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 STUDY FOR HEAD OF CHRIST 
 LEONARDO DA VINCI 
 
 
 
 It is through this charming sketch that we know the former 
 beauty of the now much faded “Last Supper’’ of Leonardo 
 da Vinci, at Santa Maria delle Grazia, Milan. 
 
 
 
 
 
 - 
 ‘ 
 
 
 
 
 
er eAT PAINTERS 
 % AND THEIR FAMOUS #¥€ 
 
 BeolLeE PICTURES 
 
 The Bible Story Retold in 
 One Hundred Masterpieces 
 Chronologically Arranged, 
 With Sidelights on the Life 
 and Work of the Artists 
 
 EDITED BY 
 WILLIAM GRIFFITH 
 
 Former Editor of Current Opinion 
 
 REPRODUCED IN AQUATONE 
 AND PUBLISHED MDCCCCXXV BY 
 WM. H. WISE & CO., NEW YORK 
 

 
 4 F ta 
 
 Copyright, 1925 a ah ‘ 
 Wm. H. Wise & Co. _ 
 | B y 
 
 Printed in the U.S.A. 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 T is interesting to note in a brief survey of the art of painting, as we know 
 it today, that its beginnings were not only inspired by the Christian religion, 
 but that its modern aspect may be attributed to the influence of one 
 man, now known as St. Francis of Assisi, who lived in the thirteenth cen- 
 
 tury. Anticipating the Renaissance, the founder of the Order of Franciscans con- 
 ceived a religion of love instead of that of stern orthodox authority, and brought 
 divinity not only nearer to man but to all creation. The birds and fishes were 
 his little brothers and sisters, and, like the Psalmist of old, he called on the hills and 
 valleys, the forests and the rivers, to join him in praising God. 
 
 @ Although fresco painting had been known since antique times, the great possibilities for 
 its use were not realized until the new outlook in life had awakened the Italian genius. 
 The overpowering influence of St. Francis with its direct relationship between his 
 preaching and nature was responsible for a revival of the arts, and a new style was 
 required by the newera. Just as mosaic is the typical medium of the severe Byzantine 
 art, and stained glass of the French of the thirteenth century, so did fresco become 
 the process by which the Italians in the Gothic and early Renaissance periods expressed 
 the new scenes from the life of St. Francis and all the gospel stories now viewed in 
 the light of human emotion. 
 
 @ During the Dark Ages, painting, as a secular art, almost entirely disappeared, and 
 in the early days of the Church the Fathers gave little encouragement toart. ‘‘Cursed 
 be all who paint pictures’’ is a sentiment not infrequently found in their writings. 
 An important event in the early history of art occurred in the year 691 when the 
 Council of Constantinople, formerly Byzantium, the capital of the Eastern Empire, 
 decreed that “‘henceforth Christ was to be publicly exhibited in the figure of a man, 
 not of alamb.’’ It marked the evaporation of all trace of the old reserve which Chris- 
 tians had felt in figuring the person of Christ; and, at the same time, it indicated as 
 fit themes for art those sufferings in the flesh, from the representations of which the 
 Christians of the earlier centuries had shrunk as from a profanation. 
 
 @ Apropos of the first depictions of Jesus, it is not known that there was ever any 
 original portrait or likeness of Him in existence. As Pére Didon, the French Biblical 
 scholar, observes, ‘‘Whatever may be written to the contrary, it is absolutely certain 
 that the world and the Church have lost forever all vestige of trustworthy tradition 
 concerning the aspect of Jesus on earth. There is not one syllable in the Gospels or 
 in the epistles respecting the appearance of His form or face.’’ Nor is there any 
 reference to it in the literature of the first two centuries, the earliest known reference 
 being in. Justin Martyr, who says that when Jesus came to the Jordan, ‘‘He appeared 
 _without beauty, as the Scriptures proclaimed.’”’ Clement of Alexandria says, ‘‘ Him- 
 self also, the Head of the Church, passed through the world unlovely in the flesh, 
 and without form, thereby teaching us to look at the Unseen and incorporate of the 
 Divine Cause.”’ 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 @ In view of such scholarly testimony, it is curious that the master painters have 
 from the beginning depicted Christ as a divinely attractive, never as a repulsive, 
 figure. His face, as imagined and portrayed by them, has variously expressed benig- 
 nity, sympathy, understanding, sorrow, pity or love; but nowhere in art does the “‘Lord 
 will to use a commonplace form of body’’. 
 @ The first great master to break away from the fixed type of Byzantine art was the 
 Florentine painter, Giovanni Cenni, commonly known as Cimabue. He was born 
 in 1240 and died in 1302. In his work a great change is perceptible. “If in type 
 his Madonna still adheres to the Byzantine tradition as regards features,’’ notes Sir 
 William Orpen, in his Outline of Art, “‘a new softness has crept into her face, the 
 infant Jesus is no longer wizened but tender and more childlike, while there is a touch 
 of human kindness in the angels who bear them company.”’ Coincidentally, Cimabue 
 was commissioned to decorate the church where the ashes of St. Francis rest, and 
 he was assisted by his apprentice, the famous Giotto, whose work was directly inspired 
 by ‘‘the little brother of the poor’’. 
 @ It is in the early Renaissance period that we get just fifty years of perfect work— 
 the time of such masters as Luini, Leonardo da Vinci, Giovanni Bellini, Carpaccio, 
 Mantegna, Verrocchio, Cima da Conegliano and—in date, though only in his earlier 
 life belonging to the school—Raphael. The great difference between these artists 
 and their immediate predecessors, as Ruskin points out, is “their desire to make every- 
 thing dainty and delightful.’’ After them came ‘‘a phase of gigantic power and 
 exquisite ease and felicity which possess an awe and charm of their own. They are 
 more inimitable than were the workers of the perfect school; but they are not perfect.” 
 @ The great artistic revolution produced by the Renaissance, inaugurated by Cimabue 
 in Florence and Duccio in Siena, was given its greatest primary impetus by Giotto, 
 whose first aim was “‘to infuse new life into traditional composition by substituting 
 the heads, attitudes and draperies of the actual world for the spectral forms and con- 
 ventional types of the Byzantine painters’’; and whose next was ‘‘to vindicate the right 
 of modern Europe to think, feel and judge for itself, to reissue or recoin the precious 
 gold of the past according as the image and superscription are or are not worthy of 
 perusal.’”? He was one of the few great innovators whose genius forced itself into 
 early recognition. Ruskin does ‘‘not know in the annals of art another such example 
 of happy, practical, unerring and benevolent power.”’ 
 @ Giotto set the example to his great successors of the Renaissance of using contempo- 
 rary Florentines as models for his saints and apostles, and frequently of dressing them 
 in thirteenth century costumes. In this regard we have to bear in mind that in those 
 days portraiture pure and simple was seldom practised. Art was the handmaid of 
 the Church, and painters devoted themselves very largely, if not exclusively, to sacred 
 subjects; and if an artist wished to convey a compliment he did it through his picture. 
 Thus, if a wealthy citizen wished to present an altar-piece to his church, the painter 
 would include therein a portrait of him among the figures represented doing homage 
 to the Virgin and the Child. The names of the donors of such works are for the most 
 part forgotten—they would interest few after their generation had passed away— 
 but the portrait may generally be identified. If among the kneeling or standing 
 8 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 figures in a group you remark one who, at some personal inconvenience, looks over 
 his shoulder to face the spectator, it is safe to assume that it is the portrait of the 
 person who commissioned the work. The face, moreover, has an individuality lacking 
 in the rest. , 
 @ Portraits of members of the great Florentine family of the Medici frequently occur 
 in picture and fresco painted by artists of the fifteenth century, and always in a flatter- 
 ing vein. A well known example occurs in Vasari’s picture of the two patron saints 
 of that family, SS. Cosmo and Damian; these are likenesses of Cosimo the Elder, 
 and of the first Duke of Tuscany, also a Cosimo. In Botticelli’s ‘“‘Spring’”’, familiar 
 to everyone through repeated reproduction, the youth who stands on the extreme 
 left is almost certainly a representation of the brother of Lorenzo the Magnificent, 
 Giuliano de’ Medici, who was assassinated by the Pazzi conspirators. There is no 
 room for question concerning the many avowed likenesses of Cosimo and his famous 
 grandson, Lorenzo—portrait busts of them exist; and if only by reason of the former’s 
 bull neck and the latter’s misshapen nose, either can be identified at a glance, whether 
 he appear among the Wise Men of the East or in another Biblical character. Lorenzo 
 the Magnificent was a liberal patron of the arts, and painters acknowledged his sup- 
 port in a manner calculated to flatter. Even a Medici might be gratified to see him- 
 self represented as one of the Magi! 
 @ Art cannot be said to have gone astray in such works, though modern taste might 
 disapprove of the portrayal of a ruler, however excellent, in the character of a saint. 
 Where art did go astray was when it made the canvas its vehicle for personal vengeance. 
 Several famous painters have left works of this description. One of the best known 
 is by the Spanish master, El] Mudo. It is a “Martyrdom of St. James the Great’’; 
 and in it the court chamberlain of King Philip II of Spain appears as an executioner: 
 It is known that the painter and the chamberlain were enemies, but what particular 
 offending procured for the latter this left-handed compliment history does not record. 
 Probably the most venomous piece of portraiture in Christian art is a ‘‘Temptation 
 of St. Anthony” which hangs in the church of St. Agostino at Siena. It is by Ribera, 
 a Neapolitan painter of Spanish extraction who flourished in the seventeenth century. 
 Naples in his time was under Spanish rule, and in the canvas Ribera adroitly depicts 
 a contemporary Spanish Don as the Evil One. It is perhaps the only picture in exist- 
 ence which represents the devil wearing spectacles. 
 @ Anachronisms in dress were very usual in the works of the Renaissance period and 
 later, artists giving Biblical characters the attire of their own time. Pictures of the 
 early saints and martyrs in which the characters are represented in brightly-hued 
 doublets and trunk hose are very common in Italy. One of the greatest pictures 
 in the world—Titian’s ‘‘Presentation of the Virgin”, in the Academy at Venice— 
 is thus treated. The principal figure, the Madonna, is portrayed as an Italian peasant 
 girl in a simple blue gown such as was worn in the sixteenth century; the ancillary 
 characters, richly dressed with many jewels, serve to set off the beautiful simplicity 
 of the Virgin’s attire. 
 @ It was no doubt at the instance of the Spanish Holy Office—the influence of Spain 
 then being strong in Italy—that a purity campaign was undertaken against the artistic 
 9 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 productions of the former country. Italy, however, adopted methods less drastic— 
 for which we may be grateful. She did not ordain the destruction of such works 
 as were thought to offend; an example of her more lenient system of correction is 
 furnished by Michel Angelo’s great fresco, ‘‘The Last Judgment’’, in the Sistine Chapel, 
 which includes nude figures. It is of passing interest to note that Michel Angelo 
 was the first great painter to introduce nude figures in his religious pictures. The 
 custom had become so common in the latter part of the sixteenth century that Pope 
 Paul IV commissioned a minor painter, Daniele of Volterra, to paint clothing on such 
 figures in the Vatican and elsewhere as appeared to require it; which task earned for 
 Daniele the nickname of I] Bragghetone—“‘the breeches-maker’’. 
 @ There was a period when the fathers of painting were stricken with a craze for 
 realism—rather dangerous when sacred subjects practically monopolised their easels. 
 Realism may be legitimate in allegorical scenes, as when Giotto, adorning the Bardi 
 Chapel with his frescos from the life of St. Francis, depicts ‘‘Poverty defending her- 
 self with a stick from a dog.’”” Poverty had not before, and probably has not since, 
 been presented in this posture. It was quite usual to introduce into scenes of ‘‘The 
 Last Supper”’ a dog crouching under the table; or wandering about in expectation 
 of scraps; and the presence of the dog does not offend. But in several such works 
 a cat is introduced, and the result is curiously different. 
 @ So far we have discussed mainly the development of Christian art in Italy, but 
 that country had no monopoly of painting even in the Middle Ages. There were, - 
 for instance, the Flemish masters of the mid-fourteenth century, Hubert and Jan 
 Van Eyck, who are credited with having discovered oil as a medium for painting. 
 Before their time artists had mixed their colors with water (frescos) or with yolk of 
 egg (tempera paintings), and although modern authorities are inclined to question 
 whether the Van Eycks were actually the first to make use of oil, they were certainly 
 the pioneers of the new medium two centuries before Rembrandt and Rubens. 
 @ Since their time religious paintings have been produced by natives of most of the 
 great countries of Europe, but either because their work was not powerful enough to 
 capture the popular imagination or, quite as probably, because they had no adequate 
 historians and biographers, such as Vasari, to whom was delegated the task of 
 perpetuating the fame of the Italian artists, the early artists of England, France 
 and Germany never acquired the fame won by their brethren of Flanders and Italy. 
 With few exceptions their names, and in many cases their works, have been entirely 
 lost. 
 @ Indeed, the lives of a majority of the master painters—and curiously and particu- 
 larly of the great painters of religious subjects—have been tragic and precarious 
 to a degree. With such rare exceptions as Veronese, Titian, Raphael, Rubens, 
 Velasquez, Reynolds and the late John Singer Sargent, to mention some of those who 
 are represented in this collection, there are few religious painters of genius who have 
 not suffered a sort of crucifixion, either spiritually or materially. In many cases their 
 misfortunes may be traced to their unruly artistic temperaments. In others they 
 were the victims of the peculiar circumstances and conditions under which they were 
 compelled to work. The early Italian painters, as well as those of Spain, were almost 
 10 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 solely dependent upon contemporary princes of the Church and State for patronage. 
 Who but the Popes could have maintained such a succession of great artists as deco- 
 rated the Vatican and St. Peter’s? The rich churches of Christendom inspired and 
 financed the painting of nearly all the early masterpieces that are to be found in the 
 great galleries today. And when a Holy Father, for one reason or another, withdrew 
 his patronage from a painter, it left the artist poor indeed, unless he might find a royal 
 or noble secular patron. Much the same condition affected the early French painters; 
 notably Poussin and Le Brun, who were entirely dependent upon royal patronage 
 and who rose in or fell from favor with pendulum-like regularity. Of the Dutch 
 masters, what a contrast was the golden career of Rubens to the iron one of Rem- 
 brandt; and in England what a difference between the material rewards meted out 
 to the first president of the Royal Academy, Sir Joshua Reynolds, and to his con- 
 temporary, William Blake, who once recorded that he was born in London in 1757 
 and had died several times since! 
 
 @ Seeking a clew to the secret of great religious painting, one may find it, looking 
 to the human aspect of the question, in the conception of the painter as primariiy a 
 craftsman and a temperament. Once preeminently the Church was there to supply 
 the theme and the occasion. The artist was there to make the most of both, accord- 
 ing to his power of imagination and, transcendently, to his handicraftsmanship. “There 
 is no such thing,” says Swinburne, ‘‘as an inarticulate poet.’’ Equally is it so that 
 there is no such thing as a great painter who cannot paint—and paint superlatively 
 well. Consider Raphael and his “‘Sistine Madonna’’. The picture survives as a triumph 
 of religious exaltation and an interpretation of divine motherhood chiefly because 
 it is magnificently and monumentally put together by a man who was so intensely 
 a human being. 
 
 @ It is a mistake to assume that “‘at some places in the morning of the modern world, 
 in Italy, in Flanders or elsewhere, art sat at the feet of the Church and profited by a 
 mystical laying on of hands. Even on that hypothesis it is to be noted that the re- 
 ligious inspiration depends for its fortunes utterly upon the caprice of fate that illu- 
 mines one man and not the other. In Spain there is something like religious ecstasy 
 in the paintings of El Greco, whereas the religious compositions of Velasquez are 
 not comparable to his secular masterpieces. . . . It all comes back to the generosity 
 of nature, which may or may not project into the world a man with the genius of 
 religious painting in him. A long time ago the earth was dowered with such masters. 
 They and not their time account for what they did. Nor let it be forgotten that 
 most of them were also great mural painters, great portrait painters, as much at home 
 with a secular as with a sacred object—in other words, simply great masters of a craft.” 
 
 W. G. 
 
 ng 
 

 
a ae = ee 
 
 
 
 
 
 SNA aN aNIENENTSS) 
 
 “fg N presenting with each of the following 
 pictures a biographical sketch of the 
 Ni artist and a brief interpretation of 
 the painting itself, we have aimed to 
 make a complete and understandable unit of each 
 subject. Our appreciation of a masterpiece is in- 
 complete without a knowledge of its creator, his 
 period, and the motive which inspired his work. 
 And neither can we know the man without a speci- 
 men of his work. 
 The order of arrangement follows the Biblical 
 chronology, but, for the student of art, reference 
 to the chronological index of artists by schools 
 will indicate the development of painting and the 
 influence of each great painter on his successors. 
 Under each illustration is given the date of the 
 artist’s birth and death and the Bible text that is 
 illustrated. Also our acknowledgment for the 
 privilege of reproduction and the present location 
 of the original painting. 
 
 
 
EDWARD BURNE-JONES 
 
 Z=—3NTIL Edward Burne-Jones was 
 
 S 4 twenty-three years old he never 
 saw a good picture. It was in 
 
 0 that year that he began to 
 
 —I study the rudiments of draw- 
 
 ing. Yet a year or two later no less an 
 artist and critic than Dante Gabriel 
 Rossetti declared that Burne-Jones’ de- 
 signs were equal to Albrecht Diirer’s finest 
 
 work; and today he is regarded as “per- 
 
 
 
 to their joint efforts the complete revolu- 
 tion which took place in decorative art, 
 and drove Victorian stuffiness from our 
 houses, is to be ascribed. 
 
 It was for the Kelmscott Press, founded 
 by Morris, that Burne-Jones made eighty- 
 seven illustrations for an edition of Chau- 
 cer, and for a long period he was a de- 
 signer of mosaics and executed designs for 
 tapestries. It is probable that his influence 
 
 haps the most per- 
 fect of English paint- 
 ers.” 
 
 As his name indicates, 
 Burne-Jones was of 
 Welsh descent. His 
 mother died at his 
 birth, and his only 
 sister in early infancy. 
 His father, a small 
 tradesman who made 
 picture-frames and 
 sold stationery in Bir- 
 mingham, England, 
 was ambitious for his 
 son to be a clergy- 
 man, and managed 
 to give him a superior 
 education. At nine- 
 teen the youth won 
 a scholarship at Exe- 
 ter College and went 
 up to Oxford. There 
 
 URNE-JONES’ “Days of Creation,” 
 
 consisting of six panels, of which the 
 jirst and last are reproduced here, was 
 originally designed for a church window. 
 Six angels are depicted, symbolizing the 
 six days of creation. Each angel is 
 crowned with a plume of fire, and each 
 bears a crystal globe reflecting an act of 
 creation, from the ordering of chaos in 
 the first, where a light globe and a dark 
 globe are taking definite shapes amid mys- 
 terious light and darkness, to the newly 
 created man and woman in the sixth. 
 The graduating colors in these panels 
 which give the key to the motive are most 
 ingeniously manipulated. In the first it is 
 that of a cold gray-green dawn, and the note 
 is successively and felicitously changed 
 to harmonize with the day portrayed. 
 
 has been exercised far 
 less in painting than 
 in the broad fields of 
 decorative design. He 
 executed cartoons for 
 stained glass, and 
 windows from his de- 
 signs are to be found 
 throughout England 
 and occasionally in 
 America. In fact, his 
 romantic imagination 
 dominated every 
 branch of his art, and 
 his energy needed to 
 be inexhaustible to 
 keep pace with his 
 constant procession of 
 ideas. 
 
 Burne-Jones was 
 made an associate of 
 the Royal Academy 
 in 1883, and _ ac- 
 
 he met another fresh- 
 
 man of Welsh birth, William Morris, and 
 the face of things suddenly changed. 
 Their dreams and aspirations tallied in 
 that their deep-rooted sense of the ugliness 
 and monotony of the present and their 
 common love of the past drew the young 
 undergraduates together and laid the foun- 
 dation of a life-long friendship. 
 
 In 1856 we hear of Burne-Jones and 
 Morris sharing lodgings in London, devot- 
 ing themselves respectively to painting 
 and poetry. Recognition came early to 
 both of them, and six years later Burne- 
 Jones painted his now famous little picture 
 of “Christ and the Merciful Knight,” 
 which ‘‘stamped its author at once as a 
 master of original genius, whose style was 
 entirely distinct from that of Rossetti, as 
 well as absolutely unlike that of any con- 
 temporary artist.”” He and Morris were 
 for many years co-partners in the cele- 
 brated firm of Morris and Company, and 
 
 14 
 
 knowledged the com- 
 pliment by sending his oil-painting, “‘The 
 Depths of the Sea,’”’ to the yearly exhibi- 
 tion. In this. he pictured a mermaid 
 carrying down with her a youth whom she 
 has unconsciously drowned in the impetu- 
 osity of her love. Its tragic irony of con- 
 ception and beauty of execution give it a 
 high place among his works, his own con- 
 ception of which is stated in a letter to a 
 friend: ‘‘I mean by a picture a beautiful 
 romantic dream of something that never 
 was, never will be—in a light better than 
 any light that ever shone—in a land no 
 one can define or remember, only desire.” 
 No artist was ever truer to his own ideals, 
 for his men and women, earth, sky, rocks 
 and trees are not of this world, but make 
 a world of their own consistent with itself, 
 therefore having its own reality. 
 He was engaged on his picture of “The 
 Sleep of King Arthur in Avalon’ until a 
 few hours before his death, on June 17, 1898. 
 
THE DAYS OF CREATION 
 THE FIRST DAY i aS ‘THE SIXTH DAY 
 
 
 
 
 ms me 
 
 aS LEDS AEN ae 
 
 SIR EDWARD BURNE-JONES (1833-1898) Courtesy Maison Ad. Braun & Cie. 
 Genesis I, 1-5; 24-31 Coliection of Alexander Henderson, Esq. 
 
Michel Angelo 
 
 = 
 
 wyA0-DAY I, Michel Angelo, sculp- 
 \y tor, began the painting of the 
 | Chapel.’”’” Here we have his 
 NN y own written statement, dated 
 March 10, 1508. It was set 
 down in despair by the great “sculptor 
 who painted.’ A little less than a year 
 later, when the work on the Sistine Chapel 
 was well under way, he protested again: 
 “This is not my profession. ...I am 
 uselessly wasting my 
 time.”’ 
 Michel Angelo, recog- 
 nized as the greatest 
 sculptor of the world, 
 had been recalled to 
 Rome by Pope Julius 
 II and commanded to 
 decorate the ceiling of 
 the Sistine Chapel. 
 He pleaded that 
 painting was not his 
 trade and _ insisted 
 that the task should 
 be given to his young 
 rival Raphael. Per- 
 haps he was still 
 smarting under the 
 humiliation of having been thrust out of 
 the Vatican by a servant only a few months 
 before. But the Pope was adamant and 
 Michel Angelo reluctantly went to work 
 on the Chapel, learning the technique of 
 painting as he labored. 
 “Destiny so ruled,’”’ writes Sidney Colvin, 
 “that the work thus thrust upon him re- 
 mains his chief title to glory.” 
 Michel Angelo was born in a small town 
 outside of Florence. His nurse was the 
 wife of a marble cutter. In later years the 
 great artist jokingly remarked that his love 
 of sculpture had been sucked from the 
 breast of his foster-mother. 
 
 
 
 
 with Adam. 
 
 One of his first pieces of carving was a. 
 
 “Sleeping Cupid.” It was carried to Rome 
 and fraudulently sold to a Cardinal as an 
 antique piece of Greek sculpture. When 
 the Cardinal learned of the deception he 
 was so delighted to know that a living Ital- 
 ian could produce work that rivalled the 
 early Greeks that he sent for the sculptor 
 and bestowed his favor upon him. 
 
 Michel Angelo began work on the Chapel 
 with a corps of assistants, but soon he 
 drove them away and painted out every- 
 thing they had done. Not content with 
 
 THE Creation of Man is only a detail of 
 
 the vast composition, covering over 
 10,000 square feet of surface, on the ceiling 
 of the Sistine Chapel. It shows the colos- 
 sal figure of God reaching across the abyss 
 which must forever separate Him from 
 mankind, and about to touch fingertips 
 
 Our first parent is painted as a mag- 
 nificent superman, but his expression is 
 languid and his manner listless. 
 not yet quickened him with the touch 
 which endowed him and each of his descen- 
 dants with the precious gift of a soul. 
 
 16 
 
 dispensing with their services he tore down 
 the scaffoldings they had erected and put 
 up his own. Then he locked the door and 
 for four years toiled on in sorrow and fury. 
 At last, on All Saints’ Day, 1512, he 
 removed the scaffoldings from which the 
 impatient Pope had threatened to have him 
 thrown, and after lying on his back for 
 four years to paint the ceiling, he stood on 
 his feet once more to receive the greatest 
 ovation ever tendered 
 any artist. 
 
 Raphael openly 
 thanked God that it 
 had been given to him 
 to live in the same 
 century with Michel 
 Angelo. 
 
 The great sculptor 
 lived to be nearly 
 ninety, working with 
 undimmed vision and 
 unflagging genius up 
 to the very end. 
 
 A friend met the great 
 man one day near 
 the Colosseum. He 
 was on foot making 
 his way through the snow, aged, infirm and 
 alone. The friend inquired where he was 
 going. ‘“To school,’’ he replied, ‘‘to school, 
 to try to learn something.”’ 
 
 From his earliest youth Michel Angelo 
 cherished all worthy things, his art first, to 
 which he gave himself completely in spite 
 of his father’s opposition. Ordinary pleas- 
 ures he held in contempt; he worked without 
 ceasing and denied himself every luxury. 
 “More than this,’’ Taine writes, “he lived 
 like a monk, without wife or mistress, 
 chaste in a voluptuous court, knowing but 
 one love, and that austere and Platonic, 
 for one woman as proud and as noble as 
 himself. At evening, after the labor of the 
 day, he wrote sonnets in her praise, and 
 knelt in spirit before her, as did Dante at 
 the feet of Beatrice, praying to her to 
 sustain his weaknesses and keep him in the 
 ‘right path.” He bowed his soul before 
 her as before an angel of virtue... . 
 She died before him, and for a long time he 
 remained ‘downstricken, as if deranged.’ 
 Several years later his heart still cherished 
 a great grief—the regret that he had not, 
 at her deathbed, kissed her brow or cheek 
 instead of her hand.” 
 
 God has 
 
ae. 
 
 THE CREATION OF MAN 
 
 
 
 MICHEL ANGELO (1475-1564) 
 Genesis I, 27 
 
 Courtesy Maison Ad. Braun & Cie. 
 Sistine Chapel, Rome 
 
WILLIAM BLAKE 
 
 EING asked for his autograph 
 # on one occasion, William Blake, 
 the great English artist-poet, 
 whom Wordsworth pronounced 
 ‘mad, but with something in 
 his madness which interests me more than 
 the sanity of Lord Byron and Walter 
 Scott,’ signed this epitaph: ‘“‘Born 28th 
 Nov. 1757, in London, and has died several 
 times since.”’ To a mutual friend who 
 offered to introduce 
 
 
 
 insight, as a planet within its own orbit.” 
 In later life Blake declared, “I am right; 
 others who differ with me are wrong,” 
 and it seems to have been his attitude 
 from the beginning. 
 
 At fourteen Blake was apprenticed to an 
 engraver, and the engraving branch of art 
 was that which he followed ever after- 
 wards as his regular calling. He next 
 studied in the Antique School of the Royal 
 
 Blake to Wordsworth 
 the former expressed 
 his thanks strongly, 
 saying, ‘““You do me 
 honor. Mr. Words- 
 worth is a great man. 
 Besides, he may con- 
 vince me that I am 
 wrong about him. I 
 have been wrong be- 
 fore now.”’ Visiting 
 England during the 
 lifetime of both Blake 
 
 DARING indeed is this conception of 
 
 “The Creation of Eve,” a picture that 
 might well have come to grief in lesser 
 hands than Blake’s. As it is, the picture 
 is a poetic conception of the scriptural 
 text: “And the Lord God caused a deep 
 sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept; 
 and He took one of his ribs, and closed up 
 the flesh instead thereof. And therib... 
 made He awoman....’’ The scene is the 
 garden of Eden, symbolized by a grove 
 in the background. In spite of the diffi- 
 
 Academy, under a 
 master named 
 Mosher, who figures . 
 in this anecdote: 
 
 Young Blake was ex- 
 amining some prints 
 from Raphael and 
 Michel Angelo in the 
 Academy library 
 when Mosher extolled 
 in their stead the 
 works of Rubens and 
 Lebrun, [iese 
 things that you call 
 
 and Wordsworth, the 
 German painter 
 Gotzenberger has left 
 on record: “I saw in 
 England many men 
 of talent, but only 
 three men of genius—Coleridge, Flaxman 
 and Blake; and of these Blake was the 
 greatest.” 
 
 Blake was most scantily educated in the 
 rudiments of reading and writing; arith- 
 metic also may be taken for granted, but 
 it is not recorded. He himself was never 
 a believer in formal education, contend- 
 ing that it curbed imagination and killed 
 inspiration. He began drawing very early, 
 becoming, as a biographer says, ‘‘at ten 
 years of age an artist, and at twelve a 
 poet.’ He copied prints in his boyhood 
 and haunted art salesrooms; his parents, 
 more especially his mother, seem to have 
 encouraged this artistic turn. 
 
 In 1767 he was sent to a drawing-school 
 in London, where he had the opportunity 
 of studying from the antique, but not 
 from the life. At auctions he bought en- 
 gravings low, but with a discriminating 
 eye; a Diirer, or after, a Raphael or a 
 Michel Angelo, none of whom was popular 
 in England at the time. But, as W. M. 
 Rossetti notes, ‘‘the little lad Blake al- 
 ready moved intellectually within his own 
 
 cult placing of the figures, by the purity 
 of his line, Blake has created a master- 
 piece of simple beauty. This is one of his 
 finest and sanest completed drawings. 
 
 finished,’’ cried 
 Blake, ‘‘are not even 
 begun; how then can 
 they be  finished?”’ 
 Another anecdote 
 concerns an interview 
 he had with Sir Joshua Reynolds, to whom 
 he was submitting some designs for his 
 opinion. Sir Joshua recommended less 
 extravagance and more simplicity, and 
 urged Blake to correct his drawing. This 
 Blake seemed to regard as an affront never 
 to be forgotten. “No doubt,’’ writes 
 Rossetti, ‘‘the censure of the drawing of 
 so severe and forcible a draughtsman as 
 Blake, coming from one of so much loose 
 facility as Reynolds, was particularly gall- 
 ing, notwithstanding their great difference 
 in age and professional standing.” 
 
