been cutting, slices from a knuckle of ham. His napkin is on his knee — he holds his meat with bare fingers, but with the daintiness of the gentleman. In the middle of the picture, his back turned to the company, right near to William’s great drum, sits, in black velvet, with his breast-plate on, the standard- bearer, Jacob Banning. Fastened to the drum is a sheet of paper, for which the poet, Jan Vos, wrote the five lines toscribed: Blood now disgusts Bellona And Mars curses the noise of destructive bronze; The sword now seeks the scabbard, © And that is why brave Wits offers to noble Van Waveren the cup of peace to celebrate perpetual alliance. Behind Banning, balanced by his left hand, the great flag of the company rises out of the picture and divides it in two parts; it is of blue silk and on it is embroidered the Virgin, emblematic of the city of Amsterdam. You remember how Thackeray says of it: “Such a silk! such a flag! such a piece of painting!” How true must have been these portraits strikes the most careless observer; each man is a portrait 10 ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING all the way through, from the expression of his eyes to the smallest detail of his dress. And, as we said, that was the problem — to paint a picture of many portraits, each one complete, so that each owner who had paid his share could feel that he had not been neglected, that he had had his full money’s worth, and that, whoever he was — mere sergeant or first heutenant — he had been represented by himself and for himself. It is no wonder that there are so few of these many pictures of military or other companies in which the problem has been successfully met. With those few, Frans Hals’s and this painting, we shall have seen all the great successes. The great Rembrandt which hangs nearby, the so-called **Night-Watch,” is not successful in a similar way, and yet it is known as one of the greatest paintings in the world. It is said that long ago it displeased the men for whom it was painted, and began to place difficulties in the way of Rembrandt’s being understood. Captain Frans Banning Cocq, Lord of Purmerland and Ilpendam, the captain of the company of militia here portrayed, the gentleman in black who steps forward toward us in the middle of the picture, had his portrait painted later by Bartholomeus Van der Helst — perhaps an indication of the general feeling that each individual portrait was not sufficiently distinct. None PORTRAITS OF CIVIC LIFE 11 of the men whose names are inscribed in the tablet upon the wall could have had an idea or could have guessed that their being painted by Rembrandt would be all that could remain about them. But, on their part, there was a reason for their disappointment. They remembered the painting known as the “Lesson in Anatomy,” in which each portrait is separately insisted upon, and some of Rembrandt’s great portraits had already been made. But already the artist had begun to see in nature those mysterious means by which we know him best: that swathing of the entire scene in the gradations of light and dark, out of which he merged what he wished to be seen and in which he bathed or even drowned what he wished only to be guessed at. The subject of many people together was a fortynate chance for use of this beautiful method; and so the picture instead of the distinct vision, almost too orderly, by which Van der Helst or Hals gives us every detail, is partly covered by shadow and partly lit suddenly. So that long ago tradition gave it the name of the “‘ Night-Watch,”’ and about it clustered mysterious meanings which never could have come about the clear stories of other Dutch artists. In reality, putting aside the paint’s darkening, it is an effect of sunlight; and the gloom of the shadow might well represent the veiled darkness of the brown fog of Amsterdam. The company, headed by Captain Cocq, are leaving their 1g ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING meeting place — what might be called their armory — for a shooting match. Instead of the military suggestions, the records of war which accompany the paintings of Hals and of Van der Helst — the jolly meeting of men who have just fought and may be called out again — this mysterious pic- ture is a record of piping times of peace. The romance that fills it is the painter’s own. The story might well rep- resent a sudden call to arms. Perhaps in the depths of Rembrandt’s extraordinary mind he may have been pleased to confuse the two occasions. The drummer rolls out his call, the ensign unfurls the big flag, the men load or prime their guns, and the pikemen carry out the long halberds which belong to their place in the company. Lieutenant William Van Ruijtenberg, Lord of Vlaardingen, the little man in light yellow, listens to the captain’s explanation, which seems important — very important — for such a small matter as a shooting match. The officers commanding are in their best. The buff coat of the lieutenant is embroidered in gold, his great sash is white, his trunk hose are tied up with ribbon; he wears gold spurs on his gray boots, and yellow gloves; his hat of yellow felt is bound by a band of precious stones, and long white plumes float beyond it; he and the captain are all-important. Behind them the troop of arque- buse men come out from the dark arcade; one of them is (8491 NI DUNANALANU NVA WATILM LNVN&LAAIT Jo ANY 0009 DNINNVE SNVUA NIVLdVO AO ANVdIVOD AHL) HOLY LHDIN FHL NfTY NVA LONVUENAY PORTRAITS OF CIVIC LIFE 13 all in scarlet, with an orange plume in his purplish hat. His powder horn is carried by a boy. Beyond the drummer (John Van Kanpoort), one of the sergeants, a serious-faced officer, stretches out a hand as if to order. Vaguely behind these we see others are coming. The light, which falls with strong shadows on a few figures here and there, lights up with singular accidental effect the little girl who is carrying, singularly enough, a dead fowl] slung to her waist. Her hair, of that mysterious golden tone liked by Rembrandt, is crowned with precious stones; pearls are in her ears, and stones again glitter on her belt and on her greenish-yellow cape. Be- tween her and the captain appears the bent body of a boy with leaf-crowned helmet, of whom we see little but his out- stretched leg; this motion of his and the light form of the little girl are striking parts of the entire picture; they prob- ably served in the painter’s mind to give a look of chance —as if just then a drop of light had fallen in that special place, without regard to the more important features of the story. The great man must have known what he wished to do. And he has succeeded in impressing the imagination of many people for these two centuries and a half, so that the painting remains a fantastic story and image of those dreams in which he indulged, and in which he placed the realism of an ordinary event. The story would be clearer if the picture 14 ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING were to-day what it once was. We should see better why the captain and the lieutenant step forward and where the rest of the company are placed. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, to fit the picture in a new place, a part of it was cut away which contained the little bridge over which the officers were to step first. And on the sides we should see two figures more and the whole portrait of the drummer, John Van Kanpoort. There can be but little doubt that we miss extremely the foreground cut away. The two foremost figures seem to be too much set out of the picture, and Rembrandt is too subtle not to have meant exactly what he did. The picture has been somewhat dam- aged, at a previous time being in better order. It is not all throughout painted as Rembrandt has elsewhere triumphed. The moment for him was one of transition. Perhaps at that moment he may have felt the impressions of those business disasters which ruined him; perhaps, in this bold emprise of creating a new form of art with the materials around him, he felt the technical difficulties that belong to beginnings. Therefore, this great masterpiece is made up of many fail- ures; in that, not so different from others of the greatest. All the more may we feel how mysterious is the phenomenon that we call “inspiration.”” How the mere work of the human hand can take us away from reality into the world of romance! PORTRAITS OF CIVIC LIFE — PART TWO II PORTRAITS OF CIVIC LIFE — PART TWO 1664 — Frans Hals, who painted so joyfully the gay com- panies of militiamen, some few years back, is now over eighty years old and has only two more years to live. It is fitting that he should paint the old ladies who are the Regents of the Home for the Aged at Haarlem. These are their portraits. They lose ever so much in the photographs, which cannot give us the extraordinary refinement which he has perceived and made us feel in the painting of these sober and even austere dresses. The whites and blacks have all the elegance of a beautiful choice of colours. The elderly painter’s touch is no longer supple and caressing as it once was in younger days — it has become a little impatient of time, but it still renders character, and, in this particular case, in the rendering of the subject, a long experience of life, the putting aside of frivolity, is told by the painter’s manner, even as he must have seen it in the old ladies here presented. Their hands, each one of which is indicative of character and of what they may be saying and listening to, are now bony and shrivelied or knotted. A certain slowness of movement one feels in the few that have much to do. 17 18 ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING The lady on the left who is speaking to the visitors, I suppose; the old dame in the centre who ruffles her fan calmly over the bag containing money perhaps, or the medals which are proofs of attendance, and the servant bringing a memoran- dum, each move in a rhythm of patience and carefulness. The unoccupied hands are folded back as if taking a rest. As for the faces, we know each type; we know which are severe and which are gentle, and that they are observant one of the other. Accident seems to have placed them about the table at which they sit, but the painter has so combined them that they make something like a chord of lines, or blacks and whites, beautiful in its peaceful harmony. Some years back, in 1641, one year before Rembrandt painted what we call the ‘‘ Night-Watch,”’ Frans Hals had painted the “Regents of the Hospital of St. Elizabeth.” For some reason probably, though it seems mere chance, the Regents about their table recall a little in arrangement the seating of the “Syndics”” in Rembrandt’s great picture. However splendid and important they are, they have yet, in all their wonderful painting, a slight reminiscence of the lightness of heart of the brave boys, the militiamen, whom Hals painted as we saw some years before — but they are seriously painted. The portrait is evident behind the action of each man. That must have been the way that each one 4 20 ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING der Helst we have little but what is merely external. No such legends compass them as those about the story of him whom Thackeray has called ““‘The Moody Tenant of the Mill’-— Rembrandt. We know to-day that they were all made up of jealous hearsay, from the necessity of accounting by strange anecdotes for the otherwise sober existence of genius. The romance, the extraordinary reach of sympathy in all directions of Rembrandt’s painting, seems to justify some manufacture of imaginary anecdotes: something to carry on the legend of the eccentricities of genius, as if genius were not in itself sublimated common sense. And as if also the creator of imaginary situations or the observer and recorder of the vicissitudes of life must also be a victim, a subject, of similar emotions. Better knowledge shows us that art is the manner of a reasonable outpouring of sentiment where it should be placed — that is to say, within the limits of an imaginary world. We can see the great example of this more prosaic but certain view in what we know of Shakespeare: a mind not so far apart from Rembrandt’s and capable, like Rembrandt’s, of using romance for reality and reality for romance. And we forget too easily that such men have not worked merely to please themselves, to establish for the outside world some manner of looking at it, but that in the 7» NAVEL Ad HavUDOLONA W NaATUVVH (F991 NI) WHTUVVH LY GaDV AHL dO ANOH AHL JO § ad CALL STVH SNVUWtI PORTRAITS OF CIVIC LIFE 21 most ordinary way they worked within their trade, doing what was asked of them; but informing that task-work with the passion, the sympathies, that life had called up within them, and which their memory placed inside the framework of the task. In the school days of the older ones of us these legends still continued concerning Rembrandt. That they were strange, and not only did not explain, but often con- tradicted what facts were known, seemed to have made no difference. It was said that at the very beginning of his life, with his first one hundred florins, he became a miser. That would account for the fact that during succeeding mo- ments of his life neither his dress nor his table showed his opulence. The constant pursuit of painting at all moments of happiness or distress was used as a proof that he lost not a moment, from the love of gold. Could there be another reason for the three hundred and fifty paintings, the three hundred and seventy engravings, and the multitude of draw- ings which are the result of his life? Hence, also from his enormous work, the belief that he must always have worked easily, while we of the trade know by the marks of his brush how often he stuttered or stammered, by expression of new truth or anxiety for better statement of what he knew already. Thus, every little while, he risked to some extent his reputation by some new manner of painting, while the old manner had all 22 ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING the needed purchasers. He was supposed to have married a poor girl, another proof of avarice, while, on the contrary, he had married well and later managed to spend unconsciously the fortune of his wife, besides what he had acquired himself. He was said to have bidden up his own engravings at auc- tions, or to have given them to his son to sell, with the state- ment that they had been stolen. It was said that he had disappeared, this hidden man, and had sent abroad the news of his death, to use the only sure method that artists have to earn much money. Then the forced sale of his paintings and studio effects had brought him a fabulous sum, and the dead man had appeared again among the astonished purchasers. And his admirers apologized for this ingenious proceeding by the natural statement that nobody had lost, and that things were worth what they would bring in the market. We know, of course, to-day, that he saw his paintings and his household goods and his rich collections sold for a trifle, and that he returned to hard work in his later age, protected from creditors by the receivership of his son. His singular use of Eastern costumes for Eastern subjects was supposed to be the result of ignorance, while we know that his collec- tions were composed of pictures and engravings by others, so that he had within his studio, without going any farther, the images of what had been done in ways not suitable to WOGSONW WaTaVVH (IF9T NI) WATUVVH LY WLAGVZITa WLS dO IVLIGSOH AHL AO SENADAY ALL STVH SNVUel PORTRAITS OF CIVIC LIFE 23 himself. On the contrary, he had made curious studies of far-away costumes and manners, beyond the men of his day. He no more erred than have done those who used what information they could get. It was even a reproach to him that he charged for his teaching, and that, like every one else about him, his pupils helped him in his work. What is true is: that he passed from romantic handling of facts to the most accurate transcription of life. And that occasion- ally, as we saw in the analysis of the ‘“‘Night-Watch,” he may have risked a great deal in the choice of the moment. In the art of writing we see how natural this is, and we do not ask of the “Tempest”’ or “Midsummer Night’s Dream”’ the accuracy of the historical play. In the painting of the ““Syndics” we shall see Rembrandt the recorder of usual nature, and test him alongside of Frans Hals as the painter of the history of Holland seen in portraits. Nothing more could be said to express the ancestral char- acter in its every-day gravity than this other painting by Rembrandt, painted three years before Hals painted those last ones of his old age. Rembrandt is no longer young. He has eight more years to live, and he paints the corporation piece known as the “Syndics of the Cloth Merchants of Amsterdam.” By the Dutch it is called “De Staalmeesters”’ — “The Stampmasters” — who affixed a mark to certify the 24 ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING origin of the cloth and the payment of certain duties. The figures in the picture ave the size of life. Placed at its exact height, it has an extraordinary appearance of something seen. The syndics are five in number. Three of them are seated on the other side of the table, which is covered by a heavy Eastern carpet, most beautifully painted, but absolutely unobtrusive. One needs to watch it to perceive the accuracy of the rendering, which disturbs one no more than nature itself. One of the syndiecs on the right, seated somewhat crossways to the table and less important in the deliberation, has placed upon the table, with a momentary gesture, a bag, containing the stamps most probably. Before the other two is an open register. Of these two, one turns gently, or, rather, is ready to turn over one of the leaves. The other one, with hand reversed, explains, apparently, some point in the record. All three behind the table, with expressions va- ried by individual character and their relation to the busi- ness on hand, look toward their fellows, or whoever they are (and of which we are a part), outside of the frame. The argu- ment is partly addressed to us. One can almost imagine a feeling of impatience in the features of the syndic who holds the sack with the stamps; and so, for each one, the movement of the eye and the eyebrow represents as nearly as has ever been rendered the slight variations of thought which our PORTRAITS OF CIVIC LIFE 25 common intentions must have. However direct the look of the eyes, which with Rembrandt at his best are always extra- ordinary as to meaning, the look is a general one addressed to a great many people. The fourth syndic is an older man, who rises slowly from his chair, on the left of the table, resting his hand on a book hardly seen. He is perhaps about to speak to the public, and his eyes take in the assemblage. Still further to the left, the fifth syndic, apparently the pre- siding officer, looks at us with a certain air of waiting for the statements; the look, perhaps, of a little superiority of knowl- edge and position. This notwithstanding that the character of the head is not so important as that of the others. These two gentlemen are dressed in the older way. Their collars are smaller and they wear their natural hair. Though they are already a little behind the time, they are far away from the splendid costumes which we saw in the paintings of Hals and of Van der Helst, and of Rembrandt in the “Night- Watch.”” No more of the great plaited ruffs, and frilled and lace collars; no more the feathers, silks and satins — remnants of the sixteenth century. No more full hair and hair cut in every personal way. We are now closing the seventeenth century, and a puritanic wave has added to the natural sobriety of business men. On the contrary, the three younger syndics wear the long hair which succeeds the cropping of 26 ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING puritanic days, and begins the full-bottomed wig of the age of Louis XIV. They have cut off the little imperial which is such a mark of the middle century: the Stuart and the Van Dyck moment. We must not forget the sixth personage, whose position does not allow him to wear a hat, and who smiles with the discreet smile of a secretary behind the scenes. If ever there' was a lesson in the difference between posing and acting, it is here. The whole impression is as momen- tary as reality. Each one of the five figures is in reality doing something, and yet you know that this is a collection of portraits. Alongside of it the great Van der Helst is thin and theat- rical, and we see in the latter, as it were, too distinctly a scene that the eye could not really grasp in such detail. If one could see the great Hals’s alongside, they too would probably appear a little more the result of much knowledge, much practice, astonishing technique, but still not so near the singular contradiction of a natural sight, that sees only certain things distinctly but is aware of all of them. Our photograph gives fairly an idea of all this. The unity and sobriety of the tone is so great that though we miss in the copy much beautiful colour, we get a fair idea of the manner of Rembrandt’s colour; that manner of transposing it into relations of light and dark which is of the essence of painting; ‘OO F NAVUd Aa H WVdUGLS WaAGsAW Sur I NI) WVGUYaLSAV LO SENVHOYAN HLOTO AHL tO SOIONAS FHL NfTY NVA LONVUEINAY PORTRAITS OF CIVIC LIFE 27 an art which with deficient materials has to represent the enormous gamut of the world of light. Though we get some idea of it by the photograph, yet the painting is one of the very great paintings as mere technique. It is, so far as this can be from what I have just said, a perfect piece of work. Rembrandt could not have painted this extreme success in the representation of an every-day subject had he not also worked in imaginative conditions, and fully freed his thought and given rein elsewhere to that universal sym- pathy with all the chances of life that invented stories allow. The feeling of contained reticence is a real one; is in the artist as well as in his models. Conversely from the ‘‘ Night-Watch,” he has kept himself entirely within the bounds. But the river is a deep and strong one that runs within this narrow canal. His rivals, the other painters, are giving us their best. But with him there is what belongs to the higher artist —that this is only what the occasion required — and that we do not know, and never shall know, the full powers that might have been exercised if life gave the chance. It is well that these paintings of Corporation Pictures remain in their native land. Not only are they there seen in the light that they were meant for, almost in the places they were born in, but we do not suffer, as in many museums, from the fact that another light, another position, dimin- 28 ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING ishes the effect which the painter had really achieved. And, morally, the effect of this testimony to a past history is powerful upon those who see the works in place. All the more if, as in quiet Haarlem, these paintings be the only record of a once active life. The little museum, where the Hals’s are strung along the wail, has more energy, more tes- timony to struggle and success than the living town itself. And their testimony to the value of Holland is greater than we get even through written records. They tell us of the solid reasons of a little country holding its own against its gigantic enemies — England, Spain, Austria, and France. The solidity of character represented carries us to our own day, and explains for us the strenuous resistance of Dutch descendants in South Africa and the value of the blood which stiffened the courage of the Boers against gigantic odds. WAR Ill WAR THE very earliest records of all the arts, the arts of speech and sound, the arts of sculpture and painting, the mere be- ginnings of architecture, are memorials of successful war. The earliest verse is that of battle and of battle-cry. From the beginning, the Pharaohs drive their chariots through the slain; the Assyrian kings number the captives, and Hokusai, the Japanese, wishing to recall the ancient stories of China, makes a picture in which the conquerors, tired with murder, toss into vast heaps the bloody heads of the slain. Later, when art has found a place in Greece, the descendants of greater men saw pictured on temple friezes the mythologi- cal struggles of gods and heroes in which they could feel their own triumphs over their own home rivals, or the Persian and the barbaric world. Later still, in a more prosaic and official age, the Roman column and the Roman arch tell the story of actual Roman triumph, preceded by a struggle in which the Roman could recognize the cohort to which he had belonged, and, in a rude way, something of the scheme of battle that had been successful. Most of this record has been of sculpture. What else that may have been painted 31 32, ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING is a mere statement of abstract fact, not far from the brevity of a telegraphic report in its earliest forms. There is also one single fragment of mosaic where Alexander charges into the Persian mass. Except for those stories that are symbolic, in which the struggle is only a type, the art is rarely of a great character, and when it rises higher it is the record of personal hand-to-hand struggle, based on the most primi- tive needs of fight, and not such a record of the art of war as might make a difference between the planning of one success and another. Such pictures came slowly, and when we have them, when in the seventeenth century we see in such pictures as Van der Meulen’s the tactical account of Louis XIV’s victories, whatever there is that is true loses its artistic human interest. One mass of men, being like another, and seen at a great distance, we cannot tell through such means much more than the theory of the movement. And as the very principle of the meaning is a sort of immobility or me- chanical action, we are too far away from.the human feeling to care for one mass more than another. Any amount of _ single individuals galloping about only make the effort at creating art more absurd and frigid. It is not so different at our very day; and we come to this astonishing result: that the number of pictures of historic battles which have ‘OD YP NOVUA AM NdVNDOLONd OOVUMd SLL (SHONWT GUL) Vda JO UAGNANMAS AHL (A VATIS VC ZION GOW ONDA) ZIIOSWTATA 3 ae WAR 33 a value in art is extremely limited. We may have accuracies, and then they take away from the feeling of life; we may have attempted archeologies, and then the great living facts, which are the same for furious Frank and fiery Hun, dis- appear in the so-called appeal to history. A few exceptions in what might have been an enormous field are all that can be marked, and a few of these I shall place before the reader. We must remember that it is not the choice of subject that makes the value of the work of art. Otherwise the story of the Bible would always be full of esthetic beauty instead of the indefinite tedium which haunts the religious picture. So, evidently, in the smaller dramatic situations, the fact that so many brave men have held a small post with their last cartridges, that certain men have made a last ineffectual charge, whether English or French, at Fontenoy or Waterloo, does not make a work of art. The meaning of the heroism should be told in painting by the arrangement of line and mass and colour, embracing, more or less, within its net, the human courage which is the story of the picture. No poet laureate, because he has the task of telling a great national story, thereby succeeds in a heroic ode. Rare in- deed, even in poetry, are the stories of great successful battles. It might almost seem as if the stories of defeat, of how “the flowers of the forest are all wede away,’ carry with them more 34 ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING of the essence of art than the songs of triumph, and, because of the solemnity of human fate, there has been no greater triumph recorded than that of the dead Hector dragged around the walls of sacred Troy behind the chariot wheels of the victor Achilles. So, perhaps, in the first example that I have chosen, we may see something of a sentiment which has directed the lines of the picture, as it might have directed the lilt of verse, and in which a representation of much accuracy, a representation of success in war, is still the record of noble human feeling. Both parties are the heroes. This is the “Surrender of Breda,”’ also known as “The Lances,” by Velasquez. Forgotten for a long time, to such an extent that its subject was unknown during part of the eighteenth century, it has become one of the famous pictures of the world. It takes its Spanish name, the painting of ‘The Lances,” from the group of long spears on the right-hand side of the painting, whose number has been often counted —they are twenty-nine. They serve to extend the picture outside of the frame and to suggest many more on that same level, and far back we see them stretched, moving down the hill. They are the serried pikes of Spain, disciplined and trained to move with one accord, undefeated until nineteen years later, in 1643, when ‘the iron cornfield”? — so called in Spanish verse — was mowed down WAR 35 forever by Condé at the battle of Rocroy. 1624-1643: those nineteen years include the paintings of the Dutch burghers fighting on the other side, in the pictures of Hals, Van der Helst, and Rembrandt. At this moment, how- ever, not of the picture, but of the capture of Breda, the Spanish must have felt the invincible power of their im- perialism, and as if this success had been achieved over the Dutch in the teeth of the whole world. Thus Olivarez, Spain’s Prime Minister, put it. Not that the Spaniards were alone; French, Germans, and Italians were on their side, and, in the fortunes of the town, this “bulwark of Flanders”’ was held by either side at different times. It was the seat of the family of Orange, and at that time converted into a model fortress by the Dutch. This impregnable fortress, the Marquis Spinola, the Italian general commanding the Spaniards, was ordered to take, in the brief message from Philip the Fourth: ‘Marquis take Breda—I, the King.” Maurice of Nassau was in the town, fully provisioned, and well defended by a garrison of veterans, and the struggle was ended by the supplies running short, when the place yielded. Spinola granted honourable terms to the aged Governor, Justin of Nassau, who was “allowed to march out with all arms, flags flying, drums beating, guns loaded to the muzzle, with lighted fuse, cavalry with flying streamers, trumpets 36 ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING blowing, armed and mounted as in the field.””. Then came the ceremony of surrender, June 2, 1625. Surrounded by a “crown” of princes and officers of high birth, Spinola awaited the arrival of Justin. The Governor then presented himself with his family, kinsfolk, and distinguished students of the Military Academy, who had been shut up in the place during the siege. Spinola embraced his vanquished opponent with kindly expressions and still more kindly words, in which he praised the courage and endurance of the protracted defence. The story is rendered in the painting in such a manner that any one can understand its meaning. Nothing could be simpler than the gesture of Spinola placing his hand on the shoulder of the Dutchman, who bends also, according to etiquette, as he delivers the keys of the conquered city. The national and the personal characteristics of each leader are expressed in every detail: in the sunburnt face of Justin of Nassau, above his great white collar, in his full doublet and trunk hose and his heavy boots; in the slightness and paleness of Spinola, clad in ornamental armour, and in the closely fitting boots which show his high-bred feet. Some years after the event, Velasquez had sailed to Italy with the great Marquis, and, perhaps, had there studied his countenance. On that trip also he saw at Venice, in the Church of San Cassiano, that wonderful picture of Tinto- WAR 37 retto, “The Crucifixion,”’ where, in the same way as in his own picture to be, the lances of the Roman soldiers run across the sky. In the Spanish picture, they and the officers be- neath, and the bent flag and the horse from whose saddle the conqueror has just come, make one great mass to one side. On the other side, the Dutch escort and the youthful companions of the Dutch commander again make another formal mass according to etiquette. To join these two sides the right arm of Spinola, extended in sympathy, makes the link. It is the real meaning of the picture; and its moral and intellectual meaning are rightly translated into the mechanism of art. Of course, the separate facts are beauti- fully painted; the faces and gestures have their expressions, the great open background spreads with accurate topogra- phy, the garrison moves out, closed in by the Spanish pikes, great bonfires are lit, and the silvery streak of the Mark indi- cates the flatness of the plain. But, against all this, the right arm of Spinola, clad in black armour, tells everything: - triumph, appreciation of others, and the dignity of a great commander. There are no more war scenes by Velasquez; there were no more victories for the Spaniards; and, as we said, notwithstanding a century and a half of war over all the possible spaces of Europe and America, there is no other great record of defeat or triumph until Turner’s record of 38 ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING Trafalgar and the “Death of Nelson,” which is now in the National Gallery of London. Whether it be entirely acceptable to the eye of most sea- men I do not know. I know that to certain mariners Tur- ner’s errors were not offensive, and that what he had to say of the sea pleased many a man who knew of what the painter has expressed. We know that a painter of figures might have been tempted to take some other and nearer view, if, indeed, he had touched the subject at all. We know also that more modern ideas of realism are here expressed, bringing in some- thing a little smaller, something more in the line of what has become illustration. But the majesty of these great ships, which we shall never see again, the record of the complicated necessities of their handling, the solemn, momentous up- heaval of the mast and yards, crowded together against the sky, the veiling of smoke and spray — which alone are a picture of movement and of light — and the choice of a perspective which makes us look down upon the deck of the flagship Victory where the victor lies dying, are enough to take the painting out of the mere realism of its story into the range of epic poetry. Here, too, we can see what is so rarely rec- ognized in the work of the great landscape painter — his wonderful capacity for the grouping and arrangement of the human figure. The many stories of the fight, their neces- WAR 39 sary connection, are all centred to one point: the little body of the great Admiral, held up by his men — poorly drawn, perhaps, according to academic notion, but perfect in mean- ing — tells a story as visible to a mind unacquainted with the facts as to us who associate with the great battle an impor- tance so decisive and so full of the romance of war. The black and white of our reproduction does not, of course, give the charm of the light and colour that fill the canvas; that beauty of Nature impassive and unobservant of the tragedies of men. The great Napoleonic conflict might well have brought out the sombre poetry of war, but of all the paintings, of all the official records, only two or three are worthy to survive as art. One man among the painters alone had the poetic fire —a youth; he had accompanied the French invasion into Italy, had been present at that marvel of genius and of luck, the first Italian campaign of Bonaparte, had been dazzled by the glory of the great commander and uplifted by the enthusiasm of the great cause of civil freedom. He paints the picture of a single episode: Napoleon carrying the flag across the bridge at Lodi; Napoleon at Jaffa, touch- ing with bare hand the sick of the plague to give them courage; and among others, few in number, the battle of Eylau, an unintentional prophecy of final defeat and disaster, where 40 ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING the great snow landscape, over which are scattered lines of the army, makes a sinister background for all the ugliness of war. There is no shirking of its horrors, all the more full because no sermon is intended. Indeed, the story is of the regrets and sympathy of the conqueror for the cost of the victory. One of the wounded enemy embraces his foot, others appeal to him. His dying companions assert their final allegiance. In the centre the pale mask of the Emperor seems the emblem of fate — of a fate too strong for his man- agement, and he extends a hand in deprecation. The dead and the wounded lie in the snow; the surgeons are working at their best — even against the struggles of the wounded enemies. Wounded beasts struggle, deserted in the deep snow, and, right by the Emperor, adding a note of caricature to emphasize the cruel scene, caracoles Murat, the King, the cavalry leader, in his theatrical costume, impervious to the scene. It has all been more or less a thing seen. The experience of actual war has taught the painter, and out of this past he has made a great drama filled with the accuracy of portraiture and of military costume and equipment. However admirably rebuilt the big picture of Meissonier in our Museum, it is an archeological and scientific reconstruc- tion of possible fact — and it is nothing more, apart from the great question that it is really a fragment, not a rebuilding J. M. W. TURNER THE DEATH OF NELSON NATIONAL GALLERY, LONDON PHOTOGRAPH BY HANFSTAENGL ANTOINE JEAN (BARON) GROS. NAPOLEON AT THE BATTLE OF EYLAU THE LOUVRE PHOTOGRAPH BY BRAUN & CO. = WAR 4d of fact by the necessities of art which ask the arrangement of lines and masses and the cadences which make a sepa- rate creation. In the great picture by Gros, ‘Napoleon at Eylau,” we see the record of the past of the art of war — the one great chief in whom all are embodied, on whom every- thing depends, who is visible to all, and whose presence animates and sustains this struggle. The era of close con- flict is over. At great distances, from unknown spots, fall the wounded and the dead. The battle itself is almost out of sight and certainly the commanders. They no longer ride at the head of their men or stand as an object for the enemy’s artillery. As the commander at sea who knows only by the electric report what is being done out of his sight, so the commander of to-day can no longer be represented in the long line of personal appearance which lasts from indefinite Egypt to the close of the nineteenth century. DREAMS OF HAPPINESS IV DREAMS OF HAPPINESS THE more man has become engaged in the conflicts of civ- ilization, in intellectual disappointment, the more he has felt the uselessness of knowledge, the more he has turned to certain expressions of art as an escape. He has addressed poems to Nature, has painted landscape more and more, has shown in every way that such an escape was a dream. I do not mean that such records of art have begun late, only that the more complex forms, especially such as those that paint- ings give, are more evident to us. Art has existed from the very beginning, even before the first man stuttered out his naming of the animals and expressed their character by the sound of their name. The dances of savages, as we call them, that is to say of people of earlier forms of civilization, invented before the arts of design, record in a poetic way what they do, and the seasons of such doings, and even the appearance of Nature: the storm, the rain, the clouds blowing across the sky, the lashing of the sea against the shore. In Fiji they have a dance where the women spread out their arms like the wave lines of the surf, and the children, springing up behind them, represent the foam 45 46 ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING of the wave crests. From these beginnings we know that tragedy and comedy, as we call them, have grown. Then, as all these disappear in fact, they are recorded in the art of painting. And as man, more and more, leaves behind him the life of out-of-doors, in so much does he desire to admire it. In very old representations we have nothing but what is really a shorthand statement of the fact that life in a garden is pleasant. Assyrian natives were shown to like the shade under vast umbrellas, and Egyptian ladies, in a mode not so different from hieroglyphics, lift a flower to smell. In the vast records of Greece and Rome there is almost noth- ing but a few such pictures of life as have for their real mean- ing something associated with story or mythology; so that we hesitate even as to the question of some mystic teaching being in reality the theme. Far away in Japan some blurred frag- ments tell us that the ladies liked to walk among the blossom- ing trees, and their descendants still continue the record. However much there may be of romance in the pictures and prints of Japan that we know, they are pictures of real life, made poetic by sobriety of means and skilful arrangement of line and colour. Here and there, in medizval miniatures and tapestries, we see occasionally some scenes of gay life out-of-doors, quite sober and dreary to us, and, indeed, hav- DREAMS OF HAPPINESS 47 ing more often the meaning of allegory than a representation of life away from danger and from work. The first eclogue in painting, with perhaps one exception, is that given by the wonderful youth who turned the stream of Venetian art into the field of colour veiling the form. Giorgione, Big George, so called, says Vasari, not only from his physical size, but from the exaltation of his nature, painted once for all an impossible ideal of a pastoral, making no pretence to the life of the fields, nor to a possible chance of being true to what might happen. In one of the beautiful breezy landscapes which he and his friend and rival, Titian of Cadore, drew out of their memories of mountain country, he placed a number of young people, in the make-believe of a musical interlude to some feudal feast in open country; in a sunshine which is true but does not burn, so that they have no need of shade. Two young men in splendid cloth- ing sit on the grass. One of them tries with one hand a theme of music on the strings of a mandolin. One of their two women companions has stopped a flute for a moment to listen. She turns her back to us; she is almost entirely nude in contrast to the full-dress of the youths before us, whose silks and satins add to the unreality. The other one has risen languidly, and, dropping her clothing as she has moved, begins to draw water from some antique fountain 48 ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING under the trees. The painter has found in this imaginarn choice a theme for his love of the beautiful glow of huma1 flesh, which he first gave in the art of painting. And, also for the pleasure of spreading out vast spaces ending in blu sea, in an atmosphere now first represented by the recen methods of painting. Not that before, and perhaps always something of air and light and distance had been given in the many ways of painting, of which those of the Greek have disappeared; but here begins in the art of painting that steeping of the picture in a bath of light and dark which we call chiaro-oscuro, which others had already much developed, but to which he and his Venetian successors gave the special glow of colour by which we know them. Partly owing tc the solemnity of this colour, the glow of human flesh and deep red dresses against the greens and browns and purple-blues of distance, partly from the combinations of the lines, a certain sadness comes to us from the painting. It is so serious that the theme of four young people with music and air and sun- shine about them seems but to add a greater solemnity. The story of the painter’s early death, the legend of the treason of friends — these memories come up in the presence of the dream of happy and thoughtless life. A little over a century had passed; society had much GIORGIONE (ZORZO DA CASTELERANCO) PASTORAL CONCERT ) LOUVRE PETER PAUL RUBENS THE GARDEN OF LOVE DRESDEN GALLERY PHOTOGRAPH BY HANFSTAENGL DREAMS OF HAPPINESS 49 changed; there were no more small independent states, proud of their separate lives. The rigid imperialism of Spain had moulded the fashionable ideals to more conformity. Even in freer Venice the glorious past was gone — gone the great painters, gone that self-assertion of the individual. A like fashion of dress and habit was beginning to reign as it does with us, though, all the more, small changes were noticeable, and the Spaniard, for instance, aimed, by rigid sumptuary laws, to mark some difference in the outward look of classes of worth or power. In 1600 Rubens goes to study in Italy, always the home of the past, and brings back larger manners to graft upon the early Flemish art — perfect of its kind, but far away from the gallant cavalier ways which are to rule in art. For, even in the mythologies, even in the Christian story, even in the allegories of the masters of the time, one feels the grand manner. The ample costume, the great silk doublets, the velvet cloaks, the floating plumes of fashion- able life, affect, of necessity, the motion and carriage of the models who posed. Even if they are saints and martyrs, or heroes of classical reticence and stoic behaviour, even Regulus and Coriolanus, they carry in their ways of moving through pictures something of the swaying of booted, belted, and spurred cavaliers. So in Corneille’s tragedies, only a little later, the heroes of Greece and Rome have the voice 50 ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING of Castilian romance — that something which Sancho Panza in vain found fault with in romantic Don Quixote. Between the ‘Pastoral Concert” of Giorgione of Castel Franco, still redolent of the heather of mountains and of freer air re- gretted in the town, to Rubens’s **Garden of Love,’’ nothing has been painted. There are pictures of amusements of real life, of no importance; there are various subjects of so-called church or pagan story, where, with Giorgione or Veronese, Moses is found by princesses, courtiers and their ladies, in the waters of lake streams that flow through charm- ing parks; or the story of Esther or of Susanna is spread through Italian gardens filled with architectural decoration. Even the most sacred stories of the New Testament have a setting of garden and palace art. But, except for a fragment, which may be a story, there is nothing between the “ Pastoral Concert” and the other dreamland of Rubens’s “Garden.” Here the seventeenth century has its fashionable dream. Rubens himself named it, in his businesslike way, “A Fashionable Conversation.””> The garden has become now mostly building; its architectural adornment fills most of the picture; the newer style of architecture is heavier, and sug- gests construction more than that of earlier Italian Re- naissance. It is an apotheosis of what was called the Grotto —a supposed retreat still more artificial than outside adorn- DREAMS OF HAPPINESS 51 ments. There, by splashing fountains, on the great steps, sit splendid ladies and gentlemen in the florid and expansive dress of the time. Enough trees, enough landscape, to show that a garden is meant. The ladies welcome each other; one gallant cavalier, with great felt hat and feathers and cloak uplifted by his long rapier, hands his lady, in the manner of the day, into this noble and gay assemblage. Other noble gentlemen whisper soft nothings to willing ears and smiling faces; their words are echoed by fluttering cupids and loves, whose wings cast shadows here and there. One of the fair ones even looks up at these birds of a love paradise with a smile of delighted amusement. It is an allegory of love nonsense, of fashionable dalliance. Nor has our faithful husband and artist forgotten to place his own beloved, his wife, Helena, in the ring of fine ladies. Indeed, mostly all have some reminder of her, or of a similar type dear to his affection. Even in this dream of fine ladies, the Helena of home life has been indirectly a subject. We have his separate studies from her for this creation of pure fancy. Pure fancy, it is true, but the note of modern society has been struck. There is an ocean between the Rubens and the Giorgione. The latter is the murmur of the indefinite past — not ex- pressed before in whatever of the classical world remains to us. Apart from a few folds of silks and velvets, that painting 52 ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING of Giorgione is an idyl of what primitive life, such as is still reflected in savage civilization, might have imagined, how- ever untrue to the prosaic fact of any special moment. Another century almost exactly has passed and once more, with no record between, we have the theme again. Watteau paints “L’embarquement pour Cythére,” “The Taking Ship for Cythera.” The large study is in the Louvre, painted for entrance into the French Academy; the deliberate com- plete work is in Germany, in that curious collection formed by Frederick the Great. The final results of events define our thoughts so much that we hardly realize that the Frederick of European war and aggrandizement, the planner of con- quests and the disenchanted cynic, could have chosen out of, all European art such a tenderness of expression. But this was begun in the earlier days; though long afterward Frede- rick continued to buy, “especially Watteaus,” as his instruc- tions read to his purchasing agent. The sad, unlucky painter, meanwhile, had no easy time. Only late, through his greater patrons, does he touch that elegant society of which he has made poetry in many paintings. For this one he could not have gone farther away from the dryness of the eighteenth century. Already the landscape is a dream. Silks and velvets have never travelled in such garden parks, placed DREAMS OF HAPPINESS 53 so high in Alpine mountain land, and looking across lakes edged by mountains peaked and engrailed. Only in South Seas, still, at Watteau’s date waiting for discoverers, are such fairy seas and hills and peaks in happy islands. Their first discoverer chose for his first discovered island, lovely Tahiti, the European name of New Cythera. To some other one, some island of the blest, some new Cythera, go this stream of pilgrims in their best holiday dresses, half of the very latest fashion of the day, half borrowed from Italian theatres. They dally, they hesitate by the way. They listen to promises, to persuasion, to small talk and chit-chat as they go; just as at any breakfast, any promenade in the open park. A great gilded barque waits for them in the shade, the mariners are of the past mythology — as are also meant to be the little loves and cupids, floating about, who are so completely of the eighteenth century that they seem to have dropped from the cornices and gilded ceilings of rococo parlours, such as we buy or heavily copy for the New York of to-day. These impossible cherubs are to guide and ac- company the pilgrims to that far-away land hinted at by the landscape, where is the Font of Eternal Youth, and from which none has ever returned. Never has this enchantment been again repeated in the art of painting, scarcely even in any verse. For there is only a slight melancholy in the delicious 54. ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING charm — only that necessary suggestion which accompanies pleasure for the poetic mind. Enchantments there will be in the lines of the poets; conventional imitations of Watteau will fill parlours and come now to us at enormous prices for the fancied pleasure of the very rich, but every such thing will be too silly or too sad. This is the last breath of that moment of society of which Talleyrand said that “who had not known it did not know the sweetness of life.” Already, above, roll the darker clouds bringing in the destiny of the modern world. That storm broke upon the Western world a century and more ago, and the words of the cynical nobleman, bishop, and diplomat have been justified abundantly. Since the day he spoke of, man has not tried for the sweetness of liv- ing — “la douceur de vivre’’; the pursuit of the dream, the dream of peace, has passed for painting into the realm of landscape. Landscape has been the escape from the re- sponsibilities of life. The nature which is not human has offered that solace to the modern man in every way, not only in painting or in verse, but in the actual modern enjoyment of the beauties of landscape. The modern landscape painter, however, has struggled and fought according to the spirit of his time with the diffi- culties of adequate representation, with the artistic necessities DREAMS OF HAPPINESS 55 implied, and, still further, with a scientific manner of render- ing light and colour, so that one looks back upon the land- scape of the past, the Claude Lorrains, and even the Dutch transcripts of nature, as representing a desire of peace and the repose that art can give. Alone, out of an indefinite number, the Frenchman, Corot, has aimed to express the rest that we feel in the look of landscape. His are the only ideals painted since that middle of the eighteenth century when Watteau ended. Nor have we distinctly felt his aim until his course was completed, because he had to invent a manner of his own which seemed to partake of the universal struggle, not in itself, but because of the agitation about him. With the end of the last century, a decorator of wall spaces, a maker of decorative figures, Puvis de Chavannes, has alone taken up the idea of representing rest and peace. This is done through the means of many figures, assembled in har- monious composition, where the line of landscape connected with them is an integral part of the story. A certain French logical coldness separates them from the warmer and less reticent works of the past. It is difficult to connect them at first with such a dream as that of the Giorgione at which we first looked. But apart from that more sensuous aban- donment to the joy of life, Puvis’s work is in the line of 56 ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING inheritance of the early dreamers, and, though it may be the landscape of dreamland, his landscape is perhaps the most essential part of his painting, which, to the usual looker-on, is an assemblage of figures. It is decidedly the landscape of that particular dream, and its line, its disposition, its colour, are woven into the story so as to be inseparable from the action of the people who live within it. I have written somewhere else that this necessity for a true bond between the figure and the landscape has always been felt, I think, by the greater figure painters. It may even have led some of them to a suppression of landscape, because of sensitiveness to the inappropriate introduction of accidental form of lines. Francois Millet, the son of the great painter, once told me of his father’s saying, on his death-bed, that he had not been enough of a landscape painter. In his own words, he had “not completed his harvest’’; and the dying painter de- scribed scenes of peace and rest which he had desired to express. Compare the dreary, homely background of Puvis’s “‘St. Genevieve,” an idealization of the tame environs of Paris, with his ““Doux Pays.” The landscape of the ‘Lovely Land” (“Doux Pays’) spreads a fairy sea and dreamy mountains and thin graceful foliage, against which are placed figures in lazy attitudes, that watch from their height of ‘OD N NOVURH AW Hd VUYOOLOHd Ty A0 (VUATHLAOD YOR dIHS YNIMVE) AUAILEAO UNOd LNANWAIOUVEING.T QVALOIVM ANIOLNY NVA T AHL SG SS Sas RG SSASsxs Sh ~ AVANNES PUVIS DE CH X PAYS (THE LOVELY LAND) DOU PARIS BONNAT, COLLECTION co. & BRAUN PHOTOGRAPH BY DREAMS OF HAPPINESS 57 cliff the arrival of the boats of their friends or of far-away traders, coming from a great sea where the struggles of others, in the words of Lucretius, are a pleasant picture to the watcher from the land. The absence of all meaning, as we usually define the word — the mere accidental postures of the figures in the scene, give just the intention of the artist — the look of momentary rest in an imaginary land where life must be easy because of its simplicity. V PORTRAITS OF CHILDREN From the pleasure we take in the pictures, sometimes also in the portraits, of children, it might be supposed that we should find for our present purpose of choosing out of all art some of the fairest flowers a greater supply than we should get from the number of older persons painted. All the more that we are naturally inclined to the subject of the artist. The subject escapes our dislike in the first place, as with the reality our knowledge of human nature does not extend far enough into the future to judge these beginning lives, and they, too, are probably at their best. They are usually painted when they are at their prettiest, and their astounding power of being all there at the moment in the transient attitude they prefer puts them almost at their ease morally. Painted, we do not ask anything from them — any duty, obedience, or holding their tongues, making less noise. We both admire and pity them because they have to change and be like us. It is, after all, for them that most of us live, but in the painted image we have no anxiety for their future welfare. Usually they are painted before that change in whichanxiety is marked, and therefore nothing darkens the prospect. It has been 61 62 ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING natural to paint them as angels even if our Lord had not established their age as a type of what we shoutd try to be. The antique representations of children come to us only through sculpture, and whether painted or sculptured they are rather types than portraits. There is no little Protus such as Browning described: Among these latter busts we count by scores Half-emperors and quarter-emperors, One loves a baby face, with violets there, Violets instead of laurel in the hair, As those were all the little locks could bear. There is, however, far away in chivalrous Japan, painted by a painter, himself a knight, touched by the grace of Bud- dhism in bloody days of feud and hate, the little portrait that I give herewith of the child saint who, seven hundred years ago, brought a fuller Buddhism into Japan. He is Ko-bo-Dai-shi (the broad religious great teacher), his real name being swamped in this posthumous tribute to his memory, and the meaning of his teaching. For he achieved the blending of the native beliefs of Japan with the foreign religion of Buddhism and helped to make “ Patriotism and Piety one.”” Thus, he saw in the gods, in the heroes of old Japan, manifestations of eternal truths, which had taken the forms of man, and founded a theology suitable to the race which secured the prevalence of the doctrine imported from PORTRAITS OF CHILDREN 63 India, where he himself was said to have studied. And, more than that, he is the inventor of the Japanese alphabet, and for the last thousand years the children have repeated the names of these names of sound which, run together, make a verse, telling the disenchanting doctrine of the transi- tory passage of the world: The charms and the perfumes of life in reality disappear: In this world of ours is there aught which lasts forever? In the deep mountain of existence the present day is sinking And is not even, alas, the fragile image of a dream. The placing of the child on the lotus flower is the rendering of a continuous prophetic dream of his when he was five years old and which he kept secret to himself; the lotus is the usual emblem and figure of that doctrine of Buddha which the child was to live for. And in his tomb, in the great garden of the monastery he founded — Koya San —a pious tradition keeps him still alive. The little picture represents the youth- ful saint placed on the lotus flower, which typifies the religion of Buddha, praying as might the infant Samuel, with a sweetness that, even in this extremely simple method of paint- ing, is reflected long before the Christian painters gave us the expression of religious absorption. For it is with the pictures of saintly scenes of the infant Christ and little John and the angels in attendance that the portrait of the child begins to be seen in art. The painters began to draw from 64 ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING real life the motives of the imaginary characters. Therefore, the little child Christ puts His hand on the gray heads of the kings or of the magi who kneel before Him. He smiles at the donors who are painted modestly in the corners of holy pictures. He lies sleepy on His mother’s shoulder and stretches out a lazy hand. He plays with the angels that surround Him or looks at them as another amusement. Nor are the little angels, the little Saint Johns, his cousins, pure inventions. They are the children playing about the homes of the painters, whether those painters live in more prosaic Flanders or in romantic villages or towns of Italy. The divine meaning of all these subjects of painting freed nature to the eye of the painter. Only very slowly are the portraits of little personages, children of princes or of kings, treated otherwise than through etiquette. In fact, they are rarely painted. It is only when they are old enough to be marked as successors to dignities that it is necessary to have a record of them, to propose their choice in other courts for marriages that might happen. And then perhaps are they more gawky than they need be, because they are just then taken at a time of indecision and vacant promise. So we have drawings of children as young as seven years, like little Margaret of Valois of France, made for the youthful Don Carlos of Spain, among the pictures by Clouet. NOBUZA KO-BO-DALSHI (THE BROAD RELIGIOUS GREAT TEACHER) Wie Lid TINS iS ayy VELASQUEZ (DIEGO RODRIGUEZ DA SILVA Y) LAS MENINAS (THE MAIDS OF HONOUR) THE PRADO PHOTOGRAPH BY BRAUN & CO. PORTRAITS OF CHILDREN 65 But the painters have begun to paint their own children and the splendour of the success begins to extend to official portraits. So that we see the story told just at the very moment by the perfectly natural representation, yet within the laws of etiquette, of the little princes and princesses painted by Velasquez around whom in a freer action move the older children of their court. Either the baby Don Balthazar, with his curious dwarf companion, or the little Infanta Margaret in the famous painting of ““The Meninas”’ (“The Maids of Honour’’). This, as we all know, is one of the famous paintings of the world and, like many great works of art or literature, has had its day of glory and day of oblivion, and now slowly within the last half century or so becomes a criterion for the modern painter. At the time it was painted it was judged of pretty nearly as it is to-day. One of the rival Italians who worked much in Spain, a fashionable and successful painter of the day, and certainly no mean artist, said of it to Philip the King, that it was the very theology of painting, meaning thereby, I suppose, that it was truth and dogma and ortho- doxy — all that is opposite to theoretical pragmatism. Its workmanship and ail that side of painting which copies nature for illusion have reached here the highest level known; not attempting to deceive, by insisting on special points of 66 ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING accuracy, but so that each accuracy depends upon the others and that the whole has that impression of nature which does not surprise us, which does not look clever or particularly wonderful or difficult to understand. Hence the wonderful success of the photograph in rendering the picture, however much we may miss. There are parts that are not to be seen and they melt away as they do in nature. The little lady in the centre of the picture is the Princess or Infanta Margaret, of whom there are many other protraits, later, by the same illustrious hand. Perhaps here she is less at her ease than in others, and one feels all the more what I am speaking of, the slow growth of the natural portrait of a child of royal blood as compared with the children of more ordinary birth. As in the lines of Thackeray, the verses called “The Ballad of Policeman X,”’ we are to remember the reproof given by the nurse to the Duke of Wellington, asking at the time of the birth of the present King — “Is tt a boy or girl?” “‘ Your Grace, it is a Prince.” “And at the nurse’s bold reply, he did ’ both laugh and wince.” Here the little Princess is five years old. She is the half-sister of the little Don Balthazar whom we have seen a moment ago with the dwarf. The relentless etiquette which surrounded her followed her into such details as this: that when she was thirsty one of her noble maids, a “‘menina,” brought a glass to another, who knelt, as also did PORTRAITS OF CHILDREN 67 the maid, and on the other side knelt also an attendant to give her a napkin, while a maid of honour stood as a witness. This is almost a description of this picture, of a scene which occurred probably in some room of the court, where their Majesties had been sitting for their portraits. Or else the King had come, as was his. habit, to watch his favourite painter. For the King himself was somewhat of a painter, somewhat of a poet, very much of a sportsman, and also a majestic and hard-worked business-man, glad to escape from the terrors of official life. Thus the subject is supposed to have happened, and that the King wished the accidental scene preserved. We know he is there, because he is reflected with the Queen in the mirror on the wall. He sees what we see; and this mirror contains the only portrait we have of the King and Queen together. The little Princess is on her best behaviour before their Majesties — her father and mother. We can reconstruct the scene as it occurred. Windows had been closed to make a special light for one of the royal sitters; and the group of the Princess, her maidens, and the dwarfs kept to amuse her, stood in this narrow light. The Queen’s quartermaster opens the door in the rear, apparently at some order from the King, whom we do not see. But we recognize the peculiar movement of a man waiting for further instructions. In the gloom of the room is the Lady of Honour 68 ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING in her convent habit. She may have belonged to some order, or have assumed it for some special purpose in such a reli- giously minded court. Next to her stands an elderly gentle- man, whose duty it was to attend the court lady. One of the noble girls, whose name still remains, offers to the little Princess, upon a gold salver, some water from a cup made of a special, fine scented clay from the East Indies. The other maiden, dressed also in the court habit, with the great hoop skirts, which were the rule, courtesies slightly upon the occasion, according to the etiquette I first described. We know her name too, and that she grew up to be a great beauty and died early. On the right is the ugly, stupid dwarf, Maria Barbola, and her companion, Nicholas Pertusato, who puts his foot on the big dog, half asleep, as if to wake him up and get a little fun out of the moment. Velasquez himself has just been painting. He stands by the great canvas which runs through the greater part of the picture; and we see the motion of the hand that painted that picture. It is all, as it were, a mere accident, but every part of it has been used to help the impression and make a beautiful pattern, and we shall never know how much it was a mere copy from nature, and how much the choice of art. There is a legend that the red cross on the painter’s doublet was painted by Philip himself, as a manner of telling Velasquez that he had made him a VELASQUEZ (DIEGO RODRIGUEZ DA SILVA Y) THE INFANTE DON BALTHAZAR CARLOS THE PRADO PHOTOGRAPH BY BRAUN & CO. BARTOLOME ESTEBAN MURILLO ST. JOHN THE BAPTIST BELVEDERE MUSEUM, VIENNA PHOTOGRAPH BY BRAUN & CO. PORTRAITS OF CHILDREN 69 Knight of Santiago, and as a joyful surprise. He was said even to have used the words that ‘it needed nothing but that.” All legends are sure to be shaken, if not destroyed, and we are now assured that the cross was added by order of the King at Velasquez’s death as a manner of making him more fitting for the august company in which he was painted. Princess Margaret’s brother, Don Balthazar, has a gayer time in painting, as he had also in real life. Another triumph of Velasquez, another triumph of art in the simplicity of its intention and its rendering, is the portrait of the little Prince on his pony galloping toward us in the style of an officer or general with his marshal’s baton extended. One can suppose the boy playing at being commander also, and riding the chestnut pony as he was taught by his father — the best horseman in Spain. The little pale face, just joyful enough, notwithstanding its play of dignity, or because of it, is framed in a heavy hat; the green velvet jacket with white sleeves, on which is tied the delicate pink scarf whose ends flutter in the wind; the blue of the saddle, the trappings of the horse, are each wonders of rendering. The chestnut pony, rounded like a ball, with long mane and sweeping tail, forms with the Prince, his rider, a mass of motion made stronger by the con- trast of all the lines and tones of the quiet landscape; such a one as Velasquez saw from his studio window, in the palace, 70 ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING at springtime — a stretch of blue and white clouds, and be- yond the blues and the grays and greens of the hills the Mountains of Guadarrama, still bluer, and crowned with films of snow. Meanwhile the children of the poor were being painted in the manner of portraits or rather in the manner of subjects sufficient of themselves and treated with some respect. The Dutch painters were painting the scenes of home life, where children came in as did everything else that belonged to the life represented. They are true enough, often disagreeably so, if they are not treated as portraits, as subjects of suffi- cient dignity, to be the entire motive. Murillo, the painter of Spanish devotion and of abandonment to the charm of religious possession, has painted his “Beggar Boys”’ with a certain grandeur, as if they were disinherited noblemen with acquired bad habits, with cheek extended by the bit of fruit, ete. They are alone of their kind. So vulgar and so dig- nified, they have no intention of satire or analysis. And in his devotional pictures the children, under the guises of angels and the cherubs, or the Christ child held by His mother or embracing St. Anthony of Padua, are children whose dignity is the lovely sentiment of the artist. However personal it may seem to us, it mingles insensibly with the other Spanish expressions. It comes from a habit of life, intimately satu- PORTRAITS OF CHILDREN 71 rated by religion, following the ordinary virtues, and, though capable of the mystic and the passionate, perfectly natural and in accordance with ordinary humanity. In that manner of using the child as a receptacle for the ideal of feeling the “Saint John” of Murillo makes a manner of portrait. Ina more serious and more poetic form such a painting connects with the children painted in the next century by Sir Joshua and Gainsborough. The one I have chosen of the several of Murillo’s sacred children is the little Saint John, who looks up to a sky over- hanging a landscape of hills and trees, such as the Spaniard saw. ‘The boy’s face grows older with the idea of the heaven above him, perhaps near him. The peasant’s hand presses the half-bared breast; the hard peasant feet are bare; the child is an out-of-doors boy, no imagined ideal of elegance and inspiration. He is the cousin of the mischievous beggars in Murillo’s pictures. He could play with them to-morrow. But a something of yearning, as if of orphanage, has touched the haggard features of the shepherd boy. It is true that he points to a scroll curled around a little cross, but that is merely the explanation of himself and that he announces the Lamb of God. And a real lamb presses also against him, waiting its turn of notice. Nor could the impression of dreamland go without the great shadows which make the picture, which 72 ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING bathe a proportion of its surface in a relation to the light, and allow the eye to centre on this transfiguration of a peas- ant’s face by the feeling of the artist. He recorded, perhaps, an expression once really seen in some boy’s face; for imagina- tion is made up of many memories and its calls do not come by ordered necessity. TRIUMPHS — PART ONE VI -TRIUMPHS — PART ONE AS THE song and the verse recorded success, so also has the work of the hand, the arts of the hand — the arts of archi- tecture, sculpture, and painting —from their most vague beginning. Mostly these early testimonials are mere rec- ords; often, however, associated with some ideals — natur- ally those of religion, of observance — of duty to the forces which perhaps give success. Sometimes they are testimonials to personal valour in the person of the ruler who triumphs over his bound enemies in Assyrian sculptures or fights the lion hand to hand. That good taste of the Greeks, which we can never too much admire — so much is it a record of intellectual sight and of moral balance — preferred to record triumphs by some de- votion to the Gods who gave the battle, or else by some image, which through praise of God and Heroes, apart from men themselves, might not wake that Nemesis which they knew hangs forever over each attempt at self-glorification. That perfect taste is not so far from later recognition of the re- ligious necessity of attributing all triumph and all success to something outside of us. 75 76 ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING With the Roman world the testimony is more brutal, and as the ruler is a form of God, as the State and God become one, there is perhaps more harmony than we discern easily to-day. With the crash of Rome and the triumph of Christi- anity comes of course some element of the Christian spirit, but still we see the Emperor, often a half barbarian, placed on the right hand of the lowly Christ in Byzantine mosaic. He is his Vice-regent, a sort of Lieutenant, and he continues the Roman tradition. Then the chivalry of the Middle Ages, the absorption of all in service to the Church, or to the Blessed Virgin, or to the Blessed Saints, or to Christ Himself the Head, wipes out the record of personal triumph. Churches are built, windows are placed, saintly stories are painted almost as atonement for success. With the necessary reaction, with the breaking up of the ties to the superiors of hierarchy, with the assertion of personal value and valour, comes first, and in Italy, the record of the glory of the City. Occasionally this is, in a smaller way, a memorial of some great lord of per- sonal promise or achievement, but it is the City which is first glorified. Any smaller attempts here and there are unim- portant, and drowned in the praises and laudations of Venice as painted by her artists. No songs since Roman days have been as fine in praise of the majesty of the City’s fame. Nil visere majus. Their meaning was sufficient, their PAOLO VERONESE THE GLORY OF VENICE DUCAL PALACE, VENICE PAOLO VERONESE VENICE ENTHRONED DUCAL PALACE, VENICE TRIUMPHS "7 theme grateful enough to lift the painters with them. In whatever case, that something that painting alone can give — the cry of music excepted — remains for us, to whom Venice is but a name, her glory all departed. But, never- theless, we see and sympathize with the idea of success depicted; as we do in music’s triumphs which are for us, and are our own, though their meaning was once for others and not for us atall. What the exact cause is of these representa- tions and triumphs having come to be the greatest types it is difficult to establish. Why, especially, when the function, the external representation of the pomp of power was so often seen by Italian eyes in pontifical splendours, or in the cere- monial of churches, in all processions of civic and government display; when the imagination of writers and of painters in Florence, in Milan, or elsewhere, was called to instil poetry into every detail; when Italian records are full of them; when fortunes were spent upon them; when a special form of poetry consecrated that name of “Triumph” for ideals such as Chastity, Love, or Death (in verse we know they bore the name Trionfi); when painters and sculptors again translated these poems of literature into engaging shapes, why was it left to Venice, the commercial, alone to feel the great breath of joy and elation that animates these great wall or ceiling pictures, which takes them away from local conditions 78 ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING and makes them types of the pure ideal? It may be that the other previous forms, exhausted first attempts, based on the copying of external realities, and not on the realities of art, in which colour, line, and spaces are the bases and realities of fact, used to excuse these means of art. The great painter, Paul of Verona, fits so absolutely by his temperament, his training, and his methods of painting into the representation of scenes open to the public eye, to which also belong a certain proportion of display, a certain idea of function, that he seems to have invented the occasions for them. Other Venetians have also spread open great surfaces of architecture in which move their crowds: the needs of the time, which as we know determine the forms of talent, called for big spaces to be adorned in churches, in the meeting places of convents, of palaces private or public; other painters have filled these needs of the day, but none as if they had always wished for such a chance and felt themselves in their proper home. A cool and temperate lighting, a wise and temperate arrangement and balance, a wise and temperate expression, even in such a drama as that of Christ falling below the weight of the cross, have always been with Vero- nese. But the larger the space to fill, the more figures to be invented, the more difficult the relations of real life and arbitrary arrangement of imaginary spaces, the more at TRIUMPHS 79 his ease seems this modest, most balanced, most gentlemanly of painters. So complete is his equipment, so thoroughly has he understood the necessities, or what one might call the duties of the paintings to be seen on big stretches of wall or ceiling — which must be seen from many places and still keep beauty of line and arrangement, and tell their story however looked at, in light, and half light, and shadow — that we pass a little too easily and call this decoration and not drama. But the essential good taste which is Veronese’s mark and his serenity of mind made him decide the proper course. In the great spread of wall paintings, which must remain before the spectator whether he wishes to see or not, it is evident logic that peace and order and absence of dis- turbance or sudden appeal should be the law. Veronese is, therefore, the great decorative painter, whatever else we may think of him, and it is but right that fate should have called him to paint the great function of Venice Triumphant, in perfect union between the idea and the artist. That triumph is one of peace, of serene established success. If centuries of war, of financial and diplomatic struggle, of commercial effort, of continued industry, have been the beginning of this day of peace, there is almost nothing in the serene picture to recall it. Only such matters as belong to great festivals; the putting of the people in order and in their places; some 80 ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING troops of guards making a police enough to remind the happy ones at home that outside and far away there are men on watch, and all the security of discipline and courage. Two horsemen ride through a crowd which is there to enjoy the spectacle and take them as part of it. All but these few euards look up to where above, over many steps, upon which ride the horses, and on the last one of which the Lion of St. Mark spreads his imaginary wings, rises a palace solid but imaginary, a painter’s dream of architecture, but the dream of a painter learned in other arts. Were it more real we could not explain why such things occurred there; we should feel that in a building built by hands, subjected to the con- ventionalities and the necessities of the builder, gods would not float from pillar to pillar, or triumphant angels sail past the cornices through the blue and white sky known only to Veronese. Hence, everything, every reality of construction, is slightly modified, with the appearance of great exactness and anxiety to conform to proper architectural rule. But the painter has only conformed to external rules and escaped the grave necessities. Perspective, the art of placing things so that they may recede or diminish with a semblance of correctness, has been most subtly used here, as was the train- ing of the time. We are enabled thereby to look up with all this multitude. We should look up since it is the ceiling, JACOPO ROBUSTI (TINTORETTO) THE GLORY OF VENICE DUCAL PALACE, VENICE TRIUMPHS 81 but the subject itself is one better understood if we suppose that it lies above us, away from whatever plane, whatever level we ourselves are on. If the architecture be imaginary, we are reassured by the relative reality of its habitants. Were we Venetians of that day we should be pleased to see the same great ladies, in their beautiful dresses, just as we met them at a distance on great occasions. And their good nature takes in all their attendants, their children, and the crowd of the curious who always trespass. These press in and lean against the columns — a little more and they would wet their hands in the clouds that separate them as by an upper story from the immortal gods above. Noblemen, and clergymen, Turks and infidels subject to Venice, lean also on the great balcony and gaze at the triumph above, just taking visible form. On that second story of clouds rests the fashionable mythology of the moment, not quite Greek, not quite antique, and still so clearly made of that same imagination which first gave human shape to powers and abstract ideas. Mars, dressed in somewhat antique fashion, and Ceres crowned with wheat, and Commerce with Mer- cury’s wand, and the other necessary chorus, sit around the sweet Goddess Venice, foreshortened high above, clad in brocade and ermine, her blond Venetian hair, obtained