 ’ In the same year that Blake first began 
 
 18 
 
 exhibiting in the Royal Academy he be- 
 came disappointed in love, and confiding 
 his distress to the daughter of his landlord, 
 she expressed her pity for him. “Do you 
 pity me?”’ asked Blake. ‘‘Yes, I do most 
 sincerely.’’ ‘‘Then I love you for that.” 
 “And I love you,’’ responded the damsel, 
 who a short time later signed her mark in 
 the marriage register and for forty-seven 
 years was “‘an angel on earth”’ to William 
 Blake, whose work had little enough sym- 
 pathy during his lifetime. 
 
THE CREATION OF EVE 
 
 prep 
 
 
 
 WILLIAM BLAKE (1757-1827) Courtesy Museum of Fine Arts, Boston 
 Genesis II, 21, 22 
 
 
 
MICHEL ANGELO 
 
 BHO KED to name the greatest 
 artist who ever lived, nine 
 people out of ten would reply 
 Michel Angelo Buonarotti, 
 whose long life was at once 
 
 
 
 SEI 
 
 an epic and a tragedy. Believing himself 
 intended by nature to be a sculptor rather 
 than a painter, the ambition of his life was 
 to carve a tomb for Pope Julius II which, 
 as he conceived it, would have been the 
 
 3 
 
 to your shame.’’ This allusion to his 
 equestrian statue of Francesco Sforza, 
 never finished, wounded Leonardo to the 
 quick. Conscious of his tendency to pro- 
 crastinate, he reddened as his rival turned 
 on his heel and strode away. 
 
 Unhappy in Florence, Michel Angelo was 
 not sorry when in 1505 Pope Julius called 
 him back to Rome for the stated purpose 
 of carving his tomb. But, as we tell 
 
 most stupendous 
 mausoleum in the 
 world. His colossal 
 statue of ‘‘Moses,”’ 
 executed for this 
 tomb, remained in Chapel. 
 his workshop for forty 
 
 years after the Pope 
 abandoned the proj- 
 ect, during all of 
 which time Michel 
 Angelo cherished the 
 hope that his plan 
 might still be carried 
 out, bitterly com- 
 plaining that” “‘it 
 would have been bet- 
 ter for him to have 
 made sulphur 
 matches all his life 
 than to have taken 
 up the desolating art- 
 ist’s trade. ‘Every 
 day,’ he cries, ‘I am 
 
 HE Temptation and Fall’ is one of 
 
 the great center panels painted by 
 Michel Angelo on the ceiling of the Sistine 
 It is, of course, allegorical and is 
 one of his most dramatic and invigorating 
 frescos. Surely not often is our imagina- 
 tion roused as by this picture. Eve’s 
 shrinking attitude and expression reflect 
 what a guilty conscience! Note the woman- 
 headed serpent coiled about the Tree of 
 Life, and the angel flashing the sword 
 behind the outcast pair. ‘“‘Where else,’’ 
 asks Berenson, “do we encounter such 
 figures as these in the Sistine Chapel to 
 fulfill our dream of a great, though way- 
 ward soul inhabiting a beautiful body? 
 Michel Angelo created the type of man 
 best fitted to subdue and control the 
 earth, and, who knows! perhaps to subju- 
 gate and govern more than the earth.” 
 
 elsewhere, the sculp- 
 tor was reduced to 
 despair by being or- 
 dered to decorate the 
 ceiling of the Sistine 
 Chapel. The order 
 was inspired by the 
 Vatican architect, 
 Bramante, who be- 
 lieved the _ sculptor 
 would fail ignomini- 
 ously. Instead, he 
 succeeded in four 
 years in accomplish- 
 ing the mightiest se- 
 ries of paintings— 
 over three hundred of 
 them—in the world. 
 The completed work, 
 however, found the 
 painter an old man 
 at thirty-seven. 
 Working for months 
 on end with his head 
 thrown back had 
 
 stoned as though I 
 
 had crucified Christ. My youth has been 
 lost, bound hand and foot to this tomb.’ ”’ 
 Returning from Rome to Florence in 1501 
 to carve a statue commemorating the deliv- 
 erance of the city from its enemies, other 
 tribulations awaited him. He was foolishly 
 pitted against Leonardo da Vinci, and the 
 two great men of the time, who ought to 
 have been friends, were forced into en- 
 mity by tattlers. Michel Angelo grew mo- 
 rose and suspicious. One day in the 
 street he saw Leonardo conversing with a 
 group of citizens about a passage in 
 Dante. Of a kindly nature, Leonardo 
 hailed his rival and said to his friends, 
 ‘“Michel 
 verses in question.’’ But the latter sus- 
 pected an insult in the remark and re- 
 torted: ‘‘Explain them yourself, you who 
 made the model of a bronze horse and who, 
 incapable of casting it, left it unfinished— 
 
 Angelo here will explain the, 
 
 20 
 
 strained his neck and deranged the 
 glands; his sight was so affected that for 
 long afterwards he could not read a book 
 or letter unless he held it above his head. 
 
 Years passed before Michel Angelo was 
 again called to Rome, in 1534, to cover 
 the immense wall at the entrance to the 
 
 Sistine Chapel with a fresco representing 
 
 “The Last Judgment.”’ He began the work 
 at sixty-one and was engaged on it more 
 than five years, subsequently designing the 
 mighty Domeof St. Peter’s, which remains 
 the sign and symbol of the Eternal City. 
 Vasari, who visited Michel Angelo when 
 he was eighty-eight years of age, describes 
 him as living like a poor man, eating a little 
 bread and a little wine. On February 17, 
 1564, feeling ill, he did not arise from bed, 
 but fully conscious, dictated his will, be- 
 queathing ‘‘his soul to God and his body to 
 the earth.”” He died the next day: 
 

 
 EDEN 
 
 eee sh ee 
 
 ij 
 
 
 
 MICHEL ANGELO (1475-1564) Courtesy Maison Ad. Braun & Cie. 
 Genesis III, 1; 23 Sistine Chapel, Rome 
 
 
 
SALVATOR ROSA 
 
 ALVATOR ROSA, tthe chief 
 of the Neapolitan 
 HSchool of Painting, was not 
 only. a painter and etcher of 
 genius, but was a poetic satirist 
 and musical composer. His birthplace was 
 the village of Renella, near Naples, and 
 the date was 1615. The son of an architect, 
 he studied music and poetry, before taking 
 up painting under an artist uncle and a 
 brother-in-law pupil 
 of Ribera whose 
 school Salvator after- 
 wards frequented. 
 
 In his youth he wan- 
 dered about sketching 
 in the mountainous 
 regions and along the 
 
 Ss 
 
 
 
 subject. 
 
 THE dramatic action of this picture of 
 
 Cain slaying his brother Abel has 
 made it a most popular treatment of the 
 The artist has read between the 
 lines of the Biblical text, in introducing an 
 altar and a sacrifice burning thereon, 
 whereas, in Genesis IV, 8, it is simply 
 stated that “‘Cain talked with Abel his 
 
 able to cope properly with a malignant 
 fever, the seeds of which had been sown 
 during his association with the banditti. 
 
 In 1635 he went to Rome and found a 
 patron in Cardinal Brancaccia, whose pal- 
 ace at Viterbo he decorated, among other 
 commissions. His progress as a painter 
 was deflected for a time by the discovery 
 of his poetic talent, sparkling and epigram- 
 matic, which gained for him a sudden 
 reputation in Rome. 
 Presently he dropped 
 literature as quickly 
 as he had taken it up, 
 and turned again to 
 painting. He worked 
 very hard, and was a 
 painter of distinct 
 power and of marked 
 personality. His pic- 
 
 shores of southern 
 Italy, often falling in 
 with the  banditti, 
 
 who appear so fre- 
 quently in his pic- 
 tures. The death of 
 his father necessitated 
 his return to Naples, 
 and at nineteen, as 
 the mainstay of the 
 family, we find him 
 painting small pic- 
 
 brother: and it came to pass, when they 
 were in the field, that Cain rose up against 
 Abel his brother, and slew him.” The 
 odd-looking weapon which Cain ts wield- 
 ing appears to be the jaw-bone of some 
 animal, as evidenced by the row of teeth. 
 The sheepskin on Abel is familiarly ap- 
 propriate to “‘a keeper of sheep.” 
 
 tures as a rule are 
 distinguished by 
 gloom and mystery, 
 rich coloring, magnif- 
 icent shadows, and 
 broad, free, easy 
 brush-work, nervous 
 and emotional. There 
 is a general air of 
 melancholy in nearly 
 
 tures at low prices until they attracted the 
 attention of Lanfranco, through whom he 
 met Falcone, under whose _ instruction 
 young Salvator learned to paint battle 
 scenes. , ; 
 
 Passari records the meeting of Salvator 
 and Lanfranco as due to the chance 
 notice taken by the latter of a picture 
 of Hagar, the servant of Abraham, and 
 her child, languishing in the desert. Dis- 
 played inconspicuously in a Neapolitan 
 shop window, Lanfranco bought it “for a 
 song’? and took it home with him, not 
 recognizing the name of the artist. En- 
 countering other pictures, bearing the same 
 signature, he invariably bought them either 
 for himself or to give to his friends. His 
 enthusiasm for the work of Salvatoriello, 
 as the young painter was called, had its 
 effect upon the shopkeepers of Naples, 
 and also upon the artist, who at once 
 raised his prices and made the acquaint- 
 ance of Lanfranco. Salvator’s progress, 
 however, was slow, and his family had a 
 faculty of absorbing all but a modicum of 
 his earnings, so that he was for years un- 
 
 22 
 
 all his creations, and his pictures appear 
 to have been turned out at top speed, not- 
 withstanding their prevailing impressive- 
 ness and fine quality of interpretation. 
 The great ambition of Salvator Rosa was 
 to excel as an historical painter, and some 
 of his pictures go far to justify his aspira- 
 tion. But his chief power lay in painting 
 landscapes, marine views and battle scenes, 
 an admirable example of the latter being 
 in the Louvre. 
 
 In Naples particularly Salvator Rosa is 
 held in such repute as almost to amount 
 to idolatry. His pictures are to be found 
 in almost all the galleries of Europe, 
 notably in the Pitti, the National Gallery 
 of London, the Hermitage, the Edinburgh 
 Gallery, and in almost every important 
 palace in Rome. He was a skilful etcher, 
 producing about ninety spirited subjects 
 after his own designs, and was a very 
 powerful draughtsman. Many of his pic- 
 tures are signed by his conjoined initials 
 arranged in at least a dozen different ways, 
 and always skilfully combined. Salvator 
 Rosa died in 1673. 
 
CAIN AND ABEL 
 
 
 
 SALVATOR ROSA (1615-1673) Courtesy Maison Ad. Braun & Cie. 
 Genesis IV, 8 Doria-Pamphili Gallery, Rome 
 
GUSTAVE DORE 
 
 ORE was barely fifteen and 
 q still at school in his native 
 town, Burger, in Alsace, when 
 his father decided that he was 
 wasting too much time in 
 drawing pictures, and took him to Paris, 
 together with an older brother who was to 
 enter the Ecole Polytechnique. The in- 
 tention was for Gustave to attend the 
 school with his brother, but, fascinated 
 
 
 
 As it was, he devoted himself to illustra- 
 tion, not heeding the advice of his devoted 
 mother to ‘‘apply himself to pure art, in- 
 stead of working for the publishers who 
 were making fortunes by his genius.”’ 
 
 And so he worked prodigiously and with- 
 out ceasing, illustrating Shakespeare, as 
 only Doré could; then came Coleridge, 
 Moore, Hood, Milton, Dante, Hugo, Gau- 
 tier, and great plans were laid to illustrate 
 
 with Paris and given 
 forty-eight hours to 
 decide whether he 
 would go to the Poly- 
 technique or return 
 to Alsace, he an- 
 nounced that he 
 would do neither. In- 
 stead he surrepti- 
 tiously made some 
 pictures illustrating 
 “The Labors of Her- 
 cules”? and submitted 
 them to a Paris pub- 
 lisher, who was so 
 impressed by the gen- 
 ius evidenced in the 
 work that he ques- 
 tioned whether the 
 
 N “The Deluge,’ Dore has chosen to 
 
 portray the desperation of man and 
 the lower animals as the Great Flood was 
 engulfing the uplands of the earth. What 
 terrible despair is expressed in the writh- 
 ing, tortured male and female figures, 
 what dumb wonder in certain of the ani- 
 mals, and what sinuous horror ts suggested 
 by the serpent forms coiling and threshing 
 the angry waters! The violence of the 
 storm is revealed by the huge splintered 
 tree, to which men and women still cling 
 frantically. In contrast to this dramatic 
 foreground scene is the great somber arkin 
 the background, with its heterogeneous 
 cargo, calmly afloat in a drowning world. 
 
 the Bible. His work 
 was the wonder of 
 Paris, and_ every- 
 where his pictures 
 were in demand; but 
 his canvases were too 
 large and too terrible 
 in subject to fit into 
 private residences. 
 
 Meanwhile his early 
 Bible pictures at- 
 tracted such atten- 
 
 ‘tion in London that 
 
 a company was 
 formed, agents were 
 sent to Paris and 
 forty large canvases 
 were contracted for, 
 on payment of three 
 
 boy had done it. As- 
 
 sured on that point, the publisher con- 
 tracted with Doré to remain with him 
 three years at a yearly salary of five 
 thousand francs, with the proviso that the 
 lad should attend an art school for four 
 hours every day. 
 
 At the end of a fortnight his visits to the 
 art school were discontinued—Gustave 
 knew more already than the teachers. 
 As Elbert Hubbard says of Doré: ‘‘With 
 such entrée into life, how was it possible 
 that he should ever become a master? 
 His advantages were his disadvantages, 
 and all his faults sprang naturally as a 
 result of his marvelous genius. He was 
 the victim of facility. ... Had Doré en- 
 tered the Paris art world in the conven- 
 tional way, the master might have toned 
 down his exuberance, taught him reserve, 
 and gradually led him along until his 
 tastes were formed and character devel- 
 oped. And then, when he had found his 
 gait and come to know his strength, the 
 name of Paul Gustave Doré might have 
 stood out alone as a bright star in the 
 firmament—the one truly great modern.” 
 
 24 
 
 hundred thousand 
 dollars, with a promise of more to come. 
 Hubbard records: ‘‘Doré took the money, 
 and hurried home to tell his adored and 
 adoring mother. She was at dinner with 
 some invited guests. Gustave vaulted 
 over the piano, played leapfrog among 
 the chairs, and turning a handspring across 
 the table, incidentally sent his heels into 
 a chandelier that came toppling down, 
 smashing every dish upon the table, and 
 frightening the guests into hysterics. ‘It’s 
 nothing,’ said Madame Doré; ‘it’s noth- 
 ing—Gustave has merely done a good 
 day’s work. It’s his way of saying 
 so.’ x” 
 The ‘‘Doré Gallery”? in London proved a 
 great success. But Paris refused to applaud 
 as London had done, and Doré became 
 dispirited. His mother, seeking to rally 
 him, would remind him that he was 
 “only a little over forty, and many a good 
 man has never been recognized at all until 
 after that— see Millet!’ But Doré drooped, 
 and when his mother died, in 1881, it 
 seemed to snap his last earthly tie, and he 
 followed her to the grave in 1883. 
 
THE DELUGE 
 
 a 
 
 \ yi ‘ PA 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ath 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 PAUL GUSTAVE DORE (1833-1883) From the engraving on wood 
 Genesis VII, 10 
 
 
 
HIPPOLYTE 
 
 IPPOLYTE FLANDRIN, one 
 of the greatest religious deco- 
 rators of the nineteenth cen- 
 Sj] tury, was born in Lyons, 
 France, in 1809, and received 
 his early art training from his father, who 
 was a miniature painter. At the age of 
 twenty he went to Paris on foot, with his 
 younger brother, Paul, and entered the 
 atelier of Ingres and the Ecole des Beaux- 
 Arts. During all their 
 student days the 
 brothers lived in dis- 
 tress and poverty. 
 A rift appeared in the 
 clouds in 1831 when 
 Hippolyte entered for 
 the first time the 
 competition for the 
 Prix de Rome, and 
 was admitted to the 
 preliminary trial, but 
 not to the final one. 
 The next year he was 
 
 
 
 LANDRIN’S “Confusion of Tongues at 
 
 the Building of the Tower of Babel’ 
 illustrates with telling decorative effect 
 the astonishment and perplexity of the 
 builders when “‘the Lord confounded their 
 language, so that they could not under- 
 stand one another’s speech.” 
 this act was provoked by the profane am- 
 bition of the dwellers in the land of Shinar 
 “to build a city, and a tower whose top. 
 may reach unto heaven.’ 
 dividual emotions of the suddenly af- 
 
 FLANDRIN 
 
 But Ingres was a dangerous master to 
 follow. His pupils formed around him a 
 small, faithful and submissive band whose 
 members, by reason of his very dominancy, 
 rarely attained to any distinctive charac- 
 ter of their own. Muther observes that 
 not one of them, with the exception of 
 Flandrin, possessed his many-sided talent, 
 and that of Flandrin was in the main con- 
 fined to religious paintings, for which he 
 early developed a pas- 
 sion and which in his 
 hands for the first 
 time attained a place 
 of real importance in 
 French art. Inciden- 
 tally, ‘She followed 
 much more closely 
 than Ingres the paths 
 of the Renaissance 
 masters, particularly 
 Raphael.’”’ 
 
 Reflecting a_ close 
 study of the great 
 
 Of course, 
 
 , 
 
 The various in- 
 
 successful, and going 
 to Rome _ devoted 
 himself definitely to 
 religious painting. His 
 development was 
 steady and, on re- 
 
 flicted populace are clearly portrayed by 
 the imaginative artist in the attitudes and 
 expressions of the men and women at the 
 base of the never-to-be-completed edifice. 
 
 Italian painters, his 
 cartoons were flow- 
 ingly and _ correctly 
 executed with a firm 
 hand. Of draughts- 
 manship Flandrin 
 
 turning to Paris in 1839, he received the 
 first of a number of church commissions 
 that led up to the one for his most im- 
 portant work, the decoration for the great 
 Church of Saint Vincent de Paul, in Paris. 
 The work was first offered to Ingres, and 
 ‘afterwards to Delaroche. Jefused for 
 private reasons by both of those artists, the 
 commission as executed by Flandrin con- 
 sists of a long frieze between two super- 
 imposed arches, representing a procession 
 of saints. It is not only his chief work, 
 but is regarded as one of the finest things 
 in modern figure decoration. 
 
 At the time of his death in Rome, in 1864, 
 Flandrin had projected decorations for the 
 Cathedral of Strassburg. 
 
 He painted between fifty and sixty por- 
 traits and a number of easel pictures, 
 among his portraits being those of Napoleon 
 III, Prince Jerome Napoleon, Duchatel 
 and Mlle. Maison. 
 
 Critics of Flandrin point to him as an 
 example of the influence exercised by 
 Ingres on his pupils, of whom Hippolyte 
 was one of the earliest and most promising. 
 
 26 
 
 knew all that was to be taught; but, 
 justly or unjustly, he is accused of being, 
 except on such occasions as his great 
 Saint Vincent de Paul decorations, at 
 once less richly endowed and more fanatical 
 than Ingres—‘‘a purely mathematical gen- 
 ius; his art a geometrical knowledge, the 
 adaptation of anatomical studies to con- 
 ventional forms, an arrangement of groups 
 and draperies in strict accordance with 
 celebrated exemplars.”’ 
 
 In the work of Flandrin is to be discerned, 
 as his peculiar property, the blond, tender, 
 
 ‘slightly melancholy face of a Christian 
 
 maiden, his conception of the Virgin being 
 essentially Nordic. In his portrait painting 
 he reveals the same ascetic and pure prin- 
 ciples, and thereby acquired a large clien- 
 tele as the painter ofthe femme honnéte. 
 These women conversed with him and 
 blushed in his presence; and his appeal lies 
 in his power to define grace and delicacy, 
 to translate them into a nun-like appear- 
 ance, which under the French Second 
 Empire gained all the greater approba- 
 tion, since it seldom was found in real life. 
 

 
 / 
 
 THE CONFUSION OF ‘TONGUES 
 
 Plan dain veehy 
 
 HR 
 
 
 
 HIPPOLYTE FLANDRIN (1809-1864) Courtesy Maison Ad. Braun & Cie. 
 Genesis XI, 7 Museum of Lille, France 
 
CAZIN 
 
 TRAN CHARLES CAZIN, a 
 French painter whose distinc- 
 
 & tion is to have struck a new 
 Ke note in modern landscape paint- 
 
 ing, was born in the village of 
 Samer, near Calais, in 1841, and died in 
 Paris in 1901. The regret of his life was 
 that he was not able to die in the old 
 house where he was born. In the first 
 days of his success he had bought the 
 house, which some 
 years before had 
 passed out of the fam- 
 ily, and with great 
 care and expense had 
 restored it to con- 
 form to his boyhood 
 memories. Only his 
 intimates were aware 
 that Cazin was so full 
 of sentiment, his ac- 
 quaintances being de- 
 ceived by his brusque 
 manner and reserve 
 into believing him a 
 pronounced — skeptic 
 and materialist. In 
 reality, sentiment was 
 strong in Cazin and 
 shows itself in most 
 of his painting. A 
 strange mixture he 
 was of culture and 
 instinct, of nature and art, of spontaneity 
 and reserve, of care and carelessness, of 
 whim and method, of simplicity and com- 
 plexity, of discipline and rebellion, of 
 caution and audacity, of emotion and 
 reason. He was shy and mysterious, and 
 at times boisterously sociable. 
 His father, a country doctor, was able to 
 give him a university education, at Lille. 
 He early exhibited a strong artistic incli- 
 nation, and while his family was not enthu- 
 siastic, he was not discouraged. At nine- 
 teen he went to Paris and entered the then 
 popular Ecole-de-Medicine, under Lecoq 
 de Boisbaudran, who also had as pupils 
 Lhermitte, Rodin, Ribot, Legros and 
 Fantin-Latour. Nine years later, through 
 the influence of Lecoq, Cazin was made 
 curator of the Museum of Tours and also 
 conducted a school of drawing there. 
 Then came the Franco-Prussian War, and 
 for six months of the military occupation 
 of Tours Cazin lived in mortal terror lest 
 
 Ishmael. 
 
 her voice and wept. 
 
 N “Hagar and Ishmael’ we find mother 
 
 and son in the desert at the close of the 
 day when water and bread are gone. 
 Cazin here illustrates the familiar story, 
 in Genesis, telling how Abraham’s wife, 
 Sarah, when ninety years old and despair- 
 ing of having children of her own, sent 
 Abraham to her handmaid, Hagar, hoping 
 to obtain children by her. 
 When, in fulfillment of His 
 covenant, God later gave Isaac to Sarah, 
 she grew jealous and had Hagar and 
 Ishmael sent inio the desert to perish. 
 Soon their food and drink were exhausted, 
 and Hagar, fearing the end, lifted up 
 Whereupon an angel 
 called to her, saying: ‘‘Arise, lift up the 
 lad... for Iwill make him a great nation.” 
 
 .the slippery pavement. 
 
 28 
 
 the museum be looted. It seems to have 
 been spared, largely owing to the work of 
 Cazin in organizing a hospital service and 
 installing beds in the museum. Surrep- 
 titiously, it is related, he boxed and 
 buried in the cellar of the building several 
 famous pictures by Montagna that the 
 Prussian authorities, well acquainted with 
 the existence, if not the location, of the 
 great French art treasures, were hunting 
 for everywhere. 
 Cazin did not really 
 begin exhibiting until 
 1876. It was four 
 years later at the 
 Paris Salon, that he 
 was awarded a medal 
 of the first class for 
 his painting of ‘‘Ha- 
 gar and Ishmael.’”’ He 
 became a member of 
 the Legion of Honor 
 in 1882. 
 
 As a painter, espe- 
 cially of landscapes, 
 Muther says, ‘‘Cazin 
 has his own hour, his 
 own world, his own 
 men and women. His 
 hour is when the sun is 
 setting and the moon 
 is rising, when shad- 
 ows fill the world.”’ 
 Cazin will paint the entrance into a 
 French village, and we see a few cottages, 
 a clump of thin poplars, and red-tiled roofs 
 lacquered with the pale shadows of even- 
 ing. Soon it will rain in torrents. Or it 
 is night, and the sky is banked with 
 clouds, behind which a moon is struggling. 
 Lamps are lighted in the village windows, 
 and an old post-chaise rolls heavily over 
 Or dun-green 
 shadows are cast over a solitary green 
 field, in which are featured a windmill and 
 a sluggish stream. Silence mysteriously 
 possesses the scene, and only in the sky 
 is there any movement, that being a faint 
 silver flash of lightning stabbing the dark. 
 Sometimes the humor of a landscape is as- 
 sociated with the memory of kindred emo- 
 tions which passages in the Bible or in old 
 legends have awakened in Cazin. In such 
 moods he painted his great Biblical or 
 mythological pictures. His pictures of this 
 character are peculiarly satisfying. 
 
 The result was 
 
HAGAR AND ISHMAEL 
 
 ibs a 7 as a ee siemens aedeiaiaiie a : 5 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 iy JEAN CHARLES CAZIN (1841-1901) Courtesy Maison Ad. Braun & Cie. 
 ; Genesis XXI, 15 Luxembourg, Paris 
 
 
 
VERONESE 
 
 AOLO VERONESE, whose 
 fondness for painting sump- 
 tuous scenes and magnificent 
 ceremonials is evident in so 
 many of his pictures, was, in 
 
 addition to being one of the greatest of 
 
 painters, the most anachronistic one that 
 ever lived. On one occasion the Roman 
 
 Church saw fit to call him to account for 
 
 ) 
 
 
 
 
 many servants in his employ, and pleaded 
 many precedents of seeming irreverence, 
 citing as an instance Michel Angelo’s 
 “Last Judgment,” in which sacred person- 
 ages were represented as quite nude. And 
 was he of the opinion, asked the inquisi- 
 tors, that that was proper and decent? 
 “Tilustrious lords,’’ acknowledged Vero- 
 nese, ‘‘I had not taken such matters into 
 
 introducing worldly accessories 
 
 scene from sacred his- 
 tory. The picture in 
 question was the 
 “Feast at the House 
 of Levi,’’ now in the 
 Venice Academy, and 
 in the summer of 1573 
 the painter was sum- 
 moned before the tri- 
 bunal of the Holy In- 
 quisition to explain 
 the liberties he had 
 taken with gospel text 
 in this picture, which 
 had been painted for 
 one of the churches 
 of Venice. Accused 
 by the tribunal of 
 having introduced a 
 dog in a place in the 
 picture where it was 
 felt that the figure of 
 the Magdalen would 
 have been more fit- 
 
 into a consideration. 
 
 N this representation of the familiar ac- 
 
 count in Genesis, of Lot and his family 
 fleeing from Sodom, Veronese has treated 
 the subject with his customary disregard 
 of historical exactitude, particularly in 
 clothing the outstanding figures in Vene- 
 tian costumes of the Renaissance period. 
 Lot’s two daughters are being conducted 
 by one of the angels, and although bare- 
 jJooted are dressed as no two women 
 would be on such an occasion. Lot him- 
 self, encouraged onward by the second 
 angel, is the only figure in the picture that 
 is not barefooted. In the lower back- 
 ground may be seen the wraithlike figure 
 of Lot’s wife ‘who looked back,’”’ despite 
 the angelic warning, ‘and became a pillar 
 of salt.” A lurid sky effectively suggests 
 the doomed city of Sodom going up in 
 smoke, behind the discouraged trees. 
 
 I paint with such study as 
 
 is natural to me, and 
 as my mind can com- 
 prehend.”’ 
 
 This, however, was 
 not regarded as a 
 good enough excuse, 
 and having been duly 
 reprimanded  Vero- 
 nese was ordered to 
 erase the objection- 
 able figures at his own 
 expense, and within 
 three months. He 
 painted out some; 
 others still remain. 
 Of his private life 
 little is known. When 
 nearly forty he mar- 
 ried a cousin in Ve- 
 rona and had two 
 sons, both of whom 
 became painters. His 
 genius and industry, 
 accompanied by good 
 husbandry, brought 
 
 ting, Veronese de- 
 fended himself by saying that he had 
 supposed the same license was granted to 
 painters as was allowed to ‘‘poets and 
 fools,’’ and frankly confessed that when- 
 ever it was necessary to fill in the empty 
 spaces of his compositions he freely intro- 
 duced figures of his own invention, and 
 while ready to show all honor to the 
 Magdalen, he did not feel that in the 
 place specified her figure would harmonize 
 with the composition of his picture. 
 
 Asked if he considered it suitable to 
 introduce such figures as dwarfs, buffoons 
 and drunken Germans—these last being 
 regarded by Italians of that day as rank 
 heretics, and one of whom the painter had 
 realistically portrayed in the act of stanch- 
 ing a bleeding nose—Veronese admitted 
 it was not, but said that he had introduced 
 such figures in order to show that the 
 master of the house was rich and had 
 
 30 
 
 him considerable wealth, despite his lavish 
 manner of living. John C. Van Dyke sees 
 in the work of Veronese “pomp and glory 
 carried to the highest pitch, but with all 
 seriousness of mood and truthfulness in 
 art. It was beyond Titian in variety, rich- 
 ness, ornament, facility; but it was below 
 him in sentiment, sobriety and depth of in- 
 sight. Titian, with all his sensuous beauty, 
 appealed to the higher intelligence, while 
 Veronese . . . appealed more positively to 
 the eye by luxurious color-setting and mag- 
 nificence of invention.” 
 
 Honored and universally admitted to be 
 of the highest genius, Veronese was a man 
 of amiable disposition, of undisputed char- 
 acter, a good neighbor and citizen. Dying 
 in 1588, his body lies in the Church of 
 San Sebastiano—an appropriate resting- 
 place for one by whose genius its walls 
 had been so richly decorated. 
 
THE BURNING OF SODOM 
 
 
 
 PAOLO VERONESE (1528- 
 Genesis XIX, 24 
 
 Louvre, Paris 
 
 Courtesy Maison Ad. Braun & Cie. 
 
 1588) 
 
TIEPOLO 
 
 — J 
 
 TAHE last great name in the 
 Y illustrious roll of Venetian mas- 
 Aig ters was Giovanni Battista 
 NN y Tiepolo, who was born in 
 Venice, in 1696, and died in 
 Madrid, in 1770. His father, a ship captain 
 and merchant of marine goods, left him a 
 considerable estate and he seems never to 
 have experienced the vicissitudes that at- 
 tend the average artist. The sources of his 
 
 
 
 jealousy and hatred of Raphael Mengs, 
 who had been Court Painter under the 
 preceding monarch. 
 