by nature or by artifice, dropping on her shoulders. She waits 82 ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING calmly, like any well-bred lady, for the crown which the occasion gives her, brought down by some divine messenger, swooping from the sky, who needs no wings to tell us how easily she moves through space, as between the archi- traves and the columns and the statues far above. She has left that blue and white sky of Veronese which seems to be- long to Venice and crowns in this case the glories of a beautiful summer day. All is fancy, all is imaginary, all is impossible except that there are the figures of the scene, and, since they are there in their proper place and perspective, the sight must be true; and we feel that in this steady light of ordinary day it must occur again, and must be the usual habit of Venice the Glorious. I do not know but that the less important ‘‘ Venice En- throned”’ of Paul Veronese be not more perfect. It is more of a rendering to us of a success which we recognize and which still lives for us. To-day the commercial, diplomatic, and warlike successes of these prudent but splendid noblemen and merchants are gone forever. It requires a historic training to recall their function in the growth of the modern world. But Venice is still enthroned actually as a City, and in the memories of literature and art, not as active, not as pushing, not as all alert from harsh necessity, but as beautiful and charming, and peaceful, and once a harbour for the exile, TRIUMPHS 83 a garden for art, a refuge of moderation in the wars of re- ligious intolerance. In the picture we see that Justice and Peace ascend the steps toward the throne, and that those steps are guarded by the Lion of Venice: These ideals of al- legory are Venetian Dames draped somewhat differently from their contemporary human sisters, who once walked below the ceiling within which these live in glorified paint and canvas. In their day their slight difference was sufficient to remove them far enough. At this very day a little change in drapery idealizes our emblematic figures, which to-morrow will again indicate the nineteenth and twentieth century fashions from which they sprung. Some adjustment of hair, some cut of sleeves, something is sure to tell; may our women hold their own as these have done. The great globe on which Venice sits enthroned means to us no longer the power of the sea; then it established a fact and had a clear meaning of proud allegory. But its great curve, which makes most of | the impression of the picture to the eye, is still beautiful, still triumphant. And the Venice who sits dreaming above the subject world of the sea is a charm in herself. She rules by beauty, by divine indifference; for, as I said, she is not at all the necessary allegory of a driving, cautious, and much- occupied people, but the emblem of a refined ease, so long acquired as to be hereditary. Her ermines and great brocade 84 ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING and sceptre held erect, and canopy above are not necessary to her pose of easy security, but they are necessary to the picture; the picture is in the great curved lines of dais and knee and edge of globe and in the two erect tangents of the sword in the hand of Justice and the sceptre in the hand of Venice. Even the exact parallelogram of the picture is a perfect choice for the inside lines and suggests large spaces of an outside world in which this record of peace and acquired security was seen by the painter’s mind. In the great ceiling picture of the Ducal Palace, the “Glory of Venice”’ by Tintoretto, a less quiet genius had been called upon to glorify the City; a much less quiet genius: one who was disturbed by the admirations of his time — desires for the line and the grouping of the painters of Florence and of Rome, Michael Angelo or Raphael, known by hearsay and by drawings; and also moved by certain glories of the great Titian, near to his own origin. A greater tension, thereby, drives his themes throughout; but also he was born a drama- tist,and none other of his school has told such powerful stories; no painter anywhere has surpassed him in the suddenness of his view of the stories he chose or was made to tell. And it is not a superficial artistic capacity for line and arrangement; with this power of artistic control go emotion and that per- ception of the story in itself which makes the dramatist. He TRIUMPHS 85 is, therefore, finer indeed in such of his stories as mean a great deal: stories of Scripture — the Christ before Pilate, where the silent prisoner seems to judge his judge; or the worn out Christ in the wilderness tempted by that most beautiful Satan; or the Crucifixions, the two that fill the great space of the Scuola di San Rocco or hang high on the wall of San Cas- siana — each one another form of triumph, more suited to his character — more suited to the telling of a great message than to the joyful clamour of success. But the “Glory of Venice”’ is still a wonderful picture; to the artist an astound- ing success — only the man of art perhaps may know how many powers go to such an easy sweep, to so much work, to such rapid execution, to such invention of detail, to such difficulties of drawing undertaken with so little hesitation. There are here the same sources of line that we see in the “Venice Enthroned” of Veronese. The same great curve of the globe, which is the sea, emblem of Venice’s sea power, determines the lines of all the picture. Against it, from it, to it, go the lines of movement of all the lower figures; sea gods, Old Neptune with his trident, his mate Amphitrite following him, Tritons carrying fish, riding on sea monsters, all the old charming, useless mythology, newer and more fash- jonable then than to-day, move across the picture. All are evidently bound to one function, which some have already 86 ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING begun, typified by the sea maiden far down at the end of our picture, who has brought a sea shell’s worth of pearls as a tribute offering to the Goddess Venice the Great. Slowly others rise from the curved sea surface, carrying tribute, branches of coral, and vases full of the waters of many rivers that flow into the ocean from lands ruled over by Venice. The gods above are pleased. They recline on clouds, pleased at the homage paid to their daughter, Venice, the most beautiful of the children of the sea; and like clouds they are spread in concentric circles below the great circle above, where Venice is the centre, herself ringed about with many halos and circles of clouds. She is the same Venice that we know in Veronese’s triumphs; beautiful, good-natured, joyful — not an imaginary being, not an allegory — a mere glorified picture of her real daughters and in their usual holiday cos- tume. Her very brocades are those for sale in the shops, the warehouses of foreign guilds, or made in her own lands. She is a gay and a kindly mistress. The gods Hercules and Mercury and lyric Apollo and Old Time and others less clearly typified sit about her. They merely lounge in their accus- tomed places, for she is a patroness or an employer of their forces. And they make with her the great circle at one end of the picture, which is repeated in another less evident way at the other end. TRIUMPHS 87 For these representations of ideas are like musical composi- tions; it is not only the special figures looxing like life that make this manufactured world great for artists. That more or less successful representation of fact attends those who are capable of the musical arrangement of the whole song. It is this orchestration which insures to this and certain other works of art an immortality which even a more accurate copy of nature does not have. Think of the multitude of pictures on decorated wall or ceiling, and how many are more than a filling up by some subject? In how very few has the great source of art been used — arrangement, the cadence which keeps all the notes together. TRIUMPHS — PART TWO VII TRIUMPHS — PART TWO WE HAVE seen how the greater bend of a body, the sweep of an arm, the flush of pink flesh against gray-blue sky, the looking up of perspective, have made the details of the success of the triumphal paintings of Venice. Venice is enthroned in art as she is in those paintings. She lives for us in art and we could afford to forget her otherwise, if it were not as an explanation of the past. From that time she has ruled in painting; no ceiling has spread from architrave to arch without a memory of the arrangements of Venice, and nothing has succeeded in the leit motif of joy and coro- nation of hope unless in connection with that past. When Rubens came to Venice his enjoyment of the splendour of existence, and of the suggestion of ample health and physical success, found a source to drink from. Throughout his paintings beats this Venetian orchestration, and when later, even by other hands, he paints the triumphs of Henry IV of France and of Mary of Medici, one feels again that these are typical triumphs and that the Queen, his subject, is merely apretext. Even the great name of Henry of Navarre merely guides us to better appreciation. The hero may be weak 91 92 ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING and the result will be the same. So that in the very picture in which the boy Louis XIII holds the reins of government, the splendour falls on him not because of his personality, but because of Rubens’s idea of triumph. Mary rides on horseback, as we see her in the painting, and we forget the probable meanness of what she may have been. She arrives in France triumphantly, received by the genius of France itself, escorted by gods above and by sirens below — all of which relates to a little princess whose establishment was a good fortune to her family in Italy. The orchestration is that of Venice, sounded on Flemish instruments, and the great pictures are hymns of triumph not only for her, for- gotten, but for us. Freed to-day from the dust, and the dark of former placing, most of them shine in the Louvre of to-day, gorgeous in colour and tone, filling the walls as if with im- ponderable tapestry. Let us consider some of these triumphs, these paintings by the painter of pomp and circumstance. It will be almost the last time in the history of painting that we shall see splen- dour represented. Once or twice, in a few moments of the nineteenth century, some chance of fortune may give us such a reminder of the past, but apart from these very few, which contradict the general meaning of the age, there will be in painting but a grayer heaven and a more prosaic earth. PETER PAUL RUBENS HENRY IV DECIDING UPON HIS FUTURE MARRIAGE THE LOUVRE : PHOTOGRAPH BY BRAUN & CO. PETER PAUL RUBENS MARRIAGE OF HENRY IV AND MARIE DE MEDICIS THE LOUVRE PHOTOGRAPH BY BRAUN & CO, TRIUMPHS 93 The world will have stiffened into forms more commercial and more practical, ruled and guided by academic formulas. It is difficult to select from a sequence whose very abun- dance is part of the wonder of the artist’s success. One sub- ject after another rolls out from this wealth of imagination, without doubting for a moment the amount of power still stored up in the mind of the inventor. Any part of the story of the Queen is at once a theme for a new form of com- position. Most likely the subjects were indicated. Nothing could be apparently less suggestive than the subject of the painting whose official title is ““Henry the Fourth of France Deciding Upon His Future Marriage,” yet at once we pass from prose into the spaces of allegory and courtly mythology. Hymen and Love present the King a portrait of Mary, a prose portrait such as Rubens might have painted. It is the portrait of a portrait, for its flat surface gives to the living figures still more reality, still more illusion of roundness and of life. It is the centre of the picture; one cannot escape from the meaning: Love points out to the King the graces of the offered bride. The prose of the picture is continued, but with all the gallantry of Rubens, in the figure of Henry of Navarre, who is represented as he must have looked, an elderly man, well balanced on his feet, a type of the warrior of that day. On his rich and gilded armour is detached the TRIUMPHS 95 3 Queen by Proxy,” which is the nearest to a real happening, which Rubens saw himself, and which almost escapes our scheme of triumph because of its qualities of accuracy. We shall skip over the beautiful landing of the Queen at Mar- seilles, where, in accurate costume and fair portraiture, she is received by emblematic figures as she descends from the great golden galley down to a bridge of boats, amid the joys of the sea-nymphs and sirens, the sound of trumpets, and waving flags. I have chosen again another of the most allegorical of the series, for its extreme bold- ness, under one of the truest of impulses derived from classical antiquity. In such a way as a Roman artist would have flattered the divine emperor and empress, Rubens has represented a marriage of Jupiter and Juno. Within their forms Henry IV and Mary are meant. A wonderful blend- ing of the portrait with the classical type is carried through with the ease born of the long apprenticeship to all forms of art. The constellation of Venus shines above, within the rainbow of good promise, and Hymen points to the kindly nfluence of the constellations. The accustomed scheme of Rubens combines the colours of the draperies and the flesh n a joyous harmony of light. Red and gold for the dress of the Queen, and blue and white for her cloak, and scarlet or King Jupiter shine out in front of the more retiring green 96 ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING dress of Hymen. Below, under the conventional clouds which support the bridal party, the eagle of Jove and the peacocks and chariot of Juno, rises the City of Lyons — the city where the marriage took place. Her chariot is drawn by the emblematic lions, the symbols of the name of the city, upon whose back sit the accustomed genii of children. Within the half shadow of the lower figures, the orange and the violets and the gold of the chariot make a solemn harmony purposely less brilliant than that of the half divine group above. In the distance, the real earthly city spreads to the line of the Mountains of Dauphiny, and the river Rhone divides the middle ground. Let us skip still more of the great paintings, the great tapestries. With them we skip just so much of the history of the Queen. Her husand has died; she has ruled as Regent; many of the great paintings represent the official happiness of her rule, and now she and her son sail the seas of fate in the symbolic ship. The Queen has just given him the tiller; her hand is yet outstretched. The Queen is still young and beautiful. It will now be for the boy to hold the course. In his favour, the mainmast is really the figure of France, who stands behind him holding the traditional sword of flame and a globe of lilies. The virtues of the nations spread the sails and, like a great garland of colour and light, Strength PETER PAUL RUBENS MARIE DE MEDICIS AT PONT-DE-CE THE LOUVRE PHOTOGRAPH BY BRAUN & CO. TRIUMPHS 97 and Religion, Justice and Good Faith, pull at the oars. Along the gunwale of the ship, emblematic shields belonging to this ulegorical crew hang in the classical antique fashion to tell 4s what they are. The ovals of the shields collect all the curves above and return them back as in a big garland, such as hangs from the poop of the vessel of state. At the yard- arm the fortunate constellations of the Twin Brothers make zood omen, and friendly dolphins and little fishes of the sea toss below in the water, painted with all the sweep of Rubens or his very best assistants. The great series ends in a glorification of the Queen, rep- resented in a combined image of Bellona and Pallas. She stands upon the collected trophies of the enemies: armour ind cannon and flags. She holds in the ancient way a little zolden Victory, and genii place upon her helmet the crown of Victory. It is one of the most careful of the series; but, iotwithstanding, it is more of an allegory, more of a portrait, ess of a displacement of fact than the picture I give. This yicture is meant to tell this small story, that the Queen’s oops, accompanied by her, dispersed some rebels by a little own known as the Bridge of Cé. In a final place this paint- ng would close more triumphantly the series in praise of the Queen’s success in life. She rides on a white horse, with long nane and tail in the style of the day, and she holds the baton 98 ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING of command upon her thigh, in true military style. Her white satin robe is embroidered with the golden lilies and her great yellow cloak — of the favourite Rubens yellow — blows out in the wind; their great curves bring together the rider and the horse — that difficult achievement which most equestrian statues miss. The helmet of the Queen is studded with precious stones; and great plumes, green and white, al- most double the importance of her size. Power, holding the mane of the emblematic lion and clad in deep red and yellow, follows the Queen in attendance. Above her floats Victory with wings outspread, and her green draperies form that favourite background for Rubens’s high colours. An emblematic eagle breaks up in the skies the company of emblematic revolted hawks, as below in the distance the chiefs of the Royal Army accept the surrender of the rebel garrisons. Above, to the right, a trumpeter, in the person of idealized Renown, entangled in dull-violet draperies, blows the trumpet of fame. Those trumpets have never sounded since. Flags of so much weight and flapping strain are only seen to-day in nature; no painter tries them — even no military painter of to-day dares to give in his pictures the struggle of weight against weight, of man against wind and silk. Once or twice in the last century, in the paintings of Gros the soldier, or the sea pieces of Turner, or some of the TRIUMPHS 99 ‘tories of Delacroix the poet, do we see this record, and then tends. It is strange. When shall it come again? There exists, painted by the same great man, a painting, or rather the preparation for a painting, which is the repre- ‘entation of a ‘Triumph’ —‘‘The Triumphal Entry of Henry IV of France into Paris after the Battle of Ivry.” lhe reasons for its not having been absolutely completed ire as follows: When Rubens came to Paris in 1622, to place n the Gallery of the Luxembourg the “Story of Mary of Medici,’ which we are discussing, he was asked before his leparture, in September of the same year, for a new series of colossal pictures. This was the request of the Queen, and Rubens undertook the work with alacrity and interest. We have, in this case, the first impression of the master, vithout the discount of his many helpers. Eight years after- vard, the King had again quarrelled with his mother, and the wrders were interrupted, to the great distress and injury of he painter. Six of these paintings, more or less unfinished, vere sold after Rubens’s death, and only two have come down ous. This one and another are in the Gallery of the Uffizi, n Florence, they having been obtained by the grand lukes, and removed in the eighteenth century to Italy. Ve may, perhaps, see still further in this painting the special ower and energy of Rubens; undiluted, unchecked by the 100 ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING prudence that comes of necessities and the toning down of the scale through the hired help of others. The painting is a gorgeous reminiscence and aggrandize- ment of the sculptures representing Roman _ triumphs. The colossal learning of Rubens, his natural fondness for pomp and display, found in these reminiscences of triumphal Rome a proper allegorical form. The good taste of the choice is, in reality, as marvellous as the use of it. Wher- ever there is a chance, some memory of the antique is sug- gested; and combined with this ornamental and conventional side, this recall of ancient rhetoric, are passages of real life, helping to certify and make more real the purely imaginary passages, contrariwise to what usual and lesser men have been able to put together. Some way back, in the long painting, the King, clad in glistening armour and carrying a branch of olive for Peace, rides in the front of a great gilded war chariot, against whose front he leans, so that we see him only to mid-waist. All the more does this resemblance to a great sculptural bust or half image emphasize the triumphal character, by condensing all our attention on the head and arms and breast, and help- ing the look of movement by the line of the great car. On its edge one foot of Victory is slightly poised, as she stretches over to place the wreath of laurel upon the conqueror’s bare PETER PAUL RUBENS THE ACCESSION OF LOUIS XIII THE LOUVRE PHOTOGRAPH BY BRAUN & CO. IMVNITV Al HdVUDOLOHd W21ddO AHL STUVd OLNI AI AUNGH AO AULNGA TVHd NOTH AHL SNAGMIVU TAVd Wald aistniter. et aneet Bis: cei et TRIUMPHS 10) head. Clad also in floating white drapery, Fame, floating still higher, lifts above the chariot a branch of palms. Winged figures sustain the edges of the long mantle of the conqueror that floats far behind into the air. Around the chariot march with the strut of musicians, trumpeters and soldiers, blowing with full cheeks through their horns. Along with them walks the youthful poet-laureate, calling out and pointing to the goddesses above, whose unheard voices his lyre shall make clear to the lower world. Behind these groups, well outside of the picture, through the skill of the artist, come a few official prisoners, and along with them, a part of the great crowd that belongs to shows. Right in front, below the chariot, on the driving seat, Bellona or Pallas, with bare arms and helmeted, guides the white horses at whose bits and cheek-straps youthful women, clad in white, bend forward to check them as they are turned toward the triumphal arch crowned by another triumphal group in marble, of horses and chariot, and attendants. A small escort marches on either side, lifting the trophies of armour and flags, one of which, the great white Bourbon flag, spotted with gold lilies, tumbles tumultuously across the scene. In front ride captains-at-arms, draped and armoured in a mix- ture of Roman adaptation of the costumes of the time. All this scene is witnessed and framed in by a crowd of 102 ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING men and women and children, mostly seated, who watch and acclaim the victors, and by their truthful resemblance to everyday life give still more probability to the imaginary and the impossible of the remainder of the picture. We have here the painter working for himself before his final changes, and never has he been more successful in his poetic recalling of the Roman antiquity, which he loved and studied, and which was so eminently fitted to help him out in the meaning of these pages of praise and exultation. ALLEGORIES — PART ONE Vill ALLEGORIES — PART ONE I HAVE chosen the title of Allegory more as a matter of con- venience than as a skilful division of the classing of the subjects of our paintings. We shall find certain beautiful pictures, which are meant in the ordinary sense of the word allegory, such as the beautiful representations of Strength and Justice, and so forth, in Venetian art, or the weaker but still beautiful tableaux in which Sir Joshua has posed Eng- lish ladies or the French Prudhon has imitated, as he believed, Correggio, and in reality invented certain dreams of figures which have for motive of union some allegorical common- place. In that he is not so far from Correggio himself in his allegory of “‘Remorse,” and so forth. But, to a certain extent, allegory is everywhere in art. The expressions of art are symbols, and it is through these — over such a bridge as Delacroix called it — that we pass to get at the meaning we choose to make. So, in the section which I have called “‘Triumphs,”’ where Rubens has painted scenes from the life of Mary of Medici, the representation of the realities is a means of expressing the idea of success. (So have I heard in the South Seas noble chiefs declaim and 105 106 ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING sing their own deeds as a beautiful groundwork for poetry, and song, and dance.) Thus, in the early church, we see the pursuit of allegory in the explanation and justification of the scriptures, and of the many meanings that can be given to Holy Writ. We shall remember how the chronicler tells us that the Egyptian saint and anchorite read the scriptures continually —“‘that he ’ might find therein new allegories.” For such as he the words were a source of many rivers of truth, from each one of which one could draw for one’s self something solid and something true, or again, “like some vast garden filled with trees bear- ing fruit, wherein such minds discover new and hidden fruits, and culling them with delight, fill the air with harmonious > song.” And the allegory is all the more beautiful when embodied with some reality, some existence of individuals. A Japanese critic — the most intelligent critic I have known —remarked to me how cold and disheartening a subject was that of my dear friend Bartholdi’s statue of “Liberty Enlightening the World,” a physical transcription of an abstraction already doubtfully uncertain. While, either in Buddhistic tradition or Christian story, or even in the ordi- nary story of man, there were saints and heroes to whom one could ascribe a real human action. And the truth of this will be evident as we consider our subject. ALLEGORIES 107 Let us take an allegory of which we have many varieties and examples, many of them very beautiful, and which we could classify otherwise. This one will be chosen out of what is called Religious Art, and as far from a distinctly religious expression as I can select. It is Correggio’s ‘‘Mys- tical Marriage of St. Catherine.”’ This, of course, is the rep- resentation of an idea of the symbolical use of the word “marriage,” used in all languages and in all mystical philos- ophy to represent an intimate union. In this case it is the devotion of body and soul to an idea, and a representa- tion of the worship that belongs to it. And, of course, there is a legend of Catherine having had a dream wherein she had received a ring from Christ himself, and “‘thereupon regarding herself as the betrothed of the Christ, she despised the world and the pomp of earthly sovereignty, thinking only of the day which should reunite her with her Celestial Lord.” The legend came from the East, where was born the Song of Solomon, and where the image of earthly love and faith still represents in mystical poems the ineffable desire of union with the best good. From far back the subject was chosen for religious pic- tures, and one of its most beautiful forms is that of Mem- ling’s painting in the middle of the fifteenth century, one of the early triumphs of the new method of painting in oil 108 ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING colours, that began the modern ways. Correggio’s painting is, of course, later, and its form, its manner, indicate the close of the great period, and are as far away as they can well be from the reticent sentiment of the Flemish painter. The beauty of the painting has always been felt, and its merits, as pure art, are still what they were. The balance of light and shade, the arrangement of the pattern, of the lines, the sense of a complete creation, every part independent, is, of course, the method by which the artist has expressed him- self. But one can perceive how the allegory becomes intensi- fied through the human expression of these beautiful figures: the tender care of the Virgin, the Child’s half-playful action, the tender absorption of St. Catherine in her receiving of the ring, and the half-amused expression of the other saint, St. Sebastian, who smiles upon the scene as we do upon the innocent actions of children. The whole story is invested in a sweetness of sentiment that borders on the edge of over- expression. Later representations by lesser but by famous men become either too sentimental or too cold, except when the Spaniard infuses into the subject the strange passion and dignity which ennoble his most realistic representations. But they are right who admire this and the other similar works by Correggio from the very side of their sentiment. They are wrong who, in such a story as this, of family life, ANTONIO ALLEGRI DA CORREGGIO MYSTIC MARRIAGE OF ST. CATHERINE THE LOUVRE GONTUOTA “LUV NYAGOW ANV LINAIONV JO XMATIVD ONIYdS ITTHOILLOG OUAGNVS ALLEGORIES 109 if we may so say, think that anything can be too sweetly expressed, because there, if ever, the feeling of mother or woman for the child, and the softening of older minds for childhood, is what we see at all times about us. And the sentiment, however pure, is almost physical from that of the mother to that of the looker-on. In a certain sense, therefore, we can look upon many of the pictures representing legends of the saints as allegories. The charming picture of Memling, again, which represents St. Christopher wading the stream and carrying the weight, too heavy for him, of the little Christ on his shoulder, is, of course, an allegory, rather than a legend. And so are other pictures of lives of the saints or even the charming subject wherein the early painter represented our Lord coming back to earth to fetch His mother. In the same way as in Chris- tian story, we could take the greater part of the stories of Greek mythology as allegory. There has been very little of success in pure representation of abstract ideas. As.long as such ideas are- invested, in a person, either real or imaginary, the success of the impression, even as allegory, becomes more powerful, as I have attempted to show above. At certain moments of artificial thought and rhetorical habit some expressions of these variations reach the art of painting. The fondness for allegory at the end of the Middle Ages, 110 ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING which inflicted so much inferior poetry on the world, is echoed and continued for a time, in Italian art especially. But the results are not among the inspired ones. Sculpture allows a better chance; the single figure, whatever it means, has its own existence and has the beauty that belongs to realism. But painting requires more subtle expression, and its background of reality protests continuously against ab- stractions. The Italian sculptures, then, representing ab- stract ideas are more successful, until we come to the later forms of painting, where the subject is again treated in the idea of sculpture, and some beautiful pose of a beautiful figure is really the subject, and not the subtlety or sentiment of the entire work. It has required all the peculiar training and turn of mind of Botticelli to make his allegorical subject alive. And it is the special charm of each figure, the refinement of the painter’s sentiment and practice, which has made up for a certain poverty in the general notion. The mark and fashion of the time is the deficient side — the artist’s personal feeling is the quality. At the same moment, also, symbolical rep- resentations were the fashion. The artist saw tableaux and choruses elaborately arranged for public ceremonies. The wonder is that they made so little for the painter, and that their records are mostly in books and not on canvas. ALLEGORIES 111 One wonders at the poverty of the paintings of that moment which were inspired by the literature of allegory, or by the record of the processions and ceremonies. They are touched sometimes by the grace which a painter like Botticelli cannot absolutely escape, and the beautiful habit of the study of ornament gives to almost all work done before our day of specialties a something which even our greater men of to- day obtain only by struggle. But again, and we must never forget it, the work of art has been usually a thing ordered to suit certain people who pay. And in many of the pictures that I speak of I seem to detect the dictation of the gram- marian or the learned man or the professor of literature, chosen to direct the painter. When Botticelli paints, however, the picture of the “spring,” in the disorder of a general intention, we begin to have the sense of an abundant poetic meaning. Of course, we feel the influence of those very sides of which I spoke — tableaux and the dances. This slightly fashionable posing, therefore, is not unnatural, and is merely extremely refined, and accord- ing to the manners which belong to the time. The ball-room was not then invented, or I might say that the singular and yet beautiful group of the Graces, who turn in the circle of the dance by their companion, Mercury, has been remem- bered from the group of some Florentine damsels exhibiting 112 ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING their most refined graces at some great entertainment, devised by some Medici, with the help of scholars and artists. The Lady Venus, draped in the most exquisitely literary manner, with sleeves and cinctures of the day, gives her consent, and, as it were, blessing, to the Happiness meant to be represented. The little blinded Cupid, discharging a fiery arrow from his bow, seems a little nude in the propriety of so much dress. But his movement of flight, and the line that he makes, is one of the most charming combinations and closing of cir- cles ever arranged by a painter. Each line of foliage, appar- ently copied from nature, helps to make a halo of verdure around the central figure, and helps the whirl and giddiness —a giddiness not unladylike —of all the other figures. The Goddess Flora steps out toward us, as she might in the ceremony of princely rejoicing. Her very smile has the delicate complexion of meaning that we might expect to find in a flower of intellectual Florence. Her dress, embroidered with flowers, is the ideal gown for the costumed ball, where great ladies might try their most exquisite taste in the cos- tuming of some allegory. The beautiful blending of the real and the embroidered flowers is one of the most charming unrealities ever painted. The God of the Wind, who seizes the not too well-favoured girl, wrapped up in many folds of drapery, personifying Fertility, is less divine than the other ALLEGORIES 113 figures. He is heavy for the wind, and his swollen cheek is not, perhaps, a refined indication of the breath of Spring. But again the line and grouping that he makes add to the general turmoil and joy of the occasion. If these last figures are not so beautiful, we must remember that perhaps they were asked for; perhaps their meaning implied in the paint- er’s mind some necessity of their being so represented. In this case, therefore, he would be faithful to the ideas of allegory. How convention, at that date, represented allegory, we can see in the charming decorations by Pinturicchio in the Borgia Apartments of the Vatican. Perhaps it may be unfair to single out these special representations of allegory when the entire work is merely decoration, with as little meaning as possible thrown in; in fact, if one can say so, almost avoided. It would have been out of order at the moment, and the place, where any real allusions, anything but fashionable meanings, might have been resented, and tripped up the painter’s future success. And the scheme, which is a charming one of pat- tern and colour, might have interfered with a higher expres- sion. An architect, however, might like such a scheme, which would be no more than the brocading of the ceiling of a room. The charming puppets representing divisions of intellectual thought or study sit pleasantly on their deco- 114 ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING rated thrones, and have just enough reminiscence of the elegance and skill of other work to avoid dexterously the question of the meaning. That, however, out of politeness, is written on tablets, which are also part of the scheme of decoration. Far different are the little paintings that bear the name of “Bellini,” in Venice, where he has struggled to give the twists and turns of allegorical meaning in enigmatic figures. But they, on the contrary, are full of a charm of a physical rendering of the suggestion of Nature. I mention them —“Opportunity,” “Slander,” ‘‘Truth,” “‘Love, Mis- tress of the World,” etc.— merely as a reminiscence, before we come to other Venetian painters. If we come to the full spread of the Venetian decorative art, which has influenced forever the decoration of modern times, we shall be at the farthest extreme from the delicate patterning of such work as Pinturicchio’s, and at the same time we shall see that to continue in such a way can only be given to a large grasp of the art of painting, and that the problem so placed has deterred the average man. Here the allegory is used not only freely, but with delight. It animates all painting but that of portraits, and its feeling permeates the great religious pictures, giving them often the look which is abundantly in the right meaning of a martyrdom being a triumph, for ALLEGORIES 115 instance; so that St. George, Veronese’s patron saint (in the church of the same name at Venice), closes his career by a cruel death, as if this were the one great and glorious moment, and the chorus of judges, executioners, saints and angels add so much of splendour for such a final occasion. But such use of realities, the rendering of many people in abundant gestures, implies, even in ordinary technique, a feeling and a knowledge for the arrangement of line, similar to that needed for the invention and orchestration of the musician. The great figures of women, golden-haired and large-armed, toss through the pictures of allegorical subjects with such freedom that we can realize only by analysis and study that their gestures form a brocade and a pattern, as full as that of the little set ornamentation of an earlier date. Therefore, of course, only the stronger arm can bend the bow, and no imitation can be attempted by weaker brethren. Wit- ness in the panel representing “Fortune,” the magnificent spread of the arm of the lower figure and the use of the fore- shortening, that is, our being made to look up, so that all the lines converge into the curves of a circle. And the painter has thrown in, moreover, the colour of a Venetian sky, the blondness of Venetian flesh, and the many colours of abundant drapery. A lover of Italy, an artist too fond of Italy perhaps, the 116 ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING Frenchman, Poussin, shall give us another variety of allegory, both in form and in invention. His character was of the kind which would easily have turned to the use of plastic forms for abstract ideas; and once or twice he has painted for decora- tion such subjects as “Time Rescuing Truth from Envy and Discord.” But his sense of implied meaning (which is what we mean by allegory) is better felt in such a painting as this of the invented subject, in itself a creation of art, ‘“The Shep- herds of Arcadia.”” The creations of Italy, modifying by mere authority his love of nature, have in this and most of his works so balanced his pictures as to cool what might easily have been a warmer statement. We can see the beginning of that tendency to a theatrical arrangement which, since then, has influenced French art, leaving only a few exceptions, and has limited more or less the habits and sympathies of painters from that date. “‘The Shepherds of Arcadia,” of the Arcadia of literature, are grouped in great beauty of attitude around a tomb. One of them, evidently a descendant of one of Raphael’s frescoes, beautifully balanced on his staff, points to the inscription, “‘And I, too, lived in Arcadia”— “Et in Arcadia Ego.” The shepherd looks up again with the Raphael eyes, to a female companion, long-skirted for a shepherdess, whose hand caresses his shoulder as she drinks in the poetry of NICOLAS POUSSIN THE SHEPHERDS OF ARCADIA THE LOUVRE ALLEGORIES 117 the meaning. Another shepherd follows the inscription on the stone, with pressed finger, and a fourth one leans upon the tomb, following the movement of the other’s hand. It is a wise, beautiful, ponderated arrangement of the four figures whose circle of composition is continued by the branches of the trees above. Far down to the right drops the edge of the tomb, implying its being on a height, cutting it away from the possible landscape, and closing in still more the lines of the composition. Something monumental belongs to the painting — something like the Latin inscription which encloses so much meaning in abbreviated words. There is a beautiful but less finished work of the same subject in the collection of the Duke of Devonshire. There the Shep- herds have just discovered the tomb and rush to it hurriedly, in the first joy and emotion. If it so be that this latter painting is the first, and that of the Louvre a later one, this would be within the logical unfolding of the character of the painter, his contained feeling, his sobriety, his withdrawal from the dangers of emotion. And the story of his life—a noble one — runs in the same direction. Far back, with the importation of Italian artists into France, begins the bureaucratic tendency of French art, its relation to government, its becoming almost an administrative func- tion. Like many of the French artists, Poussin, a type of 118 ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING true learning, of the ideal Academician, suffered, as others have done, from the pressure of the government institutions that regulated painting. He had left France as a young man, to study in Rome. There he pursued a long course of study in every department of art which could build up thorough knowledge. There he made friends, becoming almost a Roman, living happily on the Monte Pincio, absorbed in painting, in reading, in intercourse with various men of intellectual habits. When he was asked to leave his beloved Rome to come to Paris and direct the ornamentation of royal palaces, with full pay, and all privileges, he hesitated long, and at last accepted the offer of the King. But he met the pressure of official intrigue and pined for the solitary life which alone allows high thinking and doing. He determined to return to Rome, resolving never to leave it, a promise which he held, dying there November, 1665, having spent in the Motherland of Art nearly half a century. He is, not- withstanding, one of the patrons of French art whose name at least, if not his influence, has served to guide that Aca- demic tendency which is a mark of French culture. IX ALLEGORIES — PART TWO It seems far from the calm balance of the last painting we were looking at—the Arcadian Shepherds of the grave Pous- sin— tothe tumult in Titian’s picture, now at the Prado in Spain, the modern name of which is “An Offering to the Goddess of Loves.’’ One might say that Italy, in which he passed all his working life — like so many others, an exile for love of art — had only a few lessons for the French artist: the lessons of Rome. But he nevertheless studied, with respectful mind, the works of the more living human art, the colourists of Venice. One look at his portrait in the Louvre, however, decides that the somewhat melancholy right-minded Norman thinker mirrored there would follow the line of artists whose habits in art would allow slower study, longer reflection, and inculcate a gravity of appear- ance and a withdrawal from the crowd. Raphael, therefore, and later Florence and the eclectic painters of his time, filled out the staid Frenchman’s line of action. But he neglected nothing, according to Raphael’s motto, and his paintings are a full expression of his mind. We have seen that he usually laid aside his more animated, more excited 121 122 ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING first impression, to refine upon variations which allowed more careful consideration, more choice of adjustment or balance between the qualities of sculpture and of painting. He was a friend of Salvator Rosa, and one might fancy the differing results of their secure discussions; for tradition tells us how the Norman painter was in the habit of conversing with a chosen few, fond, like himself, of intellectual contemplation. How would the austere painter have cared for such a nur- sery frolic as the great Titian’s picture gives? And yet it is the less severe man who is by far the greater. There go all the babies as if tumbled out of school. But school has never troubled the little things; nor would their wings consent to remain folded on benches for the length of a les- son. For most of these little loves are winged, and those who are not, if any, would soon see them sprout, if needed. So they fly about, those that like, and gather fruit from trees above; the wish that every child must have before the days of climbing is answered at once for them. And others cry, “Come down, come back; there’s plenty here, and we have basketsful.”” So they have and are cramming for dear life. But the fruit still drops down; some catch it cleverly; one big ball has fallen on an astonished baby’s head; in that land of allegory fruit is always ripe and soft, and cannot hurt the softest baby. And others cry, ‘We have found a rabbit”; ALLEGORIES 123 whereupon they tumble over one another for proper or un- divided possession. You can see one winged one plunging from the trees right down on the frightened beast and its little circle of admiring owners. One baby protests at all this selfishness; his little face puts on the only mark of dis- content, which would leave it if he too could get into the ring of fine proprietors. No, there is another: he is being choked by another from pure affection or because some one wants his apple as much as he. Two in our near foreground kiss each other — baby boy, perhaps, and baby girl — in that sudden affection we have so often seen. We can even, I think, make out which kisses and which lets itself be kissed. And there will be a fight soon; a youngster in the fore- ground is aiming an arrow at another’s apple — as in the story of William Tell. Meanwhile, in all the big tumble, one has had enough, and is down on his back and is soon fast asleep. Meanwhile, one of Mamma’s girls — on the right there — calls to the winged ones above, with an empty basket held far out. Is it a request to fill it or a ruse to get them down out of more mischief? Far off a little circle of cupids dance in a ring with one long scarf to trip them. On all this picture of baby bliss, of cheerful plenty, the statue of their Divine Mother looks down. 124 ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING My description is too trifling and familiar for the essential gravity of this gay scene. One can gauge how serious it is, on what a level of high feeling, of noble habitual expression, by thinking of the many pictures of cupids and babies, and pink flesh, and curly hair, that decorate the walls and ceilings of the eighteenth century; whether they smile in gentlemanly manner through English painters — Reynolds, Gainsborough, and others — or sprawl about in pure artifice through the decorations of French art which made their fashionable appeal a century and a half ago, and still continue that same success from the very fact of their emptiness and that per- fect indifference to real child life. As I said, this is a joyful scene, on a high plane of imaginative feeling. While they are more real, more absorbed in themselves, and less of actors than the little personages of the eighteenth century, whether portraits or imaginary beings, they are also, through the same grace of pure imagination, creations of the realm of poetry. They are what we should have liked to find in some antique painting, not yet discovered, where the habit of the healthy life and the tradition of a definite meaning might keep together as they do in the statues, in the sculpture which remains. The landscape, of course, is beautiful. It has a Venetian record of charm; but the building or two, the church-spire, far away, has never seen any such picture TITIAN (VECELLI TIZIANO) THE STORY OF FERTILITY (AN OFFERING TO THE GODDESS OF LOVE) THE PRADO PHOTOGRAPH BY BRAUN & CO. ‘00 % NOVUH Ad HdVUDOLOHd AYANOT GHL SHOSSIDUVN GNV OHO NISsSnhOd SVWTIOOIN ALLEGORIES 125 as that of these winged children. Perhaps some assistant, and one of great talent, put it in; perhaps that essential good nature which especially marks Titian among the great artists — that indifference to many matters which are smaller — has allowed him to paint it in himself. But the statue of the Divine Mother may well have been done, or done over, by some heavier hand; she seems hardly worthy of such an imaginary scene; and yet again, that ex- treme good nature may have put up with the sufficient rep- resentation of a statue, at a time when the antique and its remnants were not so easily seen, nor so easily copied. I have said that the title of the picture, which is a new one, is a misnomer, and it has always been miscalled, as indeed have most paintings, the title being a modern inven- tion — absolutely modern. This is a “Story of Fertility” — of the growth and abundance of fruit, and the birth and abundance of children — and, as we have seen, there is no offering. Those good little winged children are thinking of themselves, and how good fruit is, and that is better than the nonsense of an offering. It is on that higher plane, within that larger feeling, that the paintings of the Franco-Norman painter, Poussin, are conceived. They have, in that way, ample connection with such a tone as this. Thus he is removed by sincerity 126 ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING and his intensity of meaning from the French painters of the time, and so many of his successors in France who have thought that they kept his lessons. In the picture of his that I give here we shall see him in his most natural atti- tude. It will not be as solemn, as defined, as his greater works; it will not be, perhaps, a complete expression of him- self — therefore, not one of his own masterpieces — but as it bears throughout its construction the mark of the first feeling and the first record of the dream, it has the advantage of placing us in the confidence of the painter’s mind — as we have said, a fine mind, of grave intelligence, kindness, and serious pride. One of the many French painters who have carefully abstained from the dangerous favours of official patronage. This is one of the mythological subjects of which the times were fond, whose character would answer to the aim of Poussin’s studies, which were meant to unite the qualities of the Italian Renaissance, just expiring, and the classical antique, recently discovered. In this attempt to be serenely wise, and to gather all together, he has often missed the record of what he also loves, and what he had all about him — Nature itself, in its ease and constant success. In this picture, however, the story of the allegory of Echo and of Narcissus, we have an impression of Nature so easy, ALLEGORIES 127 so unthought of, that the picture looks like a note of some- thing seen. A little more clothing on the divine boy —a little more on the nymph —a very little, and this could be a record of something seen in Italy, and one might suppose that these were two shepherds of Southern Europe, each one outstretched at ease, on some day’s excursion, but separated by some lovers’ quarrel, some indifference on one side or the other; some of those things which spoil the best of days, under skies and landscapes be they ever so beautiful. We know the story: The story of Narcissus runs on that he was but sixteen, and he might seem to be a boy and a young man as well. There was so stubborn a pride in his youthful beauty that no girls made any impression on him. Echo, the noisy nymph, beheld Narcissus wandering through the pathless forest, and fell in love with him, stealthily following his steps. They meet, she repeats his words, and they do not understand each other. Believing herself rejected, she lies hid in the woods, and hides her blushing face with green leaves; she from that time lives in lonely caves, but yet her love remains. Care wastes away her miserable body; her voice alone re- mains; since then she lies concealed in the woods, is never seen in the mountain, but is heard; it is her voice alone that stays alive. Thus had Narcissus deceived her, and thus, too, other 128 ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING nymphs that sprung from the water or the mountains. Some one, therefore, thus despised, lifting hands to heaven, said: “Thus, though he should love, let him not enjoy what he loves.”” Nemesis, the avenger, the goddess of retribution, the daughter of Jupiter, heard the prayer and assented. There was a clear spring, like silver, undisturbed by bird or wild best, or bough falling from the trees, with grass around it, and a wood. Here the youth, fatigued with the labour of hunting and the heat, lay down, attracted by the spot, and while endeavouring to quench his thirst, pleased with the reflec- tion of his own form seen in water, he fell in love with the thing that had no substance. Nothing could draw him thence, but, lying along the overshadowed grass, he pined away, wasting by degrees, through a hidden flame; he laid his wearied head upon the green grass, and night closed the eyes that admired the body of their master. His sisters of the water lamented him and laid their hair, cut off, over their brother; his sisters of the trees lamented him, Echo resounding to their lamentations. And now they were preparing the funeral pyre and the torches and the bier, but the body was nowhere to be found; where he lay they found a yellow flower, with white leaves encompassing it in the middle — the flower of the Narcissus, whose meaning is “to pine away.” ALLEGORIES 129 The boy stretched out on the bank may be asleep, or may be just passing into the sleep that knows no waking. He frowns in some dream, and has thrown his limbs apart, as sleepers do in unquiet slumbers. Perhaps he is conscious that the nymph, Echo, is waiting for him to return, and that this feeling adds still more to the tedious tension of indiffer- ence. She sits in the half shade, below the trees, against the rocks into which she will later melt, and she waits also for a better moment or a better feeling on the part of the dis- dainful loved one. I have read these meanings into the text of the picture, but I believe that they are there, and the picture tells the same accustomed story. Here it is told by the lines of the figures, by whatever there is of expression in their attitudes and faces, in each line of the rocks and trees, and helps to give the look of despondent waiting, of self-abandonment, of drifting according to Fate. Of course, the charming figure of the little Cupid, with the extinguished torch, waiting un- concernedly for the waking up of the shepherd, helps the story, and helps the beautifully balanced composition. But, like the great Titian, and unlike so many paintings and so many compositions of its author, Poussin, it has all the look of the thing that has happened, of a record of life, and not that of a result obtained by giving thought The note is rare in 130 ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING French art, and more than a century will have passed before another artist, Delacroix, will see again the picture of a story as a thing that has happened, and which he has merely transcribed. The charm of child life, the physical charm, and its moral influence fill in another way, in the way of Christian devotion, the paintings by Murillo wherein he used the fanciful legend of St. Anthony of Padua as his theme. He has varied the subject three times, partly because the story admits of va- rious moments, and partly because a slightly different mean- ing attaches to each variety of treatment. And also, as we must always remember, some pious donor might have dic- tated the choice or have suggested it. That romance of religion, the life of St. Francis of Assisi, in its baldest details seems full enough of poetic fancy and abundant allegorical meaning, without the addition of the delightful miraculous doings and the legends of what hap- pened to him and to his follower, St. Anthony, when no one else knew. But whatever they may be, however strange, they are nothing but flowers growing out of the tangled growth of the eccentric reality. That angels should have conversed with them, or the Mother of our Lord, or Christ himself, is not more miraculous than the passage of these men through a world more specially cruel and distressing than its history ALLEGORIES 131 has shown at any moment of record. The dreams they may have had when alone were nothing but a continuation of the dream they walked in, living again the life of Christ on earth in that form of Christianity they were born into. One of these blossoms of legend is the appearance of our Lord to Anthony in the form of His childhood, and of the Saint hav- ing held Him in his arms as had His mother eleven centuries before. The Christ he worked for could scarcely have been more real at the moment of such a legend than He was to Anthony unseen in the ordinary course of life. For the painter, a Spanish painter in love with reality, and yet led and dominated by the ideals of mystic life, the stories of intercourse between this world and the other, in a tangible form, would be but an expression of the two sides of his nature. Throughout the Spanish art lives this realizing of the subject to the furthest extent that religious emotion has ever shown. To us of different races — even to those confined within the limits of Spain, much of the result is also hard to bear. A martyrdom, the Crucifixion of our Lord, the sorrows of the Saints, are represented with a physical participation in the story that is often painful. The Spanish taste, the Spanish intensity, has not only accepted it but has felt the need of it. In some of the most extravagant forms which sculpture 132 ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING has allowed, the imitation of real tears, of actual blood, marks the faces and bodies of the Saints and Martyrs. When on feast days these images, often astounding works of prac- tical art, are dressed in real clothes, satins or ribbons, the addition of fact seems almost natural. So that we shall expect, as we shall see in this painting of the vision of St. Anthony, a real infant Christ, real angels whom we could handle, playing about or caressing a St. Anthony as true to fact as the Spanish mind could translate. For he has been usually translated and passes from a more balanced race to a fiercer and more intense one. Still, if the scope of these essays would allow it, I should add the image of St. Francis as sculptured by Alonzo Cano, which is the most absolute embodiment of the ascetic, oblivious of all but his divine dream. But the Saints of Murillo have not reached such a level. They are, as it were, portraits of the monks that he knew, and though their fervour is evident, their feeling is sincere, a something remains that has not been quite purified perhaps by the higher meaning intended. And so the young St. Anthony, with all his sweetness, is still a man whose affections have not yet passed through the fire of experience; not, as in the statue of St. Francis by Alonzo Can, refined by the persistence of one single idea. But still there is a touching confidence and a love of the BARTOLOME ESTEBAN MURILLO ST. ANTHONY OF PADUA COLLECTION OF THE DUKE OF SUTHERLAND PHOTOGRAPH BY BRAUN & CO. ALLEGORIES 133 beautiful in the expression of the Saint: he is wrapped up in the little Child, anxious to comprehend Him. Meanwhile the Child, standing on the Book, as if that Book were His natural seat and origin, lifts one little hand in blessing; the other rests, for balance, in the welcoming palm of St. Anthony. The Child’s face is full of serious intention as He addresses His servant Anthony. He is not like the little angels, His companions above, who float in the shadow and light as a sort of canopy, whose movements as well as forms are more like those of the great Titian, that we have just seen. ALLEGORIES — PART THREE X ALLEGORIES — PART THREE WHEN we last brought together certain paintings which we called Allegories, deciding to look at them from a point of view which was meant to assume that their representation, the story that they told, was a manner of embodying some general idea, all the paintings we then considered were masterpieces of execution. Titian, Murillo, even Poussin and Botticelli, were masters of their trade apart from their set value as divine executants. They belonged to periods when the art of painting was handed from one man to another, as it were, in one piece, to be improved or worked over, but at any rate in a fixed body of practice: I say practice, and not doctrine, for the beauty of the older work which we think of as Academic is that it was not Academic and that the school is a very different thing from the Academy. It was in the air, in the feeling of the time, that each capable artist should advance the entire art by some improvement upon previous practice. Hence the extraordinary evolution both in quality and in rapidity of the Italians and the Spaniards. They have had, as it were, the good-will of the community of artists in their discoveries of new lands, more beautiful 137 138 ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING countries in art. Later, with the breaking up of many old systems, came the reign of the Academy, of fixed teaching which represented a doctrine, to which the coming man conformed himself, and was approved of by his fellows or the public, according to his proving that the one thing he dis- liked was originality: that is to say, the personal addition to the store of his knowledge, the quantity and quality of beauty, already fixed by accumulation. The social evolu- tion of the last two hundred years has been in that direc- tion; so that attempts at change have been perforce revo- lutionary. They have been revolutionary even when the artist had no further intention than to carry out the meaning of the lesson of his Academy. Nothing is more touching in the story of the nineteenth century than the belief of Corot, of Decamps, of Delacroix, of Rousseau, of Millet and others, in the old masters, held up to them as models, while what their teachers meant was that the younger gener- ation should work in the manner of its living teachers. It is not so far from the idea that the young scholar in the liter- ary academy should wish to carry out the literary tendencies of Shakespeare or Milton or Pope or Wordsworth or Keats, instead of the more current forms of his professor of rhetoric. But there are more people necessarily interested in literature than in painting, so that the possibility of closing out the ALLEGORIES 139 younger believing mind is more difficult, and the public is more ready to welcome the change which it appreciates. These considerations come up naturally upon thinking of the work of Puvis de Chavannes, whom we know here, for- tunately, through his having done some work, not his most important, but still noble work, in the Public Library of Bos- ton. It is then far away from the easy confidence of those earlier painters whom we last saw, and their certainty of being able to express themselves, to the works of this French- man, who is still a descendant by culture from that other French painter, Poussin, whose allegories we admired to- gether lately. Puvis de Chavannes, who died a few years ago, had not the ample poise in the use of painting to which all these predecessors of his had been trained. He was a genuine product of the uncertainty of the nine- teenth century. The men with much to say, with abundant feeling, born in that century, found many roads open to choose from, and many methods of mechanism in painting, and none of such perfection as to allow them to walk confidently, without studying over again most of the questions of their art. To Puvis it seemed necessary to throw overboard a great many manners of expression —a great deal of the wealth of art — so as to secure the qualities and the values 140 ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING he preferred. In that he is not so unlike the great Poussin, and this logic of abstention, this willingness to sacrifice a great deal for a worthy end, has kept his paintings somewhat away from public sympathy. Had they been painted on small canvases and hidden in private collections it would be a question whether his fame might not be a thing yet to be made. But he painted for the public, that is to say, on the walls of public buildings, and his means, if not large, being sufficient for his existence, he was able to keep the great pages of his work open to the public sight, however indifferent that look might be. Slowly the respect of artists impressed the public, and, half unwillingly, the public — in reality more pleased with other work — admitted the value of his. So that he stands high in the record of the nine- teenth century, and the reference to his work, among artists, is perfectly understood. From many circumstances, includ- ing that one of securing the painting of great surfaces in buildings, where subjects are inevitably of a general char- acter, and partly because of some trend of his nature, he was naturally a painter of allegories, that is to say, of the meaning contained in things, and of only so much of the things them- selves as would help out this meaning. This is so even in his drawings of landscapes (of which we have spoken), which are so beautifully combined with his stories, and also, 96ST “LHDINAdOD ‘NOUANVO FY SMUA AM SUNIYd ATTAOO WOU AUVUAIT VITANd NOLSod ALIOIULOATa (SO TAHOS®) AULAOd OIUAT ‘(SGUaHAaaHS NVGCT¥HO FHL) AINMONOULSV SUNNVAVHO @d sLidd RET as ALLEGORIES 141 though few know it, permeated by the meaning of the actual landscape in which he supposes his figures placed; that is to say, of certain parts of France, with the special charac- teristics of the growth of nature. Thus, as do the Japanese, he rarely made studies from nature for his trees. He learned their method of growth, what made the difference between one variety and another, and, as he said, “It is then easy to see how such a particular tree would appear in such and such a condition.” So, when he had freed himself from his first influence, this same tendency led him to choose general expressions and to create scenes, based on what he imagined, rather than to begin from an actual sight. This is not to say that he began by an abstraction. On the contrary, it is fairly on record that his creations, which are often somewhat of abstractions, came from his having seen certain things, certain accidents, happening in nature. In that way he was a real painter —a person strongly impressed by the entire vision of the outside world. But he chose to use this reality of the outside world as a place for his imagi- nary beings; in which he is not singular, only that he carried these imaginary figures far away from reality, as far as he dared, indeed, trying to remain, as he said, parallel to nature, travelling on some special road that kept it in sight without being init. As a proof of my remark, and as an explanation, 142 ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING I believe that he has left a record of how the sight of a herd of swine brought suddenly to his mind the manner, the possibility, of his representation of the story of the Prodigal Son. And, as I remarked, he is in that way not different from other artists, painters or sculptors, or poets to whom some side issue brings up out of abundant memories a more important memory and the wish to embody and carry out this last suggestion. Indeed, this working of his mind would lead him naturally to replace one picture seen or thought of by another containing the same meaning. This is a manner of definition of an “‘allegory’’ — that is to say, one idea being used to represent another. Occasionally he was obliged to think first of the necessary subjects placed before him by the circumstances of the buildings which he was called upon to decorate. There again, however, he insisted on his own picture: that is to say, his own subject, provided it had suffi- cient meaning, as against what often the authorities in charge of buildings wished. He declined a great commission in a great city because the committee in charge insisted upon having certain subjects represented in the series. He had its equivalent in meaning and he was unwilling to have his imagination work second-hand. Because he painted for buildings wherein we use much conventional allegory, he was led to put aside the usual ALLEGORIES 143 conventions. Thus, instead of a female figure posing for “Astronomy,” stretching perhaps her compasses over a starry globe, such as we frequently see, he has painted the Chal- dean Shepherds in the desert noting the planets in the quiet of the night. This choice of a manner of representing the subject of astronomy was used by Delacroix a good many years before Puvis, and probably influenced his choice. The figure of “Lyric Poetry” for him is not such a convention as one of the Muses, with arm extended over the lyre, but as in the Boston Library, Hschylus sits by the blue sea, where- upon he had seen the ships of Persia sunk by the smaller galleys of his own Greece, and before him the poet sees rising from the waters the daughters of Oceanus, who, in his verses, shall come to comfort the sorrow of Prometheus. Thus, also, in the same Boston paintings, along the wires of the telegraph, pass the rapid figures, white and black, which carry good and evil news and typify “Electricity.” In the last of his mural pictures, painted under grave domestic circum- stances, he has painted St. Genevieve, in the series of her story, on the walls of the Pantheon in Paris, not as any special Saint, any characterized individual, but merely as an elderly draped woman, who, standing in the moonlight, above a city, by the door of her little house, watches the great spread of roofs, and streets, and towers, and a long white river reflect- 144 ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING ing the moon. That is the ideal, the allegory of St. Genevieve, the Patroness of the City of Paris, and she watches the For- tunes of the Town which is unconscious of her protection. It is sufficiently known to all of us that this is a memento, a parallelism of his wife who had just died when he painted this picture and whose loss he did not survive for any length of time. Indeed his own end was hastened by this loss, which is properly memorialized in the painting. I have used the word parallelism expressly because that lady had _ herself watched over the fortunes of the painter for many years. Far back, long before her marriage to him, she had advised him, had followed his work almost daily, had directed the small matters which tell so much in a painter’s work, the preference of one variety of gesture over another, the arrange- ment of a drapery — all that is a matter of choice and reflec- tion and good taste. This, with many artistic minds, is an habitual necessity. That is to say: a careful revision and consideration of many details; for the minds of workers are various; some arbitrary, some pressed or decided, but others hesitating and prudent and reflective even if stubborn after decision. And, indeed, it was long before this painter found the form into which he grew, and in which we know him. So that this story of a friendly Egeria is a symbol of his devel- opment, as it is the reality of the influences which have left PUVIS. DE, CHAVANNES . ie ABB. ae X ® PUVIS DE CHAVANNES ST. GENEVIEVE WATCHING OVER PARIS THE PANTHEON, PARIS ‘OO ® NAVUA AM HdVUOOLOHd SNGINV ‘AGUVOId JO WagdsaAW aovVdad SUNNVAVHO Wd STAId LHOdMAN ‘SIAVd “WL do daa TS TATTOO SANNVAVHD FAM STAN 4 Pee, SMR loathe ALLEGORIES 145 their mark in those paintings of his that we know best. And these influences, both personal and intellectual, came to him from an artist who has left little, from having died at the moment of his coming to a decided form of expression. To us over here, and to the greater mass of artists, for many years he was almost unknown, though for a brief moment, just fifty years, he was the brilliant new light which was to combine the differing fires of the classical and romantic schools. This was Theodore Chasseriau, from whom our painter inherited this friendship, as well as the teaching and advice and influence that men are able to give to one another at certain moments of early life, when the teaching and the advice are more insinuating and less rigid, and addressed also to minds less rigid in their settling. One of the paintings of the earlier days of Puvis is a type of this moment of im- pressions received from different sources. It has reminis- cences of the great Italian painters and of the men of his own time, including one whom he cared little for, though he had for a moment studied under him. That is another painter of a half century ago, somewhat known to us and at one time especially known to Americans, and a man who had many American pupils. That is Thomas Couture, some of whose paintings are in our museum here as well as in various other collections. He was at that time a considerable teacher and 146 ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING one of the promising men: a great executant and somewhat ageressive personality. But he had no teaching which could supply to such a constructive mind as Puvis’s any great scheme of self-training or manner of working which would make a unity of feeling and of execution. What is singular in the picture which I now refer to, the allegory of Peace in the City Hall of Amiens, is this: that though fresh from his admiration of the earlier Italians, an admiration which he never lost, there is no mechanical sign of it in this masterpiece. Perhaps, indeed, there is none distinctly traceable in the details of his work, though some more subtle influence, too fine for analysis, may have come from there and lived in these paintings where later forms are more distinctly the mark. This painting of Peace began our master’s reputation, though it began also a long series of attacks from the critics for every possible defect that an artist can be charged with. We forget these things; they must often have discouraged the solitary artist struggling for recognition, and still more seriously striving for control of himself within his ideas of art. Peace is the subject; there has been war, and now the strife has stopped, and armed bands make friends with the people of the imaginary land they have occupied. The warriors rest, or exercise their horses under the shadows of great trees ALLEGORIES 147 and high cliffs. Peasants, or, rather, the imaginary inhabi- tants of the land, bring to them fruits, or fill their cups from the udders of their flocks. Across the stepping-stones which spot the little brook, near which the former enemies meet, figures hurry, bearing food baskets in their arms and on their shoulders. The picture is well named “Peace,” though there is a slight ambiguity with regard to the momentary action of the war- riors, who ask for food and are being entertained. They have not absolutely put aside their armour, and they might be some noble raiding party of heroes, halting in some happy valley, or on the edge of some Sacred Wood where “Peace” was enthroned by sacred privilege. Nevertheless, even then, it is a halt, repose, a manner of “‘ Peace.” Here again is the story of Rest in the painting called “Sleep,” when after the day’s work in the warm air a number of figures, men and women, old and young, are absorbed in sleep. Every line means sleep, a cessation of labour; even the spread of the landscape, the droop of the branches, the entire lighting of the picture is that of Rest. THE PRIMITIVES — THE FLEMISH XI THE PRIMITIVES — THE FLEMISH In 1902, at an exposition at Bruges, while looking with me at that celebrated painting by John Van Eyck where St. Donatian stands clad in a cope, so painted that even a photograph could not have a greater appearance of ease of execution, an intelligent Oriental asked me why the men who did such work were called “primitives,” when, certainly, no painter of to-day could hope to rival the wonderful exe- cution of that time, now some five hundred years ago. The question seemed natural — five hundred years had done less damage to the paintings of the early Flemish than the last thirty or forty years have done to most modern paintings. The panels, where they remained intact from restoration, still glowed with a richness and a delicacy of colour that made them a pleasure to the senses. A feeling of complete and finished work, based on long experience, was the steady impression; and yet we were looking at the first paintings made in the modern way; that is to say, according to the custom that we call oil-painting. From one point of view these painters were properly the “primitives”; they were the first, and within a single lifetime they had developed 151 152 ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING this process of painting so far that there might be variations, but there could be no improvement. What was lacking to them were the previous combined studies of many men; what we have to-day: a full knowledge of anatomy, or perspec- tive, and, moreover, the influence of the pagan past. But the wonderful grasp of sight, the feeling for the reality of things, the analysis of character, the exquisite lighting, as well as the rich and harmonious colouring, and above all, a singular and separate spiritual expression, so satisfied the eye and the mind that one could forget that others, still greater, had painted since that day. And the wonder remained that a couple of men had passed from the inefficiency of the painting of the Middle Ages to such complete perfection in the course of a few years. Of course, they had around them the splen- dours of stained glass and of painted and gilded architecture and statuary. John Van Eyck, we know, had also been a painter of statues, and we even know what he was paid for such work. His elder brother must also have been trained in that way, and his invention of a beautiful way of painting is simply based on the experience of previous decorative work. Hubert, the elder, began, and John, the younger, continued, the system. Hubert died in 1426, having begun the great triptych of St. Bavo at Ghent. John, his younger brother, finished it in 1432, and died July 9, 1440. In twenty years THE PRIMITIVES — THE FLEMISH 153 they had completed a first expression of things in correct and exact forms, had given the first realization of air, and sky, and landscape in truthful colour, with the richness of reality, and within this first correct physical repre- sentation of all that we see together they had imparted to the creatures placed within their pictures a spiritual life, a delicacy of sentiment, or a distinctness of character which was never to be excelled, notwithstanding that nobler forms and grander movements would belong to later artists. Al- most all that was to be discovered had been opened up. It may be difficult to determine the proportion of each brother’s task in the triptych “The Worship of the Lamb.”’ Hubert painted the great figures that accompany the subject — the Heavenly Father, the Virgin, St. John, and Adam and Eve, parts of the great work which I do not reproduce. The story is in the long centre panel and the side ones which continue the landscape in which the figures are placed. In the vast space of this earliest of landscapes, under real light, a pale sky, bluer above, sheds the light of a beautiful morn- ing on a wide park of grass and flowers, framed by distances of hills, hidden behind trees and bushes of myrtle and orange filled with flowers and fruit. Behind the darker hills, edged by palm and cypress, rise the ecclesiastical towers of the New Jerusalem. In the centre of the Park of Paradise is placed 154 ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING the altar and table draped with purple, and upon it stands the White Lamb of Sacrifice. Around the altar kneel the adoring angels; some of them toss censers, others hold the symbolic images of the Passion. They are clad in white or in pale blue, or rosy gray. Around them is a sacred space of untrodden grass, spotted with white stars of innumerable daisies. Right in front, by us, is the Fountain of Life sending up a jet of water that falls back into a marble basin running over. By it kneel a mass of prophets, in far-away oriental costumes, their books open in their hands, as if following on the altar the accomplishment of their words. Next to them are a crowded group of men in strange, foreign costumes, draped and mantled and bearded. They are those who, from the beginning, have announced the Christ, or have de- veloped doctrine, or in some shape kept up the spiritual thought, whether in belief or doubt. There are ancient bards, pagan doctors, philosophers, or unbelievers, and they accept or hesitate, according to their character. An extraordinary reality of expression, with scarcely a movement, gives the sense of abundant meaning. They represent the world of thought before and after Christ. On the right-hand side of the fountain, as a balance to the kneeling prophets, kneel also the twelve apostles, all in pale violet, their hands lifted in prayer — men with great THE PRIMITIVES — THE FLEMISH 155 beards, long hair, and powerful features, contrasting again with the right-hand standing group of the officers of the Church: priests, bishops, archbishops, popes and monks, mostly shaven, following the text of their prayer-books, adoring in the full security and continuance of their office, and clad in all the splendours of Church vestments, em- broidered with gold, and pearls, and rubies, and emeralds, which play on the rich red of their many draperies. Each one of these ecclesiastics looks like a portrait in every detail. Far back, issuing from green woods, come the Chorus of the Holy Women. They are clad in pale blue and rose colour and lilac, and we discern each face in a gentle monotone of variety. On the left, farther back, to balance the assembly of the women, comes the beginning of the noble army of martyrs. They are mostly bishops or churchmen, of high rank— what we see of them — and they are clad in symbolic blue mantles; they, like the women, carry the palm of triumph. In the four side panels the Army of the Just ride or walk to join the Holy Company of the centre panel. No greater poem of Holy War has been made than the group of knights who ride past on their war-horses, clad in armour, holding their banners, guiding their horses with steel gauntlets. The serene and resolute faces are like a portrait of Medieval 156 ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING chivalry, and for the first time in painting we see the horse fully represented in weight and strength and solid tread. Behind the knights ride the Company of the Just Judges, clad in garbs of peace or office, their faces portraits of con- sciences clear of wrong. Tradition makes one of them to be the portrait of the older painter. Behind him, on a darker horse, rides his brother, who completed the picture. But this is mere tradition, perhaps of a later day. In the two right panels, round the base of one of the rocks that enclose the Paradise, comes a straggling band of pilgrims — ascetics, monks, saints of the desert, bareheaded, with pilgrim hats or folded cloths upon their heads, each one according to his story. Among them, as a manner of leader, stalks St. Christopher, the giant, the long wading-pole in his right hand, and draped in a single cloth of red. Long, matted hair, and rosaries, and staves belong to most of these anxious followers of the Truth. Behind them, emerging from some cleft in the rocks, are the contrasting forms and features of two women, saints of the desert probably: Mary Magdalen, certainly, and Mary of Egypt, perhaps. The gentle faces and calm expressions accentuate still more the energy of the male pilgrims. Against the sky, in the farthest corner, stand a solitary palm and cypress, which also close the scene, and add to its surprising reality. Its reality is of THE PRIMITIVES — THE FLEMISH 157 the most simple and visible description. It is more than realism. It is an abstraction of reality, and contrariwise to the imitations of the real, a realization of facts taken from nature. All this elaboration of facts, this accumulation of little details, almost prosaic, recalls a dream, and forces the mind to the perception of some latent meaning — of some- thing inexpressible, either by words or other forms of art. In that way it is a masterpiece of masterpieces, of a value far beyond even the astounding merits of its artistic exe- cution. And tradition, which gives its order, its arrange- ment, and its programme to the older brother, is probably in the right. No other painting of John, the younger, not- withstanding its beauties, would carry in its realism that strange message that only a great man can send. One would like to know what Albrecht Diirer said, ana what he thought, when, late in life, having accomplished so much, after seeing Italy, he looked at this picture — the full bloom of what he had tried to do as a younger painter, when he sought to study under Martin the Beautiful, of Colmar. He, almost alone besides, in his great painting of “The Trinity, Adored by All the Saints,” painted just one hundred years later, has been able to use persistent literal realism as a means of suggesting a spiritual impression. But, in Diirer’s great work the effort is more visible, as well as the mechanism. 