 No account of Tiepolo would be complete 
 without mention of the two models who 
 appear so frequently in his pictures. Most 
 important was the aforementioned Chris- 
 tina, daughter of a Venetian gondolier. who 
 accompanied the artist to Spain and ap- 
 pears to have been a member of his house- 
 
 early inspiration were 
 
 Titian and Paulo 
 Veronese, especially 
 the latter, whom, 
 
 however, he excelled 
 as a ceiling decorator, 
 in which field he has 
 never had a rival. 
 The amount of wall 
 space he covered with 
 his magnificent fres- 
 cos is nothing short 
 of stupendous, besides 
 altar-pieces, etchings 
 and finished sketches 
 for many of his works. 
 His ceiling frescos, 
 where the subject isa 
 secular one, show the 
 same striking arrange- 
 ment of masses as do 
 
 his religious compositions. 
 
 BEDIENT to God’s command, Abra- 
 
 ham was preparing to slay his beloved 
 son, Isaac, and make of him a burnt 
 offering, and “stretched forth his hand 
 and took the knife,’ when the Angel of 
 the Lord said, “‘Lay not thine hand upon 
 the lad, neither do thou anything unto 
 him; for now I know that theu fearest 
 God, seeing thou hast not withheld thine 
 only son from Me.” Such is the scene, 
 described in Genesis, that is dramatically 
 represented in this picture: Tiepolo has 
 no scriptural warrant for painting Isaac 
 blindfolded, but it adds much to the nar- 
 rative quality of the picture. Behind Isaac 
 may be seen the head of the ram, which 
 Abraham substituted for his son. 
 
 Tiepolo nearly 
 
 hold. ‘She had a 
 rare perfection: large 
 and svelt, with a 
 queenly carriage, an 
 exquisite profile, oval 
 face, eyes of a Cir- 
 cassian—piquant, one 
 could say, the neck 
 of a swan, the hands 
 of a patrician, form 
 supple and full.”” In 
 fact, we read, Tiepolo 
 never used any other 
 female model, and her 
 image is to be found 
 alike in the altar- 
 piece and on the 
 vault of ducalpalaces. 
 She appears now as 
 a saint, now as an 
 historical character, 
 
 or again as a mythological personage. 
 
 always introduces a four-horse chariot in 
 them, the spirited horses rearing and ca- 
 reering across the vaults of the sky, show- 
 ing his marvellous powers of foreshorten- 
 ing. Although many of his finest frescos are 
 to be found in the churches of his native 
 city, Tiepolo spent many years outside of 
 Italy engaged upon commissions for for- 
 eign potentates. 
 
 The last great honor paid him was to be 
 called to Spain to decorate the Royal 
 Palace in Madrid for Charles III, who had 
 lately ascended the throne. Accompanied 
 by his two sons and his model, Christina, 
 he established a residence in the Spanish 
 capital in 1762, being allowed, in addition 
 to the expenses of the journey, 2000 rubles 
 of gold a year and 500 ducats for a carriage. 
 Immediately upon his arrival at Madrid 
 his health began to fail, and he made his 
 will and deposited it with the royal notary. 
 He lived eight years longer, however, 
 superintending vast works for the Royal 
 Palace, and is said to have incurred the 
 
 Tiepolo’s other model was a Moorish 
 slave who was brought to Venice as a 
 Corsair prisoner. The artist bought him, 
 instructed him in the Christian religion, 
 to which he became a convert, and used 
 him as a model during ten of the most 
 productive years of his industrious life. 
 
 Tiepolo seems to have amassed a con- 
 siderable fortune. Of his gambling wife, 
 who does not appear to have accom- 
 
 . panied him on his travels, an anecdote is 
 
 32 
 
 told of how one evening, having lost all 
 the money she had brought with her, she 
 rose to go, when her opponent volun- 
 teered to play for the sketches in her hus- 
 band’s studio. She played again, and 
 lost. Again her wily opponent offered to 
 play for her country villa at Zianigo. A 
 third time she lost; but fortunately her 
 businesslike son, who was absent from ° 
 Venice at the time, returned home in time 
 to cancel her debt, but not without dis- 
 posing of a large number of sketches by 
 the absent master. 
 
THE SACRIFICE OF ISAAC 
 
 
 
 GIOVANNI BATTISTA TIEPOLO (1696-1770) Metropolitan Museum of Art 
 Genesis XXII, 10 New York City 
 
LEON GEROME 
 
 A GENIUS for painting first 
 manifested itself in Jean 
 Léon Géréme, and when in 
 8 middle age his inspiration as 
 e) a painter gradually began to 
 
 SEC 
 
 flag—at the age of fifty-four, to be exact— 
 he made his début as a sculptor of the 
 first rank. Of no other artist is the de- 
 velopment of such a progressive dual na- 
 ture recorded. Géréme was born in 1824 
 
 
 
 “Gladiators before Cesar,’’ which was 
 exhibited in 1859. 
 
 Gér6éme was a persistent and enthusiastic 
 traveller, spending as much as a year in 
 the Danube provinces at one time, and 
 another year in Egypt, stopping at Con- 
 stantinople on the way. He was made 
 professor of painting at the Ecole des 
 Beaux-Arts in 1865, won a medal of 
 honor at the Universal Exposition a short 
 
 at Vesoul, Haute- 
 Saone, France, and it 
 seems to have been 
 foreordained that he 
 should be an artist. 
 From the time he 
 could hold a brush 
 andpalette, his father, 
 who was a goldsmith, 
 encouraged the artis- 
 tic tendencies of his 
 son and sympatheti- 
 cally directed his 
 early efforts. 
 
 Léon’s copy of a pic- 
 ture by Decamps, 
 made at the age of 
 fifteen, chanced to be 
 seen by a friend of 
 the then immensely 
 popular Delaroche, 
 and led directly to his 
 entering the atelier of 
 that master in Paris. 
 
 ACCORDING to Genesis, the servant 
 
 of Abraham, having been despatched 
 by his master into Mesopotamia in quest 
 of a wife for his son, Isaac, reached the 
 city of Nahor at the time of day when the 
 women were accustomed to draw water 
 from a well near the city. And Rebecca 
 came to the well with her pitcher. from 
 which she bade Abraham’s servant drink, 
 and then offered to “draw water for the 
 camels also.... And she hasted, and 
 emptied her pitcher into the trough.” 
 Such is the scene faithfully portrayed in 
 this picture, which follows the scriptural 
 account in every detail. As a reward for 
 her action, Rebecca was invited to accom- 
 pany the servant back to Abraham, to 
 “find favor in his eyes’? and what is more 
 to the point, in those of Isaac. She ac- 
 cepted the invitation and in due time de- 
 parted with the blessings of her family. 
 
 time after and also 
 was made an officer 
 and commander of 
 the Legion of Honor. 
 
 His indefatigable in- 
 dustry is attested by 
 the immense number 
 of pictures he paint- 
 ed, in addition to his 
 
 later activities in 
 sculpture. Of several 
 hundred canvases, 
 
 Géréme himself con- 
 sidered his best work 
 on religious subjects 
 to be his studies of 
 “Rebecca at the 
 
 - Well,’”’ and of ‘‘Moses 
 
 overthrowing the 
 hosts of Amalek,”’ 
 and the historical pic- 
 tures of the Roman 
 gladiators and the 
 great ‘‘Pollice Verso,”’ 
 
 Three years later he 
 went with Delaroche 
 to Rome, without the formality of com- 
 peting for the Prix de Rome, when Dela- 
 roche was appointed director of the French 
 Academy in the Eternal City. With the 
 exception of a few months with Gleyre, 
 all Géréme’s early training was received 
 from Delaroche, many of whose pictures 
 he is said to have assisted in painting. 
 
 In 1847 Géréme was unsuccessful in the 
 competition for the Prix de Rome, but he 
 returned to Paris with his celebrated pic- 
 ture, a ‘‘Greek Cockfight,’’ now in the 
 Luxembourg, which was exhibited at the 
 Salon of that year, and which was the 
 sensation of the day. In the following 
 year he won the second-class medal at the 
 Salon, at which pictures by Géréme were 
 exhibited almost annually thereafter. All 
 the most splendid qualities of the art of 
 Gér6éme appear in the great picture of the 
 
 which shows a gladi- 
 ator standing over his 
 conquered antagonist, awaiting the sig- 
 nal of the Vestal Virgins, the thumb 
 turned down, which was, according to an 
 erroneous supposition, the death-sign in 
 the arena. 
 
 . Observe the sprightly way in which Géréme 
 
 34 
 
 recalls the time and place of his birth: 
 “To prevent seven cities disputing the 
 honor of being my native one, I certify 
 that it is Vesoul. No miracle took place 
 at the time of my birth, which is surprising. 
 The lightning did not even flash in a clear 
 sky.’’ He goes on to thank his father for 
 having taught him ‘‘much Latin and con- 
 siderable Greek,’’ but regrets that one of 
 them was not the Italian language, “‘which 
 has been of enormous service to me 
 in my travels.’’ Géréme died in Paris, 
 in 1904, mourned, as he had long been 
 honored, by the French nation. 
 

 
 
 
 4 
 
 JEAN LEON GEROME (1824-1904) Courtesy Current Literature Publishing Co, 
 Genesis XXIV 
 
 
 
PALMA VECCHIO 
 
 -_ 
 
 
 
 the features of the men and women of 
 well-known families among the nobility of 
 that time in Venice, notably of the women, 
 of whom Palma may be said to be the 
 painter par excellence, and whom he 
 frequently idealized by presenting them 
 in classic costumes.”’ 
 
 The fact that he never signed or dated any 
 of his canvases makes it impossible to as- 
 sign any chronological places to his pic- 
 
 HE Meeting of Jacob and Rachel’’ was 
 
 a favorite theme with early Italian 
 painters, and this idyllic interpretation by 
 Palma Vecchio has been admired for cen- 
 turies for its simplicity and tenderness of 
 expression. The figures are clothed as 
 Italian peasants in Palma’s time, and the 
 scene depicted ts the final return of Jacob. 
 To win Rachel’s hand he had served seven 
 years, but when he claimed her he was 
 told that she could not marry while her 
 older sister was unwed. To make Rachel 
 his wife he had to serve an additional 
 seven years. At the left a shepherd lies 
 beside a well, ‘“‘a whole Arcadia of intense 
 yearning,” says Symonds, “in the eyes of 
 sympathy he fixes upon the lovers.” 
 
 tures. For only two 
 of his paintings are 
 approximate dates as- 
 signed. It is known 
 that in 1520 he was 
 commissioned by Ma- 
 rin Querini to paint 
 an altar-piece for the 
 Church of Sant’ An- 
 tonio in Venice; and 
 that in 1525 he agreed 
 to paint for a lady of 
 the Malipero family 
 an altar-piece repre- 
 senting ‘‘The Adora- 
 tion of the Magi,”’ to 
 decorate the island- 
 
 church of Sant’ Elena. 
 
 In July 1528, Palma 
 made his will, be- 
 queathing all of his 
 estate, but twenty 
 
 WHAHAT certain paintings by Palma 
 Vecchio should have been, and 
 still are, mistaken for the work 
 NN yy of Titian is reason enough in 
 itself to accord him a niche in 
 the gallery of immortals. Critics have long 
 differed in their estimates of this sixteenth 
 century painter of whose life and person- 
 ality very little is known. Crowe and 
 Cavalcaselle are of the opinion that he 
 was a pioneer who 
 “‘shared with Giorgi- 
 one and Titian the 
 honor of modernizing 
 and regenerating Ve- 
 netian art,’’ and that 
 “from the borders of 
 Piedmont to the Gulf 
 of Trieste there was 
 not a city of any pre- 
 tensions that did not 
 feel the influence of 
 his art.”’ 
 Palma Vecchio, signi- 
 fying Palma the elder, 
 to distinguish him 
 from his grandnephew 
 of the same name, 
 also a painter, early 
 signed himself Jaco- 
 mo de Antonio de 
 Negreti: — It “is\ inot 
 clear just why he adopted the name 
 Palma. His birthplace was a village in 
 the Valley of the Brembo, not far from 
 Bergamo, Italy. The date, according to 
 Vasari, was 1480, and it is stated, on the 
 same authority, that he died in Venice at 
 the age of forty-eight. The house in 
 which he was born and lived in his youth, 
 before going to Venice, is still pointed 
 out as la ca’ del pittur—the house of the 
 painter. 
 It is believed that Palma went to Venice 
 when very young, and that, together with 
 Titian and Giorgione, he there entered the 
 studio of Giovanni Bellini, whose influence 
 is discernible in some of his early works. 
 Excepting occasional visits to his native 
 Lombardy, where examples of his work 
 may still be seen, Palma spent a busy life 
 in Venice, painting altar-pieces, Sante 
 Conversazioni or Holy Family and Saints 
 —in which groups of saints in adoration 
 of the Madonna and Child are depicted in 
 peaceful landscapes—and in ‘portraying 
 
 36 
 
 ducats, to two nephews and a niece, 
 children of a brother who had died four 
 years previously, and who were very dear 
 to their bachelor uncle. The twenty 
 ducats were to be distributed among his 
 poor relatives in the vicinity of Bergamo 
 and in Venice; and, by the painter’s de- 
 sire, prayers were to be said for his soul 
 in the Sanctuary of Assisi. The wit- 
 nesses to his will were three of his fellow 
 countrymen, resident in Venice—a wine- 
 seller, a fruiterer, and a dyer. 
 
 From the manner in which the painter 
 alludes to himself in this document it has 
 been surmised that his health had been 
 failing for some time. Whether this was 
 so, or whether his last sickness was of 
 short duration, it is recorded that he died 
 two days after signing his will, leaving in 
 his studio more than forty canvases to be 
 finished by his pupils. His ashes are in 
 the vault of the Confraternity of the Holy 
 Spirit, of which he had been a member, in 
 the Church of San Gregorio, Venice. 
 
THE MEETING OF JACOB AND RACHAEL 
 
 
 
 PALMA VECCHIO (1480-1528) 
 Genesis XXX, 11 
 
ALEXANDRE GABRIEL DECAMPS 
 
 HIS French painter, whose 
 name is so often associated 
 with that of Delacroix, was 
 indifferent to nothing in na- 
 ture or history: he showed as 
 much’ enthusiasm for a pair of tanned 
 street urchins playing in the sunshine of a 
 Paris concourse as for Biblical figures and 
 old-world epics. .He has painted hens 
 pecking in a barnyard, dogs on the chase 
 and in the kennel, 
 monkeys as scholars 
 and musicians in all 
 
 
 
 CAMPS’ 
 
 “Joseph Sold by His 
 
 he went on a pilgrimage to the Greek 
 Archipelago, Constantinople and Asia Mi- 
 nor, including the Holy Land, which be- 
 came a voyage of discovery for French 
 painting. 
 
 Even before visiting the East he had laid 
 the foundation of that French school of 
 Orientalism that was later to include 
 Géréme, Ziem, Constant and Frére. But 
 following his sojourn in Asia Minor, every- 
 thing he painted— 
 even in his Biblical 
 pictures— reflects the 
 
 but impossible situa- 
 tions. Someone has 
 termed his ‘‘Battle of 
 Tailleborg’’ as the 
 only picture of a 
 battle in the Ver- 
 sailles Museum. 
 Characterizing all his 
 work there is an indi- 
 viduality, not of the 
 very first order, but 
 one that is charming 
 and that assures him 
 of a very high place 
 among his contempo- 
 raries of the early 
 nineteenth century. 
 
 Decamps was born in 
 Paris, in 1803. His 
 first work that ap- 
 
 Brethren’ astonishesat the first glance. 
 The irregularities of its foreground—some 
 rocks, a spring from which a woman is 
 taking water --has little or no relation to 
 the main subject, which ts relegated to the 
 middle distance. The figure of Joseph, 
 charmingly drawn, is instinct with grace. 
 The whole group of Israelite merchants is 
 very fine. The figures’in silhouette against 
 the sky have a purity and distinction 
 worthy of the Old Masters. The transac- 
 tion is not taking place in a barren and 
 waterless desert, nor in an oasis. These 
 are the intermediate pasture lands, where 
 
 Abraham, Jacob and Laban tended their. 
 
 flocks, and where the history of the world 
 is generally believed to have begun. 
 
 East of modern times. 
 As Muther - says, 
 “The largeness of line 
 in his Oriental land- 
 scapes is expressive 
 of something so pa- 
 triarchal and Bibli- 
 cal, and of such a 
 dreamy, mystical po- 
 etry that, in spite of 
 their modern garb, 
 the figures seem like 
 visions from a far 
 distance.”’ 
 
 Decamps is never 
 trivial. All his pic- 
 tures soothe and cap- 
 tivate the eye, how- 
 ever much they may 
 lower the _ expecta- 
 
 peared in the Salon of 1827—painted in 
 his twenty-fourth year—was not at once 
 pleasing to his fellow-artists, but its 
 originality and style attracted the public 
 and paved the way for a considerable 
 vogue. 
 
 Of early instruction Decamps is said to 
 have received little, regarding the lessons 
 of his one and only master of importance, 
 Abel de Pujol, as ‘“‘monotonous.” He 
 preferred to grope his way alone, but in 
 after years regretted his lack of early 
 training. Once, visiting the studio of 
 Millet, he exclaimed, ‘‘Ah, you are a lucky 
 fellow; you can do all you wish to do!”’ 
 What has been called the “artistic con- 
 science’? was always plaguing Decamps, 
 making him discontented with even his best 
 work. Having made a success in 1829 
 with an imaginary picture of the East, he 
 became curious to see how far the reality 
 corresponded with his ideas of Turkey; 
 and in that year—anticipating Delacroix— 
 
 38 
 
 tions raised by introductory praises of 
 them. There was a time when it was 
 said that ‘“‘Delacroix painted with color and 
 Decamps with light,’’ but such an ob- 
 serving critic as Muther, while admitting 
 that Decamps has “admirable brilliancy 
 of technique,” asserts that “he was no 
 painter of light.’’ In fact, ““Decamps at- 
 tained the effect ot light in his pictures by 
 the darkening of shadows, precisely in the 
 manner of the old school. To make the 
 sky bright, he threw the foreground into 
 opaque and heavy shade.” 
 
 Decamps touched the high-water inark of 
 his popularity in 1839. But the encroach- 
 ing authority of the classic school at that 
 time made Decamps uncertain of himself 
 and discouraged with his profession. In 
 this mood he is said to have burned or 
 otherwise destroyed many of his canvases, 
 abandoning art for many years. He lost 
 his life in the summer of 1860 as the result 
 of an accident while riding to the hunt. 
 
JOSEPH SOLD BY HIS BRETHREN 
 
 
 
 ALEXANDRE GABRIEL DECAMPS (1803-1860) Courtesy Maison Ad. Braun & Cie. 
 Genesis XXVII, 28 ; 
 
 
 
JAMES JOSEPH TISSOT 
 
 gy) AUL on the road to Damascus 
 
 did not suffer a more startling 
 8 conversion, or spiritual trans- 
 ference, than did the French 
 painter, James Tissot, at the 
 age of fifty. Hitherto he had been a dis- 
 tinguished painter of fashionable life and 
 the feminine world. For years he enjoyed 
 a great vogue in London, where his pic- 
 tures were well hung at the Royal Academy 
 and were regarded as 
 among the best shown 
 there. But he was not 
 distinguished for any 
 devotion to serious 
 
 
 
 I T was at the time of the great famine in 
 
 Egypt, that followed the seven years of 
 plenty, in which Joseph had stored vast 
 quantities of foodstuffs in the granaries 
 
 cerned, the point of view of historical accu- 
 racy, as regards details of dress, accessories 
 and surroundings, was never even con- 
 sidered. 
 
 The Renaissance masters of Italy repre- 
 sented their own Italian surroundings in 
 their religious art without any conscious- 
 ness of incongruity or anachronism. It 
 was habitual with them to employ the 
 costume of the period, and although a 
 somewhat more gen- 
 eralized and _ ideal 
 point of view is fre- 
 quently found as re- 
 gards costume and 
 
 subjects and was 
 wholly unknown in 
 the field of religious 
 art. His change of 
 subject matter was 
 the result of a great 
 personal sorrow, ex- 
 perienced in the death 
 of a dear friend, and 
 after beginning his 
 great series of gospel 
 illustrations he is not 
 known to have ever 
 undertaken any pic- 
 ture other than of 
 religious character. 
 
 of Pharaoh. His brethren, who long ago 
 had treacherously sold Joseph into Egyft, 
 had now come from the land of Canaan 
 to Egypt in quest of food, and are here 
 pictured at the moment when Joseph made 
 himself known unto them. Their guilty 
 consciences are reflected in their furtive 
 expressions, as kneeling before their 
 powerful brother, they study him anx- 
 iously. Joseph, however, is too much 
 moved by the sight of his brethren and 
 by the news that his father, Jacob, is still 
 alive, to harbor a vengeful feeling. On 
 the contrary, he sends them homeward 
 
 accessories, historical 
 accuracy was never 
 attempted. 
 
 The significance of 
 the Tissot pictures is 
 indicated by the art- 
 ist himself, who writes 
 that on his return to 
 Paris from Jerusalem, 
 in 1887, he went to 
 
 see his father, a 
 Christian of the old 
 school. “T showed 
 
 him my sketches and 
 studies; and when he 
 saw the appearance 
 
 Born at Nantes in 
 1836, it was in 1886 
 that Tissot first went to Palestine with a 
 view to illustrating a life of Christ. He 
 spent ten years in the Holy Land in serious 
 study of the life and archaeology of the 
 country; and the result was a series of 
 three hundred and fifty paintings, mostly 
 water colors, and’ the one hundred and 
 twelve pen and ink sketches purchased for 
 the Brooklyn Museum in 1903, by popu- 
 lar subscription. Previously the Tissot 
 Collection had been widely shown in Eu- 
 rope and had been exhibited in all the 
 principal cities of the United States, with 
 almost fabulous success in point of inter- 
 est and attendance. 
 
 It is a remarkable fact that Tissot is the 
 first artist of modern times to aim at ab- 
 solute historical accuracy in a complete 
 and comprehensive series of Bible pictures. 
 As far as modern art is concerned, no cor- 
 responding series illustrating the life of 
 Christ has ever been attempted and, so 
 far as historical religious art is con- 
 
 with much food, money and raiment. 
 
 40 
 
 and the exact propor- 
 tions: of the holy 
 places, pereiaes of Golgotha, he ex- 
 claimed: ‘Then I must alter all my pre- 
 conceived ideas of these things. What! is 
 Calvary not a high mountain in the shape 
 of a sugar-loaf, covered with rocks and 
 brushwood?’ ‘Well, no,’ I replied, ‘the 
 mount of Calvary, though it occupied the 
 summit of the city, was, at the most, only 
 22 or 23 feet high. The Holy Sepulchre, 
 too, was close beside it, and among quite 
 different surroundings from those usually 
 pictured. The Christian world has had its 
 imagination misled by the fancies of 
 painters; and there is a whole stock of 
 images that must be driven out of the 
 mind, before it can be familiarized with 
 notions that are a little nearer the truth.’ ” 
 Tissot spent the last years of his life 
 illustrating the Old Testament. He died 
 in 1902, before the completion of this 
 work, but a considerable portion of it was 
 finished and is now in the possession of the 
 New York Public Library. 
 
JOSEPH MAKES HIMSELF KNOWN 
 
 
 
 JAMES JOSEPH TISSOT (1836-1902) Courtesy Current Literature Publishing Co. 
 Genesis XLV, 3 
 
REMBRANDT 
 
 UCH concerning the life of 
 the greatest of Dutch painters, 
 Rembrandt van Rijn (Rem- 
 brandt of the Rhine), re- 
 mains shrouded in darkness 
 
 and mystery. Enough is known, however, 
 
 to indict the Dutch people of his time 
 for their treatment of him in his declining 
 years and of their indifferent notice of his 
 death and burial by the hands of charity. 
 
 7 
 D 
 
 Ee Oa 
 
 quiet blue eyes. Taking the boy by the 
 hand that had painted this precursor of 
 priceless masterpieces, the teacher led him 
 out before the class and bade them look 
 upon their master. 
 
 From that time on Rembrandt was re- 
 garded by the little art world of Leyden 
 as a prodigy. Like William Cullen Bry- 
 ant, who wrote ‘“Thanatopsis’’ when 
 scarcely eighteen, and writing for sixty 
 
 Rembrandt was the 
 fifth of six children 
 born to a Leyden 
 miller and his wife, 
 whose maternal fea- 
 tures were to be im- 
 mortalized by her son. 
 The year of his birth 
 is believed to. have 
 been 1606. A hun- 
 dred pictures he made 
 of his mother are 
 known to exist. Hum- 
 ble as they were in 
 station, his parents 
 sent the future paint- 
 er to a grammar- 
 school where he made 
 
 VAINLY because of the venerable fig- 
 
 ure of the patriarch in Rembrandt’s 
 “Jacob Blessing the Sons of Joseph,’’ is 
 the picture a memorable addition to his 
 extensive number of paintings of Biblical 
 subjects.. Itillustrates Genesis XLVIII, 14. 
 “And Jacob stretched out his right hand 
 and laid it upon Ephraim’s head, who was 
 the younger, and his left hand upon Ma- 
 nasseh’s head, guiding his hands wittingly; 
 for Manasseh was the first-born.”” Joseph 
 protesting to this was assured by his 
 father that Ephraim, the younger, would 
 be set before Manasseh. Rembrandt has 
 introduced the supposed’ mother of the 
 
 years thereafter never 
 equalled it, or Dante 
 Gabriel Rossetti, who 
 wrote ‘‘The Blessed 
 Damozel’”’ at the same 
 age, Rembrandt had 
 an extraordinary pre- 
 cocity. It is probably 
 true that he could 
 not then have pro- 
 duced an_ elaborate 
 composition, but, as 
 Elbert Hubbard ob- 
 serves of this great 
 Dutch master, ‘“‘His 
 faces were Rem- 
 brandtesque from the 
 
 such slow progress 
 with his studies that 
 the master tried flogging, and the next 
 day found a picture of himself on the 
 blackboard, his face portrayed as anything 
 but flattering. Young Rembrandt was 
 sent home to fetch his father. The father 
 came, studied the picture in his deliberate 
 Dutch way and announced eventually that 
 the resemblance was striking. Mynheer 
 Harmen van Rijn then returned home and 
 stated the case to his wife. ‘‘Well,’’ said 
 the mother, “if he will not do anything 
 but draw pictures, I think we had better 
 let him draw pictures.”’ 
 
 So Rembrandt, at fourteen, was placed 
 with a Leyderf painter to study the rudi- 
 ments of art. He appears not to have been 
 popular with his fellow pupils and to have 
 been constantly reprimanded by the mas- 
 ter for his tardiness. One day he was 
 unusually late in getting to the studio and 
 explained that he had been up all night 
 doing a picture. By request of the teacher 
 the lad returned home and brought back 
 the picture—a woman’s face, homely, 
 wrinkled, weather-beaten, but with a look 
 of love and patience and loyalty in the 
 
 boys without scriptural warrant. 
 
 42 
 
 very first—those of 
 the only artist who, 
 Ruskin thought, 
 could ever paint a wrinkle.” 
 
 Rembrandt remained in Leyden until his 
 twenty-fifth year when he went to Am- 
 sterdam, and ere long, in 1632, painted his 
 famous ‘‘Lesson in Anatomy,’’ which es- 
 tablished his reputation as a painter. 
 Then came Saskia van Uylenburg, and 
 “the form and face of this dainty little 
 patrician, an orphan, suddenly becomes 
 the prevailing theme both in the painted 
 and etched work of Rembrandt.’” Rem- 
 brandt and Saskia van Uylenburg were 
 married in 1634. “Those first few years of 
 their married life read like a fairy tale. All 
 was for Saskia—his life, his fortune, his 
 work, his all. Even though Saskia protested 
 mildly against his extravagance, the master 
 would have his way.” 
 
 Then clouds began to gather. Two of 
 their children died in quick succession, and 
 in 1642 Saskia herself died, leaving an 
 eight-months-old son, Titus. “The Night 
 Watch,”’ completed in that year and now 
 ranked among his achievements, almost 
 destroyed the contemporary reputation of 
 the painter. : 
 
JACOB BLESSING THE SONS OF JOSEPH 
 
 
 
 REMBRANDT VAN RIJN (1606-1669) Courtesy Maison Ad. Braun & Cie. 
 Genesis XLVIII, 16 Cassel Gallery 
 
TIEPOLO 
 
 VEN in the fulness of the 
 eighteenth century Venice pos- 
 ¥ sessed one great Renaissance 
 artist, Tiepolo. It was still the 
 loveliest and gayest, if not 
 any longer the richest city in the world, 
 the trysting place of pleasure and ele- 
 gance; as of old, the scene of magnificent 
 processions and imposing ceremonies. Life 
 was easy and comparatively free, in a 
 Marvellous setting, 
 enveloped in a trans- 
 parent atmosphere 
 which the _ Renais- 
 sance masters ren- 
 dered with such in- 
 finite truth and 
 charm. Tiepolo, as 
 Salomon Reinach re- 
 cords, gave final 
 expression to these 
 splendors. “His ge- 
 nius is akin to that 
 of Tintoretto, but he 
 has more moderation, 
 more elegance; he was 
 the painter of a pol- 
 ished aristocracy, 
 conscious of its supe- 
 riority to the crowd 
 whose religion, modi- 
 fied by Spain, the Counter-reformation 
 and the Jesuits, was a subtle mingling of 
 devotion and worldliness.”’ 
 last of the Old Masters and the first of the 
 moderns,” and nearly all the great deco- 
 rators of the nineteenth century were in- 
 spired by him. 
 
 Tiepolo was a manifest proof of how much 
 native genius can do, aided by earnest 
 study and abetted by a very good mem- 
 ory. No one understood better than this 
 Venetian painter the reason of light and 
 shade, and no one knew how to render 
 light more splendidly in the difficult ef- 
 fects of the open air, of what Leonardo 
 called the universal light of the air in the 
 country. On his palette, says Molmenti, 
 “there are vivid transparencies, opaline 
 distances, sunsets of the purple Venetian 
 sky. His genius, open to all sensations, 
 to all beauties, comprehended a kingdom, 
 various, fantastic, gay, at the same time 
 never removed from the real. He did not 
 know how to contain the impetuosity of 
 his inspiration, the irresistible need of giv- 
 
 
 
 master, 
 same subject. 
 
 N his “Finding of Moses,” Tiepolo shows 
 
 the same disregard for historical accu- 
 racy that his Venetian predecessor and 
 Veronese, did in painting the 
 The scene ts Italian, rather 
 than Egyptian, as witness the halberdiers, 
 the costumes of the women and the gro- 
 tesquely attired dwarf. In the left fore- 
 ground, pointing, is the sister of Moses, 
 who is asking Pharaoh’s daughter, ‘‘Shail 
 I go and call for thee a nurse of the 
 Hebrew women, that she may nurse the 
 child for thee?” and thus succeeds in re- 
 storing Moses to his mother. 
 has not neglected to paint in the “ark of 
 bulrushes” from which the infant has just 
 been removed by the royal servants. 
 
 He was ‘“‘the - 
 
 44 
 
 ing life and color to his images, which 
 effervesced in his brain, and in whom the 
 ideal and the real, the form and the 
 thought, are tempered by an ineffable har- 
 mony.” 
 
 Tiepolo, although not of the stature of 
 Titian and Veronese, is yet a giant, dan- 
 gerous of imitation, like all innovators, 
 who knew perfectly how to fuse emotion 
 and intellect. Of him much was written 
 while he was. still 
 alive, because his age 
 recognized his superi- 
 ority to his contem- 
 poraries. His friend 
 Antonio Zanetti, a 
 year after his death, 
 in 1770, wrote: “A 
 beautiful example of 
 happy painting, of 
 the sureness of the 
 brush, and of ready 
 execution was our 
 Tiepolo, who found 
 his hand always obe- 
 dient to express upon 
 his canvases as much 
 as his intellect con- 
 ceived. His genius 
 was conscious of it- 
 self from its earliest 
 years; his style was original from the 
 time he first began to paint.”’ 
 
 Taine, in discussing the Venetian school, 
 refers to Tiepolo as ‘‘a mannerist, who in 
 his religious pictures looks for melodrama 
 and in his allegorical pictures for move- 
 ment and effect: who overthrows his col- 
 umns, topples his pyramids, tears his 
 clouds, scatters his people, in a manner to 
 give to his scenes the aspect of a volcano 
 in eruption.”’ 
 
 A favorite with women, Tiepolo seldom 
 
 The artist 
 
 -assigns to the brown maiden of the people 
 
 the réle of the Madonna, but usually de- 
 picts ladies of the highest circles; pale 
 countesses with tired laughter and with 
 wonderful white hands, who know strange 
 excitements and are avid of sensations. 
 In his perception of movement, an almost 
 imperceptible crook of the finger, a shrug 
 of the shoulder, a quick turn of the head, 
 is sufficient. It is no accident that his 
 best works treat themes of the Roman de- 
 cline; for the same time had come to pass 
 in the history of Venice. 
 
THE FINDING OF MOSES 
 
 ONG ge 
 ey | 
 
 
 
 GIOVANNI BATTISTA TIEPOLO (1696-1770) Edinburgh Gallery 
 Exodus, II, 6 
 
FRANCISCO COLLANTES 
 
 PANISH art, for some reason 
 inexplicable in a people of such 
 # emotional sensitiveness, has 
 produced, throughout its va- 
 rious transformations, but a 
 very small number of landscape painters. 
 During the entire sixteenth century, 
 Spanish landscape art, treated solely as an 
 accessory, only reflects tradition and a 
 formal mannerism entirely devoid of life. 
 It was in Andalusia, 
 
 YY) 
 
 
 
 where the first awak- 
 ening realistic tend- 
 encies were most 
 marked, that the rich 
 merchants of Seville 
 brought about an ac- 
 quaintance with the 
 painters of the Neth- 
 erlands, not enjoyed 
 by the rest of Spain. 
 A pioneer emissary, 
 in this relation, was 
 one Pedro de Moya, 
 a fellow pupil of Mu- 
 rillo’s, who paid a 
 visit to Flanders early 
 in the seventeenth 
 century and studied 
 Van Dyck. In 1642 
 we hear of him re- 
 turning to Seville, fol- 
 lowing the death of 
 Van Dyck, vastly im- 
 
 OLLANTES’ Moses, in this depiction 
 of the burning-bush miracle, is a 
 simple Spanish shepherd, and the anach- 
 ronism of very well painted costume and 
 accessories does not seem for a moment 
 to have disturbed the artist. 
 tending his flock, and has come to the 
 mount of Horeb where “‘the Angel of the 
 Lord appeared unto him in a flame of fire 
 out of the midst of a bush: and he looked, 
 and, behold, the bush burned with fire, 
 and the bush was not consumed.” 
 curiosity aroused by this phenomenon, 
 Moses investigates, and is rewarded by 
 hearing a voice from the bush appoint 
 him to lead the Israelites out of Egypt, 
 unto “a land flowing with milk and honey.” 
 The influence of the Flemish school is 
 observable in the treatment of the trees and 
 the handling of light and shade. 
 tower in the distance of an essentially 
 
 Carducho. His first works were religious 
 compositions, in which the hand and eye 
 of the pupil were plainly guided by those 
 of the master. Presently, however, a 
 marked change occurred in the style of 
 Collantés, when he began to paint land- 
 scapes, and the influence of the Flemish 
 painters, particularly of Van Dyck, may 
 be detected in such canvases as ‘“‘Moses 
 and the Burning Bush,” as well as several 
 other pictures in the 
 Museum of Madrid. 
 Incidentally, they 
 have a force of ex- 
 pression and qualities 
 of strength that one 
 does not find in the 
 
 Moses is_ paintings of Car- 
 ducho. 
 It is anew manner, a 
 transfiguration, and 
 
 by the vigor of the 
 effects, by the more 
 deeply felt arrange- 
 ment of line, as well 
 as by the intensity 
 of the coloring, the 
 landscapes of Collan- 
 tés are comparable to 
 the best productions 
 of the Venetians and 
 the Bolognese. With 
 a unity of composi- 
 tion always admir- 
 
 His 
 
 A ruined 
 
 proved by his six ‘ 2 : able, and sometimes 
 months. with ou) the pantie landscape gives a not unpleasing splendid, Collantés 
 Flemish master, and (ouch of mediaeval romance to the scene. harmonizes naively 
 ‘the brought with him realistic details in 
 
 copies of several paintings by Van Dyck, 
 also of many other major works which he 
 saw in the Netherlands ” 
 
 In this emancipation work Pedro de Moya 
 supplemented the influence on the infant 
 School of Madrid of those artists who had 
 been summoned from Italy to decorate 
 the Escorial near Madrid. Notable among 
 them were the brothers Vincenzo and 
 Bartolommeo Carducho, who dominated 
 and who epitomized this phase of transition 
 in Spanish art. In their school was devel- 
 oped Francisco Collantés, one of the most 
 remarkable painters of his time and a, 
 compeer of Velasquez and Murillo. 
 Collantés was born in the Spanish capital 
 city in 1599. While a youth in his early 
 teens he entered the studio of Vincenzio 
 
 46 
 
 such a way as to give his canvases a dis- 
 tinct and piquant originality. 
 Collantés left many pictures of varying 
 merit, some of them superb, some merely 
 good. At the same time he was not a 
 prodigal painter; his output was rather 
 limited, considering the fact that his paint- 
 ing life covered a period of nearly half a 
 century. Unhappily, some of his religious 
 compositions have been lost. A rocky 
 ruggedness characterizes most of his land- 
 scapes, and usually prominent in them is 
 a tower or an aqueduct in ruins, as in the 
 accompanying picture. 
 
 Collantés died in Madrid in 1656. No 
 pupils of his are known, but his style or 
 manner, principally in landscape work, has 
 inspired a number of imitators. 
 
MOSES AND THE BURNING BUSH 
 
 
 
 FRANCISCO COLLANTES (1599-1656) 
 Exodus, ITI, 2 
 
ALMA-TADEMA 
 
 B= MONG the most famous of 
 modern classical painters who 
 
 flourished in Victorian Eng- 
 2 a H land was Sir Lawrence Alma- 
 — 2 Tadema, who in art occupies 
 the field that Bulwer Lytton does in liter- 
 ature, in so successfully creating a picture 
 of ancient civilization that it has not been 
 surpassed by his followers. Alma-Tadema 
 
 
 
 of worship, of the sacrifices and of the 
 festal processions. There was no monu- 
 ment of brass or marble, no wall painting, 
 no pictured vase nor mosaic, no sample 
 of ancient arts, of pottery, stone-cutting, 
 or work in gold, that he did not study.” 
 In 1869 he sent his painting ‘“The Pyrrhic 
 Dance”’ to the Academy in London, where 
 it was so well received that the painter 
 decided to make his home in England. 
 
 is credited with having solved “‘the prob- 
 
 lem of the picture of 
 antique manners in 
 the most authentic 
 fashion in the pro- 
 vince of painting. He 
 has peopled the past, 
 rebuilt its towns, re- 
 furnished its houses 
 and rekindled the 
 flame upon the sacri- 
 ficial altars.’”’ In other 
 words, this famous 
 Dutch painter, who 
 was born in Holland 
 in 1836 and, settling 
 in London, became 
 a naturalized Eng- 
 lihman in 1873, 
 called to life amid 
 London smoke and 
 
 N his “Death of the Firstborn,’ Sir 
 
 Lawrence Alma-Tadema has answered 
 those critics who charge him with lacking 
 sentiment, and assert that his pictures 
 possess no heart-interest. Here on an 
 Egyptian housetop, in the time of Moses, 
 is symbolized the deep mourning into 
 which Egypt was suddenly plunged when, 
 “It came to pass, that at midnight the 
 Lord smote all the firstborn in the land, 
 from the firstborn of Pharaoh that sat on 
 his throne unto the firstborn of the captive 
 that was in the dungeon.”’ What a picture 
 of grief is this mother, clasping her dead 
 son on his father’s knees, while pros- 
 trated about them are the mourning fam- 
 
 Indeed, London, for 
 all its grime and fog, 
 offered even a more 
 favorable atmosphere 
 for the art of Alma- 
 Tadema than did that 
 of his native land. 
 Contributing materi- 
 ally to it were his 
 home and studio sur- 
 roundings, in a Pom- 
 peiian house which he 
 built in the English 
 metropolis, with ‘“‘its 
 dreamy vividarium, 
 its great golden hall, 
 its Egyptian decora- 
 tions, its Ionic pil- 
 lars, its mosaic floor, 
 and its Oriental car- 
 
 : ii ; ‘ 
 fog the sacrifices of "Y retainers! 
 
 Pompeii and Hercu- 
 
 laneum, and leads us pictorially through 
 the streets of old Athens, reconstructing 
 the temples, altars and dwellings, the 
 shops of the butchers, bakers and fish- 
 mongers, just as they once were. 
 Alma-Tadema first had the Dutch painter 
 Leys for a master at the Academy of Fine 
 Arts, Antwerp. He was then sixteen, and 
 almost immediately exhibited a preference 
 for historical painting. Encouraged by his 
 preceptor, he began with early French and 
 Egyptian subjects, but it was not until 
 1863, when he first went to Italy, that he 
 may be said to have discovered his archaeo- 
 logical mission. How the old Romans 
 dressed, how their armies were equipped 
 and attired, became the object of his 
 painstaking study, as did everything that 
 might enable him to bring antiquity back 
 to life in so far as it lay in the power of 
 his art. 
 
 Muther records: ‘‘He explored the ruins 
 of the temples, and he grew familiar with 
 the privileges of the priests, the method 
 
 Egypt lives in the picture. 
 
 48 
 
 pets—everything 
 _ needful to conjuring 
 up the days of Nero and the Byzantine 
 emperors. It was surrounded by a garden 
 in the old Roman style, with a large con- 
 servatory planted with plane-trees and 
 cypresses. All the celebrated marble 
 benches and basins, the figures of stone 
 and bronze, the tiger-skins and antique 
 vessels and garments of his pictures, were 
 to be found in this notable house in the 
 midst of London.”’ 
 
 In their still-life his pictures are the record 
 of immense archaeological Jearning which, 
 with this artist, became intuitive vision, 
 but his figures are the result of a healthy 
 rendering of life. His drawing is generally 
 pronounced good, his coloring faithful, but 
 he is at times charged with a lack of 
 sentiment. It is a visual pleasure of color- 
 ing, intelligent grouping, fine differentia- 
 tion of textures and of stuffs that his pic- 
 tures afford. In his long and successful 
 career Alma-Tadema was the recipient of 
 many great international honors. He died 
 while staying at Wiesbaden in 1912. 
 

 
 THE FIRSTBORN 
 
 
 
 BESET Es 
 
 SIR LAWRENCE ALMA-TADEMA (1836-1912) 
 Exodus XII, 29 
 
 
 
 Courtesy Current Literature Pub. Co. 
 
 
 
NICOLAS POUSSIN 
 Roe NATOLE FRANCE relates 
 
 that the Abbé Scarron, when 
 in Rome in 1634, ‘‘met in the 
 b a outskirts of the city a man 
 < a few years older than him- 
 self, who was already the glory of French 
 art.’’ This man was Nicolas Poussin, de- 
 scribed as ‘‘sober of habit, grave and 
 modest, and of a sublime genius and 
 simplicity.” The Abbé had a keen ap- 
 preciation of art and 
 contrived to pick up 
 an acquaintance with 
 Poussin, who, with 
 his young wife, “‘lived 
 as simply as any 
 workman of the pe- 
 riod.”’ Yet “‘he was 
 always surrounded by 
 a number of friends 
 and fellow artists, on 
 his strolls about the 
 Eternal City, who 
 formed a kind of es- 
 cort. He was cele- 
 brated for his con- 
 versation, and _ his 
 society was eagerly 
 sought by every per- 
 son of note who visited the city.” 
 Walking among the ruins of the Pincian 
 one day with a stranger, who was anxious 
 to obtain as a souvenir some fragment of 
 antiquity, Poussin said: “I will give you 
 the most beautiful thing you could possibly 
 desire.’’ Whereupon he picked up from the 
 grass a handful of dust—remains of ce- 
 ment, marble and porphyry, reduced al- 
 most to powder. ‘‘Seigneur,’’ he said, 
 “take this away with you; this dust is 
 ancient Rome.’’ The incident was char- 
 acteristic of the painter who dominated 
 the art of the seventeenth century. 
 Poussin was born in the Norman village 
 of Villers, in 1594, of peasant parentage. 
 Finding his way to Paris as a lad, he 
 managed later on to go to Rome to pursue 
 his studies, but ‘“‘the only living Italian 
 artist from whom he condescended to 
 learn was Domenichino.”’ Of their meet- 
 ing it is related that when all the students 
 in Rome were flocking to San Gregorio on 
 the Coelian to copy ‘‘The Martyrdom of 
 Saint Andrew,’’ by the then popular 
 Guido Reni, the chapel adjoining where a 
 Domenichino picture hung was deserted 
 
 
 
 plates. 
 
 MOSES is shown here smiting the rock 
 
 in Horeb, in accordance with the 
 command of the Lord and His promise 
 that “‘there shall come water out of it, that 
 the people may drink. And Moses did so 
 in the sight of the elders of Israel.’’ 
 Moses, at the left, is wielding the rod 
 with which he had previously caused the 
 Red Sea to spread apart, and the thirsty 
 Israelites are pictured in various attitudes, 
 some giving thanks to God and others 
 drinking avidly from goblets, bottles and 
 In the background 
 Horeb and the plain in which the thirsty 
 hosts of Israel are temporarily encamped. 
 
 50 
 
 save for one student who recognized the 
 superiority of the work and was copying 
 it. The student was Poussin. He drew 
 the attention of other painters to the 
 neglected picture, and ‘“‘presently Domeni- 
 chino himself came to the chapel to see 
 what manner of man it was who preferred 
 his work to the popular idol. They en- 
 tered into conversation, and, as a result, 
 the young French painter became a pupil 
 of Domenichino.”’ 
 
 In 1639 Louis XIII 
 of France wrote Pous- 
 sin inviting him to 
 Paris and pledging 
 him one thousand 
 écus a year and a 
 commodious lodging 
 in whichever of the 
 royal palaces he pre- 
 ferred, the Louvre or 
 Fontainebleau. He 
 was placed at the 
 head of the artists 
 who were decorating 
 the Louvre, and 
 spent more than two 
 years in France be- 
 fore returning to be 
 ‘“‘the most famous artist in Rome.”’ 
 
 He seems to have aroused the jealous 
 enmity of many artists in France, and, al- 
 though he long remained ‘“‘painter to the 
 King,” the Royal Minister of Public 
 Works on one occasion complained that 
 Poussin “‘had put more love into a picture 
 of the ‘Finding of Moses,’ for the banker 
 Pointel, than into ‘The Baptism’ which 
 had been painted for the King.’’ Poussin 
 wrote in reply, “If the picture of Moses 
 found in the waters of the Nile pleased 
 you so much, is it a sign that I have put 
 less love into your pictures? Do you not 
 see that it is the nature of the subject 
 which is the cause, and that the subjects I 
 paint for you must be presented in a dif- 
 ferent manner?” 
 
 Not long afterwards, in 1665, Poussin 
 succumbed to a fever and was buried in 
 the Roman parish church of San Lorenzo- 
 in-Lucina. A simple tablet, with an epitaph 
 in Latin, marked the site. The funeral is 
 described as stately. By 1799, however, 
 the epitaph had disappeared. Poussin 
 was forgotten—at least in Rome—and the 
 site of his grave was lost. 
 
 is Mount 
 
MOSES STRIKES THE ROCK IN HOREB 
 
 
 
 NICOLAS POUSSIN (1594-1665) Bridgewater House, London 
 Exodus XVII, 6 
 
LEON GEROME 
 
 if N the year 1847 the appear- 
 ance of a young French artist 
 
 Ni who exhibited a sensational pic- 
 ture in the Paris Salon was 
 
 : hailed by that master of critics, 
 Theophile Gautier, in the memorable 
 words, “Let us mark with white this 
 happy year, for a painter is born to us. 
 He is called Géréme. Today I tell you 
 his name, and I predict that tomorrow he 
 
 and the heroines of one or another period. 
 Another critic, Gergeuet, speaks of Gé- 
 rome’s “incontestable erudition as a man 
 and an artist. He has innate tact and 
 taste.... It may appear old fashioned to 
 applaud the literary qualities in a painter, 
 and to praise him for being well-informed 
 regarding the subjects he treats; but 
 never, since I began to look at and study 
 pictures, has it been plain to me that a 
 
 will be celebrated.” 
 
 Even Gautier, with 
 his acute perception 
 and prophetic eye, 
 could not have fore- 
 seen and measured 
 the heights to be at- 
 tained by the then 
 twenty -three-year-old 
 Leon Géréme, boyish 
 “chief of the neo- 
 Greeks,’’or that, forty 
 years later, almost 
 over-burdened with 
 decorations, titles and 
 laurels, lavished upon 
 him by many nations 
 of the civilized world, 
 he would be acclaimed 
 the most eminent rep- 
 
 A MALEK is Overcome by the Holding 
 
 up of Moses’ Hands’’ illustrates the 
 battle of Rephidim, as recorded in Exodus, 
 in which Joshua led the hosts of Israel 
 against those commanded by Amalek, 
 while Moses, Aaron and Hur witnessed 
 the fight from a near-by hill. It being or- 
 dained that the Israelites could triumph 
 only so long as Moses’ hands were up- 
 raised, and “as his hands were heavy, 
 they took a stone and put it under him, 
 and he sat thereon; and Aaron and Hur 
 stayed up his hands ...until the going 
 down of the sun.” The scene of carnage 
 in the corpse-strewn plain, with birds of 
 prey flocking overhead, is very imagina- 
 tively portrayed, as are the figures of 
 
 knowledge of the sub- 
 jects portrayed is 
 hurtful to their exe- 
 cution.”’ 
 
 Of Géréme it has 
 been said that he saw 
 his pictures finished 
 before he touched 
 brush to canvas. His 
 prevision was extraor- 
 dinary. He is ever 
 listening, disturbed 
 and dubious at times 
 in striving to hear 
 perfectly the thou- 
 sand murmurs that 
 influence the creation 
 of a masterpiece. Not 
 only, observes Horace 
 Vernet, was Gérdme 
 
 resentative of high 
 art of the nineteenth 
 century. 
 
 Alexandre Dumas 
 writes of Géréme: ‘‘A serious talent, and 
 of an elevated order; an artist who looks 
 at his art nobly, and who devotes to it 
 his existence— every instant, every thought. 
 One breathes freely again before such 
 works as his; above all, when, alas! one 
 has sighed over the lowered and lowering 
 standard of art ”’ 
 
 The artistic qualities of Gér6me—painter, 
 sculptor, savant and teacher—have been 
 the subject of much discussion. His en- 
 dowments are provocative of both praise 
 and criticism. He is an Orientalist of the 
 first order; he has executed great historic 
 works that in themselves would make an 
 artist famous; he is so learned a painter 
 of the antique that a close study of this 
 department of his work awakens a sense 
 of amazement, in view of the knowledge 
 underlying his motifs by which he intro- 
 duces us in family circles and enables us 
 to chat of everyday affairs with the heroes 
 
 Moses and his aides, who are so miracu- 
 lously determining the defeat of Amalek. 
 
 52 
 
 in accord with his 
 time, but he was 
 never betrayed into 
 bad taste. 
 
 In his recollections of his first year in 
 Italy, studying at the French Academy at 
 Rome, under Delaroche, Géréme writes 
 that he “knew nothing, and therefore had 
 everything to learn.’”’ But “it was already 
 something to be well posted regarding 
 myself, and my courage was unfailing. 
 My none too robust body was strengthened 
 by living and painting much in the open 
 air.”’ He was tireless in making studies 
 in architecture, landscapes, figures and 
 animals; in a word, was ever in contact 
 with nature at first hand. “I watched 
 myself closely at work; and one day, hav- 
 ing made a study rather easily I scraped 
 it entirely from the canvas, although it 
 was not badly done. It simply was not 
 as good as I felt capable of doing.”’ ' 
 On one occasion Géréme was reproached 
 for not showing sufficient deference to the 
 critics. He retorted: “I work to please 
 myself first, and others afterward.” 
 
Courtesy Current Literature Pub. Co. 
 
 AMALEK IS OVERCOME 
 
 (1824-1904) 
 
 AN LEON GEROME 
 
 per XVII, 12 
 
 
 
 
 
AGNOLO BRONZINO 
 
 T was the misfortune of Agnolo 
 Tori, called Bronzino, to have 
 been antedated by Michel An- 
 gelo and by Andrea del Sarto. 
 When Andrea died in 1531, 
 “full of glory and domestic trials,’ as 
 Vasari recounts, the normal development 
 of Florentine painting ended, and Florence 
 had already seen its artistic star dimmed 
 by the rising splendors of Venice and 
 
 he not only permitted Bronzino to watch 
 him work, but often, as his talent devel- 
 oped, permitted him to collaborate on a 
 picture.”’ 
 
 Thus Bronzino lived in a state of tutelage, 
 often in a condition that approached 
 penury. His first pictures, so far as 
 known to be in existence, were a Pieta 
 and a San Lorenzo—now much altered by 
 retouching—painted in conjunction with 
 
 Rome. Artistically, Pontormo between 
 it became a city of AGNOLO BRONZINO, who was among the years 1522 an 
 
 wit and - ingenuity, the last of the great Florentine 1525. In these pic- 
 chronicling and criti- tures, and other of 
 
 cizing art rather than 
 producing it. More- 
 over, observes Pro- 
 fessor Mather, the 
 sublimity of Michel 
 Angelo worked havoc 
 with his _ followers. 
 “Some of these have 
 the grace of lucidity, 
 like Agnolo Bronzino, 
 
 painters, has not scrupled, in his “Moses 
 Breaking the Tables of the Law,’ to de- 
 pict Moses both in the act of receiving 
 and of breaking the tablets. At the top 
 of the picture he can be observed kneeling 
 and receiving the tablets from the hand 
 of God, while below ‘‘as soon as he came 
 unto the camp he saw the calf and dancing: 
 and his anger waxed hot, and he cast the 
 
 his early paintings, 
 Bronzino wanders be- 
 tween the manner of 
 Andrea del Sarto and 
 its reflection in the 
 work of Pontormo. 
 
 Evidently the repu- 
 tation of the young 
 artist was growing, 
 for in 1530 the Duke 
 
 who practiced a re- 
 actionary sort of por- 
 traiture based on an 
 old tradition of tem- 
 pera painting.”’ 
 
 As a portrait painter, 
 Bronzino found con- 
 genial sitters in the 
 haughty  patricians 
 surrounding the per- 
 son of Cosimo de’ Medici, the first grand 
 duke of Florence, and in the field of por- 
 traiture he is nearly in the first rank. 
 He was born in 1502, in the Italian vil- 
 lage of Monticelli, near San Frediano. 
 His father is said to have been a butcher, 
 which elementary occupation did not blind 
 him to the boy’s artistic bent, and Ag- 
 nolo received such instruction as was 
 available before eventually entering the 
 studio of Jacopo Carucci, known to fame 
 as Pontormo in Florence. 
 
 In character and genius this fiery and 
 capricious Pontormo seems to have been 
 the exact antithesis of the gentle, submis- 
 sive and studious Bronzino. Nevertheless, 
 in his hermit fashion he took a great fancy 
 to the lad, who became as a son to him. 
 We are told that ‘“‘while the master was 
 jealous of his painting to such a degree 
 that he would never allow his pupils to see 
 one of his pictures until it was finished, 
 
 tables out of his hand, and brake them 
 beneath the mount.’’ 
 given to the women in this picture, and 
 their attitudes, bespeak the gala occasion 
 which is being so suddenly interrupted; 
 and the protesting gestures of Aaron and 
 his brethren to the breaking of the tables 
 are vigorously executed. 
 
 54 
 
 of Urbino commis- 
 sioned him to deco- 
 rate his villa, near 
 Pesaro. Vasari re- 
 counts that while 
 Bronzino was thus 
 employed Pontormo 
 urged him to return 
 to Florence and help 
 him finish the decora- 
 tions of the Sala di Poggia at Cajano, and 
 that since “‘Bronzino could not obtain 
 leave of absence from Guidobaldo, who © 
 wished to pose for a portrait in armor, 
 he was obliged to meet Pontormo surrep- 
 titiously and in the night.” Incidentally, 
 this portrait, now in the Pitti Gallery, was 
 the first noteworthy proof that Bronzino 
 was a painter of genius. 
 
 The fullest expression of his art dates 
 from 1540 when he entered the service of 
 Cosimo, and decorated the chapel of 
 Eleanora di Toledo. This work is a re- 
 sumé of all his paintings, and it was while 
 engaged upon it that he painted some of 
 his best portraits of the Medici family. 
 Considering that Bronzino was a most 
 conscientious artist the extent of his out- 
 put is extraordinary. But his energy and 
 the quality of his work suffered a marked 
 decline, and his old age was attended with 
 poverty and infirmities. He died in 1572. 
 
 The prominence 
 
MOSES SMASHES THE TABLES OF THE LAW 
 
 
 
 BRONZINO (1502-1572) Courtesy Maison Ad. Braun & Cie. 
 Exodus XXXII, 19 , Royal Gallery, Dresden 
 
EDWIN A. ABBEY 
 
 4a SINGER SARGENT, of 
 whom we write elsewhere, was 
 awarded his commission to 
 decorate a section of the Bos- 
 ton Public Library at the same 
 time that contracts to decorate other sec- 
 tions of the edifice were made with Puvis 
 de Chavannes and Edwin Austin Abbey. 
 The French painter, Chavannes, was the 
 first of the trio to get his staging up and 
 the first to get it 
 
 
 
 gave him a letter of introduction to the 
 art director of Harper’s Weekly. 
 Thus, at nineteen, we find Abbey in New 
 York helping to illustrate the leading 
 American weekly periodical of the time. 
 Its files from 1872 to 1890 contain a record 
 of the gradual evolution of the art of 
 Abbey. At first his salary was seven dol- 
 lars a week, which was increased to ten 
 dollars a week at the end of five years. 
 At twenty-six Abbey 
 receivedshis first im- 
 
 down. Sargent’s 
 ‘“‘Prophets” by no 
 means cover the 
 
 . spaceassigned to him; 
 and when asked once 
 when he would com- 
 plete the task, he re- 
 plied, ‘‘Never, unless 
 I learn to paint bet- 
 ter than I do now— 
 Abbey has discour- 
 aged me!’’ As for 
 Abbey and his great 
 murals in the Boston 
 Library, it is signifi- 
 cant that the artist 
 himself was not 
 wholly pleased with 
 them. ‘‘Give me a 
 little time,’’ he is re- 
 ported to have said 
 while engaged on the 
 work, ‘“‘and I’ll do 
 
 A™ ONG the comparatively few pictures 
 
 of Biblical subjects done by Edwin A. 
 Abbey, this one illustrating ‘‘The Strata- 
 gem of Gideon’ is rated most highly. It 
 was inspired by Judges VII, 20: “And 
 the three companies blew the trumpets, 
 and brake the pitchers, and held the 
 lamps in their left hands, and the trum- 
 pets in their right hands.”’ It will be ob- 
 served that the artist has taken some 
 liberties with the text, in that several of 
 the trumpeters are holding the lamps and 
 trumpets in reverse order to that stated 
 scripturally. As a portrayal of martial ani- 
 mation, this picture 1s a last word in illus- 
 tration. It, of course, portrays the three 
 hundred desperate followers of Gideon 
 who, by a ruse of divine dictation, con- 
 fused and routed the mighty host of 
 Midian, as promised by Jehovah. 
 
 portant commission 
 to illustrate a de luxe 
 edition of the poems 
 of Robert Herrick, 
 and was sent to Eng- 
 land to do it. At the 
 end of two years 
 Abbey returned to 
 America with more 
 than enough sketches 
 to illustrate the vol- 
 ume, and remained 
 long enough to see it 
 published. Then he 
 returned to England 
 and made his home 
 there for the rest of 
 his life. His Glouces- 
 tershire studio, forty 
 feet wide by seventy- 
 five feet long and 
 
 something worth 
 
 while with my subject of the Holy Grail.” 
 This distinguished American painter was 
 born in Philadelphia on April 1, 1852. 
 As a schoolboy he was remiss and back- 
 ward in his studies; fonder of drawing 
 pictures than of wrestling with the three 
 R’s. At the same time his parents were 
 ambitious for him to be a lawyer; but 
 the boy continued to draw pictures be- 
 cause he wanted to. As a result the elder 
 Abbeys gave up the idea of having a lawyer 
 in the family, and decided that if Edwin 
 became a good printer it would be enough. 
 A position was found for him in the type- 
 setting department of a Philadelphia news- 
 paper published by George W. Childs. 
 Evenings and a daylight hour three times 
 a week he sketched in the free class of the 
 Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and 
 in the course of time his sketches at- 
 tracted the attention of his employer, who 
 
 56 
 
 twenty feet high, as 
 described by Elbert 
 Hubbard, was ‘‘a royal workshop such 
 as Michel Angelo might have used for 
 equestrian statues, or cartoons to decorate . 
 a palace for the Pope. Dozens of pictures, 
 large and small, were generally upon the 
 easels. Arms, armor, furniture were all 
 about, while on the shelves were vases and 
 old china enough to start a museum. In . 
 chests and wardrobes were velvets, bro- 
 cades and antique stuffs and costumes, all 
 labeled, numbered and catalogued.”’ 
 