158 ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING As painting, it has not the astounding perfection of the earlier work, nor does its energy replace the sweetness, based on power, of the great Van Eyck. In 1436, four years after the painting of the “Lamb,” John Van Eyck finished the picture called ‘‘The Virgin and St. Donatian.”’ It is the ancient work which, however, realizes most of the demands of modern art. The art of painting would seem entirely expressed in this realization of a scene. It is a transcript of nature, spiritualized by its wonderful execution, by the accuracy of its observation, and the art through which, without apparent means, and without blurring or concealing, the enormous detail occupies only our necessary attention. The suggestion of light, and air, and space, and of relative obscurity, is so subtle that we only think of the scene. It is not a complicated one. The Virgin sits in the centre upon a throne, against which hangs a dais, black with red designs. She and the Child, the saints, and the kneeling donor of the picture are in some churchlike building, upon a marble floor, lit by the windows, which Van Eyck so wonderfully painted, recalling, perhaps, his days of glass staining. Beneath the feet of the Virgin is unrolled a Persian carpet minutely copied and realized. The Virgin is one of the most prosaic that Van Eyck has painted, and the Child is strangely devoid of beauty, copied, apparently, with- THE PRIMITIVES — THE FLEMISH 159 out change from some baby underfed. But on the right of the Virgin stands St. Donatian, the patron of the Cathedral, whence the picture came, astonishing in realism and in choice of church character. He is mitred in gold, and nothing could be more perfect than the painting of his cope. On the left of the Mother and Child, St. George, a portrait of a strange but beautiful type, clad in damascened armour, lifts his helmet, with a smile, as he presents the donor of the picture, Canon van der Paele. He is dressed in a white surplice. He holds in his wrinkled hands a prayer-book and its cover, and an eye-glass whose lens is a marvel of imitation. He is old and bald; a few gray hairs play upon the hard skull that we feel under the thin skin. The drawn eyes and face, wrin- kled and seamed by age, are a marvel of portraiture, equal to any that the great Holbein will paint later. That is the great wonder in the wonderful picture whose colour is so rich, whose tone is so full, that the mere decoration of the surface is almost a sufficient pleasure to the eye. An astonishing resemblance and astonishing difference come in with the painting of Memling. The art and the school are the same, but the personal feeling appears with a distinctness, with a delicacy, that singles out the painter from every school. So impressive is this sentiment that one almost regrets the legend that made a story, of Memling’s 160 ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING having painted as a thank-offering to the Hospital of St. John at Bruges the picture which I have chosen, and which has long been known as “The Mystic Marriage of St. - Catherine.”” The story was that one night of January, 1477, a young soldier begged for help, and care, and food at the door of the hospital. He had escaped from the defeat at Nancy, which saw the death of Charles the Rash of Burgundy, his lord, and had made his way through that week of cruel weather as far as the city of Bruges. Taken in, and shel- tered, and cured, he had painted for the hospital, during the following year, “The Shrine of St. Ursula,” his painting of “St. Catherine,” and other paintings that are there. Like so many legends, the story seems to have no foundation. On the contrary, we know that he was fairly successful, that he came from far away, born in Mayence, but of Dutch ex- traction. In 1478, a master painter, he had the freedom of the city; but in 1480 he was well off, and had purchased a large stone house and two others; we know that his wife’s name was ‘“‘Anne,”’ that he had three children, that she died in 1487, and he on August 11, 1494. This account would certainly be better for him than the more poetic story. But the paintings that bear his name were executed slowly, and needed means and time. We know only this much of Memling. He dies half a 4 o ao ea 7. a - Z, — > A 4. m & oe jon a fea) — x WORSHIP OF THE LAMB (CENTRAL PANEL) GHENT OF CATHEDRAL HUBERT AND JAN VAN EYCK WORSHIP OF THE LAMB (THE TWO LEFT PANELS) CATHEDRAL OF GHENT HUBERT AND JAN VAN EYCK WORSHIP OF THE LAMB (THE TWO RIGHT PA CATHEDRAL OF GHENT THE PRIMITIVES — THE FLEMISH 161 century after John Van Eyck, and his teaching comes through some other direct influence, though the sequence is undoubted. John Van Eyck, at least, we know did well. He was painter and chamber servant to Philip of Burgundy, ana besides the work that he painted he seems to have been employed on certain secret and far-away travels which the Duke commanded him to make “into certain places of which he desired no further mention made.” If Philip trusted him, or trusted his accurate sight and opinion as to a future wife, it may have been thus that he went to Spain, and then to Portugal, and painted the Infanta Isabella, who shortly afterward was engaged to Philip. Once more, in 1435, he was sent “upon certain far-away voyages and strange marches,” and then returned to his own house. To his one son Duke Philip stood godfather. We have the portrait of his wife, painted a year before he died, and inscribed, “My husband, John, painted me in the year 1439; my age was thirty years.” “41s ich kan’ is the motto on this picture and on many others, and certainly the paintings are well inscribed as being done as well as possible. I have, naturally, chosen part of a masterpiece by Memling for our subject. It is the centre of the triptych of the high altar at St. John’s Hospital at Bruges, painted in 1479, toward the latter part of his life. As I said, it is usually 162 ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING known as ““The Mystic Marriage of St. Catherine,” an all gorical subject, much beloved by painters, partly becaus perhaps, often required of them on account of the many mea: ings of its symbolism. The Virgin is seated on a metal fak stool with the infant Jesus upon her lap. On the canor above her hangs a cloth of honour, a large-patterned brocad accentuating the perpendiculars of the dark columns whic frame the throne, and repeating the many columns of tl temple or building where the scene is laid. Two tiny angel the size of big birds, hold the crown far up over the hea of the Virgin, and their gowns and wings melt gently int the space above. Two others, full-grown, with sweet face dressed like choristers, kneel alongside of her. The or plays upon a portable organ, the other holds open for her tk Book of Wisdom, of which the Virgin turns a leaf, apparent! absorbed in some thought connected with her reading. Tl right hand supports the infant Christ. He holds an app in His left hand, in the uncertain way of a baby, and with similar gesture He places a bridal ring on the finger of the le: hand of St. Catherine, who is seated a little nearer to tk front. St. Catherine wears a long skirt, black, embroidere with gold; her sleeves are of crimson velvet, her bodice cut open, showing an exquisite neck; a diadem of gold an pearls covers her forehead above the veil—a white vei THE PRIMITIVES — THE FLEMISH 163 so delicate as to be almost like a film of water. No descrip- tion could render the expression of her face — so young, so feminine, so gentle, and yet so decided, as if the type of what we call “The Lady,”’ with whom everything becomes refined, whose gestures and movements are guided by habit into accomplished rhythm. And no arm and hand could be more calmly beautiful in gesture, or in make, than hers, as she lifts her long, tapering finger for the wedding ring. A sword and a wheel lie beside her, the usual emblems of her martyr- dom, which tell us her name. Opposite her, farther away, is seated St. Barbara, absorbed in her book, which she holds with both hands, looking down with attentive eyes, attentive lips, in that special manner that the painter must have seen in high-bred maidens fond of books. Like St. Catherine, she is another type of refined, courtly training. One would say that nothing but the habit of a life under constant ob- servation could give to these two personages such manners as rule every line, every modulation of their gestures. Com- pared to their elegance, the figures behind them, though beautiful and noble, fall almost into commonplace. No one else has ever gone farther in these suggestions — not even Memling himself. The two St. Johns who stand behind the women are John the Baptist with his lamb, and John the Evangelist, making 164 ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING the traditional sign of the cross over the poisoned chali according to one of his legends. Tradition thinks the latte: portrait of the painter; and there is a certain something contemplative absorption and innocence in the face th might well justify this possible invention of fancy. Outsi the building is seen an earthly landscape, with many figw that have a story connected with the story of St. John. T picture was painted at the suggestion of John of Florei (who at that time was hospital treasurer), for the Hospi Church, dedicated to St. John the Baptist and St. John t Divine, at the cost of the devout men and women who to care of the hospital, thus dividing their time between labo and prayer, as typified by St. Catherine and St. Barbar who represent, in the symbolism of painting, the active a the contemplative religious life. . Apart from the beautiful methods of the painting, whi renders with absorbed interest the delicacy of flesh and } complexion, the preciousness of stuffs, and gold, and em and metals, and holds all these many interests in one balan of due proportion, what is it that has given to Memli this perception of the exquisite refinement of woman? T painter has seen in these women a beauty even greater th: they could have had, and the charm of their daintiness nothing but an exterior covering for a beautiful mind. Car sapaua ANUOAD LS Ad GaLOaAL -OUd ‘ATAVd UAA NVA NONVO ANV NYLLYNOC “IS ‘(1TIHO GNV NIOUTA AHL MOG NVA NVE HANS MEMLING THE MYSTIC MARRIAGE OF ST. CATHERINE CENTRAL PANEL OF TRIPTYCH, HOSPITAL ST. JOHN, BRUGES THE PRIMITIVES — THE FLEMISH 165 fulness and attention to the rendering of these charms of body and mind, the exquisite finish of the painting, seem a form of respectful regard and caress. Who were the models that sat to the painter? These are not pure inventions any more than his other figures. The sense of portraiture runs throughout his work. But the original model has been transmuted, probably, into finer gold. In no other painting of the time —a time of many portraits — are there such types. The times were cruel, harsh, brutal, debased, violent. Every variety of crime and assertion of its necessity, injustice, perfidy, treason, oaths carefully sworn and broken, revolt and massacre, superstition and debauchery, are carefully recorded by the general historians of the day. The pictures bear testimony to the love of gold, and show, and pomp, and festival, and extraordinary display that mark the time. But how out of all that did the painter build these images of sweet sanctity, these flowers of simple perfection? UNKNOWN PORTRAITS XI UNKNOWN PORTRAITS WE bo not often enough consider that the art of painting and the art of sculpture have a result of such eternal interest and such extreme value as to make them, more than all others, representative of the persistent lite of humanity. The great feats in literature, the great poetical declarations, prefer extraordinary limit. The great buildings testify to collected wealth, to the ambition of some people, their pre- eminence, sometimes to great artistic faculties. History, for instance, is in greater part the record of what a few men have inflicted upon others. It is not that art has not recorded these deeds of a few, but it has also told us of those who are left out. It has told us of the ways of feeling and living and of varieties of all date. Visions of peace, life of every-day work, as carried on in the world. The great masses, if they have not history for them, have the record of art. And singularly enough, it may be in the record of the humblest life, of which there must be other innumerable examples, which will interest the painter or the sculptor as much as the most romantic experiences or the highest positions. That some old woman has passed an obscure, voiceless life, that she 169 170 ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING has toiled and has suffered — all that Rembrandt will te you with an equal, perhaps a greater, interest than he migh take in the record of a brilliant deed or the representation c some lord of the world. Therein the portraits, or the paint ings, which, like those of the Dutch painters, are all don from the portrait view, show us the existence of that soli stuff of work and duty, and obedience to the ordinary demand of right, upon which heavy tissue are embroidered the deed of a few, the displays of ambition and of all those sides o what we call human nature which, were they not rare, woul end its history itself. Most of this record is modern. Th development of the art of painting and the existence of tha’ small democracy of Holland has, especially, given us thes proofs. But at all times, somewhere or other, the unknow1 portrait strikes us beyond, perhaps, anything but the mos extraordinary successes of art—all the more that these rep resentations are more or less accidental and dependent upo1 the perception of the artist. But far back the wooden por trait of the Egyptian Factor, the Sheik EI’Beled, tells u: what was the good-natured look of a kindly director of labour Nearer to us, but a thousand years ago, the clay portrar of a Japanese peasant girl tells us of the sweetness of mind the simplicity, the sincerity, which welcomed the new religior of Buddha in millions of unknown supporters. Her face ANTONELLO DA MESSINA PORTRAIT OF A MAN COLLECTION OF JOHN G. JOHNSON, PHILADELPHIA UNKNOWN PORTRAITS 171 the like of which is still unlabelled, the traveller can see in those same fields of Nara or Horiuji (Yamato). We can be- lieve in these representations of unknown people all the more that they are not to be suspected of official flattery. Farther down, nearer us, we have the portraits of Flemish burghers or their wives, of Italians who played some unknown part, until we come to the time when the separate portrait is more common and no longer surprises us. In most of these cases one can see that the artist has looked at his model without outside pressure. He has judged for himself and used that side of his nature which he cannot always employ and which makes him judge apart from beauty or splendour of outside appearance. It is, after all, pleasant to think that we, too, can look at these images and look at them for them- selves and for their own individual value or interest as ex- ponents of human life, without the prejudice or the anxicty to see clearly which may disturb us in looking at the records of well-known characters who have played a part, and whom we may criticize as we criticize actors, asking that their por- traits should fill the part which history has given them. In this perfectly free attitude of mind let us look at some few portraits of unknown persons, or some even by undetermined masters. We do not sufficiently realize that this must be so; that the parts played by these various characters must 172 ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING be filled by the moderate or insufficient actors if there be no great ones to take the place. The apparent leaders may be simply carried upon the wave of great movements, or be the necessary Officials, or be put up in place of others who moved behind them, and this the portrait tells us almost uninten- tionally. This is a commonplace statement, but it is worth keeping before us. To have a place in the world and to keep it in some in- genious way, whether on the surface or behind it, may well be the meaning of the mind within the face of the portrait by Antonello da Messina. The clever painter, whose legend makes him ingeniously discover the secrets of the Flemish painters, so as to practise them in Italy, must have enjoyed the cleverness of the face before us. 'We remember the por- trait by him of another unknown, the so-called Condottiere, in the Louvre, and its relentless persistence of intention. Here the personage, certainly of a less warlike profession, will follow his end in a more subtle but certainly quite as determined a manner. The intelligent watchfulness, the readiness for some possible change, a certain humour of ap- preciation, and readiness also to smile at what might require it, is all marked there. One can almost believe that the lips will move to appreciate something worth noting, or abstain from what might not be the proper thing. Will he be a ANTONELLO DA MESSINA THE CONDOTTIERE THE LOUVRE THOMAS DE KEYSER PORTRAIT OF A MAN THE HAGUE MUSEUM PHOTOGRAPH BY BRUCKMAN UNKNOWN PORTRAITS 173 Cardinal some day, or a Chancellor, or is he already in some position of security? The dress is already rich and that of a personage. So that it is not quite an unpleasant suggestion that we receive from the clever face. We feel that such a clear eye, looking so steadily, has at least a clear vision of what is. It might almost be that of the painter himself gauging the sitter before him. Another eye, another look, is that of the gentleman secure in his professional standing, who was painted almost two centuries later in Holland by Thomas de Keyser. The glory of the Dutch School is this possibility of some of the lesser men rivalling in the rendering of nature the very greatest of all artists, through love of nature, sincerity of purpose, and last, not least, the holding to a technique and practice care- fully observed. If, as I take it, this gentleman be a physician, he is worthy of being remembered alongside of the Jew doc- tors whom Rembrandt has represented: faces, features, ex- pressions and habits of bodies so eminently professional, so interested in their work. Who can ever forget the face and hand of Ephraim Bonus as he halts on the stairway, hesitat- ing as to the accuracy of his diagnosis and the remedy he may have chosen? Here our man looks with an eye of observation — with the intention of some ascertaining. The rest of the face has passed entirely into that one inten- 174 ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING tion. The mouth is parted as in moments of keen interest, while the deepened line of the cheek and the slight con- traction of the nostril follow the direction of the eye. Even if those eyes were covered, one could see the intention of dis- covery and of mental observation. The coat-of-arms might tell us who the gentleman was. Thomas de Keyser painted this in 1636, when he was sixty-six years old. These were two men of action, without doubt. Brilliancy and capacity of various kinds and the mark of the man of the world belong to the Italian; and capacity and serious self- respect justified mark the Dutchman’s face. But they are in the world and either upholding it by work or making use of the work of others. “The Young Man in Black,” whose portrait hangs in the Louvre, an unknown man painted by an unknown painter, makes all the contrast of a withdrawal from action into thought — certainly not pleasant. Sorrow or envy or dis- appointment fills the masque of the Italian youth with the blurred eyes and the contemptuous lips. The masterpiece has long ago told this story of discontent to all admirers. Everything in the picture unites for the impression, even to the placing of the figure in its frame — the narrowness of the shoulders, the fulness of hair, the leaning in conventional but absent-minded manner, arm upon arm. The very out- UNKNOWN PORTRAITS 175 lines of solitary trees against the distant sky are details of this story. It is in that way the one absolutely sad portrait. There is nothing in the face or attitude to tell us of the possi- ble revulsion, of a willingness to struggle against, ill-fortune. Even if the mood of the sitter was momentary, the painter has made it eternal. At a moment of fatigue and despondency in the great stress of an impossible position Raphael painted the great Pope Julius, and we see for a moment the expression of a beaten hero. But the will is not broken, nor the courage for new attempts, and even the old age is a pledge for the hurry to resume again the fight which cannot be put off. At a certain moment the painting of “The Young Man in Black” was given to the painter Francia, the Bolognese. That attri- bution has, I think, been long withdrawn. One might recall the mistaken legend which made Francia die of grief at the superiority of the young Raphael — a foolish story which comes up, not unnaturally, with this record of despondent withdrawal within one’s self. Compared to the quiet, to the desolate, patience of “The Young Man in Black,” it is by a more dramatic action that the portrait of another “Unknown,” by Lorenzo Lotto, gives its meaning of intimate sorrow. Lotto has himself, through- out his work, the mark of the sympathizer with forms of 176 ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING sadness half concealed, so that this portrait is rightly mad by him. Like that of ““The Young Man in Black” — lik most great portraits — its shape and the proportions of it arrangement are the foundation of impression. The half seen embrasure of the window, high up, from which drops . lonely light, the square of the window or great opening throug! which we see far off a spread of the world, its cities and it actions, close in all the more the mental tragedy of the her of the portrait. He is clad in rich garments, whose make and every detai tell of position and probable wealth. He is large and strong and his hands tell of refinement of habit. The face, unmarkec by age, is that of a man in full health and the prime of life across it the painter has given the transitory movement o great distress. The eyes look without seeing, and a sligh frown indicates the thought. Nothing else in the face moves unless it be perhaps a slight droop, hardly distinguishable of the lower lip. But there is no mistaking the sadness mean’ to be indulged in. This is the portrait of the man who has come back fror things. They are empty, they have nothing in them but death This he thinks as he presses the scattered flowers on the table within which lies the small ivory skull that symbolizes the meaning of the picture. One hardly notices the detail, bu‘ AN RIJN V T M BO AND PHRAI HI MBR RE IS E NI = 4 E FROM THE MASTER x BY TH NC C ET AVI CENTURY FLORENTINE SCHOOL “THE YOUNG MAN IN BLACK” THE LOUVRE UNKNOWN PORTRAITS 177 the motion of the hand, the jewelled fingers, half pushing aside the leaves and flowers and revealing a small skull, catch our attention and tell again the story. The other hand, with the rings and lace, presses against the hip—as in moments of grief and reflection —the hand moves unconsciously. All else, as I said before, is wealth and a certain magnificence. So that this is but transient. The subject of our portrait may return in a moment to his position and the world, to what he has to do there, but for this single moment he realizes the real value of things. The portrait is a complete expression of sadness, as it was meant to be. Its hero has wished to record for himself, perhaps for others whom he knew, this attitude of mind. To whom could it have gone? What friend, what lover, what descendant shall it have been ad- dressed to, or was it merely the record of the strong individ- uality of which no one then was ashamed, and which rarely again, unless in Spain, where pride has no vanity, is repre- sented by the portrait? It may have been some manner of saying to others, who misjudged: “‘This is what I really felt, and I am no longer with you.” But the work of art is meant to tell you some form of story, whether intentional or not, and we could dream for hours over the past of the subject of the portrait and of his intentions and wishes. 178 ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING As we return in mind to the portrait of ‘The Young Man in Black” we recognize no drama as in the portrait of Lotto. In the painting of the Louvre there is no drama, no sense of momentary outward action. The drama is all within the sustained character of the hero of the portrait. His expres- sion is not that of a momentary reflection or solemn thought such as we all know. It is the picture of a permanent soak- ing in of melancholy and unhappiness, which will last with the character of the man depicted. One is reminded of the verses of de Musset, in which his double, ‘The Young Man in Black,” appears to him whenever he attempts to escape from his brooding over an unhappy past which is part of his present. PORTRAITS OF FASHION — PART ONE XIII PORTRAITS OF FASHION — PART ONE Iv was been said with justice, certainly with much meaning, that the great painter Van Dyck was one of the most beau- tiful creations of Rubens. Van Dyck was his favourite pupil, which meant also in most cases his assistant. Toby Matthews writing to Sir Dudley Castleton calls him Rubens’s Famous Allievo,’” meaning, of course, his pupil but also his assistant. However much he was under the influence of Rubens, however much he was guided by the example of his stupendous patron, his sensitive and delicate nature modified the robust Flemish sense of life and nature through the influences of Italy. He might be described as a son of Rubens, whose acquaintance with Italy both in art and manners gave him the special mark of foreign training which comes upon travelled youth. Wan Dyck was helped and guided in his outside career by the great Flemish master, and out of his own genius, his own personal charm, his beautiful manner, his good looks, he made a career which reflects his master’s in less important manner, but in a shape of attrac- tive beauty. He painted subjects of all kinds as his master did: religious pictures for churches, or for individual devo- 181 182 ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING tion, stories out of the Bible or classical history, classical allegories and mythologies. Above all, just what his master did least, he painted most — portraits of such a kind that he remains as the typical portrait painter to the modern mind; so much so that the varied excellencies and the charm of his other painting are perhaps a great deal overshadowed. He had the advantage of a wonderful training which devel- oped an extraordinary facility at a most early date. At twenty-one years of age he had acquired the knowledge of practice which made him already a master, and the influence of this training and the manner of it were essentially in the way of a sumptuous and elegant rendering of nature, a man- ner of using his subject for a more beautiful adornment, an insisting on whatever might be elegance and richness, like- wise in form and line and colour. It is a perception of how nature can be used for the attainment or a beautiful melody harmonized upon some wonderful instrument. Like his mas- ter, he went to England to paint the portraits of the aristoc- racy. It was through the Earl of Arundel, the great lover and patron of art of his day, that Van Dyck came to England. His first arrival makes little mark. But the same Matthews says in 1620 that “the King had given him a pension of one hundred pounds per annum.” This amount he received after three or four months’ residence, and at that time as PORTRAITS OF FASHION 183 Anthony Van Dyck, gentleman, his majesty’s servant, he obtained permission to travel for eight months. This jour- ney took him to Italy and seems to have been far extended. He was doing as his master had done before him, he was going to the land of artistic culture. So we know that he left Antwerp, October 3, 1621, mounted on the best horse in Rubens’s stables, a parting gift from his master. There was once a story, such as might well belong to this romantic youth: that he had delayed in the village of Saventhem for love of a pretty girl, and that there he painted one of his first paintings, the picture of St. Martin dividing his coat for a beggar. Similar traditions belong to his after life, as well as his own account of how later he could say to his royal patron, Charles, “Open table to one’s friends and open pockets for one’s mistresses soon show the bottom of ex- chequer.’’ Van Dyck’s privileged position at the court helped him to much work and many commissions, but entailed costly acquaintances and luxurious habits. All this told on his health as well as upon his purse. There are stories of his having resorted to alchemy and the black arts to help his fortunes, under the influence of his friend Sir Kenelm Digby. Then there are various stories of fair ladies, until both the King’s and Queen’s interest in his welfare attempted to settle him by finding him a bride in Mary Ruthven, connected 184 ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING with some of the noblest families in Scotland. It is but natural, then, that we should have such intimate representa- tions of the gentlemen of England in Van Dyck’s portraits. He would have shared their feelings, their ways of looking at current events. And our impressions of the history of that time are recorded in these paintings. His records give us the romantic impression that comes from that moment of England’s anxieties, and nothing more justifies the poetry of the Cavalier. The noblemen and gentlemen of the por- traits are far removed from common needs, struggles, and associations. The fact that they are often armed and booted and spurred, and even ride on splendid chargers, seems only to make them belong more evidently to romance. Everything about their portraits, the slight disdain of their faces, their in- difference of eye, the well-kept hands — a little too much of one make — the daintiness of their linen, their silks, their velvets, all mean that they are far from the profane and vulgar, and keep at sword’s length. Rarely does any indication appear of the tragic fate which awaits some of them, of the story of dis- aster, or at least of danger and difficulty, which is to surround them. Once in the portrait of Strafford, and in the wonderful picture of Charles Stuart, King of England, now in the Louvre, the portrait can be supposed to be near enough to show what might happen to a personage so extremely singled out. ANTON VAN DYCK CHARLES I OF ENGLAND THE LOUVRE PHOTOGRAPH BY BRAUN & CO. ANTON VAN DYCK THE INFANTA ISABEL CLARA EUGENIA, REGENT OF THE NETHERLANDS COLLECTION OF THE DUKE OF DEVONSHIRE PHOTOGRAPH BY HANFSTAENGL ANTON VAN DYCK BEATRICE DE CUZANCE, PRINCESSE DE CANTECROIX (FRAGMENT) WINDSOR CASTLE PHOTOGRAPH BY BRAUN & CO. ‘OO F NAVY AM HdVUDOLOHA UALSNINISEM FO AMIG AHL JO NOILOATIOON (.UAMOTANIS SHEL HLIM.) LIVULYOd SIA NMOAG NVA NOLNYV PORTRAITS OF FASHION 185 The portrait of Charles is, as we know, one of the most famous. Its entire composition has the appearance of a story — of some poetic description of part of an important event. The King is in riding costume, in a white satin jacket, red hose, and light yellow leather jack boots — with a wide- brimmed black hat, slightly tilted, under which drops the long cavalier hair. One lock touches his wide collar, and a pearl hangs from the ear beneath it. The King’s gray horse drops its head, champing the bit, and the groom holds it back. Another attendant holds in his hands the King’s silk riding cloak. The loneliness that belongs to kings attends Charles, who stands a little away from horse and attendants and the trees that edge the woods he has left. Every trifle in his equipment and in his gestures makes him out the type of the gentleman aristocrat by birth, by feeling, by training, by prejudice, and by unconscious assertion. His right hand presses his tall cane with gentle authority, the gloved left hand, bent upon the hip, holds the other glove with open fingers, elegantly spread. The feet and legs, cased in the elegant fashion of the day, press firmly but lightly with a gentle stride. The King is all that there is there—all else is but a setting, and all and anything, every line, every means of dark and light carry to one point, the eye of the royal face, looking at us, part of the general spectacle, with eyebrow 186 ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING slightly raised, with lid slightly drooped, with a clear but not insistent vision — perhaps the expression of conscious superi- ority. In marvellous elegance, the divine right of kings is here shown. Anything further from the Puritan and the strenuous assertion of anything one cannot imagine. That solitariness that belongs to certain refinements is here pic- tured as never elsewhere. And the melancholy of this perception by the painter reminds us of the fate of his hero. History is written there — the things that were to be. This manner of courtesy, of aristocratic elegance, is carried out even in the big landscapes of the portraits, in whatever fills in the architecture of the pictures, meant to hang on splendid walls as fresh testimonies to pride of place and mirroring of fashion. The picture of well-born fashion has never since been so beautifully expressed. There is still with Van Dyck’s portraits some reflection of a more heroic age, and the mark of ancestry, both in the subjects and the painter’s reminiscence of greater art, separates these por- traits from other later masterpieces, equally fashionable, and sometimes almost as beautiful, where the subjects of the portraits do not affirm themselves as of undoubted blue blood and as living in a manner of superiority absolutely unchallenged. To obtain such results some of the meaning in each face has to be felt out: some of the experience of life PORTRAITS OF FASHION 187 which is separate for each one of us, some of that hardness or softness or special character which we have by ourselves when we are no longer dressed for the public. In that, the portraits of Van Dyck begin a new era in painting. They are more the representation of what a person of distinction would like to appear to be than what he really is when seen more than once on some occasion of show or festivity. A little of this polite view of reality can be seen in the Titians before Van Dyck. But after Van Dyck it marks throughout the whole modern history a special way of looking at por- traiture; a society manner, putting aside the individual and the main question. In England it becomes the special mark. In Spain the older idea persists, and even into the nineteenth century the unflattering representation of royalty or impor- tance continues unbroken. It is as if Spanish pride of ances- try and of character were too great to allow for the smaller weakness of vanity. Van Dyck appreciated to an extraordinary extent such national or personal characteristics. His portrait will be more or less superficial according to these circumstances. There is no easy politeness in the way he treats his direct sovereign, Isabella Clara Eugenia, the Archduchess, Regent of the Netherlands and daughter of the terrible Philip I. Thereby, perhaps, we feel the different air of court and camp, 188 ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING and the manner of feeling of different historical moments. The Earl of Arundel, for instance, belongs to an older genera- tion, and his dignity contrasts with the trust in the future and in all that will be pleasant for the younger people of a little later: as with Lord Philip Wharton, just married, painted as a shepherd of Arcady in the most beautiful silks. When he paints the Earl of Strafford fate seems to be indi- cated in the solitary abstraction of the Earl, pictured, perhaps unawares, in the sensitive mirror of Van Dyck’s mind. It is, aS we see, no pleasant face: a manner of sullen pride marks it. The man thinks, however, following some obsti- nate course. And in some way, while pondering, perhaps, some dictation to his secretary, he seems left alone — deserted. The secretary, writing alongside, belongs to another kind. His is not an unfrequent face — one sees it in clever hangers- on. We know all the more that the look which attends so many of the portraits of Sir Anthony answers to what we might expect, by what has happened to his sitters in their after lives. It is not merely, then, we ourselves who have made this interest in these heroes of misfortune, but their fate has been written out on their faces, to be registered un- consciously by the artist. In that way a splendour and im- portance which we might call Shakespearian fills the great portrait — great among all portraits — of Charles Stuart of PORTRAITS OF FASHION 189 England, who steps forward slowly and disdainfully into the open from the wood where he has been hunting, and who seems to take upon himself a responsibility of divine right. In a far different way Beatrice of Cuzance steps up to good fortune and great marriage with a slight doubt still lingering in the face, within pleasure of attainment. And all this is in the artist’s character; for we know him very fairly. He had his serious and even religious side; his brothers and sisters were in the church. He was sometimes roughly spoken of as “‘the gentleman painter” by the other artists whose manner of life was not what he thought best-seeming, and he was also fond of pleasure —and of hard work — and was ambitious, and led to many things. His portrait of a later date, that with the great sunflower, shows all this, perhaps, whether the sunflower be the emblem of constancy or the sign of something quite the reverse, turning toward the shine and toward the warmth of the sun. The mass of the Van Dyck portraiture is very great. In museums and private ownership it stretches along lengthy surfaces. Perhaps it is less charming when the charm seems so easily repeated. Perhaps the eye recognizes that many of these successes are the work of many assistants who painted at the very least the dresses of the sitters, loaned, as we know, for the occasion. Jabach tells us how Van Dyck XIV PORTRAITS OF FASHION — PART TWO Str JosHua REYNoLps’s paintings are not so sure in their methods as Van Dyck’s; many of them must have lost a large portion of their first charm, but they keep to the main idea of making the portrait a beautiful thing to look at, in which all the parts of speech that belong to the art of painting shall have their due share in the making of a work of art, in a some- thing which did not exactly so exist in nature, but for which nature has been used. Therein lies the justification of what appears to us occasionally eminently artificial, especially if we have just compared it to the sincerity of a Holbein, not to speak of the realism of Velasquez, or the wealth of meaning of Rembrandt. Coming upon one of the portraits of the great Dutchman is quite as much of a surprise as if a real person were there, only one passes more rapidly into the meaning of his char- acter and into the statement of what has happened to him in previous life, On reflection, it is evident that a person in what is called society, that is to say, the outside appearance of life, would hesitate at being stated in full with the summing up of everything in this one face on a painted canvas. It 195 196 ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING would be like having one’s hand read with the explanation of what had really happened. So that it is not surprising that Rembrandt’s portraits do not represent the great people of his time: a time which was already beginning to doubt and to question. Before that there were moments in each country when a painter represented, without fear and without annoyance to his sitter, merely his face as he was. The most beautiful painting that the world can give in the way of portraits could not give more of a shock than comes to the visitor in Venice who comes upon the portrait painted by that moderate artist, Gentile Bellini, the brother of the great John. It is the profile of Mahomet II, the con- queror of Constantinople, and has the story, in its simple lines of precision, of the ruthless exterminator and intellect- ual contemner of mankind. When passing from the more modern work to these older phases, the sensation of sincerity, the belief that we are really touching history, is upon us. The originals of these portraits have no doubts about their position, and their security or their pride seems to save them from vanity. Later, more and more, the portraits show another type of society, much of it newly made. They give us types of a less aristocratic setting apart, of a manner of life with less rigid barriers between classes, which is accentuated all the AUNADWALILIO VP PAYDIILYVIN 1vé more by the fact that all is holiday in the pictures. Except for a very few studies, there are hardly any workers among all these people, many of whom did a great deal in the world. Even the gallant Lord Hatfield, who holds the keys to Gibral- tar, with the background of battle smoke, looks somewhat unreal if we think of him as a practical hero. The great ladies and most of the lesser ones have no home troubles, have no visible experience of life. And they all connect in this happy land of appearances, of absence from reflection — from the sweet little girls to Kitty Fisher or Nellie O’Brien, or the Archbishops of York and Canterbury. Nothing in the painting tells us whether the artist saw any difference in their modes of life except in so far as certain society rules might determine some marks of distinction. And even the affectations of the moment are motives for his pictures: whether he painted mock tragedy, gentle mis- applications of Dante’s ferocious stories, amiable versions of religious subjects, or pagan stories without heathen and im- proper tendencies: all are, as it were, in the manner of private theatricals. And yet all this is beautiful, because he was Sir Joshua, in the first place; and then, his was a cultivated mind, continually referring to all that was greatest and best within that knowledge of art that he had managed to acquire by travel, by study, and by a singular habit of reflection. 