 This largest private studio in England 
 
 ,was built especially to accommodate the 
 
 paintings for the Boston Public Library, 
 which cover over a thousand square feet of 
 space, and form ‘‘quite the noblest speci- 
 men of mural decoration in America.” 
 Abbey married Mary Gertrude Mead of 
 New York in 1890, the year his first 
 picture was accepted by the British 
 Academy. 
 
THE STRATAGEM OF GIDEON 
 
 
 
 SEN 
 
 EDWIN AUSTIN ABBEY (1852-1911) Courtesy Current Literature Pub. Co. 
 Judges VII, 20 
 
JEAN PAUL LAURENS 
 
 
 
 of his ambition, his art is its own justifi- 
 cation. 
 
 Laurens was born at Fourquevaux in the 
 Haute-Garonne. He was a pupil of the 
 Ecole des Beaux-Arts at Toulouse, and 
 then in Paris of Cogniet and Bida. He 
 is said to have travelled over the French 
 Alpine provinces in his youth with a band 
 of young painters, whose primitive means 
 of locomotion was a donkey-drawn cart, 
 
 AKING the text “... And behold his 
 
 daughter came out to meet him with 
 timbrels and with dances,’”’ Laurens, in 
 his “Jephthah’s Daughter,’ has painted 
 a scriptural picture of vision and anima- 
 tion. Jephthah, as captain of the hosts 
 of Israel, had vowed unto the Lord that, 
 if his army defeated that of Ammon, he, 
 on his return home, would offer up for a 
 burnt offering “whatsoever cometh forth 
 of the doors of my house to meet me.” 
 Success crowned his arms, and this pic- 
 
 paying their way by 
 painting rude pictures 
 in the little churches 
 along the way. 
 
 In 1863 Laurens ex- 
 
 ‘hibited at the Paris 
 
 Salon a picture of the 
 “Death of Cato,’ fol- 
 lowed the next year 
 by the. “Death: of 
 Tiberius,’’ and some 
 six years later by his 
 “Supper of Beau- 
 caire’’ which was his 
 
 C= SMONG modern French paint- 
 ers Jean Paul Laurens, who 
 was born in 1838, may be 
 b E\ 3 characterized as a sort of 
 <a artistic son-in-law of Dela- 
 croix, who was forty years his senior. 
 But whereas Delacroix irritated people by 
 his violence of composition, by his ar- 
 rangement of figures with a view to pathos 
 at the expense of naturalness, and the 
 frequent incomplete- 
 ness of his works, 
 which were regarded 
 as sketches, not fin- 
 ished paintings, Lau- 
 rens was always a 
 finished and accurate 
 painter. 
 Surnamed by his 
 comrades “the Bene- 
 dictine,’’ because of 
 his fondness for 
 themes from ecclesi- 
 astical history, Lau- 
 rens belonged to a 
 group of French his- 
 torical painters whose 
 theory was that a 
 picture should repre- 
 sent an historical fact 
 with absolute faithfulness. He was far 
 more vigorous and essentially masculine 
 than Delaroche. His personages, as Pro- 
 fessor Muther points out, are truer to 
 nature, are less banal; the general effect 
 is warmer and more vital; he has a greater 
 power of attracting attention. There is no 
 cold pedantry about his work; the art of 
 combination is adroit, and frequently be- 
 trays a grim earnestness. Laurens really 
 loved the terrible, while many of his 
 contemporaries merely made use of it for 
 the manufacture of what are nothing more 
 than tableaux. To the Inquisition espe- 
 cially was he indebted for many notable 
 canvases, and at times he was able to 
 portray its darker aspects with very subtle 
 but tremendous effectiveness. When he 
 heaps up, in front of a church, corpses to 
 which burial has been refused; when he 
 disinters princes of the church in order to 
 place them on the stand before their ac- 
 cusers; when he opens coffins to reveal the 
 death-blasted features of some erstwhile 
 lovely girl, he sets even the dullest nerves 
 on edge; and as he therein attained the goal 
 
 ture shows the doomed maiden, idolized 
 by him, dancing forth to meet her victori- 
 ous father, who can be seen through the 
 window riding at the head of his soldiers. 
 
 58 
 
 first considerable suc- 
 cess. Early in the 
 70’s on the opening 
 day of the Salon, stu- 
 dents were comment- 
 ing on the pictures 
 when one from the Atélier Bonnat said, 
 “Have you seen the Robert the Pious? 
 It is an innovation.’”’ A short time after- 
 ward the picture in question, the “Ex- 
 communication of King Robert the Pious, 
 1004,’ having won the applause of Paris, 
 was bought by the French Government 
 and placed in the Luxembourg. 
 
 The fondness of Laurens for mortuary 
 subjects may have had its origin in his 
 technical capacity and technical limita- 
 tions, as well as in his mental bias. In this 
 connection, E. H. Blashfield makes the 
 interesting observation that “in his can- 
 vases Laurens admits no movement... 
 his finely drawn and admirably character- 
 ized people sit or stand still; they do not 
 move.” Probing for the secret of their 
 impressiveness, this critic traces it to the 
 manner in which Laurens observes the 
 first law of composition, that of filled and 
 empty spaces. ‘‘He never had to be taught 
 that where certain portions of a picture are 
 rich and crowded, other portions must be 
 simple, in order that there may be spaces 
 which shall rest the eye.”’ 
 
JEPHTHA’S DAUGHTER 
 
 
 
 Courtesy Current Literature Pub. Co. 
 
 ) 
 
 JEAN PAUL LAURENS (1838- 
 
 Judges XI, 34 
 
LEON BONNAT 
 
 § EON BONNAT had his day, 
 saw it fade away, and is due 
 
 Pai to have it dawn again. This 
 
 Ws] eminent French artist, most 
 
 distinguished perhaps as a 
 portrait painter, was seventeen years of 
 age when he put aside his boyish ambition 
 to be a sailor in order to become a painter. 
 Doubtless his early seafaring disposition 
 was due to his birthplace and environ- 
 
 of the Prix de Rome; on the contrary, he 
 satisfied himself with painting scenes from 
 the varied and colorful lives of the Roman 
 people. It was at this period that he was 
 first attracted to Biblical subjects, and to 
 it are attributed such religious pictures as 
 “The Martyrdom of Saint Andrew,” “Saint 
 Vincent de Paul,’’ and the realistic and 
 striking ‘“‘Job’’ of the Luxembourg. 
 
 All these pictures showed steady progress. 
 
 ment, Bayonne, 
 France, where he was 
 born in 1833 and 
 spent his childhood. 
 Fortunately for his 
 artistic future, his 
 father failed in busi- 
 ness, when the lad 
 was fourteen, and re- 
 moved to Madrid. 
 There he remained 
 seven years, and took 
 the boy frequently 
 through the Museum 
 of the Prado, where 
 young Bonnat devel- 
 oped an adoration for 
 Velasquez, and coin- 
 cidentally decided to 
 be a painter himself. 
 For a time in Madrid 
 
 BONNAT'S Spirited painting, “The 
 
 Youth of Samson,” shares with a 
 great many of his portraits an astonishing 
 power of characterization and realism. 
 He builds up his figures with the plastic 
 sense of a sculptor, giving them the pro- 
 jection of life itself. This picture refers 
 to the journey Samson took to the Philis- 
 tine town of Timnath in quest of a wife, 
 and when a young lion crossed his path, 
 “the spirit of the Lord came mightily upon 
 him, and he rent him as he would have 
 rent a kid, and he had nothing in his 
 hand.” The artist is particular to accentu- 
 ate Samson’s hair, the saurce of his great 
 strength, by making it luxuriant and re- 
 belliously confined under two strands of 
 
 Bonnat displayed a 
 special virtuosity in 
 conjuring onto the 
 canvas visages fur- 
 rowed by the toil and 
 tempest of life—gray 
 hair, waving gray 
 beards, and the start- 
 ing sinews and mus- 
 cles of venerable 
 weather-beaten folk. 
 In the early seventies, 
 in painting a Cruci- 
 fixion for the jury- 
 chamber in the Paris 
 Palais de Justice, 
 he executed a virile 
 
 figure, the muscles 
 and anatomy of which 
 are as “clearly 
 
 _marked as the but- 
 
 he studied under Ma- 
 drazo, and profited 
 greatly in his forma- 
 tive, impressionable years by the teaching 
 of that Spanish master. 
 
 Returning to France, and naturally pro- 
 ceeding to Paris, Bonnat entered the 
 Ecole des Beaux-Arts, and was assigned 
 to the studio of Léon Cogniet. He still 
 remained faithful to the teaching of Ma- 
 drazo, however, and did much to estab- 
 lish the profitable connection between 
 French painting and that of the old 
 Spaniards. By this, observes Muther, a 
 large quantity of the fresh blood of natu- 
 ralism was poured into French art once 
 more. 2 
 
 After four years at the Ecole des Beaux- 
 Arts, practically all of them being spent 
 with Cogniet, Bonnat went to Italy, where 
 he was met and received as a painter of 
 accomplishment. Even at that time, his 
 individuality was so pronounced that he 
 was not tempted to waste himself on large 
 academical compositions like the holders 
 
 heavy cord or rope. 
 picture is beyond criticism. 
 
 60 
 
 Anatomically this ° tresses in a Gothic 
 
 cathedral.... As in 
 the paintings of Ca- 
 ravaggio, a sharp, glaring light falls upon 
 certain parts of the body, while others re- 
 main dark and colorless in background.”’ 
 His models of painting, however, were 
 those of Velasquez and Ribera. The deep 
 shadows and strong lights of the latter are 
 often recalled by Bonnat’s vigorous method 
 of painting. It was his practice, in pro- 
 ducing a portrait, to light the sitter viv- 
 idly, and to relieve him by the simplest 
 of backgrounds, usually dark, thus isolat- 
 ing the subject so that nothing would be 
 in proximity to disturb the effect of con- 
 centrated light upon him. 
 
 A French Lenbach, or one might even say 
 a French Sargent of a rugged sort, Bonnat 
 painted a gallery of celebrated men. More 
 than two hundred persons, a great many 
 of them celebrities, sat to him and he has 
 “painted them with an exceedingly intelli- 
 
 gent power, masculine taste, and a learning 
 
 which never loses itself in detail.”’ 
 
THE YOUTH OF SAMSON 
 
 
 
 LEON BONNAT (1833-1922) Courtesy Maison Ad. Braun & Cie. 
 Judges XIV, 6 4 
 
ANDREA MANTEGNA 
 
 Pah NDREA MANTEGNA was 
 of obscure origin, all that is 
 faeces known of his early 
 years being that he went to 
 Padua when very young, was 
 
 
 
 hae 
 
 adopted = the painter Squarcione, and at 
 the age of ten was admitted to the guild 
 
 99 
 
 Sposi,’’ in the Castello at Mantua, and as 
 a reward Lodovico Gonzaga presented 
 him with an estate upon which the painter 
 was to build for himself a stately house, 
 where, however, he seems never to have 
 actually lived, but where it was his hope 
 to be free from the annoyances he suffered 
 
 of painters as ‘“‘Andrea, the son of Messer 
 
 Francesco Squarcione, painter.” 
 time he was twenty-three, Mantegna had 
 
 been employed in dec- 
 orating three of the 
 principal churches of 
 the city of his adop- 
 tion, and his frescos 
 in the Church of the 
 Eremitani, together 
 with the six cele- 
 brated wall-paintings 
 which remain of his 
 works there, are a 
 priceless record of his 
 early art. 
 
 While thus engaged, 
 Mantegna married 
 
 By the we read, 
 
 irascible temper, 
 
 ANTEGNA’S “Samson and Delilah’ 
 
 has always been admired for its com- 
 position and its fine drawing. Suggesting 
 the art of the engraver no less than that 
 of the painter, its sharp ruggedness of 
 outline bears witness to Mantegna’s being 
 “the first painter to give thought to the 
 construction of a picture’; that is to say, 
 to substitute for a simple juxtaposition or 
 a picturesque grouping of the figures an 
 arrangement which had been thoroughly 
 thought out as a whole. Incidentally, 
 Delilah is here shown shearing the “‘seven 
 
 from his neighbors. 
 “Mantegna, 
 quick to imagine slights 
 
 “Again and again,’’ 
 who was of an 
 
 and to resent fancied 
 injuries, appealed to 
 his princely patron 
 to redress his wrongs. 
 Now it was to beg 
 him to punish a 
 tailor who had spoiled 
 a piece of his cloth; 
 now to bitterly com- 
 plain of a neighbor 
 who, he declared, had 
 robbed his garden of 
 five quinces; again, to 
 beg for justice re- 
 garding the boundary 
 
 the daughter of Ja- 
 copo Bellini, a rival 
 
 of Squarcione, who 
 was so_ displeased 
 that, instead of ex- 
 
 tolling his pupil as in the past, he vio- 
 lently criticized his work and found fault 
 with the Eremitani frescos because the 
 figures resembled antique marbles. The 
 fame of the frescos spread so rapidly, 
 however, that before long Mantegna was 
 regarded as the chief painter of Padua, 
 and he was invited by Lodovico Gonzaga, 
 marquis of Mantua, to enter his service 
 and reside at the Mantuan court, then one 
 of the most brilliant in Italy. Mantegna 
 hesitated to accept the flattering invitation, 
 and it was not until two years had passed, 
 after repeated appeals from the marquis, 
 who courteously but persistently plied 
 him with letters filled with liberal prom- 
 ises—fifteen ducats a month, free lodging, 
 corn and wood enough for six people, and 
 all travelling expenses paid—that Man- 
 tegna yielded and removed to Mantua. 
 From that time until his death forty- 
 seven years later he remained the special 
 court painter and a devoted retainer of 
 the Gonzaga family. 
 
 In 1474 Mantegna finished his famous 
 frescos, known as the ‘Camera degli 
 
 locks of his head,’”’ whereas, scripturally, 
 “‘she called for a man, and she caused him 
 to shave off the seven locks of his head.’’ 
 
 62 
 
 line between his es- 
 tate and the next. 
 To all appeals from 
 his testy painter Lo- 
 dovico turned a pa- 
 tient ear, adjusting matters to Man- 
 tegna’s satisfaction whenever possible, 
 though sometimes forced to decide against 
 the irritable artist, who on one occasion 
 soundly thrashed an engraver whom he-sus- 
 pected of having stolen his plates. This 
 time a lawsuit followed in which Mantegna 
 fared badly, for we find him again appealing 
 to the marquis for help.’’ 
 
 Mantegna went to Rome, in 1488, to 
 decorate a chapel in the Vatican, and we 
 find him complaining in a letter to the 
 marquis of Mantua that Pope Innocent 
 VIII, though gracious, was not generous, 
 for “I have been obliged to work for a 
 year with nothing in return but my 
 board.”’ This statement is corroborated 
 by Ridolfi who relates that the painter, 
 being bidden to portray the seven deadly 
 sins, placed beside them an eighth figure, 
 and that when the holy father asked an 
 explanation Mantegna replied, ‘‘Ingrati- 
 tude.’”’ To which the Pope rejoined, smil- 
 ing, “‘On this side then paint the seven 
 virtues, and for an eighth figure add 
 ‘Patience. +77 
 
SAMSON AND DELILAH 
 
 
 
 London 
 
 Courtesy Maison Ad. Braun & Cie. 
 National Gallery, 
 
 ANDREA MANTEGNA (1431-1506) 
 
 Judges XVI, 19 
 
GUSTAVE DORE 
 
 USTAVE DORE drew pic- 
 tures because he had to—or 
 starve. He drew them so well, 
 or ill, as some of his detract- 
 ors would prefer to say, that 
 
 he became a millionaire at forty, and died 
 
 of a broken heart at fifty. He seldom or 
 never used a model; could not sketch 
 from Nature; accepted advice from no- 
 body; never retouched or considered his 
 work after it was 
 done; produced over 
 a hundred thousand 
 
 /y 
 
 [NX this picture there is evidence of the 
 painstaking care Doré took in every de- 
 
 Parisian sketches in which he represented 
 with an incisive pencil the opera, the 
 Théatre des Italiens, the circus, the 
 Odéon and the Jardin des Plantes. There- 
 after he was engaged entirely with his- 
 torical, mythological and Biblical subjects. 
 As Muther says, ‘‘He turned away from 
 his own age as well as from caricature, 
 and made excursions into all zones and all 
 periods. He visited the Inferno with 
 Dante, lingered in 
 Palestine with the 
 patriarchs of the Old 
 
 pictures—an average 
 of six a day—was 
 knighted, flattered, 
 enriched, adored, 
 scoffed at and pro- 
 claimed the _ great- 
 est illustrator of the 
 Bible that ever lived. 
 An Alsatian by birth, 
 and a Parisian by en- 
 vironment, Gustave 
 Doré is spoken of as 
 
 tail of his drawing. The magnitude of the 
 house is not exaggerated, as read Judges 
 XVII, 27-30: “There were upon the roof 
 about three thousand men and women.... 
 And Samson bowed himself with all his 
 might; and the house fell upon the lords, 
 and upon all the people that were therein.”’ 
 This is one of his forty Bible pictures that 
 were done for.exhibition in London and 
 became famous as the “Doré Gallery.” 
 
 Testament, and ran 
 through the world of 
 wonders with Per- 
 rault. The facility of 
 his invention was as- 
 tonishing, and so, too, 
 was the aptness with 
 which he seized for 
 illustration on the 
 most vivid scenes 
 from all authors.’’ 
 
 Meanwhile Doréillus- 
 
 of the French school, 
 
 but if ever an artist belonged to no “‘school”’ 
 it was this one. Gustave was the second 
 of three sons and he appears to have 
 frequently accompanied his father up and 
 down the Rhine until “the lad came to 
 know each wild crag, and crowning fort- 
 ress, and bend in the river where strong 
 men with spears and bows and arrows 
 used to lie in wait. In imagination Gustave 
 repeopled the ruins and filled the weird 
 forests with curious, haunting shapes. The 
 folklore of the storied river filled the 
 dreams of this curious boy.”’ 
 
 The extravagant imaginings of the future 
 artist at first were amusing to his parents, 
 but as time went on and he still imagined 
 outlandish things and made pictures of 
 them, his father was distressed and sought 
 by bribes and ridicule to get Gustave to 
 quit scrawling with pencil and turn his 
 attention to studies in engineering; but 
 with only partial success. His precocity 
 is evidenced by the existence of many 
 drawings and sketches that he made at the 
 age of five, and by a book, ‘“‘The Brilliant 
 Adventures of ‘Fouilloux’,’’ which he illus- 
 trated when eight years old. His first 
 drawings of artistic importance date from 
 1844. 
 
 Early in his career Doré did a series of 
 
 64 
 
 trated serial after 
 serial with ease and surety, from the be- 
 ginning giving to every picture, as Elbert 
 Hubbard observes, ‘‘a wildness and weird- 
 ness and awful comicality.”” This work 
 was unlike anything ever before seen in 
 Paris, or for that matter, in the world. 
 Everyone was saying, ‘‘What next!” and 
 to add to the interest, Philipon wrote 
 articles for various publications concerning 
 “the artistic prodigy”’ in his employ. 
 Says Hubbard: ‘‘The background of every 
 good Doré picture is a deep wood or 
 mountain pass or dark ravine. ‘The wild 
 romantic passes of the Vosges, and the 
 sullen crags, topped with dark mazes of 
 wilderness, were ever in his mind, just as 
 he saw them yesterday when he went up 
 and down the Rhine with his father.” 
 And his tracery of bark and branch, and 
 drooping bough held down with weight of 
 dew, are strangely true to life. The great 
 roots of giant trees, denuded by storm and 
 flood, lie stripped before the eye: and deep 
 vistas are given of shadowy glade and 
 tumbling mountain torrent. All in these 
 extraordinary pictures by Gustave Doré is 
 somber, terrible, and tells of forces capable 
 of tossing mountain peaks like bowls, and 
 of a power immense, immeasurable, in- 
 comprehensible, eternal in the heavens. 
 
a” WY MY iy fi tas Gp. 
 ek “a a jj Ly MWe Gi RUB RTO 
 Uy 
 
 Liye 
 
 ipeueeltiill 
 inet Ultatd 
 
 
 
 i 
 : i 
 
 LUN Auy 
 
 fy 
 
 ‘ mn il i 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 AN AN l | 
 
 : 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 at 
 
 PAUL GUSTAVE DORE (1833-1883) From the engraving on wood 
 Judges XVI, 30 
 
PHILIP _ HERMOGENES CALDERON 
 
 N 1851, recounts Henry Stacy 
 Marks, the English painter, ‘‘I 
 was making a drawing from an 
 antique figure in the British 
 Museum, when a young man 
 with a bright, intelligent face, dark eyes 
 and a slight black mustache, looked over 
 my shoulder for a minute or two and 
 then addressed me in French. I had not 
 long returned from Paris, which indeed 
 
 paratively small numbers of pictures its 
 members seem to have painted and ex- 
 hibited. Calderon was more prolific than 
 Walker, of whom Dr. Muther says, “‘fifty 
 per cent. of the English pictures in every 
 exhibition would perhaps never have been 
 painted if he had not been born. A national 
 element long renounced, that old English 
 sentiment which once inspired the land- 
 scapes of Gainsborough and the scenes of 
 
 must have been per- 
 ceived by that quick- 
 witted youth of seven- 
 teen. We entered into 
 conversation and dis- 
 covered a community 
 of artistic interest; 
 also that we both 
 lived in St. John’s 
 Wood. In a _ short 
 time we became fast 
 friends, and on my 
 next trip to Paris he 
 accompanied me, and 
 for a year studied 
 under Picot.’”’ The 
 young man in ques- 
 tion was Philip Her- 
 mogenes Calderon, a 
 descendant of the 
 great Spanish drama- 
 tist, and himself an 
 
 N40M1, having lost her husband and 
 
 two sons, enjoins their widows, Ruth 
 and Orpah, to return to their respective 
 people in the country of Moab, she herself 
 planning to go back to her native land of 
 Judah. Both her daughters-in-law have 
 a strong affection for Naomi, but while 
 “Orpah kissed her mother-in-law,” on 
 parting from her, “Ruth clave unto her, 
 and said, Entreat me not to leave thee, 
 
 ‘ or to return from following after thee: for 
 
 3) 
 . 
 
 whither thou goest I will go. . . Ruth 
 is here shown in the act of embracing 
 Naomi, while Orpah is standing behind her 
 preparatory to returning to the home of her 
 parents. Accompanying Naomi into the 
 land of Judah, it will be remembered 
 that Ruth met and married Boaz, and 
 became the great-grandmother of David. 
 
 Morland, and was lost 
 in the hands of Wilkie 
 and thegenre painters, 
 lived once more in the 
 school of Walker. 
 They adapted it to 
 the age by adding 
 something of the 
 Tennysonian passion 
 for nature. English 
 art entered with them 
 into a new domain, 
 where musical senti- 
 ment is everything, 
 where one is buried in 
 sweet reveries at the 
 sight of a flock of 
 geese driven by a 
 young girl, or a la- 
 borer walking behind 
 his plough, or a child 
 playing with pebbles 
 
 English subject. His 
 
 father was a teacher of Spanish literature 
 in King’s College, London. 
 
 Born at Poitiers, the home of his French 
 mother, in 1833, Calderon did not really 
 begin to be an artist, in a professional 
 sense; until he returned to London from 
 Paris and was welcomed back by a little 
 band of young painters, Fred Walker 
 among them, who, somewhat in the manner 
 of the Pre-Raphaelites, had formed them- 
 selves into a brotherhood called The Clique. 
 Calderon soon became a leader of this art 
 circle, by reason not only of his painting 
 ability, but because of his magnetic and 
 persuasive personality. Tall and pos- 
 sessed of romantic appearance, he was, as 
 it were, a Spanish gentleman translated 
 into English. 
 
 That Calderon had a strong influence on 
 Walker and other members of The Clique 
 is unquestionable; and the influence of the 
 little brotherhood itself was far greater 
 than might be supposed from the com- 
 
 66 
 
 at the seashore.” 
 
 Successors to, or, one might say, disciples 
 of the Calderon-Walker manner of painting 
 have perhaps been healthier, less refined, 
 not so sensitive and hyperesthetic. They 
 seem, in their work, more physically robust, 
 and face more squarely the sharp air of 
 reality. They ao longer dissolve painting 
 altogether into music and poetry, living 
 more in the world at every hour, not merely 
 when the sun is setting, but also when the 
 prosaic daylight exposes objects in their 
 material heaviness. But the tender ground- 
 tone, the effort to seize nature in soft 
 phases, is the same in all. The earnest, 
 tender and deeply heart-felt art of The 
 Clique leaders has influenced them all. 
 Seven years older than Walker, Calderon 
 was far more fertile. His first picture, 
 “By the Waters of Babylon,’ was ex- 
 hibited at the Royal Academy in 1853, 
 and his canvases were exhibited there with 
 more or less regularity until shortly before 
 his death in 1898. 
 
RUTH AND NAOMI 
 
 
 
 Courtesy Taber-Prang Art Co. 
 
 1898) 
 
 (1833- 
 
 PHILIP HERMOGENES CALDERON 
 
 Ruth I, 16 
 
 
 
JOSHUA REYNOLDS 
 
 
 
 4 material advantages and have 
 \ had their roads so smoothly 
 paved toward success as the 
 S English painter, Sir Joshua 
 Reynolds. We read of him going to Lon- 
 don at nineteen and finding a master who 
 required $600 with a pupil, and at twenty- 
 one of his taking a fine establishment and 
 keeping open house in order to attract at- 
 tention. So successful 
 was he in this direc- 
 
 painting for lack of patrons, one hundred 
 and twenty-five persons sat for Reynolds. 
 Thereafter about a hundred and fifty 
 people were painted by him annually; 
 yielding him a yearly income of about 
 $80,000. 
 
 Presently Reynolds bought a mansion in 
 Leicester Square, and furnished it mag- 
 nificently. His studio was as large as a 
 ballroom and was equipped luxuriously. 
 The whole English 
 nobility flocked to 
 
 tion that a portrait he 
 painted of Commo- 
 dore Keppel so flat- 
 tered that command- 
 er of the Mediterra- 
 nean squadron that 
 he invited the young 
 painter to go for a 
 cruise in his. ship. 
 They sailed in 1749, 
 
 N “The Infant Samuel,’’ Sir Joshua 
 
 preserves both the spirit and letter of 
 the text in representing the little son of 
 Eli and Hannah. His expression is that 
 of wonder, rather than of prayerful rever- 
 ence, inasmuch as he was not conscious 
 that the Lord was addressing him, think- 
 ing the voice to be that of Eli. At the 
 same time, the child has his hands 
 
 him. For forty years 
 onwards from 1752 it 
 was considered the 
 proper thing to be 
 painted by Reynolds, 
 and he is estimated 
 to have done between 
 two and three thou- 
 sand portraits. 
 
 Muther observes that 
 
 and Reynolds spent : 
 three years in Italy. 
 His first impression 
 of the great Italian masters was, strangely 
 enough, one of extreme disappointment. 
 Where was that rich coloring in the Re- 
 naissance classics that he had been led to 
 expect from the English mezzotints? The 
 Vatican glories of art were simply over- 
 estimated, in his youthful opinion. Raphael, 
 in particular, impressed him as being a 
 mediocre painter, whom only a remarkable 
 combination of circumstances had made 
 famous. Surrounded by the great master- 
 pieces of the fifteenth century, he contented 
 himself with drawing caricatures, and made 
 a sort of travesty of the “‘School of Athens’”’ 
 by caricaturing the English colony in 
 Rome at that time, in the attitudes of 
 figures in the pictures of Raphael. But 
 he very speedily changed his opinion, and 
 soon was an admiring student of the 
 great dead. For Titian, in particular, he 
 had an extravagant devotion, professing a 
 willingness to ruin himself if he might only 
 possess one of his great works. 
 
 Returning to England at the age of thirty, 
 Reynolds brought with him a number of 
 canvases that caused a furore in London 
 art circles, where he was hailed as a new 
 Van Dyck. With the portrait of the 
 Duchess of Hamilton, exhibited in 1753, 
 his vogue was established, and at a time 
 when Hogarth had to give up portrait 
 
 pressed together, indicating a subcon- 
 sciousness of a high and holy happening. 
 
 68 
 
 “Only an incredible 
 industry, enabling 
 him year after year to 
 paint with the facility and regularity of 
 Rubens, made it possible to complete, ex- 
 clusive of portraits, quite a number of 
 religious and mythological pictures, of 
 which he himself was especially proud. 
 He painted with great speed and dex- 
 terity, rose early, breakfasted at nine 
 o’clock, was in his studio punctually at 
 ten; and there till eleven he worked on 
 pictures that had been commenced. On 
 the stroke of eleven the first sitter ar- 
 rived, succeeded by another an hour later. 
 Thus he painted till four o’clock, after 
 which hour he belonged to the social 
 world.” 
 
 Critical opinion today is that there is no 
 striking originality in the work of this 
 most celebrated English portrait painter. 
 His composition and brushwork are ad- 
 mirable, but his drawing, especially of the 
 limbs, is often faulty. The strong point 
 of his paintings is their color, showing the 
 influence of Titian. 
 
 Sir Joshua died in his great London house 
 on February 23, 1792; and after lying in 
 state at the Royal Academy, of which he 
 was the first president, his body was 
 placed in the crypt of St. Paul’s. His 
 pictures left unfinished brought at auction 
 nearly $200,000 and his estate was esti- 
 mated at half a million dollars. 
 