198 ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING So that anywhere, in the least probable places, we shall find that he has had reminiscences of other painters working on very different schemes or subjects, and that he used much of them to direct his course or to suggest arrangements of line, taking right and left, but always wisely; and never, if one may so explain, pilfering, but turning the river edge into his own garden. A certain nobility, therefore, sustains his most frivolous notions. When obeying the last whim of a fad he may have a manner of grace which lasts far past his time and ours. Take, for instance, the typical painting called ‘Ladies Decorating a Term of Hymen,” in the National Gal- lery. We know the very date of his beginning this, or rather of his arrangement to begin it —on Monday, the first of March, 1773, when the Right Honourable Gardiner, then in London for his marriage with Miss Elizabeth Montgomery, proposes to him to paint this young lady and her two beau- tiful sisters, who are also engaged to be married. ‘The order given to the painter suggests that their combined portraits represent some emblematical or historical subject, as was the fashion of the moment, when Sir Joshua could also paint a lady, Lady Bunbury, “sacrificing to the Graces.” Sir Joshua himself describes the motive of the portraits of these three Montgomery girls as “Adorning a Term of Hymen with Festoons of Flowers.” “This affords,” he says, “suffi- BVAUEAUAE EN VR Bsa eadwi uu cient employment to the figures and gives an opportunity of introducing a variety of graceful historical attitudes.” What Sir Joshua meant was attitudes that you might have seen beforehand in pictures of other subjects. So he goes on, in his best fashionable manner, and says: “‘I have every inducement to exert myself on this occasion, from the subjects presented to me, which are such as I am never likely to meet with again as long as I live.’’ He concludes with his usual declaration: ‘‘It will be the best picture I have ever painted.” The success of Sir Joshua’s picture is evident, and one can well realize the name by which the picture went, the name given to the young ladies themselves, ““The Scots Graces.” It is indeed a beautiful thing, worthy of the name of Scots Graces or others, and shows a refined combination of the historical attitudes created anew or a second time from what- ever memory he had; in fact, a glorification of what might possibly be reached in the most successful tableau of society theatricals. This charm remains historical: the world of art could not be complete without Sir Joshua. Nor can others, his equals or nearly so, be understood without him. Moreover, he has the prestige of personal association with the names of the eighteenth century. He has also written things worth reading, and his wisdom, his balance, his getting on with 200 ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING the world are also all in his pictures. ‘‘Nature he loved” —and perhaps more ‘‘than Nature — Art”: that is to say, the management of what he could do. Even in the sketch books of his youthful days in Italy he marked for lessons the balances of arrangement and subordinate in certain paint- ers whom he admired — and he also admired many whom he did not follow. He registered for each picture so much light, so much dark, such a place for warm colour or cold; so much midway between. To-day the young student might copy detail or invention on his tour of learning, but such an enlightened foresight to-day would bring him into disrepute at school. Sir Joshua studied the artistic side of Art, the making use of colour and form and light and shade, and subject and place, as a great stage-director groups the effect of his com- pany on the stage And his contemporaries and his succes- sors caught this or learned it. Hence the curious suggestion | of artfulness in some of the most apparently innocent of Sir Joshua’s or Gainsborough’s paintings. The charming lands- cape backgrounds, for instance, are stage settings more and more — indeed, all behind the sitter or person represented: as in the charming picture of the young married couple by Gainsborough, “The Morning Walk,” where the holiday of honeymoon and best wishes of all friends is painted for us. GENTILE BELLINI MAHOMET II LAYARD COLLECTION, VENICE PHOTOGRAPH BY ANDERSON SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS LORD HEATHFIELD NATIONAL GALLERY, LONDON PHOTOGRAPH BY HANFSTAENGL NOGNOT ‘XUATIVD TVNOILVN (SHOVUD SLOOS AHL) NAINAH JO WUAL ¥ ONILVYOOU SaIGVT SGTIONAAY VAHSOL UIs THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH THE MORNING WALK (SQUIRE HALLETT AND HIS WIFE) COLLECTION OF LORD ROTHSCHILD, LONDON PHOTOGRAPH BY BRAUN & CO. THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH MASTER BUTTALL (THE BLUE BOY) COLLECTION OF THE DUKE OF WESTMINSTER THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH THE HONOURABLE MISTRESS GRAHAM NATIONAL GALLERY OF SCOTLAND, EDINBURGH PHOTOGRAPH BY BRAUN & CO. THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH MRS. SIDDONS NATIONAL GALLERY, LONDON SIR THOMAS LAWRENCE MASTER LAMBTON (SON OF J. G. LAMBTON, ESQ.) PORTRAITS OF FASHION 201 But Gainsborough, the great rival of Sir Joshua, touches nature more closely, and sentiment more often comes into the faces and the poses of his charming creations. As in the “Blue Boy” or ‘‘ Mistress Graham,”’ they certainly have a life of their own even if we see that life in holiday dress. Mrs. Siddons, as she must have appeared in social intercourse on occasions of some importance, must have had that look of elegance, and as we are told that her manner was somewhat cold, we can believe that this beautiful flower culled in the garden looked like that. One somehow might wish to know how the flower looked in the garden before its being picked for society representation. Until some years ago, when exhibitions began to collect for the pleasure of the London picture season, the value of the other painters, Romney, etc., and their right to a place in the chain of English art, had not been so properly felt. With these shows, with the displacements of fortune, which took from the owners of land and gave to the owners of stocks, came the privilege of adorning their walls with what might look like the possessions of ahome. All these beautiful things began to be understood at their proper value as some of the most perfect adornments that wealth could offer to itself. The value of Sir Thomas Lawrence, as connected with this older art, as keeping also in another way the many 202 ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING traditions of painting which came from Flanders, began again to be appreciated and marketed. A thinner and also more violent way of painting, a recognition on his part of the influence of fashion, a certain Byronic expression, both in attitude and in the landscapes which might have more peace and less theatrical meaning, may separate him from the larger past, but he, too, has kept the English tradition and has painted the appearance of society, the look of the portrait being a recognition of attainment and deserved position. We have but place for one example and that might be ‘“‘Master Lambton,” where the charming affectations are connected with a beautiful appearance of the beauty of boyhood. The storm behind the great landscape, the Byronic curls on the forehead, the attitude of contemplation and deep meaning are all there. THE ROMANTIC SCHOOL — PART ONE XV THE ROMANTIC SCHOOL — PART ONE WE all know that the name “school” is one of the loosest of designations as applied to literature or the art of painting. In the arts of architecture or music, which are based upon strict and definite physical conditions, and upon united ef- fort, the term is more exact. There are, of course, in painting, actual schools, where certain masters have taught certain others who themselves have again had pupils, and those who have been taught have more or less strictly followed a rule and a mechanism of work. But often what we mean by schools is that general tendency of a given moment wherein certain minds either affect one another or are affected by the same general momentary sentiment, without, sometimes, even an actual personal acquaintance. In this way we can use the term which is a convenient one and not a compli- mentary one. We know from our acquaintance with literature that the poets and the writers of the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth reflect a great storm of thought and politics and war which had agitated the world; as well also as the settling of the waters in newer forms of society. The great poetic names of Germany and 205 206 ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING of England, Goethe and Schiller and Byron and Shelley and Keats, come naturally to our mind. In France, where paint- ers are to be mainly our subject, literature showed more slowly the effects of these agitations of thought. They came, it is true, and in a powerful form. Their last echoes are scarcely over to-day. With Chateaubriand in full sight and De Vigny hidden in obscurity, this expression began to be reinforced by the loud voice of Victor Hugo and his friends and followers. With this disturbance of internal thought and sentiment came also an expression of the admiration of ex- ternal nature, whose permanency is a consolation for the disappointment of ambitions or rash hopes, and whose moods can be used to reflect the unrelated moods of man. Modern literature again gives us these same names as types of such emotions, with the addition of many others, from Wordsworth in quiet England to Lamartine and George Sand in agitated France. The art of painting did not everywhere feel these influences in a like degree. The art of the painter is subjected to phy- sical conditions of patronage and expense which rarely allow to individual likings a sufficient expression. The portraiture of England could certainly not take upon itself to represent aspirations against the established order of the beautiful conventionalities of good society. Blake, perhaps, indicates THE ROMANTIC SCHOOL 207 what there might have been; but in the development of landscape sentiment, which is not distinctly opposed to polit- ical order, England had a certain form of romance. The rest of the continent is out of the question, but France de- veloped suddenly, in the art of painting, the result of the many years of storm and stress, and, at the same time, an appeal to the eternal beauty of nature. In this latter bloom the influence of England was great. It was but the kindling of a spark; for what the French artists had seen of English art was less than we to-day might get by a fortnight’s trip to Europe. It so happened, also, that these first beginners were touched by English and by German literature, and that the stories of Sir Walter Scott helped them to a sympathy or delight in that past which was irrevocably destroyed. They saw in it many things that were wanting in the settling commonplace about them; and they realized obscurely that the new, more bureaucratic form of life was beginning to crystallize, even in the art of painting, by the establishment of government academies and teachings, and the sacredness of routine; and hence, with the usual doubt about anything new, the official contempt of the Academy and School of Fine Arts for anything but their own limited past. This certain artists saw and felt, all the more that the historians, also, and the archeologists tempted them into the admira- 208 ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING tion of the greater past. So that within a few years, one might almost say months, a few painters expressed these confused sensations in what appeared to be new forms. To them it was largely, on the contrary, an interest in the past, an admi- ration for forms of art farther back than those about them. Géricault, in a couple of paintings, indicated this sudden turn. His is but a first note; his death comes almost with his first appearance. His friend, Delacroix, was to strike at one blow the highest note of what might be called a move- ment in painting, were it not that few other men were of sufficient importance, and that literature expressed more successfully these general feelings. In fact, literature carried on the new painters into relative but momentary fame. Hence, perhaps, also the present mistaken idea that these few successful exponents of the romantic school confused the limits of writing and painting, and tried to express in the art of physical representation what is better done in words. It is a known yet not ancient confusion of ideas, the result of the modern tendency to specialty. There is no trace of such a division and intention in ancient art. The religious idea so called, for instance, supplies a motive and buoys up the ancient sculptor, the ancient painter and designer again. The human story of sentiment found in the Bible allowed Rembrandt to unfold still further the art of painting THE ROMANTIC SCHOOL 209 Certainly the manner of Lieutenant Dieudonnés, turning suddenly around in his saddle while his horse plunges, in the wild portrait by Géricault, is not a literary invention. Nor, indeed, the fringe of arms and waving draperies in the paint- ing of the raft of the ‘“‘Medusa.’’ There remains, it is true, in Géricault, a little of the theatrical, that is to say, of the set scene notion, derived from his masters, and a great deal of the study from life in the Academy, placed in what should be a moving picture. In the first painting of Delacroix, the “‘Dante and Virgil Crossing the Styx,” there is still a fragment of study from the models in some of the nude figures tossing in the river of Hell. But no Academy, no posing in any school, invented the hatred of the damned for each other, and the biting and tearing that surges round the boat of Charon, in which stand Dante and Virgil as they pass the Styx. No models of any French studio, no actors in any theatre, invented the gesture by which the poet Virgil pacifies the poet Dante in his fear, and teaches him, gently, contempt for the unknown hounds, not worthy to be remembered, who fill the forgotten mud of Hell. From the commonplace of ordinary story, the acquies- cence in polite commonplace, this picture emerged for the admiration of a few, and the scandal of many, astonished at what seemed to them a new subject — which would have 210 ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING to be looked up and which, moreover, belonged to a period of what they thought was ignorance — and still more, sug- gested religious questions which they thought forgotten with the past. To-day, with our schools, and our reading of Dante, and our translations, we are nearer to the mind of the painter, who did not realize that his public was neither as well read nor as free minded as himself. The painter Delacroix was merely an artist, as he ought to be, with political and religious and social views that were really very far from the ideas of the other great artist in literature, the poet Dante, from whom he had taken his motive. What was new and is perpetually new is the expression of sympathy in the human meaning of the story, in what is the real drama, not the theatre. I might describe it as the lyric side of the arts of representation, where the subject is not taken merely because it gives an excuse for placing some figures in some particularly hand- some attitudes, or of representing them as if they were real to the touch — whether that touch make them of flesh or make them of hard wood, as is too often the case. This picture of Dante and Virgil, which now hangs in the Louvre, much altered from its former freshness, is, of course, famous, even historically, as marking a turning point in the history of modern art. As a proof of the enormous difference between the views of the French Academy at the time, and THE ROMANTIC SCHOOL 211 what we, to-day, believe to be what makes a masterpiece, the critics of that day objected to the unity of the picture, to the manner in which every detail was subordinated to the entire story, to the fact that each part made a part of the composition, and that one could not pick out some special place to enlarge upon. A still better proof of this permanent trouble of Academies is that at that very moment our artist, who in his modesty considered himself a mere student, com- peted for the Roman prize, given to promising young men by the government — and was numbered sixty on the list. Who the others were we do not know. I mean that nobody has thought it worth while to record their success, though their pictures lumber up some forsaken corner of the French School of Fine Arts. We realize, insufficiently, how beautifully the stories of Walter Scott, both poems and novels, fitted into this desire of knowledge of the past, this wish for descriptions of some- thing outside of modern society, and how natural it was then for the painter I am speaking of to find in Sir Walter subjects which would have human interest (a quality never wanting with the dear old man), and at the same time a spirit of romance and an apparent correctness of historical accuracy. I have chosen for another example Delacroix’s picture of the “‘Abduction of Rebecca” by the Saracen followers of the 212 ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING Templar Brian de Bois Guilbert. It is not exactly a great masterpiece when compared with the greater work of the same master. But, partly owing to its subject, partly to its treatment, it might be called an excellent example of the Romantic School. It has also this extreme quality, visible even in the photograph (that loses the colour), of a fine move- ment which painting had not seen since the last of the great painters died with Rubens and Rembrandt. To be able to say that of any painting is so rare and extraordinary that this artist, deficient in many ways, is thereby lifted entirely out of the plane on which have stood the artists of the eigh- teenth and nineteenth centuries; and alone, perhaps, unless we think of the quiet fire of Puvis de Chavannes, can he clasp hands with the men who, above all, were great painters. That is to say: men to whom the movement of light in nature was translated in colour and shadow in the small field of their canvas, and who emphasized more specially the merits of the art of painting as distinguished from the art of sculpture, which is an art of less movement and less dependence on the variations of light. Far above us the great castle of Front de Boeuf, Torquil- stone, is wrapped in clouds of smoke which obscure the bril- liant sky. Down the side of the hill below the castle come the fugitives of the story. Up the hill, into our foreground, EUGENE DELACROIX ABDUCTION OF REBECCA THE LOUVRE PHOTOGRAPH BY BRAUN & CO, THE ROMANTIC SCHOOL 213 gallops the Templar to hurry his Saracens before news of the loss of Rebecca has reached the unknown Knight, Richard Coeur de Lion, and a rescue can be attempted. The white costume of the Order blows around the Templar as he rises in the higher air. Horse and man are carried in one sweep; and in this little space the great weight of a horse, the great weight of a man on horseback, the lifting of a man in saddle, the clinging of a rider, and their coming up the hill to us, are expressed as well as in any but the greatest statues. Hurry is the meaning, and every line of the group of Saracens before us means the same. Rebecca in a dead faint is lifted like baggage to the back of the horse which is to carry her off. The rider backs the animal toward us to make his grasp easier; in a moment she will be placed and carried away. Every line, every curve, every bit of mane and drapery, even to the smoke of the great fire, means hurry and abduction. So completely does our artist typify the so-called “‘Roman- tic”? movement that the choice of examples brings us back more naturally to him. One other of that date might be chosen, and that is Decamps. But the separate example might not be sufficiently important, while the collected work would give him sufficient standing. Out of the many that I might select in the enormous mass of Delacroix’s produc- tions I shall choose the painting of “The Entrance of the 214 ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING Crusaders into Constantinople.” The painting is like a chapter of Sir Walter Scott. But here is pure invention on his part; merely the poetic reconstruction of the possibilities of such a theme. Like Sir Walter Scott’s ‘Count Robert of Paris,” it is the shock of Western energy against Eastern wealth and apathetic convention; the perpetual story of the successful barbarian. But it has more than that in it, and more than even the successful suggestion of a historical moment; and yet it has that also, and for the first time in modern painting the costumes and trappings of the Middle Ages are represented, not as mere archeology, but with the actual record of the thing seen. The picture has the meaning of a great drama — employing that ill-used word not in the meaning of the theatre, but in that of a condensed impression of agitated life. And, like lyric poetry, it gives the record of one great impression — the fatigue of victory, the confusion and hesitation of unexpected success. Perhaps some of the painter’s older military friends, remnants of the great con- quering armies of France, perhaps his own brother the general, Baron of the Napoleonic Empire, may have told the painter anecdotes of the straggling of conquerors into cities too large for their forces, where they had wandered about through streets of deserted palaces, and stumbled suddenly on half resistance and partial submission, and the temptations to THE ROMANTIC SCHOOL 215 plunder, and to the license of success. The group of horse- men has reached the upper part of the city and halts before the doors of some palace. Far below them spreads the Bosphorus, and the mass of the city seen from above, cut up by streets that are marked with shadows. Up the steps be- hind them rush other companies, striking right and left in the useless rage of victory. They, themselves, hesitate at what they see; a group of citizens begging for mercy in fear and confusion, the old man imploring, the women and children, some innocent victims of chance blows or bolts, lying about, the daughter weeping over her dying mother, and some old man dragged out for ransom by a brutal victor. And with all that, the representation of triumph in the outlines of the lances and flags floating in the wind, and the strange proud mass of helmets and plumes which cut against the vast land- scape below the city. Perhaps this is a full example of the romance of the period, and the memories of Byron and of Scott may well be invoked before this example of a sister art. No paintings since that day have had an equal breath of life and grasp of imagination. Works of art have been constructed carefully and with precision, and with the patience of accumulated effort, but the main power, the essence of the drama, the seeing of all together at one moment, has apparently deserted modern art in its more ambitious pages. THE ROMANTIC SCHOOL — PART TWO XVI THE ROMANTIC SCHOOL — PART TWO IN THE preceding notice of what I have called the “‘Romantic School,” following a name already given and well chosen, because it implies external manners, I said that one painter of the same date as the great man whom we chose to follow might also be taken as a great examplar, and that is De- camps. But a single example did not seem sufficiently im- portant, so that, naturally, I am led to take up again the work of Decamps and give a few of his paintings which embody the full meaning of this moment in the history of thought. The pictures that I have chosen were painted at the end of the career of the painter, and in a certain way they have little connection with his previous successes. Of these there are very many in most collections throughout Europe and America and their subjects are usually of an incidental nature, representing what the French have called “genre,”’ which name still persists for a line of representation difficult to classify and analyze. But its main point would be that the subject would not be of a dramatic character in the sense of intention of deep feeling. However this may be, Decamps’s 219 220 ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING earlier work, even in the representation of very indifferent subjects, was still under the influence of the spirit of the time. It has, under even some ugliness of work, the sense of a meaning of something discovered by the painter — behind the things represented. And in his landscapes this is oc- casionally very strong. Sometimes he has been helped by his admiration for the Eastern theme, which he saw and painted almost the first of Europeans, but his intense feeling is perhaps still stronger in his expression of what under another hand might be an ordinary subject. In English art we have seen that intensity in many of the paintings of Turner, but they have been usually based on some natural scenery already important enough to fix the admiration of any passerby. But here let us take a landscape of Decamps, which, if I remember right, was called “The Hunter,” because in the foreground we see a man shooting at a water bird, which slides away from the quiet pool in front of us. Puffs of sunlit smoke cross the deep shadows and tell us of the report of the gun, which has disturbed the peace of the solemn land- scape and goes echoing along the rocks that line the water. Rarely has any such representation of sound been thought of or even hinted at, and yet it is but a mere detail, as it would be in a real scene. We merely notice it as we would notice ALEX. GABRIEL DECAMPS THE DEFEAT OF THE CIMBRI AND TEUTONS BY MARIUS (FRAGME FROM THE LITHOGRAPH BY EUGENE LE ROUX THE ROMANTIC SCHOOL 221 the sudden sound were we the traveller on horseback, about to turn the edge of the wood. Like him we pass our- selves through the landscape and take the same path to which every line, every shadow, every movement of light and shade converge. We are ourselves then the traveller who himself is as unimportant as any other passerby. Here nature and art are so consummately blended that one cannot disentangle whether this whole scene is a mere composition or is really a transcript from nature carefully copied with a faithful hand. The less serious paintings of Decamps brought him fame and fortune, and it is to his great honour that he felt tired of a success which confined him, and most especially kept him from the expression of that feeling, that manner of using art, which we here call “Romantic.”” Ata certain moment he gave up painting to be quiet for a time and make more serious studies for what he felt was a new departure toward his real vocation — and then Fate overtook him and closed this peculiar career. Meanwhile, his last works were not cared for by the public or by the critics. It is fair to say also that they were not given out as complete nor were they beautiful in certain qualities of colour which he, himself, would have desired to control. But of late the tide has turned and some of these less complete 222 ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING paintings have obtained the recognition which his admirers predicted. The Louvre has just received as a great gift his painting of the “Defeat of the Cimbri and Teutons by Marius.” Of this painting there are variations and fragmentary episodes, one of which I give. The painting in the Louvre represents too great a surface of country and too many figures to be narrowed down to a small space, such as we have in this page. The mere undertaking of the subject was in itself a mark of the tendency of the moment that we have been considering. A larger view of history, both more sympathetic and more connected with fact, had grown up. Here we have the desire to represent the shock of two civilizations and of great bodies of men, almost nations. In the other bigger painting (that I do not give) we look, from higher up, upon a vast space, the great spread of country which even to this day carries the memory of the repulse of the barbarians by civil- ized organization. In the picture I here grve, a momentary episode descriptive of the barbarian defeat fills the whole space nearer to us, and only above this group of fugitives do we see the main battle or at least the edge and explanation of it. In the foreground a great cart, carrying the women of the chiefs and the ancient patriarchs, slowly creaks along, drawn by oxen, urged to their THE ROMANTIC SCHOOL 223 lumbering utmost by the goading of their drivers. They are crossing a small stream and delayed, so that the first outriders of the Roman conquerors are upon them. A few devoted guards fight with the energy of despair in protection of the tribal family. We can see that it is too late, that the heavy carts cannot escape, and that the Roman triumph will carry these daughters and wives of chiefs to parade in the City processions. Behind these groups of the convoy break the last struggles of the two armies. . Further up on the slope, on the crest of the low hill and through the plain, we see the orderly evolution of the Roman army breaking into such bits as that in the foreground, the enormous hordes that we but guess at. For the picture has the quality of im- plying a larger field than what one sees, and one is reminded of the stories of battle in which the spectator has only seen his corner of the great event. Over all hover the clouds in long bands and in uptossed shapes, throwing light or shadow upon the vast landscape. The Eastern studies of Decamps had made him ac- quainted with larger horizons than those of his own country, had let him see older forms of life, had touched him with the sense of history, so that it was but natural, when he tried to be himself, to resort, as we all have, to the story of the Bible. He chose for a time the episodes 224 ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING from the legend of Samson. Some of these were painted, some are drawings. Of these I give the ““Samson Seated upon tne Rock Watch- ing” the fires that destroy the standing corn in the vineyards and the olives of the Philistines. In this the sense of some strange fact, really witnessed by him, is wonderfully repre- sented by the painter. However great the spread of the land- scape may be, and we feel that it goes farther than the picture, that man on the rock is the meaning of the picture most evidently. Even if we did not know the story we should not be surprised at being told that he is responsible for the fire and the columns of smoke that fill the plain and rise against the sky. His very attitude, the holding of his foot in his hand in easy Oriental pose and in a manner of enjoy- ment, is also to be noted as showing how the painter had entered into the feelings of the hero of his story. In such ways most of these works of Decamps are master- pieces of composition, if by composition we mean the inter- dependence of every part: so that one line forces another, and each division is, as it were, an explanation. It may be this very mastery of what is really composition that annoyed the school teachers of his day, for whom a few given recipes for making pictures were all that they knew and all that they allowed in others. EUGENE DELACROIX HAMLET AND THE GRAVE DIGGER FROM A LITHOGRAPH THE ROMANTIC SCHOOL 225 Another painting of the series of Samson is still more im- pressive in that itis quiet. It is ““Samson in the Mill.”” There is Samson tied to the wheel, the beast of burden, chained, blind, the slave of the very slave who urges him on with the stick. Meanwhile, the sun that he cannot see sends a ray into the building wherein basks one patient, undisturbed rat. This detail tells the story of the constant tread, so regular that it does not disturb the anxious little beast. One would like to know what Decamps, now master of many manners of rendering form and light and shade, would have made of this new career, wherein the higher qualities of thought and feeling would guide his experienced hand. As I said, his career closed as he had begun to prepare again. There is a painting of Decamps wherein, as I have just explained, he has wisely used his special qualities and learning for the rendering of a subject which threatens failure to any but the very chosen. This is “Christ in the Hall of Pilate Insulted by the Guards.” He has managed in the simplest way to make our Lord the one important personage, while around Him move in coarse joy the guards and bystanders and Jewish haters of His teaching. Here, too, apart from the individual attitudes that seem almost observed from nature, the life learning of Decamps, his knowledge of ar- rangement of line and spaces, is the basis of the structure of 226 ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING his picture. It has become so subtle by experience that one neither detects nor cares to detect it, so much more important is the mere look at the head of Christ patiently suffering the indignities of the story. As we began our notice ot the so-called Romantic School with the name of its greatest representative, Delacroix, we might look for a moment at this painting of his, a scene from the poem of “ Faust,’ where Valentine, killed by Faust, or rather by Mephistopheles, curses his sister Margaret. We all know the story of Faust, through play and opera and reading. But in those days, outside of Germany, Faust was known to but a few, and as with many of Delacroix’s subjects the public wondered what this was all about. Hence, in part, a want of appreciation of this painter by his contemporaries which we would find difficult to understand to-day, when general reading and knowledge of foreign literatures have made us acquainted with a great many more possible motives of artis- tic representation in every form of art. It is worth while noting, however, as a valuable fact, that on seeing Delacroix’s illustrations to his own “Faust” the great Goethe said, “Delacroix has surpassed the pictures that I made to myself of the scenes that I wrote myself.””. And here we can under- stand the praise of the inventor and poet, just as it seems strange that the public of the day did not understand the THE ROMANTIC SCHOOL 287 truthfulness of the drama in the picture, apart from any knowledge o1 the book. The story is told in such a way that one can see that it must have happened over and over again. Quiet peace of a city of the Middle Ages such as we yet know, and the night suddenly disturbed by riots, the neigh- bours, orderly citizens, coming out to the rescue, the city guard too late, the affrightened pity of the women, the agony of the poor cause of it all as she rushes out from her house, the motion of angry resentment of the dying man, while far away up the steps of the narrow street the two gallant murderers pass away, sheathing the swords just used. But this Shakespearian intensity and completeness of drama are not obtained at will: it may be long again before in the history of painting the liwing scene, not the builded combina- tion, shall be within the control of the painter. Indeed im- mediately upon the death of this man came up for a long time a multitude of ingenious presentations of historic subjects, carefully arranged and studied, but which are already be- ginning to tire us by their theatrical convention and cold- blooded indifference to what is nature, that is to say, the feelings and passions of men. SACRED CONVERSATIONS — PART ONE XVII SACRED CONVERSATIONS — PART ONE WE must never forget, when we look at a work of art of the past, especially a picture, or, rather, when we think about it, that it is not a free expression in space, but that it is the result of many origins, many minds, many circumstances — that religion, race, climate, still more the personality of the artist, have gone to make it; and yet more again, the fact that rarely — except in the most modern times — is it otherwise than a thing made to order; a thing to suit some special demand of some other personality or personalities. Sometimes this has helped; sometimes it has detracted from the result. A well-known artist, whom I knew intimately, was asked by a friendly patron if his last work (work carefully made to suit the donor’s wishes) were not as fine as any other of the artist’s creation. “No,” said the artist, an honest man, “such and such are better.” “What? Notwithstanding that you had time, and pay, and appreciation?” “No,” again said the artist. “In your work, you know, I was obliged to yield in part to you; that part is yours, and not so good as mine; while the others, I know, are better, because in them I had all my own way, and they are all my own.” 231 232 ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING With the development of modern appliances of civilization, academies have been instituted, salons and exhibitions es- tablished, in which the modern artist has risked paintings of his own choice and invention, unhampered except by the desire of success or gain. Whether these modern results of art are greater than those of the past, on the whole, it is not my purpose to inquire now. But this also must be thought of or felt, when we look at other works — other objects of art — that what we see was made to suit a definite request, constructed as a house is built by an architect, or, if not too homely a comparison, as a shoe is made by a shoemaker. Great things have been thus done: the Sistine Chapel, Raphael’s Stanze of the Vatican, innumerable decorative works, and many pictures which, torn from the places where their being was reasonable, justifiable, and amply explained, now hang in museums and galleries as best they may — next to other contradictory ones — in lights never meant for them, as if — and this the painter feels acutely — several orchestras played at once Mozart, Bach, Beethoven, Wagner, and innumerable other compositions of sound. One of the curious examples of this misplacement are the paintings which once were called, for convenience of classification, ‘‘Sacred Con- versations.” Especially in Italian art do they occur. They are not unlike the imaginary conversations invented long SACRED CONVERSATIONS 233 ago by literary men or poets, in which people who could not have met at the same time are brought together for purposes of offering some thought, or insisting on some impression. It is usually a late development. Plutarch’s example marks a type, and in Plato’s records of the conversations of Socrates we have the idea glorified, with a subtle thread of probability. Some few of these painted “‘conversations” are famous — many of them masterpieces of the art of painting. We may select two or three at random — there are so many welt have each some charm, so that the less important ones rival the very great examples. And this is natural. The very fact of a more artificial plan allows the lesser man to show great qualities without drawing upon the one most rare gift, which no industry, no effort, can supply — that of imaginative invention. Many of these pictures centre about the Madonna — as the Blessed Virgin Mary is called in art — because of the fact that these pictures are all religious; and as the devotion to the. Blessed Mother persists in the Church, in a manner in- volving her Son, the representation of our Lord as a child with his mother takes away from the idea of a historical meaning. Were He represented alone-in conversation it might look like a something added to the story of the Gospel, or a misapprehended rendering of some of its scenes. Indeed, 234 ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING I can remember but one representation of Him and His Apostles conversing. But the Virgin is human. The Infant Child, tended and cared for by her, makes the meaning still more human, more like that of every day. Thus, the Madonna, apart from her personality, and from the wish to honour her, to pray to her Son perpetually for future centuries, through a picture of Him, placed on the wall by the skilful hand of the master painter — the Madonna with the Child typifies the Child and the history of the Child and its per- petuity. Thus, the special devotion to any saintly character — prophet of the Old Testament — apostle of the New — martyrs, doctors, saints of all kinds and degrees — has had, a representation in their being painted. It is a manner of assuming the reality of the Communion of Saints. The fact of their being, as we call it, “dead” or “alive,” or their having been, on earth, contemporaneous or not, is of little consequence in their relation to the existence of the Child Glorious. It is not always mere devotion on the part of the donor of the picture. It may be a record of the personal name, so often taken from Christian tradition: ‘‘ James,” “Francis,” “Benjamin,” ‘‘ John,” “Clara,” “Catherine.” These pictures, then, hang as records on the wall; there may be some story, known or guessed at, which this choice thus memorializes; some story intentionally hidden therein; SACRED CONVERSATIONS 235 some grief —some love —some memory, merely human, perhaps — nay, even some variety of profane pride or desire, which will not, at least, offend the good taste of the looker-on, who is not in the secret. I remember a painting which must contain the personal record of a spiritual life, where the donor kneels meeting the Christ carrying his cross and, as in the garden of the Scripture story, takes himself the place of the forgiven sinner, Mary Magdalen. Thus, as it hung upon the wall, he could live over in his mind the facts and the meaning of his own hidden story. The painting may not merit the name of masterpiece, is little known, and will never attract the homage of the many, but it is alone of its kind in its subject, in the manner of the representation, and in the subtle meaning concealed within it. All the more does it seem fitting that it should have been painted by that charming and personal artist, Moretto of Brescia, whose realism so often covers a manner of feeling which leaves upon the mind of the spectator the impression of a secret not fully told. Here, the more the secret is told, the less we know, unless some good fortune of research within the life of the donor explain the reasons for the subject. 236 ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING He was a functionary, an ecclesiastic of some kind, and he kneels, as we see in the picture, portrait-wise, his hands clasped upon his breast in devout abstraction; with a slight frown of physical tension and special thought within, an attitude which is evidently familiar to his profession. Right by him, a book with open pages tells part of his thought, and the characters, which are turned upward, are much abbre- viated, making the text still more difficult to understand. It breathes a prayer for a pardon, an absolution, a wish not to be confounded.* Standing in the garden near him is a broken base, for a column or a statue; thereupon an inscription, part of which is broken off, whose abbreviation may run in this way: “To the one Mediator between God and man, the man Jesus Christ.”” It may be the simple expression of personal belief, or the usual statement of the Church’s doctrine, or it may be a concealed protest against any other mediation; a question that then troubled the entire Christian world. But there, and at that time, such a statement boldly expressed would have been against the prevalent current of thought. Still, it is forced upon one, that the broken base once held *It is part of the thirty-first Psalm, the thirtieth in the Latin Vulgate, which must have been the Bible known to him, for our date is 1518: ‘‘ Make thy face to shine upon thy servant: save me for thy mercies’ sake. Let me not be ashamed, O Lord; for I have called upon thee.” WH 3 LT HO VEDI MO Ges TES Vv “ , | , 0 MORETTO DA BRESCIA (BONVICINO) JESUS CHRIST AND A DEVOTEE RAPHAEL THE MADONNA “OF THE F THE PRADO SACRED CONVERSATIONS 237 the image of what our Devotee once cared for and now gave up. The subject of the picture is, however, far removed from these personalities. It is the Christ, resurrected, as indi- ated by His being partly naked and draped in His winding- sheet, and He walks bearing the great cross, which one feels to be a heavy burden, this time all by Himself, With His own sorrow and suffering, and gazes up into the circle of the hea'vens of His Father, around which a few adoring angels indicate the Presence. This representation is one of the few cases in which the smaller man, carried by an idea, is the equal of the greater. The expression of loneliness, and the weariness of passage through this world, is given in the simplest form of realism. Far back, in the Italian landscape of ancient simplicity, is seen the Good Shepherd bringing back His straying sheep; evidently again a part of the story of the donor. A decipherable example we have here, in the “Imaginary Conversation,” called the “‘ Virgin of the Fish,” by Raphael. The Madonna is enthroned in a large antique chair upon a platform. An old man, St. Jerome, known by his attendant lion, holds a book in which he has been reading — his fingers mark the page — and watches earnestly the little Child Christ, who extends His hand and looks intently at a tall, bending 238 ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING angel leading to the Child a suppliant, a long-haired youth. The boy, for he is hardly more, carries hanging from his other hand, a fish — whence the name of the picture. The boy, eminently characteristic of Raphael’s choice and taste, is the Tobit of the Apocrypha. The fish is the fish in his leg- endary story, whose gall cured the blinded Tobias. The angel is the Archangel Raphael, the “‘Medicine of God,” who had guided the boy Tobit to this healing of his father. The entrance of this book of the Apocrypha into the Canon of the Scripture was in dispute when Raphael painted the picture. The Council of Trent, thirty years later, was to settle the question for the Catholic Church. All doubts were then floating about, and of these doubts, this was one. It may not have been exactly in the mind of the donor of the picture, but yet it would be but natural. Let us see the record: St. Jerome adopted the authenticity, or rather, the canonical rights of the Book of Tobit. This is, perhaps, be- fore the year 400, the fourth century. Before that there was doubt, or mere acceptance as a morality; though Polycarp in the second and Cyprian in the third century looked upon the record as inspired. After Jerome, the Councils of Hippo and Carthage, in the fourth and fifth centuries, consecrated the Book of Tobit — although the Church adjourned its solemn decision for nearly a thousand years. The West, SACRED CONVERSATIONS 239 however, had consented to it long before. Thus, in our pict- ure, St. Jerome watches steadily, with comprehensive eye, the hand of Christ accepting the homage of the angel, with his kneeling client. And the gaze of the Child Christ meets the adoring supplication of the archangel. The Virgin sits, holding up the Child with familiar care, and her eyes rest kindly on the hopeful face of the youthful Tobit. There is here, therefore, a real “‘conversation,”’ if one may say so: such a one as situations bring by mere actions without the use of words. In too many of such paintings there is no such unity. It may be that this unexplained meaning has upheld the fame of the picture, besides the grace of the figures, the solemnity of the arrangement of what one might call the > “function,” and that balance of line and mass which is to painting what orchestration is to music And now, who were the donors? And why did they choose this meaning, and suggest these personages for this picture, now stored far away in the gallery of the Prado, at Madrid? They were the Dominican monks of the Church of San Do- menico Maggiore, at Naples, whose chapel held a crucifix which was said to have once looked down on the great Dominican, St. Thomas Aquinas. A tradition of help had been formed, according to which, prayers for recovery of sight, or similar help, were still offered up by sufferers. As in the Bible story 240 ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING God’s power had restored sight to old Tobias, why might not their prayers help obtain favour? Thus, naturally, the picture would hang, a perpetual record of Divine Help to the unhappy; an inspirer of hope and faith and consolation — for with hope and faith goes submission to the Divine will. There is a little picture in one of the galleries of Florence, painted by one of the best of painters, John Bellini, the elderly leader, respected by all about him: from Albert Diirer, who earned his good-will, to his great successors who, under the names of Titian, Giorgione, and Tintoret, have somewhat drowned his light in their accompanying lustre. He painted to a great age, and his last painting is as steady and complete as if the hand were not that of a man of eighty and more. John Bellini has left a little picture of a “Sacred Conversa- tion,”’ now in the Uffizi of Florence. There it is known as a “Sacred Allegory,”’ a title which will do as well for it as the one I have chosen, because it is full of allusions and meanings not clear, but suggested. But whatever the mystic meanings may be, it is eminently a conversation. Replace the per- sonages derived from sacred story by some set of courtiers and fine ladies, people of distinction — some princes, some cardinals or bishops, or ladies and gentlemen living the higher, esthetic and intellectual life, and you would have a fair com- pany, in a most lovely garden retreat, far from the vulgar GIOVANNI BELLINI A SACRED ALLEGORY UFFIZI GALLERY PHOTOGRAPH BY ANDERSON SACRED CONVERSATIONS 241 world, enjoying the beauty of nature and the pleasures of high-bred social intercourse. Is the little painting a masterpiece? Perhaps not such a one as Bellini’s more triumphant and more ample work. It is small, some of its details are a little dry, and it may naturally have been ascribed for a long time to a smaller man, a lovely painter also — Basditi, a Greek, who lived and died in Venice. I am tempted to bring it up before us. It is unique and alone. It is an imaginary, rather than a “sacred” conversation, except for its actors. But it is treated as no one before or after has rendered such an imaginary subject: as if it had really occurred; in a place as clearly defined as if looked at for portraiture, and as if its heroes were in the perpetual habit of such meetings. It is a scene in the Isle of the Blest, in a paradise continued from the past; a souvenir of the Elysian Fields, a country where the heroes live with the Promised Child, in a reminiscence of accustomed earthly memories; “‘ipse videbitur tllis.’’ Rocks and mountains, such as Bellini and the other Venetian painters liked, closethe sight enough to tell us that we are shut out from an every-day world. But far-away castles and buildings imply an ordinary life, even if blessed and chosen and full of meaning. A lake edges all this distance, and where it is not overhung with steep cliffs, distant figures in Oriental dress walk along the 242 ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING quiet shore telling some story, nearer, perhaps, to the Nile than to the Italian lakes. As these cliffs come around toward us we see a hermit in a cave, clad in the ordinary peasant dress, who meditates, leaning on his stone table. Outside, near him, on the narrowest shore, rest or feed his sheep and his goats. Around the wall of rock, in the shadow, the strange creature, little known to us, but familiar to the monks of Egypt, a centaur, waits in the shade for some one, perhaps St. Anthony of the Desert, who comes carefully down a set of steps guarded by a wooden rail. This, then, is an allegory, an image of the Thebais, the residence of the hermit monks of Egypt; it could not be more different, and it could not be better typified in this language of another geography. Rest, seclusion, and the habit of extraordinary visions are told of in this dream of landscape. On our own Island just before us, separated by a narrow space of water from this record of the hermit life, is an enclosed space, framed by a balustrade of marble; its pavement is of coloured and precious stones. This marks a place of special rest, an enclosed garden — hortus inclusus — sacred to the purpose. At one end and corner of it, in a great seat of honour crowned by an allegorical canopy, a cornucopia partly filled with leafage and fruit, upon high steps sits a figure which we know to be the Madonna, though she has no halo, any more than the other saintly SACRED CONVERSATIONS 243 or divine characters. She watches with folded hands the little Child, whom also we know must be the infant Christ, who has left her, and at the bottom of the steps talks in play with another child, half-draped, like a little acolyte or choir boy — perhaps the little St. John, his companion in so many pictures. One other child has climbed the great basin, where is planted a little tree. He shakes it so that the golden fruit has fallen for the other children to gather. A lovely saint, with long golden locks and crown, half kneels in the corner of the enclosure by the Madonna. Her eyes are dropped, her mouth is half open in prayer, and she joins also in prayer the tips of her fingers. She is dressed in a flowing mantle. Contrariwise, in narrow, folded mantle and strict gown, some other female saint stands timidly against the balcony; she, too, folds her hands in prayer; so does another saint, at the farther right hand. He must be one; he would not otherwise be there. He is almost naked, bearded and browned by the suns of the desert where he has lived. And his companion would also pray with joined hands, but he is St. Sebastian, and his hands are folded and bound behind his back, according to his pictures on earth. He is white as to his skin, and one sees that his clothes have been taken away from him, and, as in pictures of his martyrdom, the mortal arrow stands fixed in his chest also. Both the saints 244 ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING are praying, whatever their action; prayer does not consist of folded hands. Outside the balustrade, leaning against il, in the more open garden of the Island, stands St. Peter looking down on the Child Christ and praying. He is not very far from the open gate, and perhaps he guards it. Near him St. Paul, one hand tightened on his writings, as it slides along the edge of the railing, turns away and holds up his emblematic sword. He, too, is a guardian, and his face in profile is fixed, looking at a doubtful personage who moves out of the picture, and is turbaned and clad like Jew or infidel. SACRED CONVERSATIONS — PART TWO XVIII SACRED CONVERSATIONS — PART TWO Preruapes the most celebrated of the ideal arrangements that we know under the name of Sacred Conversations is Ra- phael’s Saint Cecilia. With the “‘Madonnas”’ whom he has represented in the meaning of the Great Lady Patroness surrounded by a court of worshippers, or beings influenced by hen the Madonna and the Child are so immeasurably impor- tant that we do not at once classify these great paintings as belonging to the simpler idea of a meeting of people outside of Time. Saint Cecilia is the principal personage in the picture that bears her name, not only because she stands in the centre of a group of saints, and because every line of their move- ments helps to make her more important, but also because the subject of the artist is listening to divine harmonies. As far as the artist has been able to effect it, the other saints unite with the musical saint in an absorption which has given to the picture its official title of “Ecstasy.” As we have explained before, the problem given to the painter by the pious donor was that of presenting together a certain number of saints, or holy people, for whom the donor 247 248 ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING had some veneration, or to whom he owed some tribute of respect on account of sharing names with these blessed ones, who were patrons in Heaven. The problem has always been a@ difficult, almost an impossible, one, but long custom made the artists of those days familiar beforehand with their probable task; and this work of deep sentiment, looking as if it were the voluntary expression of a beautiful thought, was nothing but a business task, such as to-day is given all the time to firms of ‘Art Decorators.’ It marks the degradation of to-day. Similar facts, upon which I have insisted before, are necessary to clear our minds from the mistaken and barbarous modern commercial view of the separation of the arts of painting, one of which divisions is Church decoration. We know, more or less, of the manner of the ordering of the picture. It is a form of memorial. Cardinal Pucci asked Raphael to paint this picture as a family memorial, and also as a work of personal devotion to Saint Cecilia. The story goes that Pucci’s voice was so bad as to be annoying when he celebrated Mass, and, as a person of im- portance, this was of consequence. He implored the inter- cession of Saint Cecilia; in six months of lessons from a choir- master the defects were cured. This is an anecdote of the RAPHAEL ST. CECILIA (ECSTASY) BOLOGNA GALLERY PHOTOGRAPH BY ANDERSON ANTONIO ALLEGRI DA CORREGGIO MADONNA AND ST. JEROME PARMA GALLERY SACRED CONVERSATIONS 249 time, valuable as helping us to the origin of the picture, but not of necessity authentic. What is certain is that the chapel near Bologna had been built by a member of his family to carry out a command received in a dream by a relative, a noble Bolognese lady, Eleanor Duglioli, who died in the odour of sanctity, and was afterward beatified. This chapel was to be consecrated to Saint Cecilia, and hence the natural family memorial. Why Paul and the Magdalen and Saint John and Saint Augustine are there I do not at this moment know, but they were probably chosen for the reasons given above for the choice of patron saints. And here they become of all impor- tance as increasing the appearance of listening, and thereby carrying out the meaning of the picture. A little detail is worth recording. In the usual habit of the day other artists were employed to help, and here we know that the famous John of Udine painted the organ in the hands of the saint and the other musical instruments which are at the feet of Saint Cecilia. And there is a foolish, romantic episode connected with the success of the picture: namely, that it caused that charm- ing painter Francia to die of grief because of his inferiority to Raphael. But he may have felt the weight of sixty-seven SACRED CONVERSATIONS 251 will be able to understand the value of the picture better than through any description of mine. Still it may be well to quote the words of Vasari, the con- temporary biographer of the Italian painters, whose simplicity of expression has a charm of its own: “The subject of the work is Santa Cecilia listening in ecstasy to the songs of the angelic choir as their voices reach her ear from Heaven itself. Wholly given up to the celestial harmonies, the counte- nance of the saint affords full expression of her abstraction from the things of this earth, and wears that rapt expression which is wont to be seen on the faces of those who are in ecstasy. Musical instruments lie scattered around her. (These she has abandoned from their failure in contrast with angels’ singing.) “In the figure of Saint Paul listening, the power and thought of the master are equally obvious: the saint is resting his left arm on his naked sword (the sword of Faith): the head is supported by the right hand (which caresses his beard, as is so natural in abstracted thought), and the pride of his aspect has charmed him to a dignified gravity. Saint Mary Magdalen also forms part of the group and holds a vase (the vase of ointment), made of a very fine marble, in her hand.” Vasari praises the attitude of the figures as “singularly 252 ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING graceful,” but it is more than that; it serves to throw the entire meaning into the movement of the centre figure, and in that way is a piece of intelligent subordination, where a less self-centred artist might have looked for more dramatic importance. The heads of Saint Augustine and Saint John the Evange- list, which are both in this picture, are of equal excellence, and Vasari ends his account, of which I only give part, by quoting, among the tributes commendatory of the artist, some verses composed in his honour, the meaning of which out of the Latin is this: “Let others paint things one by one and bring back the faces by colours: Raphael has given us not only the face but the soul of Cecilia.” The painting by Correggio known as ‘“‘The Madonna and Saint Jerome,” is a contrast, in every sense but that of per- fection, of accomplishment in the art of painting. It has even more in that art, for a great part of its charm depends on the technical development of light and shade, of what is called chiaroscuro in the books — that is, the placing of the subject within an atmosphere which is coloured in a paint- ing, or merely black and white and gray, as in our photograph of the coloured original. It is, therefore, later, and already in many ways indicates that the end is near for the men of the Italian schools. A slight something of affectation, if SACRED CONVERSATIONS 253 one did not hesitate at using so gross a word, is felt in some of the details of movement, but it is an affectation all based on nature, on the ways of people. And perhaps in this case it inclines the painting more toward a manner of home life, an abandonment of any relation to the outside world, which always affects us somewhat. It.is most decidedly a sacred conversation — a family incident in, the imaginary poem of the Mother and Child’s life with sweet and loving saints; a glorified angelic translation of home affections and home incidents and the importance of the baby. Every one has seen the same thing — but not perhaps so beautifully composed with such flowery draperies, and with such a. landscape of fable behind the intimacy of the nursery. It may be, and it is, of course, the imaginary Saint Catherine who presses her cheek against the baby’s leg, while he passes his fingers through her hair. It is Saint Jerome, half nude from his hermitage, who smiles benignantly at the baby’s touching of the book: certainly that great book translated by him, the tremendous Bible which we know as the Vul- gate. We know that it is Saint Jerome because, among other reasons, his domestic lion has accompanied him, as if accus- tomed to such friendly visits. But what is most evident is the kindliness and sweetness of liking for the Child shown by the aged and famous theologian. The angel turning the 254 ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING leaves of the book is an older cousin and enjoys the astonished pleasure of the Child. We know that all this is saintly be- cause it is so beautiful, so far away from all evil, so much within the definition of art ascribed to Saint Thomas Aquinas, “the land of innocence.” Let us go back to an earlier date, not so far back in years as in spirit and in the development of the special art of paint- ing. There is.a delightful painting by Mantegna, owned by Mrs. John Lowell Gardner, of Boston, which offers a very different type of our subject from the lordly representations of Raphael and his circle It is more like the Conversation by Bellini given before, but it has that strange severity that never leaves the ancient painter, which persists in this pastoral scene, in this dream of sweetness and of light. By the riverside in the foreground, filling almost the entire space, sit a group of women and two naked children, pert haps fresh from the bath, the Infant Christ, and the infant John. They are like a family party, or a number of friends well accustomed to each other’s company. Here, in what might have been a conventional and frigid arrangement, the painter’s sense of life has combined the separate charac- ters, probably chosen for devotional reasons (as I keep ex- plaining), in what seems an unpremeditated arrangement; SACRED CONVERSATIONS 255 which all the more looks as if it must have happened — as having been taken from an actual sight. The Madonna sits in the middle, facing us, and in an abstracted way looks toward the little Christ, who stands between her knees, His bare feet protected by her cloak, upon which He stands. His foot rests upon her and forms the start of all the many folds which run through her drapery, and determines the arrangement of the draperies of all the figures to the right of the Virgin. However natural the picture may be, it is a learned com- position, and a beautiful study of the arrangement of folds, expressing the movement of the body and the character of the individual. The Madonna’s dull blue mantle, lined with black, frames her head in dark and makes it the most impor- tant. All the folds of her dress are large and soft, benign and gentle. Saint Anne, her mother, next to her, draws up her hand to close her cloak upon her bosom in a manner sug- gestive of feeling and also of the protection necessary to age. Her gray cloak covers her head and falls in many folds of a certain severity, contrasting with the more gentle fall of the Madonna’s dress and with the simpler gown of Mary Mag- dalen alongside, whose frock is merely twice girdled and is all of one colour. Her drapery shows her form in a sim- plicity of attitude which the face above carries out. She, and 256 ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING all but one of the women of the group, look with varieties of meaning and expression at the Divine Child. The Mag- dalen’s hand and arm rest in her lap, abstracted, and she holds a little pyx of red gold, which is her symbol. Near her, on the edge of the picture, sits some other saint in much more worldly dress, like that of the period, with hair in curls down her cheeks and in net behind, whose face expresses a quiet interest in the Child and Mother, but also appears to talk a little to the saint in the absolute foreground. This one is reading, perhaps aloud, for her lips are open and a slight movement of the face seems to indicate something more than the silent reading to one’s self. In the care- ful folds, dear to Mantegna, her dress, in many colours and complicated fashion, spreads out upon the rock on which she sits. Here in these folds, and in the whole figure of the saint, one sees that fondness for form and its strong statement, which is the mark of Mantegna. Indeed, from the Saint Anne a statue could well be built. And as for the landscape which spreads behind the figures, it is made out, in its flat spaces and rising ground, as if to lead the spectator to a wish to wander into a land so full of stories. For here, not far off, Saint Christopher, car- rying the Infant Christ on his shoulders, crosses the ford, indicated by piles rising from the water, and distant ANDREA MANTEGNA MADONNA AND SAINTS COLLECTION OF MRS. J. L. GARDNER, BOSTON COPYRIGHT, 1903, BY T. E. MARR FRANCISCO HERRERA ST. BASIL DICTATING HIS DOCTRINE THE LOUVRE PHOTOGRAPH BY BRAUN & CO. SACRED CONVERSATIONS 257 figures wait near the continuance of a peaceful road on a farther bank. There gallops Saint George in full armour, on the heavy horse that knights rode in action. He is about to strike with his lance the dragon that crouches behind rocks upon a little green sward, where lie the skulls and bones of his victims. Farther on runs the road, up the hill and round the en- closure, a peaceful orchard fronting still higher ground, also planted with trees, wherein is laid out the scheme of a great garden in the Italian way: and further back, crowning the hill, a mass of buildings, with arcades and pyramids and an aque- duct and a classical temple, closed in by the foot of a fortress and out-flanking towers. On either side of the river rise high and strange rocks. On our side the rocks rise suddenly, closing in the sense of garden that belongs to the name of the Madonna and to the idea of a Sacred Conversation. Up in a great rock, that towers in the top of the painting, is a cavern of two openings. In one, Saint Jerome, long- bearded, kneels before a tall crucifix, and bares his bosom to strike it with the stone of repentance. In the other cavern his friend, the lion, watches him attentively. Higher up again, on a platform near another opening of the cavern, Saint Francis stands in excited attitude before the 258 ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING winged crucifix of legend, the vision from which he obtained the wounds of his Saviour. Some way nearer, a monk, with his back turned, waits patiently, without seeing the miraculous scene. One is reminded of that other lovely Sacred Conversation, attrib- uted to Bellini, where outside the closed garden occur far- away scenes of the saints of the desert, emphasizing the per- petuity of the Church, the long continuance of the saints in Heaven with us of to-day, and the idea that all these acci- dents of Time and Place are but the events of a moment in the scale of Eternity. As our eyes come down again to the nearer figures we feel all the more the presence of the two saints, the one seated, the other kneeling on the right of the picture. The one nearer to the Madonna looks pensively at the Infant Christ, having interrupted her reading and waking up from her dream. In front of her moves the little infant Baptist, as if he had just come from his bath. He offers some flowers to the other Child, resting his hand on the Virgin’s knee. He does this with a gentle action of supplication and an upward look of the eyes, which the Divine Child meets in the manner of a young lord accustomed to worship. Quite to the right, the kneeling saint, in a costume very much of the period, kneels and looks down, scarcely seeing ANDREA DEL SARTO THE DISPUTE ON THE TRINITY PITTE GALLERY PHOTOGRAPIL BY BRAUN & CO, SACRED CONVERSATIONS 259 the Infant Saviour to whom she prays, however, with hands pressed one against the other. Those hands and arms close the arrangement on that side of the picture, and we feel that there is nothing more even outside of the frame. The examples that we could retain for this classification called Sacred Conversations are many or numerous, accord- ing to the strictness of the term. It was habitual in more old-fashioned days to give this title to many of the pictures which were really a representation of the Madonna and Child and certain saints accompanying the principal figure in some other way: usually in rather a formal manner or way of function. Many of these are of extraordinary beauty. There is much temptation to place some of them upon our list, but if we look strictly to representations of the imaginary meetings and conversations between these holy ideals of persons, we find that we are narrowed down. I therefore take again here what is really meant to be a conversation between holy persons, an imaginary one and a choice very far from the beautiful quiet that pervades our pictures already chosen. On the contrary, the painting that goes by the name of Saint Basil Dictating His Doctrine is a fierce and disagreeable representation of ecclesiastical authority and the harshness of reasoning. All the more, perhaps, that it makes one 260 ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING feel the essential difference of religious feeling which fills the paintings we have just looked at. Theology is, as a well-known theologian once explained to me, like botany, compared to the living flower. And botanists and scientific men are usually decided in their views. Here, then, sit Saint Basil and various saints of other times. They are of various types, but none of any other form than that of decision. No face indicates the possible softness of adove. Clad in black and white, in his lap a big book on which he is about to write, he holds his hand uplifted in quiet abey- ance. He frowns with eyes that look not, absorbed in medi- tation, listening to the Divine Voice of the spirit above him. Less important personages than Dominic, Bernard, Peter, the Dominican, Bishop Diego and others, wait for him to speak. These greater characters named wait impatiently about, ready to contradict or question. Something hard and imposing is forced upon us by the successive outline of these heads against the distant sweetness of the sky. The mitres and the cowls accentuate still more this impression, evidently meant by the artist, who himself was a type of a peculiar severity amounting almost to ferocity. He was the first master of the great Velasquez, and had other pupils, but none who could long endure the ways of his madness, caused, it is said, by some treachery on the part of one of his sons. PETER PAUL RUBENS THE INFANT JESUS WITH ST. JOHN AND ANGELS BERLIN MUSEUM PHOTOGRAPH BY BRAUN & CO. SACRED CONVERSATIONS 261 Whatever may be true of the legends concerning Herrera, he has embodied here an ideal of the popular traditions of the “Inquisition’”’— an ideal, not a protest, nor a copy of fact. So that one can feel how such a painting might have dignified the great walls of some Spanish cathedral. We have in the “‘Dispute” (a discussion on the Trinity), by Andrea del Sarto, a picture whose theory of subject would resemble the one we have just looked at. It is an imaginary conversation between holy people of various dates. In that way it may be taken as a very complete type of the highest bloom of the art of the Renaissance, embodying all its aims and all its qualities; a very perfect work by a painter so excellent as to have been called the “faultless painter.”’ With him the feeling for the newer problems, which when solved were handed down to us, is all the more splendidly represented that this great artist is one of the least dramatic of painters, and rarely moves the spectator to more than an admiration that cannot be refused. Here one feels the “‘art for art’s sake” in its most successful form. Colour, form, movement, line, the relief of light and dark, are all balanced in one great harmony of perfection. Let us see who these personages are. There is the Bishop, Saint Augustine, his arm extended, arguing, and apparently closing the line of his argument, so correct and so just is the 262 ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING choice of the movement of his hand. Peter Martyr, the Dominican, is the personage addressed by the Bishop. His face, expressive of intellectual acuteness, follows the Bishop’s argument, and his hand keeps the big book open, evidently at the place then in question. Next to him Saint Francis, who takes the subject in another way, absorbing it, as it were, places his hand on his heart as one might expect the gesture of the saint of sweetness and of light. Saint Lawrence, behind them, listens with a neutral expression, seeming per- haps to watch what the two monks may think. He holds the crucifix, as if Christ and Him crucified was all that he thought of. Mary Magdalen kneels in the foreground, lis- tening also (a most feminine contrast to the expressions of the men) — with mouth slightly open and that motion of the forehead and eyebrow that belongs to the half astonished feeling that one understands the argument. Of Saint Se- bastian, who kneels opposite, we know nothing except that he is very beautiful, and that his nude back represents what the painter of that time could do, now that he knew anatomy, and light and shade, and colouring, and had conquered for all time the representation of human form. Let us adnure the beautiful rhythm of all the hands, each one of a separate character and beautifully drawn, and yet belonging to the new movement of that day, the pursuit of typical beauty. SACRED CONVERSATIONS 263 The hands of the Magdalen are also a wonder in their dif- ferent expression, in the unconsciousness with which they hold the vase of ointment. There can be nothing but words of praise for this bloom of the Renaissance, and in describing it I have been obliged to leave out the greater parts of its technical merits. And yet, perhaps, of the several examples of our subject, this Is in reality the most indifferent, the one in which there is Teast feeling, as if we saw the art so much that the man some- what disappeared. And this is not against the impression that this remarkable man has left in the world of art. I feel inclined to close our collection with a subject painted by Rubens: the Infant Christ, Saint John and angels, which may be described as a conversation without words. 