THE INFANT SAMUEL 
 
 
 
 SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS (1723-1792) Courtesy Maison Ad. Braun & Cie. 
 I Samuel II, 18 Montpellier, France 
 
JACOB VAN OOST 
 
 Bo CONTEMPORARY of Hals 
 and Rembrandt, Jacob van 
 Oost, called the Elder, was a 
 Dutch painter of the seven- 
 teenth century who is said 
 
 
 
 EG 
 
 never to have painted a mediocre picture 
 
 in a long life of production. Whereas 
 Hals expressed the gallantry of Holland 
 in action, just as Rembrandt reflected the 
 depth of Dutch philosophy, van Oost, the 
 
 possessed seventeen, while even Rem- 
 brandt in spite of his financial diffi- 
 culties managed to collect and retain eight. 
 Van Oost and his Flemish contemporaries 
 were preoccupied with rendering the man- 
 ners of their time. This characteristic, 
 which gives their work a lasting historical 
 value, has caused their pictures of court- 
 yards, interiors, tavern scenes, conversa- 
 tions, toilet-scenes, and the like to be 
 
 Elder, while possess- 
 ing rare skill and in- 
 telligence, displays no 
 
 dashing action, no 
 heroic quality, no 
 transcendence. He 
 
 was born at Bruges in 
 the year 1600, and 
 first studied under his 
 brother, Frans van 
 Oost. The family 
 appears to have been 
 both an old ‘and 
 wealthy one and no 
 expense was spared on 
 the education of the 
 artist. On the death 
 of his brother in 1623, 
 Jacob van Oost de- 
 
 I T is characteristic of the Flemish master, 
 
 van Oost, to have imbued his picture 
 of “David and Goliath” with a certain 
 “noble elegance,” despite the repellent 
 subject. The artist has observed scrip- 
 ture to the letter in illustrating the words 
 of Samuel, “And David ... smote the 
 Philistine in his forehead, that the stone 
 sunk into his forehead.”’ Thereon, “David 
 ran and stood upon the Philistine, and 
 took his sword and slew him, and cut off 
 his -head therewith.”” The size of the 
 sword, as pictured, is borne out by the 
 Biblical text which states that Goliath, the 
 Philistine champion, was “six cubits and 
 a span’ in height, and “‘his spear’s head 
 
 known as ‘‘genre’’ 
 painting, from that 
 French word meaning 
 manner or style. A 
 few, like van Oost and 
 Terborch, depict the 
 manner of dress and 
 living of the upper 
 classes; others do the 
 same for the middle 
 classes, and still more 
 concern themselves 
 with the manners of 
 the peasants and 
 lower classes. In 
 addition to his genre, 
 historical and portrait 
 painting, van Oost 
 painted many relig- 
 
 cided to go to Italy 
 and study the Italian 
 masters, especially Annibale Carracci, the 
 Bolognese eclectic, who exercised a lasting 
 influence on his work. So thoroughly did 
 he absorb the spirit of Carracci and copy 
 his style that experts have been deceived 
 into mistaking canvases of van Oost to be 
 the work of the Bolognese master whose 
 frescos in the Farnese palace taught 
 Charles Le Brun the way to decorate the 
 Louvre and the Palace of Versailles. 
 
 In 1629 van Oost returned to his nativé 
 city of Bruges and there established him- 
 self as a painter. He was also a finished 
 musician and a remarkable linguist. In 
 the following year he married, and in 1637 
 was born his artist son, Jacob van Oost, 
 the Younger. 
 
 Van Oost, the Elder, enjoyed the respect 
 and friendship of many great contemporary 
 Dutch painters such as Brouwer, Gerard 
 Dou, Terborch and Peter de Hooch. For 
 Brouwer, van Oost echoes the praises of 
 Reubens and Rembrandt. He is said to 
 have owned more than twenty of Brouwer’s 
 pictures, of which, incidentally, Rubens 
 
 weighed six hundred shekels of iron.’ 
 
 70 
 
 ious subjects, and the 
 Flemish guilds and 
 industrial corporations kept him well sup- 
 plied with commissions. 
 
 His son, also a painter of genius, after 
 studying with his father in Bruges, spent 
 several years in Italy studying the old 
 masters. On one occasion, while travelling 
 from Flanders to Florence, he passed 
 through Paris and, instead of spending a 
 night there, as he had intended, he re- 
 mained two years. The sojourn had the 
 effect of prejudicing him against Bruges, 
 and despite the efforts of his parents to 
 keep him in Flanders, he soon returned 
 to France with the intention of taking a 
 studio in Paris. On his way thither, how- 
 ever, he took such a fancy to the town of 
 Lille that he changed his mind about 
 Paris and found in Lille both a home and 
 a wife. He lived there for more than 
 forty years, and only after losing his wife 
 did he return to Bruges, where he died in 
 1713. His pictures, most of which are to 
 be seen at Lille, have so great a resemblance 
 to those of his father that it i difficult to 
 tell them apart 
 
DAVID WITH THE HEAD OF GOLIATH 
 
 
 
 JACOB VAN OOST (1637-1713) 
 Samuel 
 
DOMENICHINO 
 
 that about 1625-6, when all the art stu- 
 dents in Rome were flocking to San 
 Gregario on the Coelian to copy the new- 
 est masterpiece of the then popular Guido 
 Reni, the chapel adjoining, where there 
 hung a painting by Domenichino, was 
 deserted save for one student who recog- 
 nized the superiority of the work, and set 
 his easel up in front of it. The student was 
 young Poussin, newly come to Rome to 
 
 PROOF that Domenichino delighted in 
 
 painting scenes of violent contrast is 
 to be had by comparing this idyllic repre- 
 sentation, “David as King,” to his some- 
 what horrible “‘Martyrdom of St. Agnes,” 
 in the Gallery of Bologna. Himself a 
 chronic victim of misfortune, the gentle, 
 long-suffering spirit of the painter is in 
 the face of David as he finds solace and 
 abstraction in his harp-playing. The pres- 
 ence of the two children, one holding an 
 open music book before the king, and the 
 other penning a song-score in a second 
 book, are happy pictorial thoughts, as is 
 the serene stretch of landscape seen 
 through the open window. Distinguishing 
 this painting is its great clarity both of 
 figure construction and composition—a 
 quality that also distinguishes many other 
 works of this martyr to his art. 
 
 perfect his art. He 
 drew the attention of 
 others to the neg- 
 lected picture, and his 
 enthusiasm seems to 
 have been communi- 
 cated to Domeni- 
 chino, who visited the 
 chapel one day to 
 watch the student 
 copying his’ work. 
 They fell into con- 
 versation, with the re- 
 sult that Poussin be- 
 came a pupil of Do- 
 menichino. 
 
 Some discredit this 
 story, and maintain 
 that the two artists 
 
 were introduced by 
 
 Cardinal Barberini, 
 and that the sym- 
 pathy felt by Poussin 
 for Domenichino, who 
 
 rT YF the disciples of the Carracci 
 and early seventeenth cen- 
 turies, Domenico Zampieri, 
 
 of his shortness and corpulence, is by far 
 
 the most important and serious figure, 
 
 because of his influence on his contempo- 
 
 raries and on successive artists, such as 
 
 Nicolas Poussin. As 
 
 Sir William Orpen 
 
 of the Italian Re- 
 
 naissance period, “We 
 
 Michel Angelo and 
 
 Leonardo da Vinci as 
 
 school of painters; 
 
 but our forefathers 
 
 gard them as the 
 
 beginning of a great 
 
 cessors, men _ like 
 
 Annibale Carracci 
 
 nichino (1581-1641) 
 
 and Carlo Maratti 
 
 one time esteemed as 
 
 far greater masters 
 
 Commenting on dZampieri’s nickname, 
 
 “‘Bue,’’ meaning the Ox, Professor Mather 
 
 the ox amid the febrile sprightliness of the 
 
 Catholic Reaction. His gravity is marked 
 
 old decorative conventions of the Renais- 
 
 sance and works in olive and silvery tones 
 
 coolness and freshness of nature. Above 
 
 all, Domenichino is not facile like most of 
 
 and considerate. At times he yields to the 
 
 prevailing sentimentality, but usually he is 
 
 dom insists, but candidly lets the picture 
 
 be seen.”’ 
 
 nichino and Poussin, Esther Sutro, in her 
 
 study of the French painter, tells of his 
 
 in Italy, in the late sixteenth 
 EN Zee called Domenichino because 
 not only because of his own work, but 
 the French master, 
 observes, in a survey 
 look upon Raphael, 
 the end of a great 
 were inclined to re- 
 school. Their suc- 
 (1560-1609), Dome- 
 (1625-1713), were at 
 than they are today.”’ 
 observes that “it took character to play 
 also in his color work. He forsakes the 
 which suggest in a generalizing way the 
 his contemporaries, but studious, dilatory 
 - both spontaneous and reticent. He sel- 
 Apropos of the relations between Dome- 
 meeting with Domenichino. It seems 
 
 te 
 
 was plagued with mis- 
 fortunes, accounted for the friendship 
 that sprang up between them. These 
 misfortunes seem to have consisted of the 
 enmity of some of his contemporaries. 
 As though his tribulations in Rome were 
 not severe enough, an ill fate led Domeni- 
 chino to take up a residence in Naples 
 about the year 1640, with the idea of 
 establishing a school. This idea was 
 anything but popular with certain Neapol- 
 itan painters, who soon broke the 
 spirit of Domenichino, even turning him 
 against the wife with whom he had lived 
 on terms of ideal affection. “Presumably,” 
 says Mather, “the barbarous Neapolitans 
 would have done about the same thing to 
 any visiting artist, but doubtless they turned 
 the screw a bit harder upon a gentle idealist 
 who brought into their realistic stews the 
 afterglow of a Montagna or a Cima.”’ He 
 died in 1641. 
 
DAVID AS KING 
 
 
 
 
 pe NOH s 
 
 DOMENICHINO (1581-1641) Courtesy Maison Ad. Braun & Cie. 
 II Samuel Louvre, Paris 
 
FRANK DICKSEE 
 
 more to the art manner born 
 than Frank (christened Fran- 
 cis Bernard) Dicksee, who 
 practiced the art of draughts- 
 manship before he became acquainted with 
 reading, writing and arithmetic. His 
 father, Thomas Francis, and his uncle, 
 John Robert Dicksee, were both painters 
 of considerable distinction, the latter hav- 
 ing been born in the 
 year that the Royal 
 Academy was char- 
 tered,and yet beingon 
 record as an exhibitor 
 at its hundred and 
 thirty-seventh exhi- 
 bition in 1905. The 
 former, Thomas Dick- 
 see, had his first pic- 
 ture in the: Royal 
 Academy itt 1841, and 
 during the next fifty- 
 five years he exhibited 
 sixty-six pictures, 
 prior to his death in 
 1896. In fact, the 
 exhibition record of 
 the Dicksee family is 
 remarkable and prob- 
 ably unrivalled,—Thomas Dicksee, his son 
 Frank, his daughter Margaret, and an 
 artist nephew having shown 242 pictures 
 at the Royal Academy alone, in addition 
 to more than a hundred canvases at other 
 London exhibitions. 
 
 Frank Dicksee was born in _ Fitzroy 
 Square, London, in 1853, his father being 
 a painter of independent. means. The 
 Dicksee home was the centre of an artistic 
 colony and the scene of much entertaining. 
 Frank Dicksee cannot remember when he 
 began to draw, but his earliest essays were 
 in copying book illustrations. At the age 
 of sixteen his artistic inclination was so 
 pronounced, as contrasted to his back- 
 wardness with books, that he was removed 
 from school and devoted himself entirely 
 to the study of art, in association with 
 his father. At the end of a year he was 
 admitted as a probationer at the school of 
 the Royal Academy, and a year later, in 
 1871, he was granted a studentship. 
 Recognition and honors came with fair 
 rapidity. In 1872 he was awarded a 
 silver medal for a drawing from the an- 
 
 
 
 infant at any cost. 
 
 THE Judgment of Solomon’’ has never 
 
 been better illustrated than in the 
 case of the two women who taxed the 
 wise king’s understanding of human 
 nature to determine which of them was 
 the mother of the live child and which the 
 mother of the dead one. 
 said, Bring me a sword. . . . Divide the 
 living child in two, and give half to the 
 one, and half to the other.” 
 man is preparing to execute the royal 
 command, when the mother of the live 
 child beseeches Solomon to spare the 
 The false mother’s 
 wry expression of defeat is one of the finest 
 touches in this eloquent canvas. 
 
 74 
 
 tique; and three years later he trium- 
 phantly carried off the gold medal with 
 the first of his notable religious paintings, 
 “Elijah Confronting Ahab and Jezebel in 
 Naboth’s Vineyard.’’ With this picture, 
 Dicksee, in 1876, made his début as an 
 exhibitor at Burlington House, and it 
 found a ready purchaser in a London 
 publisher, who was the source of many 
 subsequently lucrative commissions. 
 Dicksee had previ- 
 ously exhibited two 
 pictures in water color 
 at the Suffolk Street — 
 Galleries, the first of 
 which, ‘‘What Might 
 Have Been,’’ exhib- 
 ited in 1872, was 
 bought by the late 
 General Sir Pomeroy 
 Colley, who lost his 
 life in the famous 
 charge up Majuba 
 Hill. 
 
 Dicksee attracted the 
 attention of Fred- 
 erick Leighton at the 
 Academy school, and 
 despite their disparity 
 of ages, a friendship 
 was begun that lasted until the death of 
 Lord Leighton, the first British painter 
 to be elevated to the peerage, in 1896. 
 Like Leighton, Dicksee executed illustra- 
 tions and has been a voluminous contribu- 
 tor of pictorial work to Cassell’s, The 
 Cornhill, The Graphic and other English 
 periodicals. A 
 Looking backward one _ surmises_ chat 
 the wide popularity enjoyed by Leighton 
 and his younger contemporaries, including 
 Dicksee, was related to the revival of 
 interest in antiquity and archaeology 
 which, beginning in the reign of Queen 
 Victoria, has continued undiminished to 
 this day. Elected to the Royal Acad- 
 emy in 1881, even his early pictures attest- 
 ed his power and versatility, respectively, 
 showing him apt in Biblical illustration, 
 decorative design, poetic illustration and 
 portraiture—qualities that were none the 
 less pronounced in his fine contributions 
 to a folio illustrated Bible, illustrated by 
 twenty-six noted artists, and exhibited in 
 1901. ‘‘The Judgment of Solomon” was 
 one of the subjects. 
 
 “And the king 
 
 The swords- 
 
THE JUDGMENT OF SOLOMON 
 
 
 
 
 
 SIR FRANCIS DICKSEE (1853- ) Courtesy Current Literature Publishing Co. 
 I Kings III 
 
BENJAMIN WEST 
 
 
 
 RIOR to the Declaration of 
 Independence in 1776 there 
 were neither painters nor 
 —— sculptors in America. People 
 a ate and drank, hewed and 
 built and ploughed, and multiplied. But 
 a rod of iron was esteemed of more value 
 than the finest statue, and a bolt of good 
 cloth was prized more highly than a can- 
 The 
 
 
 
 = 
 
 @ 
 
 
 
 
 4 
 
 light is still standing on what is now the 
 campus of Swarthmore College. 
 
 Quaint stories are told of his youthful 
 talent; how he made his own brushes, the 
 family cat supplying the hair, and 
 gained his first knowledge of mixing colors 
 from the Indians. A Philadelphia merchant 
 saw some of his juvenile sketches and sent 
 the boy a complete painter’s outfit, to- 
 gether with a set of engravings by Grave- 
 
 vas by Michel Angelo or Raphael. 
 
 rank and file of people 
 were poor, and far 
 too much occupied in 
 making a_ livelihood 
 to trouble themselves 
 about problems of 
 color. Moreover, art 
 was frowned upon by 
 the Quakers, of whom 
 there was an influen- 
 tial proportion in the 
 original colonies. As 
 Muther observes, in 
 his ‘‘History of Mod- 
 ern Painting,’ it was 
 only when the dollar 
 began to display its 
 might that enterpris- 
 ing portrait painters, 
 
 N his “Solomon and the Queen of Sheba”’ 
 
 Benjamin West executed one of his few 
 undisputed pictures of the first order. His 
 handling of lights and shadows is particu- 
 larly effective, and betrays something of 
 the chiaroscuro magic of Rembrandt, to 
 whom the American painter evidently had 
 given deep study. Observe how the light 
 is thrown in a blaze on the Queen of 
 Sheba and her attendants in the fore- 
 ground, and with appropriately lessened 
 intensity upon the enthroned Solomon in 
 the distant background. This arrange- 
 ment is the key to the Rembrandtesque 
 secret of filling a great room with a living, 
 breathing congregation in shadow. 
 
 lot. Immediately up- 
 on receipt of this 
 windfall, Benjamin 
 forgot to go to school 
 one day and painteda 
 picture that combined 
 two of the engravings. 
 Sixty-seven years la- 
 ter this picture was 
 exhibited in a London 
 gallery along with 
 West’s celebrated 
 painting, “‘Christ Re- 
 jected.” 
 
 On coming of age, 
 West removed to New 
 York; and finally, in 
 1760, he went to Italy 
 to study the Renais- 
 
 who had failed in Eu- 
 
 rope, occasionally crossed the ocean to 
 enlighten the New World with their du- 
 bious art. 
 
 Incited by these stray artists, a few young 
 men of American birth cherished the am- 
 bition to make painting their profession, 
 but, since the early fathers were not dis- 
 posed to encourage them financially, it was 
 necessary for them to develop abroad. 
 Thus we find Benjamin West, the first 
 artist born in America, going to Europe at 
 the age of twenty-one and establishing 
 himself as a painter of such distinction 
 as to be one of the founders of the Royal 
 Academy, of which in the course of time 
 he succeeded Sir Joshua Reynolds as 
 its second president. 
 
 West was born -at Springfield, Pennsyl- 
 vania, on October 10, 1738. Oddly enough, 
 in view of the attitude of the Friends 
 toward art, West was of Quaker parentage, 
 his grandsire on the maternal side being 
 intimate with William Penn. His father 
 was a country merchant, and Benjamin 
 was the youngest member of a large fam- 
 ily. The house in which he first saw the 
 
 76 
 
 sance masters whose 
 works are in the Vatican. 
 Encouraged by Sir Joshua Reynolds, whom 
 he had met in Italy, West went to Lon- 
 don in 1763. His success was assured by 
 a painting he did for the Archbishop 
 (Drummond) of York, who obtained for 
 him the royal patronage and a commission 
 to decorate the royal chapel at Windsor. 
 In his ‘‘Death of General Wolfe’? West 
 discarded the convention of painting fig- 
 ures in a modern battle clothed in Greek 
 and Roman costumes, though Reynolds 
 and Archbishop Drummond strove to dis- 
 suade him. Sir Joshua subsequently re- 
 tracted his objections and admitted West 
 to be right, proclaiming the change as an 
 epoch-making innovation. He produced 
 more than four hundred canvases. 
 In 1817 West lost his wife, with whom he 
 had eloped in his Philadelphia days, with 
 the assistance of Francis Hopkinson, a 
 signer of the Declaration of Independence, 
 William White, first Bishop of the Episco- 
 pal Church in America, and Benjamin 
 Franklin. In 1820 he followed her, and 
 was buried in St. Paul’s, London. 
 
_ SOLOMON AND THE QUEEN OF SHEBA 
 
 
 
 
 BENJAMIN WEST (1738-1820) Worcester Art Museum 
 I Kings X Worcester, Mass. 
 
© 
 
 WILLIAM BLAKE 
 
 = AM more famed in Heaven for 
 my work,’’ William Blake once 
 Ni wrote to a friend, “than I 
 could well perceive. In my 
 —_ brain are studies and chambers 
 filled with books and pictures of old, 
 which I wrote and painted in ages of 
 eternity before my mortal life; and those 
 works are the delight and study of arch- 
 angels. Why, then, should I be anxious 
 about the riches or 
 fame of mortality?” 
 This was written from 
 the English seaside 
 village of Felpham, 
 where Blake lived 
 from 1800 to 1803, 
 supported mainly by 
 commissions for pic- 
 tures from a London 
 art patron who ‘“‘went 
 on nearly thirty years 
 buying Blake’s water- 
 colors, along with 
 what the artist 
 termed tempera-pic- 
 tures or frescos; for 
 oil, after a few ex- 
 periments (dictated, 
 as he said, by demons such as Titian and 
 Correggio), was a vehicle which he utterly 
 eschewed . . . a ‘villany’ for which he held 
 Rubens or Van Dyck accountable.”’ In an- 
 other letter we find Blake saying that in 
 the country “I have re-collected all my 
 scattered thoughts on art, and resumed by 
 primitive and original way of execution in 
 both painting and engraving, which, in the 
 confusion of London, I had very much 
 lost and obliterated from my mind.”’ 
 While residing at Felpham, Blake was 
 arrested for forcibly ejecting a trooper of 
 the Royal Dragoons from his garden. He 
 was tried on the charge of assault and 
 using seditious language, but was honor- 
 ably acquitted. 
 Blake was the victim of many unscrupulous 
 fellow artists and of dishonest dealers—also 
 of hallucinations. In him imagination 
 was carried to an extreme, though he was 
 a visionary in the best sense. His ability 
 to see that on which his thought concen- 
 trated was so abnormal that often he 
 could draw portraits of heroes, kings and 
 bygone worthies while his friends looked 
 on. One of them, a contemporary land- 
 
 T? a visionary like Blake, the miracu- 
 lous appearance of “‘a chariot of fire, 
 and horses of fire’ that bore Elijah “up 
 by a whirlwind into heaven, 
 ticularly appealing subject to depict. His 
 illustration is of Elijah and Elisha at the 
 moment when the latter sees his father 
 borne away, and in seeing the strange 
 transference is rewarded with “a double 
 portion” of his father’s spirit, Elijah hav- 
 ing promised, “If thou see me when I am 
 taken from thee, it shall be so unto thee.” 
 The awfulness of the spectacle is indicated 
 by the attitude of Elisha, whose head is 
 bowed as under an insupportable vision. 
 
 78 
 
 frequent nocturnal visitants. 
 
 scape-painter of merit named Varley, en- 
 couraged Blake to make sketches of his 
 Gilchrist re- 
 cords: ‘‘Varley sitting by, awake or drows- 
 ing, would say, ‘Draw me Moses,’ or 
 David; or would call for a likeness of 
 Julius Caesar, or Cassibellaunus, or Ed- 
 ward the Third, or some other great his- 
 torical personage. Blake would answer, 
 ‘There he is!’ And taking paper and pencil 
 would begin drawing 
 with the utmost alac- 
 tity and composure, 
 looking up from time 
 to time, as though he 
 had a real sitter be- 
 fore him; ingenious 
 Varley meanwhile 
 straining wistful eyes 
 into vacancy, and see- 
 ing nothing, though 
 he tried hard, and 
 long expected to be 
 rewarded by a genu- 
 ine apparition.” It 
 was thus Blake drew 
 a ferocious figure, half 
 human, half insect, 
 called the Ghost of a 
 Flea. When the phantasm would change 
 its pose from side to full front, he drew 
 the blood mouth of it on the margin, and 
 when it turned back he went on drawing 
 it in profile, later finishing the picture. 
 The last four years of his life Blake and 
 his wife passed in a small apartment in 
 Fountain Court, Strand, consisting of two 
 ground-floor rooms, one of which was a 
 living-room for all purposes—working, 
 studying, cooking, dining, sleeping. He 
 seems to have been happy, though fre- 
 quently his wife would place an empty 
 platter before him at mealtime as a re- 
 minder for him to paint something that 
 would sell. 
 
 A few days before his death, in August, 
 1827, it is related, ‘‘Blake composed end 
 uttered songs to his Maker, so sweetly to 
 the ear of his devoted wife that he, looking 
 upon her most affectionately, said, ‘My 
 beloved, they are not mine! No, they are 
 not mine!’’’ Just before he died, he began 
 singing of the things he saw in Heaven. 
 His grave in Bunhill Fields Cemetery is 
 unmarked by any memorial, and cannot 
 now be traced. 
 
 +9 
 
 was a par- 
 
ELIJAH AND THE FIERY CHARIOT 
 
 
 
 
 MAREE a 
 
 WILLIAM BLAKE (1757-1827) Collection W. Graham Robertson, Esa. 
 Il Kings II, 11 
 
THEODORE CHASSERIAU 
 
 RIEF and brilliant was the 
 "™ career of Theodore Chasseriau, 
 who flashed across the heavens 
 A of art like a meteor in the 
 early part of the nineteenth 
 century, first as a devotee of form, as 
 interpreted by his master, 
 afterwards, like Delacroix, as an enthusi- 
 astic lover of sunshine and the clear light 
 
 
 
 Ingres, and - 
 
 Unfortunately his production was very 
 limited, the number of canvases attrib- 
 uted to him being less than a hundred. 
 This was due partly to a natural indolence 
 and partly to a fondness for social diver- 
 sions. Personally a very elegant, blasé 
 gentleman, he early plunged into the whirl- 
 pool of Parisian life, and despite his re- 
 markable ugliness, his black, piercing eyes 
 
 of his native West Indies. 
 
 born in 1819, at Sa- 
 mana, on the island 
 of San Domingo. His 
 father was a man of 
 adventurous charac- 
 ter and picturesque 
 career, whose later 
 years were passed as 
 French consul at Por- 
 to Rico. At the age 
 of ten Theodore an- 
 nounced his desire 
 and intention to be a 
 painter, and a num- 
 ber of his canvases are 
 in existence that were 
 painted before he was 
 fifteen years old. At 
 that age he went to 
 Paris and entered the 
 studio of Ingres, un- 
 der whom he studied 
 for two years, until 
 the master was called 
 to direct the Villa 
 
 Chasseriau was 
 
 'N this picture of “Esther preparing to 
 
 meet King Ahasuerus’’ the creole artist, 
 Chasseriau, has painted an exotic con- 
 ception of Esther, the rival and successor 
 to Queen Vashti in the favor of Ahasuerus. 
 Vashti, having refused to wait upon the 
 king, ‘“‘wearing the crown royal, to shew 
 the people and the princes her beauty,” 
 was banished, and among_all the maidens 
 who were sought to supplant her, it was 
 Esther, niece of Mordecai, upon whose 
 head “‘Ahasuerus set the royal crown, and 
 made her queen instead of Vashti.’”’ At 
 the time it was first exhibited, at the 
 Paris Salon of 1842, this small canvas 
 created something of a sensation, in that 
 
 the artist had not sufficiently idealized the. 
 
 great beauty of the girl the Old Testa- 
 ment celebrates. Its praises were elo- 
 quently sung, however, by Gautier and 
 Victor Hugo, and are still being sung. 
 
 seem to have made him a boudoir favor- 
 
 ite, and he dissipated 
 his energies so rapid- 
 ly that he broke down 
 altogether at the age 
 of thirty-six. Indeed, | 
 “the amorous and 
 sensual nature of 
 Chasseriau led him 
 into many liaisons, of 
 which one was long 
 and celebrated. An 
 admirable sketch of 
 Alice Ozy remains as 
 a reminder of it.’’ 
 His love of women, 
 combined with an in- 
 termittently intense 
 application to work, 
 were without doubt 
 the reason for the 
 premature death of 
 this greatest of creole 
 painters, who, after a 
 brief illness, died in 
 Paris, in 1857. 
 
 Medici in Rome. 
 
 Chasseriau seems to have been unable to 
 accompany Ingres to Italy because of the 
 expense. Remaining in Paris, however, he 
 received early and profitable recognition, 
 sending to the Salon of 1836 a ‘‘Return 
 of the Prodigal Son,’’ which won a medal 
 and helped to establish him as a painter 
 in the French capital. Three years later 
 his ‘‘Susanna,’’ now in the Louvre, was 
 exhibited at: the Salon and showed Chas- 
 seriau to be anything but an orthodox 
 pupil of Ingres. 
 
 ‘‘He has not the least understanding of the 
 ideas or the changes that have entered 
 into art in our time, and knows absolutely 
 nothing of the poets of recent days. Our 
 ideas do not in the least correspond.” 
 In these words Chasseriau has himself 
 pointed out what it is that distinguishes 
 him from Ingres. 
 
 80 
 
 Considering his in- 
 fluence upon his contemporaries, notably 
 Moreau and Puvis de Chavannes, it is 
 strange that the fame of Theodore Chas- 
 seriau has not spread wider over the world. 
 Of him Gautier says, ‘Other artists have 
 been purer, broader, more explicit, but none 
 has ever possessed a stranger fascination 
 than Chasseriau.... His heads have al- 
 ways a morbidly strange expression of 
 nostalgic languor, a sad voluptuousness, a 
 mournful smile, a mysterious gaze into in- 
 finity. We have seen them in dreams of a 
 far-off country, at some indefinite period of 
 time, amid strange cities, or in forests of un- 
 known vegetation. One would think them 
 captives of another world brought into our 
 civilization, clad in striped garments, 
 sparkling with barbaric jewels, and re- 
 sistant, like caged gazelles, with attitudes 
 of wild grace.”’ 
 
oer 
 
 ESTHER PREPARING TO MEET AHASUERUS 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 AE SEER IS a a ay 
 
 THEODORE CHASSERIAU (1819-1857) Courtesy Maison Ad. Braun & Cie. 
 Esther II, 13 Collection of Arthur Chasseriau 
 
WILLIAM BLAKE 
 
 HEN a young man, William 
 
 Blake succeeded in mas- 
 tering Greek and Latin by 
 himself, and although he 
 declared his disapproval of 
 education in general, he began to study 
 Italian at the age of seventy, while he was 
 at work upon his great Dante series of 
 drawings. Having a mind of imagination 
 all compact, he seems to have foreseen 
 some of the crippled 
 and deformed things 
 accepted as art since 
 his time. “IT see 
 everything I paint in 
 this world,”’ he writes, 
 “but everybody does 
 not see alike. To the 
 eyes of a miser a 
 guinea is far more 
 beautiful than the 
 sun, and a bag worn 
 with the use of money 
 has more _ beautiful 
 proportions than a 
 vine filled with 
 grapes. The tree 
 which moves some to 
 tears of joy is in the 
 eyes of others only a green thing which 
 stands in the way. Some see Nature all 
 ridicule and deformity, and by these I shall 
 not regulate my proportions; and some 
 scarce see Nature at all.” 
 
 Despite the wild, yet never meaningless, 
 
 attacks Blake made on certain artists 
 
 (such as Titian, Correggio, Rubens, Rey- 
 
 nolds), “‘in conversation he was anything 
 
 but sectarian or exclusive, finding sources 
 of delight throughout the whole range of 
 art, while, as a critic, he was judicious 
 and discriminating.” To a patron he was 
 capable of writing about himself: ‘‘... The 
 works I have done for you are equal to the 
 Carracci or Raphael (and I am now some 
 years older than Raphael was when he 
 died), or else I am blind, stupid, ignorant 
 and incapable.’’ Execution he once called 
 the chariot of genius; and never did that 
 charioteer reveal himself in more unmis- 
 takable guise than in the handiwork of 
 
 Blake. As W. M. Rossetti observes, ‘‘To 
 see one of his finer tempera or water-color 
 
 pictures, or one of his partly color-printed, 
 
 partly hand-colored engraved designs, or 
 of his designs engraved by himself on the 
 
 
 
 and_ tribulations. 
 
 the Naamathite. 
 