'To say much about it svould perhaps be out of place. It is a beau- tiful Flemish picture, and in so far contrasts in its national characteristics with the-Spaniard and the Italians at whom -we have been looking. SACRED CONVERSATIONS — PART THREE XIX SACRED CONVERSATIONS — PART THREE > WE HAVE used the title of “Sacred Conversations,” an old and far-away one, though still official, because it gave us the excuse and motive for bringing certain paintings to our eyes, which represent sweet beings in association with the Virgin and Child, usually. This sweetness of womanhood we know belongs essentially to the representations of Christian art, though certain Orien- tal works indicate the necessary exception to all rules. The history of our art of painting for the last five hundred years is marked at first by such recurrences. Then there are fewer. Then all such attempts pass away, and however charming and amusing the eighteenth century may have made its sacred stories, as with that last Venetian, Tiepolo, the deep feeling of something sacred in woman is gone. Perhaps in Spain one may discover it yet, even in Goya, because of the Catholicity of Spain. But the eighteenth century has closed that feeling for the whole world apparently. Something like this is noted elsewhere. It comes forever upon us as we look once more upon these beautiful motives, which verhaps at bottom are mere results of orders for some 267 SACRED CONVERSATIONS 269 enjoyment of change even in religious expression. It may be, indeed it is certain, that Fra Angelico, for instance, carries more religious sentiment into his work than such or such a Spaniard of much later times — or, taking the coolest of all the poetic painters — of Poussin in his religious subjects. But Fra Angelico is a great painter who helps on the tech- nique of art, just as have the others; never in opposition or in retreat into the past (that is a modern disease, brought on by railroads and newspapers and cheap outside criti- cism upon cheaper people — and especially commercial chances). To continue: Fra Angelico said that every one must find a few saints and first-class artists in the same persons. Men died and that is all there is to it in art. Certain people have lived and expressed their feelings in the modes of the time, or in the changing of these modes, and when they are gone their expression is gone. This personal note we should expect in such subjects as those which give our title. We have restricted the title to the conventional limits. Of course farther back Van Eyck gives us what are really Sacred Con- versations, 2. e., occasions where saints are gathered together, usually under the patronage of the Infant Christ who is with his Mother. They read or they pray or they look away. But in the subjects we now select, the progress of rendering 268 ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING religious picture which shall have certain types or personages represented. And this beautiful notion of some familiar action is only possible when the New Art of the Later Renais- sance allows it. We can’t expect it even with the men of the Earlier Renaissance. It has to begin with the sculptors because they know the human figure. They can give to sen- timent expression. But the painters are soon there and beyond, of course, and let us not forget it for a moment, all this is commercial. Pictures of Madonnas and saints, female mostly, must be put up in churches and private chapels and must be pleasant to look at and as far as was possible to the art of the moment, for it is only slowly that things can come to the point where Vasari, the writer (and painter, of course), can speak of Massaccio as “giving the world as it looks.” That is a form of definition of the new art, the art of painting on which we live mostly to-day, trying all the time to widen the limits of our definition. But even many of us to-day like conventional representa- tions. Indeed it is a commonplace feeling; such represen- tations give us an impossibility which looks like religion — their formality seems like church ceremonies, their emptiness recalls the respectable forlornness of sermons —of the “Stickit Minister” even. This is natural, as fortunately is also the reverse, and there have been happy moments of LORENZO LOTTO MARRIAGE OF ST. CATHERINE BERGAMO GALLERY PHOTOGRAPH BY ALINARI SACRED CONVERSATIONS 269 enjoyment of change even in religious expression. It may be, indeed it is certain, that Fra Angelico, for instance, carries more religious sentiment into his work than such or such a Spaniard of much later times — or, taking the coolest of all the poetic painters — of Poussin in his religious subjects. But Fra Angelico is a great painter who helps on the tech- nique of art, just as have the others; never in opposition or in retreat into the past (that is a modern disease, brought on by railroads and newspapers and cheap outside criti- cism upon cheaper people — and especially commercial chances). To continue: Fra Angelico said that every one must find a few saints and first-class artists in the same persons. Men died and that is all there is to it in art. Certain people have lived and expressed their feelings in the modes of the time, or in the changing of these modes, and when they are gone their expression is gone. This personal note we should expect in such subjects as those which give our title. We have restricted the title to the conventional limits. Of course farther back Van Eyck gives us what are really Sacred Con- versations, 1. e., occasions where saints are gathered together, usually under the patronage of the Infant Christ who is with his Mother. They read or they pray or they look away. But in the subjects we now select, the progress of rendering 270 ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING “‘whatever exists — and the greater and greater avoidance of setness brings the modern look; the look of the artists having really wished to make you believe that it happened so. And the ‘“‘new art” brings in the new knowledges and their use, perspective and anatomical correctness and the use of light and shadow —the connection of all with all in the envelope of the frame, so that this that we see is not a piece of all that we see outside; it is of it in one way but is a little world of its own — what we now call a picture. And the painters now in this new Italian art (destined to permeate all) are proud of meeting difficulties — difficulties of drawing, such as the balance of pose, such as foreshortening. The latter becomes even in some places such a mania that we have the record of one painter who abandoned his work because of the perpetual appeal for more foreshortening. Now arms seem stretched toward us, or legs the same, and we feel ourselves the fatigue of a great deal of this. The difficulties having been surmounted centuries ago, we are no longer interested in them as charming novelties. They have been conquered with difficulty — these difficulties. The very first of the choice of our artists will be one who passed from stiffness to a final ease that is unsurpassed — though his last work is little known to the vast public, being out of the travelled path. TONAVISANVH A HdVYDOLOHd VNNGIA ‘NWAGSAIN IVIYGd NI TADNY NV ANY SLINIVS OME “(TIHO ‘VNNOCVIN OLLOT OZNAUYOT SACRED CONVERSATIONS 271 We have noticed elsewhere this very special sadness which marks certain portraits by him, in which he has put most intimately the sympathy with his sisters, necessary to imply such an expression. In certain cases we know that the per- sons represented wished to have the record of their state of mind; in others we presume it, because of this curious fact in certain other cases. All this means of course extreme sensitiveness, so that we shall not be surprised at the painter’s delight in the joy and beauty of his other visions. Take therefore this: painting, “‘The Marriage of St. Catherine,” which is in the gallery of Bergamo. We have seen elsewhere how this imaginary subject of vision and dream, with its mystic meaning quite Oriental, as its origin must have been, has been used as a record of devotion; sometimes no doubt with a meaning belonging to the donor but not expressed, some- times on the contrary, as in this one, distinctly indicated. I refer to its being a special choice; perhaps the donor wished the name of a Catherine known to him made of record in a thing of beauty and sentiment. Perhaps it is a mere record of devotion to the Child and the Mother. There could be no greater elegance in this half artificial pose of the three main persons in the action. A curious consciousness accompanies their delightful movements. I know of no such refined com- 272 ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING bination unless perhaps in some very few of the artists of Northern Italy — Milanese perhaps, or perhaps, Ferrari. There is so much personal sensation in the art of these more northern men that there may well be a general analogy. They seem to yield to their emotion, not to affront it deliber- ately, and have a reticence in their joy, which divides them from the rather too great certainty of the artists of the more central Italy. One might like to describe the painting we have here: the grace of the women and the elegance even of their dress which is unusual perhaps portrayed as the face of at least St. Catherine. That must be the secret of Nicolo di Bonghi who must have ordered it painted in 1523. His stupid por- trait is on the left and perhaps we have done well to omit it. The upper part also of the picture is cut away; because also it once contained a beautiful landscape which some plunderer of a foreign army cut out and carried away long ago. Inconvenient it must have proved, and _ perhaps therefore lost forever. But the picture loses little if any- thing by our cutting away. A similar elegance belongs to our other painting by Lotto from the gallery of Vienna. But it is less important because of there being no special meaning such as the intention of the marriage. All the more, however, does it belong to our TONAVLISHNVH A HdVUNOLOHA NOGNOT ‘XUATIVD IVNOLLYN ANTYAMLVYO (LS (NV NHOL£ LS ‘(THO ‘VNNOCVIN (ONVIZIE ITTHOUA) NVI ANTON VAN DYCK MADONNA, CHILD AND ST. CATHERINE COLLECTION OF A. A. SPRAGUE, CHICAGO SACRED CONVERSATIONS 273 type of the Sacra Conversazione. The movement and every detail of the angels who crown the Madonna are enough to distinguish a group not otherwise so different from others. This is again St. Catherine reading, perhaps again a portrait; and St. James kneels beside her. Perhaps she turns toward him expressly, but in so far the gentle blessing of the Child passes unnoticed over her to the Apostle; an inconvenience of introducing portraits by order. We can see the connection of such subjects by calling up next the beautiful Titian of the National Gallery. As in the last there is open landscape far off, so as to make our subject more intimate by contrast, for we are so near to the St. Catherine that her dress touches the frame. That frame or its four-square limits absolutely, with the certainty of Titian, the extent of the picture. We could not go further, our eye could not go farther to right or left. We need not explain the picture. It is all there before us, but there is no more. Wonderful as is its success, we feel that it must be so, that all has been prepared. And if we could at once compare another painting, let us say of some Venetian, profane even, not quite Titian, Palma let us sup- pose — not sacred — even profane of some group seated in a landscape we should be comforted by a certain resemblance: That of the formula of arrangement. Shall we follow St. 274 ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING Catherine still further? She is an ideal in such subjects. Were there no special meaning, she gives the feminine rdles the mystic meaning with no assistance or with a direct rendering as we saw in that first painting of Lotto’s when the little Child places the symbolic marriage ring on the adoring Catherine. Here is a Flemish painting, which never would have been painted had not Titian and others been at work before Van Dyck or his master Rubens went to Italy to study and also, most certainly, to work and produce and suit customers who wisely thought well of them. Here, though all recalls, yet nothing exactly imitates. And then, throughout, the Flemish feeling and a less detached view strike chords very different. Certainly the St. Catherine ‘placing’ and expression — her being only partly seen — and her absolute absorption — the other, the Mother’s rapt contemplation, make a more dis- tinetly religious frame of mind. And yet this connects, as we know and see, with Italy so much visited and studied. And even more, when one has seen Van Dyck’s sketches and notes from Titian and his accompanying artists — notes of all kinds, written, copied, abridged, almost concealed — it is difficult to be sure that somehow, somewhere, a memory has not been lodged. ANNUNCIATIONS — PART ONE XX ANNUNCIATIONS — PART ONE IN THE representation of stories or incidents taken from the history of the Church there is a double current of intention worth our thinking of. There is an encouragement of such representation by the Church as a form of teaching, as a manner of reminder, especially in days when the picture was a form of book. There is also the sympathetic, spiritual choice of those who ordered such things from the painters because a special subject appealed directly to some previous desire or reminiscence. There was also, very especially, and there still remains, somewhat of a belief that the act itself of placing such a memorial is one to bring spiritual benefit upon the donor, apart from the usual credit we obtain from our joining in the usual forms of worship. And we must remember that such memoranda of pious belief were not simply for the adornment of public worship, but that they were used for every one, more or less, to catch the eye at moments, or to be the fixed station which would call to prayer. With the invention of engraving there came for the vast public, and especially for the poor, the possibility of having at any moment, at small prices, the benefit of these means Q77 278 ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING of grace. Conversely, then, the men who did these things for the public filled the great commercial need. They worked to supply a market; they worked to express the wishes, the fancies, of patrons, and to do so according to the fashion of the time. The makers of these images, therefore, are not absolutely free agents; they are talking for others. And they rarely have such a free expression as we attribute to the work of art. But occasionally the sympathy of the artist with the subject required of him is so complete that the result seems a free offering on his part. In the choice of some religious subjects it might be possible to single out a few which are types of the unity of religious intention. One of the many reasons why religious art has given us so many masterpieces is an apparent contradiction. This reason is that the subject has been used before, is very well known, and has been the source of complete successes. On that account comes the strong desire to sing the old song again in newer metres, and another success is added from the very difficulty of the conditions. The field of religious painting is so great that one hesitates in achoice. The representation, however, of the Annuncia- tion, the Angelic Salutation, is so delicate a theme that the very undertaking of the picture seems to have eliminated the more commonplace results. To take three out of so many ANNUNCIATIONS 279 seems an arbitrary decision. We shall take three of a period so early as to keep intact the bloom of medieval feeling, and yet of a date late enough to allow the artist a sufficient knowledge of the painter’s art. The earliest representation of the story, in the West, is in the dark vault of one of the tombs in the cemetery of Priscilla, where, upon the crumbling plaster, is represented what we see to mean a woman, seated in a red chair, who looks astonished as a young man stretches out his right hand to her in annunciation. This first form of the story will scarcely change for centuries — until the general love and passionate interest and devotion to the Mother of Christ, the help of sinners, who are too conscious of their infirmities to address Him directly, invents new methods. The modest figure of Mary, a mere symbol in the Catacombs, becomes a Byzantine priestess and then a queen of glory. Lastly, with this glorification of womanhood, with the romance of chivalry, is born the idea of the Madonna, the symbol of the purity of maternal love, the unselfishness of feminine devotion. In the same way, the perfunctory archangel in the rude fresco of the Catacombs becomes in the Byzantine mosaics and sculptures some hero of the skies, resplendent in colour and light, until transformed in later art into some shape of sweet and innocent sympathy almost childlike in its smile. But 280 ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING the main line of attitude remains intact, preserving the teach- ing of the fathers in accordance with the candid legends of early date. Even the small detail of legend that told how the Virgin had been busy with household duties, spinning and drawing water, is kept in many early images. Always the posture of Mary remains with some meaning of gospel story: either the shrinking modesty of attitude, withdrawing from the messenger, or the absolute trust in God which makes her kneel to receive the divine command. As the repre- sentations increase in number with the greater reverence for her personality, either in opposition to heresy or from the inevitable trend of devotion to the idea, the divine messengers partake more and more of the feelings that fill the hearts of worshipers. They, too, salute the “Help of Christians, the Tower of Ivory,” so that Dante asks of St. Bernard, in Heaven, ““Who may be the angel, keeping within his eyes the Queen of Heaven, so enamoured that he appeared to be of fire?”’ Instead of the merely extended hand or the Byzantine staff of office, Dante and the painters give the messenger of Heaven the branch of palm or the sceptre of lilies. Before the steps of the angel and under his feet bloom the flowers of Paradise. Or, again, in more austere simplicity, but with still more tender sympathy, the angel bows, pressing his hands to his breast, in worship of the humility which meets his salutation. VNOUTA ‘AUOIDDVAT ONUAL NVS lO HOW AHL NI NOILVIONONNV QNVSId) ONVSId HUOLLIA (OTI rf nd ee ee ere a Ree a See ee etme dee cena tnt MASTER OF ST. SEVERIN (SCHOOL OF COLOGNE) AN ANGEL APPEARS TO ST. URSULA ANNUNCIATIONS 281 So, in two of those paintings which we have chosen, each actor in the scene expresses this feeling of submissive respect to the divine order. The first one is by a lesser artist, whose tradition is not that of a specially devout mind; what we have of him is astonishing, however, for the quality of sincerity and for a perception of the real which gives to even his driest studies an importance rivalling the accomplishments of the greater men. The damaged fresco here copied is disturbed still more than through decay of time, by the placing before it of modern sculpture. The figures of doves on one side and a little dog on the other in the corners are a form of signature well known to those who have followed the many studies of animals in the drawings of the great collections by our artist, Pisano, called Pisanello. I doubt if here they have any special symbolism, but, as I hinted in the begin- ning of this notice, we must remember that the artist of past time, as the decorative artist of to-day, was often required to insert some new fancy of his patron, more or less willingly, as it might fit into the scheme, which he was naturally forced to make for himself. This small point, as well as the very important one of the space within the space and shape in which the artist is ordered to place his work, is one of the hidden problems that give most trouble, that are the inevitable basis of design and yet are unexplain- 282 ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING able usually to the ordinary eye. Here the painter, fond of reality, has built all the accuracies of a real scene — the chest upon which the Virgin sits, the Oriental carpet, which must have seemed to him a proof of Eastern residence, the little footstool put aside, the orderly bed far back in a Gothic recess, the leaves of trees spotting the sight through the little windows, even, perhaps, the little lap-dog looking in doubt at the celestial messenger. And his intense perception of life sends the angel down, whirled as if a big bird, just lighted, with wings still quivering, the gown outstretched, the head bent low, the hands folded on the arms, all in the hurry of immediate message. Perhaps the doves in the foreground outside the house came naturally to his mind on thinking of what Dante called “the divine bird,” the angel above. But all — the head and wings and folds of drapery, and closed arms, open mouth, and fluttering hair, even to the little bit of palm in the hand — make a series of line expressing devout respect and obedience. And the Virgin’s pose, her hands together on the knees, her placid listening, her being all wrapped up in a big mantle that contains her, show her in this lovely realism as modest and resigned as the angel is hurried and anxious to fulfil his order. This is Italian realism. - Another example is not an annunciation of the gospel story: it is the appearance of an angel messenger to a maiden ANNUNCIATIONS 283 saint — the mythical St. Ursula, delight of many painters. The painter has told the story of such a message in the manner of a dream, out of the stuff that dreams are made of. This is German realism, still belonging to the Middle Ages. It is Germany of the Rhine, the place sacred to the story of St. Ursula. Hence, also, it connects with Burgundian and Flemish origins, and the master who painted it is so far un- known except by some other work. But it has been given to him, in the innocence of his integrity, to combine the most simple, almost childish realism with the sense of the marvellous — the reality of a dream. For this is the way that our dreams are real: we are sure of all sorts of little every-day matters, and feel them about us, while the im- possible happens to us, in what we do not know to be sleep. From such a sleep the very youthful virgin saint awakes, only just disturbed enough to show that there is something strange. She makes a slight attempt to sit up in her bed, wherein she is shut off from the outside world by the heavy curtains, in the fashion of that very day, except where, on one side, again in the old way, the curtain is bunched in a great homely fold, and there stands an angel lighting up this little artificial room. Like the good priests and preachers of the day, dressed in a great ecclesiastical cope, he tells his story as from the pulpit, stating it upon his fingers, as the 284 ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING preacher does when he argues and divides his text. His face, reminiscent also of the kindly faces of ecclesiastics, is anxious for the accuracy of his message. It is such a dream as might happen in any kindly family accustomed to its ecclesiastical instruction, and, were it not for the gorgeous wings, the invading light, and the drapery ending in nothing (as it does in dreams), the angel might be some kindly minister preaching from a godly text to some sweet, girlish soul. But there is no doubt of the supernatural: every prosaic detail confirms it more and more. And to the experienced artist the manner of this impression is visible through the singular use of some of the simplest means. Note the great per- pendicular lines of the angel and the canopy, and that or- dinary detail of an embroidered seam which, crossing the bed, repeats line after line of level spread, and melts into the long sleeves of the angelic messenger, disappearing again — as everything does in the nothing of a dream — where the edges of clothes and bed on the firm stand of solid things melt into the shaded floor. It may be that once upon a time Dante Gabriel Rossetti may have seen this picture, if the dates of his trips to Belgium allow it. He had used a similar treatment on similar lines; but, however beautiful the result, however romantic the conception of the Virgin, there is no such suggestion of a miracle in the wilful modern work of art as FRA ANGELICO DA FIESOLE ANNUNCIATION CONVENT OF SAN MARCO, FLORENCE ANNUNCIATIONS 285 in the still more realistic image of the unknown painter. It is only because of its being forced upon my memory that I allow myself a comparison which must contain some inevitable injustice. In the same way, how impossible to compare the Annun- ciation which Fra Angelico painted, along with many other pictures, in his convent of San Marco of Florence. There are just so many cells for the monks, and in forty of them are frescos painted on the walls by himself or his disciples. This is in the one called by the number three. Its shape echoes the opening of the window — that must have made another lookout, another pleasing space in the absolute bareness of the little rooms. Somebody has prettily said, “One opened on this world, and the other on the spiritual.”’” This was somewhat after 1443, when the convent was completed, having been built by the Brothers’ friend, the great architect Michelozzo. It was a gift of Cosimo of the Medici to the Dominican Brotherhood, of whom Brother Angelico was one. He must have been forty-six years old, approaching the matu- rity of his artistic talent and well confirmed in religious life. Into that he had entered thirty-five years before with his brother Benedetto. He was then called Guido da Vecchio. Thereafter he is known as Brother John (Giovanni) Angelico, and, we add, of Fiesole. He had probably learned to paint 286 ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING before he entered the Dominican order, moved to do so, apparently, by one of the revivals of faith which passed occa- sionally through a country sufficiently skeptical and worldly. He became a great master, and he is one of the precursors of the new forms of art. But his growth is so slow, or rather so difficult to analyze, that he can be taken also as a part of an earlier day. In reality, he was connected with the newer movement, but as his work is preéminently the expression of his meaning, less notice has been taken that his manner of painting, what is called technique, meets amply all that is asked of it. And that he did also a great deal of little work — shop-work, it might be called — for the use of churches or the devout, has made him appear sometimes less of a master of art than he really was. And this spiritual life so struck the imagination of his time and of the future that we think of him more as a saint who was a painter than as a painter who was a saint. The account of him given by Vasari, the recorder of Italian art, expresses this double character. “Rightly indeed was he called Angelico, for he gave his whole life to God’s service, and to the doing of good works for man- kind and for his neighbour. He kept himself unspotted from the world, and, living in purity and holiness, he was so much the friend of the poor that I think his soul is now in Heaven. Rich indeed he might have been, yet for riches he took no ANNUNCIATIONS 287 thought. He might indeed, had he so chosen, have lived in the world in greatest comfort, and, beyond what he himself already possessed, have gained whatsoever he wanted more, by the practice of those arts of which, while still a young man, he was already a master. He was wont to say that true riches consist in being contented with little. He might have borne rule over many, but he did not choose to do so, believ- ing that he who obeys has fewer cares and is less likely to go astray. It was in his power to have held high place, both within his order and without it; but he cared nothing for such honours, affirming that he sought no other dignity than the attainment of Paradise. He used often to say that he who practised art had need of quiet, and of a life free from care, and that he who had to do the things of Christ ought to live with Christ.” Disengaging what he did from the necessary hand-work of his assistants, it is certain that the world is right in its acceptance of Vasari’s belief that his paintings expressed his inner life. And in the painting of the Annunciation, the little fresco easily painted on the wall, we have the mark of one side of his art, the ineffable peace and reticence of the cloister. It is a cloister room in which Mary kneels, on the plain wooden bench of a monk, in the form of obedience of which Vasari speaks, and the angel speaks to her, like another 288 ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING devotee, of obedience to the Lord’s will, self-contained and reticent under the order from on high. Just outside, half seen, is the great founder of the order, St. Dominic, who looks with uplifted hands at this scene from the Gospels, which is visible to his mind; and he blesses, as it were, the hand-work of his spiritual son, the painter. The story could not be told more simply, in a more fitting way, for the cloister, as if the mere record of the fact were enough for the beauty of the subject. ANNUNCIATIONS — PART TWO UUVW “AL Ad ‘CQGL THDMAd0o NOLSOd “UANGUVD “IT “f “SUI FO NOILOATION NOILVIONONNYV OZNAYOT Id OZNAOULA ; be 3 in XXI ANNUNCIATIONS — PART TWO Tue Annunciation by Fiorenzo de Lorenzo, which is now in Mrs. John Lowell Gardner’s house of the Fenway, Boston, and which formerly hung on the outer wall of the Borinneala in the Church of Santa Maria degli Angeli, at Assisi, is a type midway between all the extremes of sentiment and realism: in that way a delight of simplicity of intention. In a great hall, of which we see only a part — two arcadings and a corner of a vaulted corridor — the Virgin kneels to receive the words of the angelic messenger. We are very close to them — they are just in front of the painting. The angel kneels on one bent knee. He has hurried, and his draperies fall in sudden but precise folds and are arrested upon the marble floor. In one indifferent hand he holds the lily of the Annunciation, and the other with delightful stiffness points with one finger to the upper places from which he has come. Or, rather, it is a motion of a finger repeating a lesson, a message which is partly an order. Nothing, in its simple way, could be more real without the addition of any unneces- sary truthfulness. His very look, the steadiness of his eye, are proofs of the certainty of his message and almost of his 291 292 ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING habit as a messenger. The Madonna, kneeling before him, may have been standing and now have knelt for the message, so that her drapery falls into an arrested movement. She has hardly interrupted her book prayer. She listens just enough; she listens with that special look which belongs to obedience, and which, in a more ideal, more poetic way, we saw in Fra Angelico’s Madonna. And only a little marking of the eyebrow may represent some manner of astonishment. Her face is the simple portrait of the recipient of a message, as the face of the angel is that of the bearer of one. These two people are all by themselves in the big hall, and yet they are not solitary — they are only a little more out of the world. The hall looks cool in its many tones of white and gray. Black and gray and white are the colours of the pavement which stretches out into a far perspective, through a distant corridor and the beginning of a garden. Upon the @hite wall of the right corridor count the gray trims of the clear gray stone of Florence. Those doors are nicely closed. The privacy is increased instead of broken by the openings of their frames. Outside, beyond the central corridor, which technically and in pure decoration is the motive of the picture, a brick wall begins, indicating a court or a garden, and above it we see the sky. In the wall is set the pedimented portal through which we look into a far-away landscape of ANNUNCIATIONS 293 grass and trees, and river and city, and far-away mountains. Against or rather within these harmonies of black and gray and white, are disposed the colours of the figures: gray-white, as if of velvet, in the angel’s dress, with blue velvet for his sleeves; his mantle a rose-red with green lining; his wings of that special gray of feathers, against the gray of the walls. And the Madonna is in a rose-coloured gown, deepening to crimson in the shades, according to the ancient Italian recipes for indication of modelling and shadow. Her mantlc is of a deep greenish blue, certainly darkened by time, with dark-green lining. Her veil is white and blends with what little is seen of her fair hair. Throughout, this charm of colour blends with the realistic representation of every detail. In the same way, the ap- parently average faces become beautiful through their ac- curacy and simplicity of rendering. They have the singular quality of seeming only transcripts of some certain peoples, and yet of being representations of what is almost an ideal. The entire picture has this same connection of what our mind always insists upon as opposite qualities. One feels the pleas- ure that the painter must have taken in his successful ren- dering of what he already knew well and what had been done before him, and of the triumphant novelties he has intro- duced, among others the using of the open door or portico 294 ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING as the key’ of his composition, and its being really open, and there being through the smallest opening of the picture a great landscape behind it. This great and novel mechanical triumph, carried out in patience and in calm, has in itself the charm of something that is not physical. It conveys to the mind the beauty of all open doors that look into far distant countries. We remember how the old Florentine painter, Paolo Uccello, said, waking up his wife at night to listen: “What a sweet thing is this perspective!’’ For to the men of the day the discoveries of scientific perspective were full of promises of what could be done in a future that should leave behind it the flat surfaces of older masters. All the parts, then, of the picture represent the new discoveries that belong to the period. They predict, in their way, what others will make of them; and among these others, the pupils of Fiorenzo — Pinturicchio and Perugino, and, through him, even the divine Raphael. And Lorenzo lived long enough to outlive all of these pupils, and even this very last, the pupil of his pupils. It might be that the new civilization through Christianity tended to develop certain national characteristics throughout the world. In literature something of the kind might be demonstrable; in art we see it more and more affirmed. And so, while the idea and the doctrine reinforce unity, the re- ANNUNCIATIONS 295 ligious expression of various countries is vastly different — even when later, at the moments of the greatest unity, on the contrary, the makers of buildings and images travel and teach and influence in what is apparently one direction. In this most intimate expression of feeling — the rendering of the character of the Madonna — the national turn is most strongly felt. It may really be an expression, or it may merely be an attempt, in many cases limited by want of power. So again the Southern Madonnas, those of Italy or later of Spain, are so triumphantly above the others that it is difficult to realize that the more Northern expression represents quite as beautiful a notion of the Idea. This Southern superiority is so, notwithstanding that the early art of the Rhine or France or Burgundy or Flanders contains beautiful memories of images and pictures. Astonishingly complete in many idealizations, something has held back the hand of the North- ern artist in this supreme one — the very ideal that his heart must have cared for. Occasionally, under great emotion, or under the foresight of sadness which, for instance, our “Lady of Flémale” shows in her picture at Frankfort, the drama elevates the type. But usually we are left uncertain of the full intention and powers of the artist. On the con- trary, the Italian has let himself go so that even the varia- tions of Southern geography are emphasized; most especially 296 ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING in the Madonna, whose type being not singular, but common to all women, takes the form of the place, the sentiment of the local difference, even when we feel almost sure that the artist has herein consecrated his liking or admiration for some special person upon whose likeness he has built this momentary ideal. Almost any one of our examples will show this, and we may take out of Northern Italy something which is so far removed from the external sentiment of the Italy farther down that it makes almost another nationality. Whether or not developed by the training of a few artists, there is in such a type as those of Gaudenzio Ferrari a some- thing tremulous, a something not fixed, so that the sense of a, possible appeal, answered by some change, carries the ideal far away from the set and sculptural mien under which the divine woman has been so often represented by the Italian artist, descendant of Rome and inheritor of classical anti- quity. In the Madonnas of Gaudenzio, and of many of the more Northern painters, there is a continuance of present life, so that one might feel that such a face might be seen at any moment, however choice, however exquisite. And yet, this is not realism in the sense of any transcript of ordinary life —any possible replacing of one type by another —as is the case with the artists whom we rightly call masters, great “J ih GAUDENZIO FERRARI ANNUNCIATION BERLIN MUSEUM PHOTOGRAPH BY BRAUN & CO. ANNUNCIATIONS 297 orsmall. The unity of such a picture as this one is composed of a multitude of details pervaded by a like refinement, a similar daintiness, a purity of choice that one might call feminine were it not that, on the contrary, it is the admiration of the man for the finer delicacies of woman. Elegancies of drapery, what our ancestors in criticism called “careful 9 choice of folds,” every detail of adornment is sunk into the texture of the work, not embroidered upon it nor added to its form. The angel kneels in a manner of conversation, as if explaining, according to the text, more fully than in a mere statement. He is earnest; he explains his message as if to some one who ought to know; and his elegant hand half explains and half caresses the symbolical lily that he holds by his knee. The very plant bends in some subtle sympathy with the artist and with his mien. So beautiful is the angel with the fair hair and the green wreath that he seems younger than Mary, whose gentle face has become serious with the message. Her crossed hands tremble slightly; she bends — she has already been kneeling — in the curve which will be relaxation. And every line of her drapery is meant to tell you this through the mystery of “light and dark,” then be- ginning to be triumphantly established for future art by the contemporaries of Leonardo. There is a solemn, beautiful idea of an Annunciation — that 298 ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING is to say, the visit of an angel to announce in the legend which repeats for the Virgin her earlier story. An angel ap- peared to her at some moment when she longed for the final meeting with her Son, to let her know that the days were fulfilled and that death was present. The subject itself is so beautiful that I had hoped to find some painting of the subject assuming a greater importance than the one I give, which, however, is beautiful in its telling of the story and in the charm that accompanies so often the indifferent monk about whom clustered the legends of an unsteady life. Here, in the picture at Florence known as “‘The Announcing to the Virgin Her Coming Decease,” he has told the story sweetly and with sufficient dignity. The Virgin is ready for the call, and the angel bends before her, not looking at her, as in a more joyous moment, but with a certain reticence implying the human feeling for the approach of death. For even in this case the news is wrapped in sorrow, at least for others, and in doubt; so that the angel looks down upon the floor, not raising his eyes to judge the effect of his mission. He gives the Virgin the lighted taper which is placed in the hand of the dying — in a contrary manner to other pictures and to the usual legend itself, which makes him present a branch of that palm that grows in Paradise, and which is the sign of future reward. ANNUNCIATIONS 299 From what texts our painter monk worked the story I am not at all certain. He may have had a text to justify this variation, which is in itself most beautiful, and, like the whole picture, extremely human. The many written accounts and legends were not favoured by the Church, and this particular one was distinctly con- demned by Pope Gelasius as early as the fifth century. There were heretical sides to these stories, a certain gnostic temper- ament in them which seemed dangerous; but, as we know, the Christian world was full of gospels and stories of the life of Christ. Some few have come down to us; the greater mass has been lost or destroyed, and it is one of the curiosities of the present moment that we may find in Egypt some quan- tities of these writings dropped by the Church. The small quantity of paintings or similar representations of the present subject which are to be found in the Western world does not seem to be owing to the condemnation of the Western Church. The painters and sculptors worked accord- ing to the demand for pious materials, or for the representa- tions of these stories; and these legends remained living in the conscience and memory of the entire Christian world. It may be worth while recalling more exactly this ancient legend of what was called the “T ransit,”’ which, in forgetful- ness of its heretical origin, was even attributed occasionally 300 ONE HUNDRED MASTERPIECES OF PAINTING to St. John himself. In the book the story goes on to say that as the Virgin wept, through desire to behold again her Son, an angel wrapped in light appeared to her and extended to her a branch of palm, because he had come to tell her that after three days would occur her death and assumption. Mary then wished that the apostles might be near to bury her, hoping also that her soul, on leaving the body, should not encounter any evil spirit. The angel said: ‘‘He who carried from Judea to Babylon the prophet by a single hair can bring to thee the apostles now scattered through the world; nor needs’t thou fear the evil spirit, thou who hast crushed his > head and overturned his throne.” So speaking, the angel returned to Heaven in a wave of light, leaving the palm in Mary’s hands. At that moment, while John was preaching at Ephesus, he was wrapped in a white cloud which placed him before the house of Mary, the Mother to whom his Master from the cross had given him as a son. Almost at the same moment the other living apostles appeared, and were told not to mourn, that people might not be disturbed. And the Virgin lay down to sleep surrounded, in the manner of the Church, by the apostles praying for her. So we see her in many beautiful works either of sculpture or of painting. Here, entering the building from every side, troop in the ANNUNCIATIONS 301 apostles, conducted, nay, pushed, by angelic ministers. They are still only half-waked — and pass in, partly dazed, as if seeking an explanation of their sudden call. One under- stands and kneels. Nothing could be truer to the story; and the realism of the artist, his faithfulness to life, has here one of its most evident successes. TUVNITV AM HdVUNOLOHA GONGUOTA ‘OZNAUOT NVS JO HOWAHO HIVAdG ONINOOSD YAH NIDYLA AML OL DNIONIONNV IddIT OddITH Vue ail