 I N this picture Job is shown complaining 
 
 to God, after suffering many sore trials 
 “What is man that 
 Thou shouldst try him every moment?” 
 Present with Job at the time are, in addi- 
 tion to his wife, who has vainly besought 
 him to ‘“‘curse God, and die,’”’ Eliphaz the 
 Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite and Zophar and 
 Time and again they 
 have tried Job’s patience, until he ex- 
 claims, ‘“‘How long will ye vex my soul, 
 and break me in pieces with words?” The 
 figures in this print, made in 1792, and 
 measuring about 14 by 20 inches, are the 
 largest that Blake ever engraved. 
 
 ordinary system, is a new and intense 
 experience.”’ 
 
 In a prospectus which he issued in 1793 
 Blake spoke of having “invented a method 
 of printing both letterpress and engraving 
 in a style more ornamental, uniform and 
 grand than any before discovered.’’ His 
 color-worked engravings have greater 
 strength and depth than the water colors, 
 and are in numerous instances most forcible, 
 not only in idea but 
 in execution. Of his 
 uncolored engravings, 
 the Job is in some 
 points of view his — 
 masterpiece. 
 
 Next after his powers 
 of imagination, awe- 
 inspiring at times, 
 after Blake’s 
 masterly reproduc- 
 tion of the human 
 form, as expressive 
 of energy, aspiration, 
 ardor and all of the 
 divine or demoniac 
 in man, Rossetti 
 would place the treat- 
 ment of light, and 
 especially of flame, as Blake’s highest dis- 
 tinction in art; although “his mastery 
 over color likewise, in certain vivid com- 
 binations of simplicity and of intensity, is 
 very marked and admirable. Clearly 
 Blake ‘was born, like every other great 
 artist, with the seeing eye—with the power 
 to discern appearances rapidly, vividly 
 and intensely, and to reproduce them at 
 once if in demand, or to store them up for 
 future use. Many things that he saw he 
 loved, and he painted them masterfully or 
 tenderly.” 
 
 Of the difference between a bad and good 
 artist, Blake himself observed that ‘‘the 
 bad artist seems to copy a great deal, and 
 the good one does copy a great deal.... 
 Invention depends altogether upon execu- 
 tion or organization. As that is right or 
 wrong, so is the invention perfect or im- 
 perfect. Michel Angelo’s art depends upon 
 Michel Angelo’s execution altogether.” 
 Blake protests that he does not condemn 
 Rubens, Rembrandt or Titian because 
 they did not understand drawing, but, 
 strange to say, because “they did not 
 understand coloring.” 
 

 
 Ba 
 
 WILLIA 
 Job III, 1 
 
 BLAKE (1757-1827) 
 
 
 
 satis * 
 
 Collegtion W. Graham Robertson, Esq. 
 
CHRISTOFANO ALLORI 
 
 AD Christofano Allori painted 
 only one picture, that of 
 ‘‘Judith and Holofernes,”’ he 
 would still be reputed ‘“‘easily 
 first among the Florentine 
 artists, in his mastery of technique and 
 coloring.’’ And Charles Blanc goes on to 
 
 observe, ‘‘Allori excelled in delicacy of 
 
 execution, but he was withheld by a certain 
 fastidiousness from completing many of his 
 
 
 
 with his work that he allowed himself to be 
 influenced by palpably inferior contempo- 
 raries, such as Cigoli, for instance—another 
 deserter from the studio of old Alessandro— 
 who went to Venice to. study Correggio, 
 Baroccio and others of the Venetian school, 
 and revealed to the Florentines a new lan- 
 guage of color. Even through a second- 
 hand acquaintance with Corregio, however, 
 Allori was inspired to soften his brush-work, 
 
 pictures.’” Less than 
 twenty canvases by 
 him are known to be 
 in existence, and he is 
 believed to have 
 painted less than fifty 
 pictures in his life- 
 time of forty-four 
 years. 
 
 Christofano Allori 
 was born at Florence 
 in 1577, the son of a 
 painter, Alessandro 
 Allori, well known in 
 his day, who, in turn, 
 was a nephew of the 
 old Florentine mas- 
 
 and in copying the 
 
 [HE event here depicted, related in the te per pe by 
 frequently painted that master e for- 
 
 ts got foreverthedry aus- 
 
 Apocrypha, 
 by the Renaissance artists. Holofernes, 
 whose severed head Judith is clutching, 
 had commanded an army sent against 
 Palestine by the Assyrian King, Nebuchada- 
 nezzar. The destruction of the temple at 
 Jerusalem was imminent when Judith, 
 described as a rich young widow of the 
 tribe of Judah, went to the camp of Holo- 
 fernes, and captivated the general by her 
 great beauty. A banquet was given in her 
 honor, and as Holofernes lay sleeping after 
 a night of dissipation she cut off his head. 
 
 terity of Bronzino.”’ 
 
 Allori was a man of 
 passionate nature and 
 of a_pleasure-loving 
 disposition. A good 
 horseman, a graceful 
 dancer, an accom- 
 plished musician, he 
 spent much time in 
 social adventuresthat, 
 in the interest of his 
 art, might have been 
 
 ter Bro nz tn k 
 
 Christofano first studied under his father, 
 but while still in his nonage he became 
 impatient of the influence Bronzino had on 
 his sire and teacher, and made the fact 
 public by calling his father ‘‘a heretic in 
 painting,’ to the great scandal of Ales- 
 sandro. As a result Christofano became a 
 pupil of Pagani, and his defection filled with 
 bitterness the declining days of the elder 
 Allori. The father’s death in 1607 at least 
 put an end to the family quarrel, and left 
 Christofano unhampered in his rebellious- 
 ness against a style of painting that had 
 originated with Michel Angelo, but had 
 greatly degenerated in the hands of lesser 
 artists. About it was a violence of pose 
 that is nowhere observed in the work of 
 Christofano, who, at the age of thirty, had 
 already become a painter of considerable 
 note in Tuscany, and was SUR as Bron- 
 zino, the younger. 
 
 Apropos of his a idinee it is related 
 that when Allori was once painting a pic- 
 ture of St. Francis he took for a model a 
 Capuchin monk whom he made pose for six 
 hours on fifteen consecutive days in order 
 that one eye might be painted to the artist’s 
 satisfaction. So dissatisfied was he indeed 
 
 84 
 
 better employed. In- 
 deed, his frequent sur- 
 render to such dissipations proved his 
 undoing. Baldinucci relates that, becoming 
 infatuated with a beautiful Florentine girl 
 named Mazzafirra, Allori spent his last 
 years ‘‘under the spell of this enchantress, 
 whose whims were sometimes his joy but 
 were more often his sorrow. Of a morning 
 she would receive him with her heart on 
 her lips; and that evening she would not 
 so much as speak to him. Moreover, she 
 was fond of luxury and costly diversions, 
 and Allori’s inability to humor her in such 
 matters kept him in a fever of jealousy and 
 rage. ... Thinking to avenge himself 
 through his art, he perpetuated the memory 
 of his sorrow and his shame by painting his 
 mistress as Judith and himself as Holo- 
 fernes, in the greatest of his pictures.” 
 
 Such is the story which M. Blanc questions, 
 saying, ‘“‘The head of MHolofernes can 
 hardly be the portrait of Allori. It is a 
 mask essentially idealized and broadly 
 drawn in the Florentine manner. . . . As 
 for the Mazzafirra, if she was as beautiful 
 as she is painted, she must have been ador- 
 able; and in the presence of that paragon 
 of women, victorious, resplendent, the mad 
 passion of Allori is completely understood.” 
 
JUDITH WITH THE HEAD OF HOLOFERNES 
 
 
 
 
 
 CHRISTOFANO ALLORI (1577-1621) Courtesy Maison Ad. Braun & Cie. 
 Apocrypha Pitti Gallery, Florence 
 
BRITON 
 
 SJRITON RIVIERE has been 
 called the greatest English ani- 
 mal painter since Landseer, 
 and by many he is regarded as 
 superior to Landseer. Lions 
 and geese, royal tigers and golden eagles, 
 stags, dogs, foxes, cattle, he has painted 
 them all, and with the mastery which 
 betrays the presence of genius. Among 
 animal painters he stands alone in his 
 power of conception 
 and his fine poetic 
 vein, uniting in all his 
 
 
 
 RIVIERE 
 
 ANIEL is here shown with his back 
 deliberately turned upon the lions 
 
 Raphaelite between the ages of eighteen 
 and twenty-two, and graduated from 
 Oxford at twenty-seven. 
 
 In his youth he divided his time between 
 art and scholarship—painting pictures and 
 studying Greek and Latin literature. Thus 
 he became a painter of animals, having 
 also an enthusiasm for the Greek poets, 
 and he has stood for more than a generation 
 as an uncontested lord and master on his 
 own peculiar ground. 
 
 Among his’ more 
 intimate friends Brit- 
 
 pictures the greatest 
 simplicity with im- 
 mense dramatic force. 
 As Professor Muther 
 says of Riviére, ‘By 
 him the character of 
 animals is magnifi- 
 cently grasped, and 
 he never forgets that 
 beasts of prey are 
 usually quiet and 
 peaceable, only now 
 and then displaying 
 their savage nature. 
 Moreover, he never 
 attempts to represent 
 animals performing a 
 masquerade of hu- 
 manity in their ges- 
 
 while gazing upward toward King Darius, 
 who has come to learn whether Daniel 
 has survived: the night among the lions. 
 The Prophet says: ‘“‘My God has sent His 
 angel, and hath shut the lions’ mouths, 
 that they have not hurt me: forasmuch as 
 before Him innocency was found in me; 
 and also before thee, O king, have I done 
 no hurt.” How excellently the painter 
 has executed these lions in their every 
 movement and look! Curiously ignoring 
 Daniel, their gaze is fastened upon the 
 face of the king peering down into the 
 den. It is early morning, and the sunlight 
 streaming into the den is handled in a 
 most effective manner to bring out the 
 dramatic values of the picture. 
 
 on Riviére had the 
 good fortune to num- 
 ber the late Dinah 
 Muloch Craik and her 
 husband,awell-known 
 London publisher. 
 While Craik was giv- 
 ing the artist valu- 
 able introductions, 
 his wife—a popular 
 novelist—had him 
 employed to _ illus- 
 trate her stories. In 
 this way he was en- 
 gaged to make the 
 drawings for Ameri- 
 can editions of several 
 of her novels, as well 
 as for numerous 
 
 tures and expression, 
 
 as Landseer often did, nor does he trans- 
 form them into comic actors. He paints 
 them for what they are, a symbol of what 
 humanity was once itself, with its ele- 
 mental passions and its natural virtues 
 and failings.”’ 
 
 Among animal painters Briton Riviére 
 is almost alone in resisting the temptation 
 to give the lion a consciousness of his own 
 dignity, the tiger a consciousness of his 
 own savagery, the dog a consciousness of 
 his own understanding. 
 
 Born in London in 1840, Riviére was 
 descended from a French family which 
 found its way into England after the 
 revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and he 
 is one of those painters—so frequent in 
 English art—whose nature developed early: 
 while he was still a schoolboy he drew 
 and painted animals with considerable 
 power; at fourteen he left school and, devot- 
 ing himself to art, exhibited in the Academy 
 when he was eighteen; painted as a Pre- 
 
 86 
 
 verses. Between 1868 
 and 1871 he was a regular contributor to 
 Punch. Riviére would do his illustrations 
 on wood with a brush, working mostly by 
 lamp light, while his wife read aloud to 
 
 him. As a rule he employed no models. 
 
 His style of drawing was strongly influ- 
 enced by Sir John Millais. 
 
 If his illustrative work was done in the 
 evening, his painting was done entirely in 
 the morning, we are told. His afternoons 
 were devoted to reading and recreation. 
 As an artist Briton Riviére is distinguished 
 by his sympathy with animals, his sense 
 of color, unerring directness of conception 
 and fine vein of poetry. 
 
 It was in 1872 that Riviére exhibited 
 his great picture of ‘‘ Daniel’’ in the den of 
 lions, followed six years later by ‘‘Persep- 
 olis,’’ which many consider his master- 
 piece, and which makes the appeal of a 
 page from the philosophy of history, with 
 its lions roaming majestically amid the 
 moonlit ruins of a past civilization. 
 

 
 | DANIEL’S ANSWER TO THE KING 
 
 
 
 BRITON RIVIERE (1840-1920) Courtesy Taber-Prang Art Co. 
 Daniel VI, 21 
 
JOHN SINGER SARGENT 
 
 ITH the death in London on 
 April 15, 1925, of John 
 Singer Sargent it ceased to 
 be possible to speak of this 
 great American artist who 
 
 was so little in America as the “only 
 
 living old master.’’ His was an old New 
 
 England family identified with the fishing 
 
 port of Gloucester, Massachusetts, and his 
 
 forbears were maritime merchants and sea 
 
 
 
 captains. Sargent 
 himself was born in SARGENT, 
 1856, in Florence, 
 
 ainter 
 Italy, and his early p : 
 
 years were spent amid 
 
 although primarily a portrait 
 was capable of decorative 
 work with elements of greatness in it. 
 
 whose ailment a famous medical specialist 
 had been unable to diagnose. Looking upon 
 the patient in the mirror of his Sargent 
 portrait the physician perceived at once 
 what was the matter and predicted the 
 end, which was not far off. There is an- 
 other about a New England small town 
 mayor who indulged the soaring ambition 
 of having his portrait painted by Sargent, 
 and who vaingloriously hung the canvas 
 in his dining-room. 
 His fellow townsmen 
 came in to see—and 
 laughed. They saw 
 his honor as he was. 
 
 the palaces, churches 
 and galleries of that 
 historic city. Later 
 he studied in Ger- 
 many, and at nine- 
 teen he turned up, a 
 shy youth, in the 
 Paris atelier of Caro- 
 lus Duran, the most 
 fashionable painter of 
 his time, with a sheaf 
 of sketches which in- 
 cluded work in oil, 
 drawings of many 
 sorts, copies of old 
 masters—a _ remark- 
 able record of juvenile 
 
 His finest decorative achievement is to be 
 found in the ‘‘Prophets’’ covering the 
 walls of the great hall which bears his 
 name in the Boston Public Library. In 
 preparation for this work, he spent much 
 time in study in Egypt and wherever the 
 monuments and symbols of ancient re- 
 ligions are to be found. The result is a 
 series of representations of the progres- 
 sive triumph of monotheism over the 
 polytheism of the ancient world. In this 
 work he utilized every device of art, even 
 that of polychrome relief. The figure of 
 Isaiah, in the group on the opposite page, 
 is much admired for its depth of tone and 
 
 The mortified digni- 
 tary arranged with a 
 burglar who provi- 
 dentially came before 
 him the next day as 
 he sat as magistrate, 
 to break into his 
 house by night and 
 purloin the picture. 
 Of his sincerity, which 
 has been no less ar- 
 dently championed 
 by his admirers than 
 questioned by his de- 
 tractors, this tale is 
 told. Sargent was 
 once painting a cer- 
 
 accomplishment. 
 Duran pronounced 
 them good—and Sargent became so as- 
 siduously his pupil that in 1877 he ex- 
 hibited in the Salon a portrait of the 
 master in which the master was outdone. 
 Amazing as was his youthful facility, his 
 youthful industry was likewise prodigious. 
 From Paris Sargent went to Spain and 
 fell under the influence of Velasquez—an 
 influence from which he never entirely 
 escaped. Returning to the French capital 
 he at once began to make a stir, winning 
 a medal in the Salon of 1881. He kept 
 on painting and exhibiting, but French 
 criticism beginning to overbalance French 
 appreciation he took up a residence in 
 London in 1884, and resided there for the 
 rest of his life, engaged mainly in portrait 
 painting. 
 
 There seems to be a general agreement 
 that Sargent had an uncanny gift for 
 character-revelation in his portraits. There 
 is the story of his painting of a person 
 
 expression. Itis his best mural expression. 
 
 88 
 
 tain lady in a manner 
 that caused _ her 
 friends to protest. Obligingly the painter 
 scraped her out and painted her over. 
 She was exactly the same. He scraped her 
 out again and once more painted her. 
 Still she was the same. 
 
 Sargent’s first visit to his native land, as 
 America always was to him, was in 1876, 
 when he was twenty years old, and it was 
 about fifteen years later that he came to 
 do the murals for the Boston Public Library 
 —the famous ‘“Prophets.’’ His choice of 
 a religious subject was surprising. These 
 murals were completed in 1894. 
 
 Of the decorations entitled ‘“The Church” 
 and “The Synagogue,” the second caused 
 such offense that the Legislature of Mas- 
 sachusetts in 1922 passed a bill ordering 
 it removed. Subsequently the courts de- 
 nied the validity of the legislative act. 
 It appeared that the idea of the two pic- 
 tures was to show Christianity triumphant 
 and Judaism defeated. 
 
HABAKKUK 
 
 0. 
 
 a ABARKY 5 | 
 
 
 
 JOHN SINGER SARGENT (1856-1925) Copyright Boston Pub. Lib. Employees Benefit Assn. 
 Boston Public Library 
 
JOHN SINGER SARGENT 
 
 ye 
 p 
 
 a Ba 
 
 Gene in terms of pure 
 
 painting John Singer Sargent 
 is regarded by critics of au- 
 thority as a modern master 
 comparable to the great lead- 
 ers in the historic periods. Royal Cortissoz 
 sees in him “the single American out- 
 standing type of genius governed by com- 
 
 A master of water color, it was his habit 
 in Italy, in the Alps, in the Holy Land, 
 everywhere, to make innumerable travel 
 notes. Working in oils, these were often 
 but stepping stones to compositions of 
 serious import. He could make a Venetian 
 street scene or interior, a Spanish court- 
 yard, a Florentine villa live again in 
 
 plete technical authority. 
 a kind of romantic splendor about it, for 
 
 it was begun in al- 
 most dramatic bril- 
 liance, and that bril- 
 liance persisted over 
 a long period. In all 
 the picturesque an- 
 nals of the _ studio 
 there is nothing quite 
 like it until we pause 
 upon the lives, say, 
 of such men as Ru- 
 bens and Van Dyck. 
 Sargent drew with 
 great force and pre- 
 cision. His portraits, 
 when he was in the 
 mood to make them, 
 are merciless in their 
 truth. He was not 
 always in the mood, 
 
 ’? His career had 
 to reproduce 
 
 OF Sargent’s great decorative figures of 
 
 the Hebrew “Prophets,’”’ in the Boston 
 Public Library, the minor ones, notably 
 Zephaniah, Joel, Obadiah and especially 
 Hosea, have won universal praise. In 
 them Sargent came nearest to achieving 
 his life-long ambition to be as good a 
 mural decorator as portrait painter. Nev- 
 ertheless, “It is difficult to think of the 
 frieze of the prophets as the work of the 
 artist who painted the subsequent deco- 
 rations in the same building, in spite of 
 the fact that no other painter could be 
 associated with either series.”’ During a 
 heated controversy over his Boston Public 
 Library murals in 1923-4, particularly of 
 
 glittering beauty. That was his function— 
 in enchanting form the 
 
 picturesque charm of 
 
 the visible world. 
 Sargent was no 
 dreamer. It was not 
 
 habitual with him to 
 draw upon his imagi- 
 nation. But in regis- 
 tering tangible facts 
 he was proficiency it- 
 self, adding to his 
 record of the fact a 
 beguiling note of 
 style. ‘‘He never in 
 his life deliberately 
 romanticized atheme, 
 but he was too much 
 of an artist ever to 
 leave it exactly as he 
 found it. The truth 
 painted by Sargent 
 
 and latterly, in fact, 
 he is said to have 
 come fairly to hate 
 the routine and various irritations of por- 
 traiture. To a visitor in his London 
 studio he once declared in a half-amused, 
 half-wrathful outburst, that he would paint 
 no more portraits after he had once dis- 
 posed of those he was engaged upon. 
 ‘Women don’t ask you to make them 
 beautiful,’ he said, “‘but you can feel 
 them wanting you to do so all the time.”’ 
 Nevertheless he went on painting portraits, 
 even while he wanted most of all to be a 
 mural decorator, and his paintings of the 
 ‘*Prophets’”’ in the Boston Public Library 
 reveal with what devotion he pursued this 
 great interest in his life. ‘‘They do hardly 
 more than that,’’ says a discerning critic. 
 “Though they contain some superb epi- 
 sodes, they do not as a whole affirm his 
 genius in an absolutely convincing manner. 
 The peculiar constructive aptitude which is 
 essential to the decorative designer work- 
 ing against an architectural background 
 was for some occult reason denied him.”’ 
 
 “The Synagogue,” it narrowly escaped de- 
 struction when it was bespattered with ink. 
 
 90 
 
 was. always. truth 
 raised to a higher 
 power, made more 
 interesting through the beauty of his art.” 
 Sargent was an eager reader, an enthusias- 
 tic lover of music, and an indefatigable 
 student of human nature. He painted the 
 notabilities of the world, and in so doing 
 acquired rare intellectual insight. He was 
 a cosmopolitan, at home anywhere. He 
 painted with thought as well as with ex- 
 treme dexterity, and the interest of the 
 immense body of work he has left behind 
 is not only aesthetic but psychological. 
 Above all, John Singer Sargent was one 
 of the most modest of painters. There is 
 a pretty story of his watching a young 
 art student at work upon a picture in a 
 garden. Asked for some advice he gave it, 
 almost diffidently, saying, in a deprecating 
 way, that he remembered once painting 
 a garden picture of his own, as though, of 
 course, the student had not so much as 
 heard of it. That was all that he could 
 manage to say about the famous ‘“Car- 
 nation, Lily—Lily, Rose.”’ 
 
eer! 
 
 MZEPHANIAN 0 e Ran ANAMS RL ce tas 2 
 
 
 
 ieee 
 
 JOHN SINGER SARGENT (1856-1925) Copyright Boston Pub. Lib. Employees Benefit Assn. 
 Boston Public Library 
 
MURILLO 
 
 S“GARTOLOME ESTEBAN MU- 
 
 4 RILLO was left an orphan at a 
 very tender age, in the care of 
 4) a surgeon who had married his 
 aunt. Soon afterwards he was 
 apprenticed to an uncle, Juan del Cas- 
 tillo, a painter of no great ability, in 
 Seville, Spain, and young Murillo began 
 his career as an artist. The uncle evi- 
 dently was a better teacher than painter, 
 
 
 
 the money necessary to carry out the 
 project he acquired a quantity of linen, 
 divided it into squares of different sizes, 
 and painted upon them attractive saints, 
 bright landscapes, groups of flowers, fruit 
 and other subjects designed to attract 
 ready purchasers. Then, without a word 
 of his intention he set out on foot for 
 Madrid, where he arrived footsore, penni- 
 less and with no friend to receive him. 
 
 for the pupil was soon 
 painting better pic- 
 tures than his master. 
 When the uncle went 
 to live in Cadiz, Mu- 
 rillo was left in Se- 
 ville to shift for him- 
 self, and for two 
 years he struggled 
 desperately for an ex- 
 istence. Seville was 
 so overrun with paint- 
 ers at the time that 
 only the pictures of 
 the most celebrated 
 brought anything like 
 a remunerative price. 
 As he haunted the 
 market place in 
 search of customers, 
 Murillo had every op- 
 portunity of study- 
 ing the features and 
 characteristics of the 
 street gamins of Se- 
 
 THE Birth of the Virgin’’ was painted 
 
 for the Cathedral of Seville when 
 Murillo was thirty-seven years of age. 
 Gautier has given this interesting appreci- 
 ation of it: “In the center of the composi- 
 tion, the baby Virgin swims, as it were, in 
 a cloud of light. An old woman, . . . raises 
 the child from.the cradle with a caressing 
 gesture. But the most marvellous figure 
 in the group is the young angel modeled, as 
 it seems, from nothing—a rose-colored 
 vapor touched with silver. She leans her 
 adorable head—made with three brief 
 brush strokes—over the Virgin, resting 
 one delicate hand on her breast, the fingers 
 nestling among the folds of her dress as 
 if in the petals of a flower. Above the 
 cradle a hovering glory of child angels 
 illumines the room.... Half hidden in 
 the shadow of the background, the bed of 
 the mother may be vaguely distinguished.”’ 
 
 But Murillo had cour- 
 age, and he ventured 
 to call on the greatest 
 artist in Spain, Velas- 
 quez, a fellow towns- 
 man, and at that time 
 court painter to Phil- 
 ip IV. Velasquez was 
 so pleased with the 
 personality of the 
 young painter that 
 he took him into his 
 home. Three years 
 later when Murillo, 
 having abandoned the 
 idea of going to 
 Rome, returned to 
 his native city of Se- 
 ville the first thing he 
 did was to accept a 
 dubious commission 
 which had gone beg- 
 ging among Sevillan 
 artists to paint eleven 
 life-sized figures for a 
 
 ville who appear so 
 
 often and with such lifelike convincingness 
 on his canvases. There was plenty of com- 
 petition, even in this huckster atmosphere, 
 as a great majority of the Sevillan painters 
 exhibited their pictures on the streets and 
 it was customary to bring brushes and 
 colors to the stalls and alter canvases to 
 suit the tastes of customers. The young 
 artist was getting his education “in the 
 university of hard knocks,’’ and he 
 missed no opportunity for self-improve- 
 ment. 
 
 The turning point in his career came at 
 the age of twenty-five when ‘a former 
 fellow-pupil of Murillo under Juan del 
 Castillo returned from studying in Flan- 
 ders and England bringing copies of sev- 
 eral paintings by Van Dyck. These so 
 fired the ambition of young Murillo that 
 he determined to visit Rome. To obtain 
 
 92 
 
 small Franciscan con- 
 vent. Murillo grasped the opportunity 
 to show what he was capable of doing, 
 and spent three years at the work which, 
 when finished, established his reputation. 
 He had no trouble now securing commis- 
 sions; and we presently hear of him marry- 
 ing a wealthy noblewoman, and their 
 home becoming the resort of the most 
 distinguished society in Seville. The fame 
 of Murillo grew correspondingly, and in 
 1670 the post of court painter was ten- 
 dered him by Charles II. But Murillo had 
 not been impressed by the honor once 
 held by his friend Velasquez, and pre- 
 ferred his own independent seclusion in 
 Seville. 
 It was while he was finishing a large pic- 
 ture for a church in Cadiz that the artist 
 fell from the scaffolding and sustained 
 injuries from which he never recovered. 
 
THE BIRTH OF THE VIRGIN 
 
 
 
 ‘MURILLO (1617-1682) Courtesy Maison Ad. Braun & Cie. 
 Louvre, Paris 
 
TINTORETTO 
 
 WAINTORETTO is a nickname 
 that has stuck through four 
 centuries to the Venetian 
 painter whose real name was 
 Jacopo Robusti. His father 
 was a dyer of silks. The boy helped his 
 father at his trade, and was called ‘“‘il 
 tintoretto,’’ the little dyer. 
 
 As a youth, Tintoretto amused himself at 
 home by making charcoal sketches on the 
 
 
 
 S 
 
 DN 
 
 he resembles Michel Angelo. His brain 
 fermented; his thoughts boiled; his throng- 
 ing conceptions so tormented him that 
 he was obliged to rid himself ofthem.” In 
 many cases he received no pay at all for 
 his work, in others just enough to pay for 
 his materials; but he seems always to have 
 worked like a Trojan, and whether he was 
 paid or not mattered little to him so long as 
 he was creating. 
 
 walls and coloring 
 them with his father’s 
 dyes. This convinced 
 the parents that the 
 son was born to be a 
 painter, and somehow 
 the father managed to 
 apprentice the boy to 
 Titian, who at that 
 time was without a 
 rival in Venice. 
 
 Titian lived to see his 
 pupil win recognition 
 and even fame, but 
 he never warmed to 
 him. In fact he went 
 out of his way to dis- 
 
 INTORETTO’S “Presentation of the 
 
 Virgin’? shows Our Lady ascending 
 the steps of the Temple, at the top of 
 which the high priest awaits the slight 
 girlish figure in its gray dress contrasting 
 with the blue sky beyond. Groups of 
 women and children, ancients and idlers, 
 ranged along the steps watch the scene. 
 The Venetian staircase has been criticized 
 as being too important for the actors, but 
 the effect of the figures in shadow is so 
 fine, the beauty of the women seated upon 
 or ascending the steps so striking, and the 
 figure of the Virgin so full of grace and 
 
 Tintoretto had a keen 
 sense of humor, and 
 man y interesting 
 stories are told of 
 him. On one occa- 
 sion when he was 
 working on some 
 sketches for his ‘‘Par- 
 adise’’ in the Ducal 
 Palace he was inter- 
 rupted by some dis- 
 tinguished _ visitors, 
 one of whom in- 
 quired why he worked 
 so rapidly, observing 
 at the same time that 
 Giovanni, Bellini and 
 
 parage him, and for- 
 bade him his studio. 
 Undaunted ,theyoung 
 painter opened a studio of his own, ‘and, 
 heedless of the rebuff, on the wall he painted 
 this sign:' “The drawing of Michel Angelo 
 and the coloring of Titian.’”’ To com- 
 bine the highest qualities of these great 
 painters—two of the greatest that ever 
 lived—was an ambitious undertaking for 
 so young a painter, but Tintoretto recog- 
 nized no limitations. In time he _ sur- 
 passed Titian in keenness of observation 
 and could even outdo Michel Angelo in 
 some respects, particularly in the speed 
 with which he could turn out his canvases. 
 Titian might shut him out of his studio, 
 but he could not close the churches and 
 palaces to him. There Tintoretto studied 
 Titian’s masterpieces, copied them and 
 finally conjured from them their secrets. 
 An indefatigable workman, he. refused no 
 commissions. His greatest desire was to 
 give form and shape to the ideas that 
 fairly swarmed in his imagination. 
 
 Tintoretto’s is declared by Taine to have 
 been “the most vigorous and _ prolific 
 artistic temperament that ever existed. 
 In savage originality and in energy of will 
 
 simplicity that, whatever its defects, the 
 picture remains to the glory of Tintoretto. 
 
 94 
 
 Titian had been delib- 
 erate and painstak- 
 ing. “‘The old mas- 
 ters,’ Tintoretto replied, ““had not so many 
 to bother them as I have.” . 
 
 His aggressive nature and the speed with 
 which he executed his canvases is illus- 
 trated by the following incident. “Il 
 Furioso,’”’ as he came to be known, was 
 invited with three other artists to submit 
 designs for the ceiling of the refectory at 
 San Rocco. Tintoretto took the exact 
 measurements, and while the other artists 
 labored over their sketches he finished his 
 canvas and put it into place. When the 
 time came to study the designs and award 
 the commission Tintoretto’s finished pic- 
 ture was found in place. His competitors 
 were furious and the head of the Brother- 
 hood displeased. Asked to explain, Tin- 
 toretto merely replied: ‘‘This is my method 
 of preparing designs. I do not know how 
 to make them in any other manner. All 
 designs and models for a work should be 
 executed in this fashion, so that the per- 
 sons interested may not be deceived. If 
 you do not think it proper to pay for the 
 work and remunerate me for my pains, 
 I will make you a present of it.” 
 
THE PRESENTATION OF THE VIRGIN 
 
 
 
 
 TINTORETTO (1518-1594) Church of Santa Maria pecs a 
 enice 
 
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI 
 
 ANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI 
 g@ was the son of an exiled Italian 
 patriot. He was born in 
 1828, in London, where his 
 father was Professor of Italian 
 at King’s College, and a distinguished and 
 original commentator on the works of 
 Dante. So the youth of this Anglo-Italian 
 painter-poet was spent in the atmosphere 
 of Dante—the gloomy Florentine—and the 
 world created by the 
 mystical genius of the 
 
 
 
 Italian Renaissance 
 became his spiritual 
 home. 
 
 At eighteen Rossetti of age. 
 
 became a pupil at the 
 Royal Academy and 
 even at that early age 
 seemed to hold his 
 friends under what is 
 described as a pecu- 
 liar hypnotic influ- 
 ence. He was tall 
 and thin, always 
 walked with a slight 
 stoop; was reserved 
 in manner and care- 
 less in appearance. 
 The year of 1848 was 
 an important one to Rossetti and to the 
 development of art in England. He had 
 formed a friendship with Holman Hunt, 
 with whom he shared a studio, and through 
 Hunt he became acquainted with John 
 Everett Millais, his junior by a year, 
 though already an exhibiting painter of 
 promise. With these three young men— 
 Hunt, Rossetti and Millais, aged respec- 
 tively twenty-one, twenty and nineteen 
 years—originated the movement known 
 as the Pre-Raphaelitism—an emulation 
 of the sincerity and love of truth that 
 characterized the early Italian painters and 
 gave way to artificiality after Raphael. 
 The term originated as a nickname, some- 
 body exclaiming when they had expressed 
 a preference for the painters before Raphael 
 to those who succeeded him, ‘‘Why then 
 you must be Pre-Raphaelites.’’ The title 
 was adopted as an Official label which fitly 
 conveyed their aims which, as Sir William 
 Orpen says, ‘“‘were to paint nature with 
 minute fidelity, and to regain the passion- 
 ate intensity of the masters of the Renais- 
 sance.”’ 
 
 Anne. 
 
 mother of Deity.” 
 
 THE Girlhood of Mary Virgin’ was 
 Rossetti’s first oil painting. 
 done when the artist was only twenty years 
 The Virgin is seated at an em- 
 broidery frame copying a white lily, under 
 the direction of her mother, St. Anne. 
 Rossetti’s sister, Christina, was the model 
 for the. Virgin, and his mother for St. 
 The picture is full of delicate 
 sentiment and its dominant idea is un- 
 mistakable, “the Virgin advances in purity 
 until fitted to become the bride and 
 Outside the room a 
 dove rests, and in the garden is St. 
 Joachim, the Virgin’s father, training a 
 vine, the tendrils of which form a cross. 
 
 96 
 
 It was at this time that Rossetti’s fancy 
 turned to Biblical subjects and he painted 
 the picture called ‘“The Girlhood of Mary 
 Virgin.”’ 
 
 As a working organization the so-called 
 Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood ceased to exist 
 after two or three years. The members 
 drifted apart, each painting in his own 
 special manner; but its influence pro- 
 foundly affected the art, especially the 
 decorative art, of 
 England, and it is 
 now recognized as 
 one of the important 
 movements in the his- 
 tory of painting. 
 
 As for Rossetti, his 
 religious tendency 
 soon suffered an 
 eclipse and we find 
 him passing under the 
 spell of Dante, whose 
 influence was to domi- 
 nate the art of Ros- 
 setti for the rest of 
 his life. Undoubtedly 
 his greatest picture is 
 ‘‘Dante’s Dream.”’ 
 After his first exhibi- 
 tion of Bible pictures 
 Rossetti exhibited publicly only once again, 
 in 1856. After that he worked in seclusion 
 for his friends and the friends of his friends. 
 One of them was John Ruskin, the great 
 critic and art patron, who agreed to buy, 
 up to a certain amount, and at a mutually 
 satisfactory price, any picture by Rossetti 
 that struck his fancy. This arrangement 
 ended only when the painter ‘“‘could no 
 longer brook the constant criticisms which 
 Ruskin could not refrain from expressing.”’ 
 In 1860 Rossetti married Elizabeth Siddal, 
 a milliner’s assistant, who had sat for him 
 with more or less frequency for ten years. 
 Two years later this passionately loved 
 woman died from the effects of an over- 
 dose of laudanum, and Rossetti laid a whole 
 volume of poems in manuscript in her coffin, 
 and retired to an old house at Chelsea and 
 gave himself up completely to his dreams. 
 Eight years later, under pressure from his 
 friends, he caused the grave of his wife 
 to be opened and took from it the manu- 
 scripts, which he published. The first edi- 
 tion was sold in ten days and numerous 
 other editions followed. 
 
 It was 
 
THE GIRLHOOD OF MARY VIRGIN 
 
 reerta 
 
 
 
 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI (1828-1882) Owned by Mrs. Jekyll 
 
FRA ANGELICO 
 
 T is related of Fra Angelico, 
 whose baptismal name _ was 
 Guido and who was born at 
 Vicchio, near Florence, Italy, 
 in 1387, that being invited to 
 breakfast by Pope Nicholas V he had 
 scruples of conscience as to eating meat 
 without the permission of his prior, not 
 considering that the authority of the pon- 
 tiff superseded that of the prior. Such 
 was his simple ear 
 nestness of purpose. 
 Guido probably would 
 have been content to 
 
 RA ANGELICO painted this “Annun- 
 ciation” in the upper corridor of the 
 
 ius IV to decorate a chapel adjoining St. 
 Peter’s, which was razed less than a cen- 
 tury later to make room for the great 
 staircase of the Vatican Palace. At the 
 age of sixty, he entered upon the crown- 
 ing achievement of his life—the decora- 
 tion of the Chapel of Nicholas V in the 
 Vatican, on the walls of which he painted 
 his famous frescos representing scenes from 
 the lives of Sts. Laurence and Stephen. 
 
 Fra Angelico disre- 
 garded all earthly ad- 
 vantages, and strove 
 to live in simple holi- 
 
 follow the profession 
 of a painter alone had 
 it not been for the 
 great Italian preacher 
 and scholar, Giovanni 
 Dominici, a Domini- 
 can friar, who, early 
 in the fifteenth cen- 
 tury, established a 
 monastery at Fiesole 
 to which Quido 
 sought and obtained 
 admission at the age 
 of twenty. <A year 
 
 cloisters of San Marco, Florence. Of it 
 Taine remarks: “‘Such immaculate mod- 
 esty, such virginal candor! By her side 
 Raphael’s Virgins are merely vigorous 
 peasant girls.” This painting reflects 
 clearly the pious nature of the artist, who 
 was diligently seeking in pictures like this 
 to “express the inner life of the adoring 
 soul.”” At eventide the Virgin is shown 
 seated in an open loggia, reverently re- 
 ceiving the message brought by the angel 
 who has just alighted and bows to her and 
 designates her the chosen one of God. 
 
 ness. He labored con- 
 tinually at his paint- 
 ings, but, Vasari re- 
 cords, would do noth- 
 ing dissociated from 
 things holy. ‘He 
 might have been rich, 
 but of riches he took 
 no care; on the con- 
 trary, he was accus- 
 tomed to say that the 
 only true riches was 
 contentment with lit- 
 tle. He might have 
 
 later he changed his 
 
 name to Giovanni, being known as Fra 
 Giovanni da Fiesole. It was not until 
 after his death and beatification that he 
 was called Angelico, the Angelic. 
 
 In the summer of 1435, Fra Angelico 
 removed from the convent of his order at 
 Fiesole, where he had painted the great 
 “Coronation of the Virgin,’? now in the 
 Louvre, to the newly renovated Convent 
 of San Marco at Florence, which now 
 contains his ‘‘Last Judgment,” four great 
 Madonnas and sundry other of his pic- 
 tures. There, writes Langton Douglas, 
 before the buildings were fairly com- 
 pleted, he began to decorate the interior 
 walls of the convent, which in time be- 
 came a perfect treasure-house of his works. 
 The “Crucifixion,” which Fra Angelico 
 painted in the chapter-house, is the largest 
 and one of the most important of his 
 achievements. He painted frescos of the 
 chief Dominican saints in the cloisters, 
 and decorated the cloister corridors and 
 walls of the cells with sacred subjects, 
 principally scenes from the life of Christ. 
 Thus occupied for a decade, Fra Angelico 
 was summoned to Rome by Pope Eugen- 
 
 98 
 
 commanded many, 
 but would not do so, declaring that there 
 was less fatigue and less danger of error 
 in obeying than in commanding others.” 
 Estimating Fra Angelico as an artist, 
 Muther says that ‘“‘when he does not leave 
 his proper sphere, and the problem is to 
 portray tender feelings, a great and silent 
 joy of the heart, a holy ecstasy or tender 
 sadness, his pictures have the effect of 
 the silent prayer of a child.” 
 It was his custom to abstain from re- 
 touching or improving any painting once 
 finished. He altered nothing, believing, as 
 he said, that such was the divine will. 
 It also is affirmed that he would never 
 take brush in hand until he had first 
 offered a prayer. 
 In 1455, at sixty-eight, this good man and 
 great painter died in Rome, in the his- 
 toric convent of his order, Santa Maria 
 Sopra Minerva, and was buried near the 
 high altar in the convent church. At the 
 command of Pope Nicholas his effigy was 
 carved upon his marble tomb, together 
 with an epitaph, in Latin, composed, it is 
 said, by the pope himself, inspired by the 
 virtues of the holy monk. 
 
THE ANNUNCIATION 
 
 & 
 
 eo 
 
 
 
 FRA ANGELICO (1387-1455) Courtesy Maison Ad. Braun & Cie. 
 Luke I, 28 San Marco, Florence 
 
MURILLO 
 
 URILLO, who passed nearly 
 all his life in Seville, Spain, 
 and painted for conventual 
 churches, hospitals and sac- 
 risties, had to paint the sub- 
 jects that pleased the devout of his day and 
 country, such as the “Immaculate Con- 
 ception,’ the visions of the monastery 
 cell, the mysteries and ecstasies of as- 
 ceticism Indeed, the subject of the Im- 
 maculate Conception 
 was painted so often 
 by Murillo that he 
 came to be known as 
 “the painter of the 
 Conception.” The 
 one we reproduce was 
 painted for a hcespital 
 in Seville. It was 
 purchased by the 
 French Government 
 in 1852, from the 
 Marshal Soult sale, 
 for 586,000 francs. 
 An anecdote is told 
 
 
 
 x- 
 
 paintings. 
 
 of the manner in 
 which the French 
 Marshal comman- 
 
 deered this picture 
 during his military oc- 
 cupancy of Seville. It 
 had been hidden by 
 the chapter of the 
 Cathedral, but a 
 traitor informed Soult of its whereabouts 
 and he sent to beg it as a present, hinting 
 that if refused he would take it by force. 
 Some years after, in Paris, the worthy 
 Marshal was showing a wealthy con- 
 noisseur his collection, and pausing oppo- 
 site a Murillo, said, ‘I very much value 
 that specimen. It saved the lives of 
 two estimable persons.’”’ An aide-de-camp 
 who was standing near whispered, ‘‘He 
 threatened to have both of them shot on 
 the spot unless they gave up the picture.”’ 
 Of Murillo as a painter of ineffable figures, 
 Justi observes that the Spaniard ‘“‘had to 
 depict what he had never seen; he had to 
 wrestle for years with such a problem as 
 how to paint successfully a human face 
 set against a background of glowing light. 
 But his critics shut their eyés to his mar- 
 vellous mastery of the illustrative appara- 
 tus, asserting that his effects are purely 
 materialistic, though hundreds of artists, 
 
 Englishmen. 
 
 THE march of French armies through- 
 
 out the Spanish peninsula in the days 
 of the first Napoleon brought about an 
 extension of the fame of Spanish art; for 
 their retreating baggage-trains carried into 
 northern Europe hundreds of priceless 
 Marshal Soult was especially 
 energetic in plundering southern Spain of 
 its pictures, including this “Immaculate 
 Conception” and other Murillos. 
 Marshal seized the objects, and carefully 
 guarded the legality of their titles by 
 forcing their owners to sign fictitious bills 
 of sale. The trophies were transferred to 
 Paris; and for many years afterwards the 
 thrifty veteran derived a large income 
 from selling them, one by one, to wealthy 
 As a result the best Mu- 
 rillos are found today, not 
 where they were painted, but in England. 
 
 already forgotten or passing into oblivion, 
 have produced precisely similar effects so 
 far as the material outside is concerned.”’ 
 Critics are agreed that Murillo owes his 
 artistic greatness, and his world-wide 
 popularity, to the fact that he recognized 
 the unique character and special charm 
 of the human nature of southern Spain, 
 adapted it to the palette and brush, and 
 ventured to introduce it into paintings of 
 religious subjects. In 
 doing this he was an 
 originator of the first 
 order. The Andalu- 
 sian saints and Ma- 
 donnas seen elsewhere 
 might just as well 
 have been painted in 
 Naples or in Amster- 
 dam. Like Rem- 
 brandt, Murillo rec- 
 ognized with the in- 
 sight of genius that 
 Biblical history and 
 the legends of the 
 saints could be best 
 narrated in the dia- 
 lect of the people. 
 
 To describe this art- 
 ist as an improvisa- 
 tore, who “paints as 
 the bird sings,’’ is to 
 hit beside the mark. 
 
 “‘Few painters have so 
 well understood the art of pictorial com- 
 position or known so well how to charm 
 the eye by gradations of light, skilful 
 attitudes and adroit foreshortenings; few 
 have calculated their effects more care- 
 fully.”” To M. Beulé, the only divisions 
 evident in the art of Murillo are “those 
 which mark his progress successively from 
 a formative period, when to gain a liveli- 
 hood he was hastily daubing bits of linen 
 at the fair; a second, when he was de- 
 
 The 
 
 in Spain 
 
 veloping his style by a study of the mas- 
 
 100 
 
 terpieces in Madrid; and a third, when he 
 finally became master of his individual 
 talent. It would be a more exact descrip- 
 tion to say, simply, that one picture is 
 badly composed and crude in color and de- 
 Sign, that another is, on the contrary, 
 vigorously painted, and that a third is ren- 
 dered so that the outlines seem half lost 
 in clouds.”’ A “‘happy freedom from bonds” 
 is everywhere evident in his works. 
 
THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION 
 
 mee 
 
 
 
 MURILLO (1617-1682) Courtesy Maison Ad. Braun & Cie. 
 Luke I Louvre, Paris 
 
ALBERTINELLI 
 
 (777 T was both the fortune and mis- 
 fortune of Mariotto Albertinelli, 
 
 Ni a distinguished, if not a great, 
 painter of the Florentine school, 
 
 2 to have been closely associated 
 during most of his maturity with Fra 
 Bartolommeo, to whose work his own is 
 compared and not always to its advan- 
 tage. Albertinelli, the son of a gold-beater, 
 and born in 1474, was a year older than 
 
 he executed a number of pictures. The 
 dissimilarity of his nature and that of his 
 partner artist was forcibly shown at the 
 time Savonarola, the renowned preaching 
 friar and reformer, was predicting for 
 Florence the doom of Sodom and Gomor- 
 rah. Among those who most ardently em- 
 braced his cause was Bartolommeo, one of 
 his earliest adherents. Albertinelli, on the 
 contrary, joined the opposing faction and 
 
 Bartolommeo, whose 
 serious and gentle na- 
 ture was in marked 
 contrast to the gay 
 and somewhat boister- 
 ous disposition of the 
 older artist, but who, 
 nevertheless, became 
 his chosen and closest 
 friend. 
 
 Associated in an ap- 
 prenticeship that 
 lasted six or seven 
 years the two lads, 
 feeling that they had 
 nothing more to learn 
 from their teacher, 
 formed a partnership, 
 rented a studio in 
 common and became 
 artists on their own 
 account. Doubtless, 
 ventures a biographer, 
 
 & 
 
 ‘HIS “Visitation” is regarded as the 
 
 best of the works done by Albertinelli 
 alone, other than in collaboration with 
 his friend, Fra Bartolommeo. It was 
 painted in 1503 when the artist was 
 twenty-nine years old. The picture is 
 notable for its coloring and for the expres- 
 sive attitudes of the two women. It 
 illustrates the passage in Luke I, 59-41: 
 “And Mary arose in those days, and went 
 into the hill country with haste, into a city 
 of Juda; and entered into the house of 
 Zacharias, and saluted Elisabeth. And it 
 came to pass that, when Elisabeth heard 
 the salutation of Mary, the babe |John the 
 Baptist] leaped in her womb; and Elisa- 
 beth was filled with the Holy Ghost.” 
 The birth of John the Baptist preceded that 
 of Christ by about six months. 
 
 openly scoffed at the 
 Piagnoni, or Mourn- 
 ers, as the followers of 
 Savonarola were de- 
 risively called. The 
 rupture was of short 
 duration, however, 
 and beforelongtheart- 
 ists were again work- 
 ing in partnership. 
 
 The tide of popular 
 feeling turned against 
 Savonarola when Al- 
 bertinelli and his 
 friend were respec- 
 tively twenty-four 
 and twenty-three 
 years of age. Al- 
 though engaged on 
 decorating the walls 
 of a chapel adjoining 
 the Hospital of Santa 
 Nuova, Florence, 
 
 they spent much time 
 
 in the Medici gardens, where Lorenzo 
 the Magnificent, then ruler of Florence, had 
 collected many valuable specimens of an- 
 tique statuary, which were eagerly studied 
 by the Florentine artists of the time; 
 but ‘‘while Albertinelli gave his whole at- 
 tention to copying these marbles, Bartolom- 
 meo studied also the works of Masaccio, 
 of Filippino Lippi and, above all, of 
 Leonardo da Vinci. His progress was 
 rapid, and his influence over his friend in 
 all matters pertaining to art, in spite of 
 their different dispositions, was so strong 
 that most of Albertinelli’s work bears a 
 strong resemblance to that of Bartolom- 
 meo.” 
 
 Albertinelli appears to have been anything 
 but fastidious in the choice of his pleasures, 
 was a tavern frequenter and a sort of 
 Frangois Villon of Florence. He had as a 
 protectress the wife of Pierre de Medici, 
 whose portrait he painted, and for whom 
 
 102 
 
 with a great fresco of 
 the “‘Last Judgment,’’—‘‘a worthy prelude 
 to the ‘Disputa’ of Raphael’’—Bartolom- 
 meo, who had planned and drawn in the 
 whole composition, left the remainder of the 
 work to Albertinelli, and himself became a 
 Dominican novice. So capably did Alberti- 
 nelli carry the fresco to completion that 
 “its faded and almost ruined remains, now 
 removed to the picture-gallery of Santa 
 Maria Nuova, offer one of the noblest and 
 most impressive examples of monumental 
 composition.”’ 
 In 1509, or some eight years later, it is 
 recorded that an “artist-layman’’ was 
 introduced into the quiet monastery of 
 San Marco, where Fra Bartolommeo, hav- 
 ing concluded his novitiate, appears to 
 have resumed painting. The ‘“‘artist-lay- 
 man’”’ is known to have been Albertinelli. 
 He died toward the end of 1515, in his 
 forty-second year, preceding by two years 
 the death of Fra Bartolommeo. 
 
THE VISITATION 
 
 
 
 ALBERTINELLI (1474-1515) 
 
 Luke I, 40 
 
 Courtesy Maison Ad. Braun & Cie. 
 
 Uffizi Gallery, Florence 
 
RAPHAEL 
 
 SIP AHAT Raphael, Michel Angelo 
 
 a and Leonardo da Vinci, three 
 
 
 
 supreme masters of art, should 
 have been contemporaries, liv- 
 ing and painting literally side 
 
 DN 
 
 by side in the greatest days of the Italian 
 Renaissance, is the most remarkable coin- 
 cidence in that remarkable period. Raphael 
 Sanzio, or Santi, was born on’ Good Friday 
 of the year 1483 in the ducal city of 
 
 figures, by Michel Angelo, in competition 
 with Leonardo, whom he had on that 
 occasion greatly surpassed.” 
 
 To Florence hastened young Raphael to 
 behold the commended works, and, adds 
 Vasari, ‘‘he stood dumb before the splen- 
 dor of Leonardo’s figures, and thought 
 him superior to all other masters.... At 
 the same time Michel Angelo’s mastery of 
 the human frame impressed him pro- 
 
 Urbino, and died in 
 
 Rome thirty-seven 
 years later to a day, 
 just before finishing 
 his glorious picture 
 of ‘‘The Transfigura- 
 tion.’ All his life he 
 seems never to have 
 suffered any serious 
 vicissitudes. His 
 first teacher was his 
 father, a painter of 
 considerable talent, 
 who -early perceived 
 in his son an artistic 
 inclination, and the 
 latter is reported by 
 Vasari to have 
 “greatly assisted his 
 father in numerous 
 works executed in the 
 State of Urbino.’’ The 
 extent of his assist- 
 ance may be ques- 
 tioned in view of the 
 fact that Raphael was 
 
 APHAEL’S “Marriage of the Virgin’’ 
 
 was his first original picture of im- 
 portance. Its subject had been a favorite 
 one with painters for more than two cen- 
 turies. In treating it Raphael followed the 
 accepted legend, relating that there were 
 so many competitors for the Virgin’s hand 
 that the High Priest ordered every bache- 
 lor to lay a dry rod on the altar, and de- 
 clared that he whose rod should bud 
 should be the husband of Mary. Among 
 the suitors was Joseph, an elderly man 
 and a widower, whose rod alone budded; 
 and as it did so a dove descended from 
 heaven and lighted upon it. The Virgin 
 is attended by five young women, Joseph 
 by five young men—rejected suitors, of 
 whom one in the foreground breaks his 
 rod, which had failed to blossom. This 
 picture is not so noted for its coloring as 
 for its masterly composition and arrange- 
 ment of figures. Init “Raphael treats the 
 subject finally, definitively and for all time.” 
 
 foundly, and he ap- 
 plied himself with ar- 
 dor to learn the prin- 
 ciples of anatomy. 
 Night and day he 
 studied the structure 
 of the body, learning 
 in a few months what 
 others take years to 
 acquire.”’ Notwith- 
 standing his youth, 
 Raphael was. wel- 
 comed as an equal by 
 theartistsof Florence, 
 among whom he made 
 many friends; and 
 his beauty of person 
 and charm of manner 
 captivated everyone. 
 Of the manner in 
 which Raphael, at 
 twenty-five, was sum- 
 moned to Rome to as- 
 sist in decorating the 
 Vatican we tell else- 
 where. So rapid was 
 
 left an orphan at the 
 
 age of eleven, in care of an uncle who 
 placed him in the studio of Perugino, at 
 Perugia. His mother had died three years 
 previously, leaving memories of her deeply 
 etched in his mind. 
 
 Under Perugino, who was regarded as the 
 greatest master of technique in his time, 
 and another of whose pupils was Pintu- 
 ricchio, Raphael remained for nine or ten 
 years, acquiring Perugino’s technique so 
 perfectly that ‘‘their works could not be 
 told apart.’’ It was about this time that 
 Raphael painted ‘‘The Marriag2 of the 
 Virgin.’”” Then, writes Vasari, reports 
 reached Perugia of a cartoon which Lec- 
 nardo da Vinci had prepared for a “‘most 
 beautiful group of horses to be executed 
 for the Great Hall of the Palace at Flor- 
 ence,’ and another “representing nude 
 
 104 
 
 his progress, how- 
 ever, that by the time he was thirty ‘“‘he 
 was never seen to go to court without 
 being surrounded and accompanied, as he 
 left his house, by some fifty painters, all 
 men of ability and distinction, as evidence 
 of the honor in which he was held.” 
 Meeting him on one of these occasions, 
 Michel Angelo growled out, ““You look like 
 a general at the head of an army.”’ 
 Laughing, Raphael retorted, “‘and you, 
 sir, like an executioner on the way to the 
 scaffold.”’ 
 Rome in the course of time was divided 
 in opinion as to the relative merits of 
 Raphael and Michel Angelo, and formed 
 two great parties, that of Raphael being, 
 it is said, the more numerous. On page 
 160 are given further and very interesting 
 particulars of their rivalry. 
 
THE MARRIAGE OF THE VIRGIN 
 
 APR. 
 
 
 
 RAPHAEL (1483-1520) Courtesy Maison Ad. Braun & Cie. 
 Matt. I, 24, Luke I, 27 Brera Gallery, Milan 
 
MASACCIO 
 
 ASACCIO is the slightly slur- 
 ring nickname, inspired by the 
 
 
 
 “‘absent-mindedness, untidi- 
 ness, and physical clumsi- 
 ness.”” of Tomaso di Ser 
 
 Giovanni di Tomasso Guidi, “the father 
 of modern painting,’’ who came into the 
 world about Christmas time in 1401 and 
 mysteriously dropped out of sight at Rome 
 in 1428, being less than twenty-seven years 
 old. Some report that 
 he was poisoned, oth- 
 
 ers that he was slain A 
 in astreet brawl. The 
 truth of the matter 
 is not known. What 
 
 we do know is, to 
 quote Professor Frank 
 Jewett Mather, of 
 Princeton, that ‘“‘in 
 
 the recorded history 
 of art no painter had 
 achieved so_ greatly 
 in so short a time. 
 Within six years Ma- 
 saccio created that 
 method of painting 
 which stood uncon- 
 tested till the advent 
 of luminism some 
 forty years ago. And 
 he not merely illustrated the method of 
 construction in light and dark, painting in 
 atmospheric values rather than in lines 
 and charted areas, but he also expressed 
 in the new technic both the noblest tradi- 
 tional emotions and poignant new emo- 
 tions quite his own. In one superb 
 aggressive he moved three generations 
 into the future. For a hundred years 
 the most intelligent and ambitious artists in 
 Florence—Eotticelli, Ghirlandajo, Leonardo 
 da Vinci, Michel Angelo, Raphael, Andrea 
 del Sarto— paid homage to the untidy 
 youth from Castel: San Giovanni, and 
 even the iconoclasts of today, for whom 
 Leonardo da Vinci and his peers are 
 scarcely artists at all, envy the gravity 
 and force of Masaccio.” , 
 
 Tradition as late as Vasari declared that 
 this young Florentine genius lived in a 
 world of intense speculation concerning 
 his art. Contemporary tax-returns show 
 that he died deeply in debt, and that he 
 never really knew how much he owed. 
 Tradition again insists that he never 
 
 Florentine mother. 
 
 LITTLE giant of a picture” is what 
 the celebrated critic Berensen calls 
 Masaccio’s “Birth of St. John the Baptist.” 
 It was executed as a birth-plate, or pic- 
 tured salver, such as it was customary at 
 the time to prepare in celebrating the 
 birth of a patrician child in Florence. 
 These salvers were used to convey the 
 congratulatory gifts which were offered 
 with appalling promptness to every young 
 This, the most famous 
 of them all, shows, in the excellent pro- 
 portions of the Renaissance portico, in 
 the gravity and mass of the figures, the 
 “beginnings of a new and more truthful 
 style, based not on tradition but on direct 
 and masterful observation of nature.”’ 
 
 troubled to collect payments due him 
 unless his need of money was extreme. 
 
 Becoming an art student in Florence as a 
 mere lad, he was matriculated in the 
 Druggists’ Guild as a licensed painter at 
 twenty-one, and coincidentally announced 
 that the painting of his contemporaries 
 and predecessors was all based on unnat- 
 ural conventions. One fancies him exclaim- 
 ing, as Goya was to do more than three 
 centuries later, 
 “Lines, always lines, 
 I don’t see them in 
 
 nature.”’ 
 His radical innova- 
 tion was to paint 
 
 according to natural 
 laws, distributing color 
 and light and dark so 
 as to give the swiftest 
 and truest represen- 
 tation of mass and 
 distance. ‘“‘Besides 
 functional light and 
 shade, Masaccio in- 
 troduced into paint- 
 ing the idea of aerial 
 perspective. He saw 
 that distant objects 
 diminished not mere- 
 ly in size but also in 
 definition. He felt the air as a palpable 
 veil between the object and the eye, and 
 he painted not simply the object but the 
 veil, as well. By a swift impulse of sheer 
 genius this moody lad fixed ideals of natu- 
 ralistic painting which were to remain until 
 yesterday and the Impressionists. Funda- 
 mentally, Velasquez marks no great ad- 
 vance over Masaccio.”’ 
 
 It is in his fresco painting that Masaccio is 
 most happy. Reviewing those frescos in 
 the Brancacci Chapel of the Carmelite 
 Church at Florence, the great Italian critic 
 Cavalcaselle observes that in them ‘the 
 
 spirit of art derived mostly from Giotto” 
 
 106 
 
 and that “it was highly important for the 
 whole ongoing art of Italy that so revolu- 
 tionary a spirit was tempered by the finest 
 respect for the great classic tradition.” 
 Masaccio is said to have borne a strong 
 resemblance to the alert figure of St. 
 Thomas in his upper fresco on the right wall 
 of the Chapel, near which is that of “‘The 
 Tribute Money,”’ appraised as “‘one of the 
 grandest creations of European art.” 
 
THE BIRTH OF JOHN THE BAPTIST 
 
 
 
 MASACCIO (1401-1428) Berlin Museum 
 
 Luke I, 57 
 
GHIRLANDAJO 
 
 IKE so many of the famous 
 artists of the MRenaissance, 
 Domenico di Tommaso di 
 Currado Bigordi is best known 
 to posterity by a sobriquet. 
 The name Ghirlandajo derives from gar- 
 lands (ghirlande) and stuck to Domenico 
 as a souvenir of his early apprenticeship 
 to a Florentine goldsmith ‘“‘where he 
 learned to make the beautiful garlands 
 
 
 
 that David went to the abbot apologetically 
 saying that his protest was made entjrely 
 on account of his brother, ‘whose merits 
 and abilities deserved consideration.’ ”’ 
 Nothing fit to eat was served at their next 
 meal, however, and ‘‘David rose in a rage, 
 threw the soup over the friar, and seizing 
 the great loaf from the board fell upon him 
 therewith, and belabored him in such 
 fashion that he was carried to his cell 
 
 which earned him the 
 name by which he 
 was thenceforth 
 known.”’ 
 
 Ghirlandajo was born 
 in 1449, two years be- 
 fore the birth of Bot- 
 ticelli and only three 
 years before that of 
 Leonardo da_ Vinci; 
 both of whom out- 
 lived him many years, 
 working well into the 
 first quarter of the 
 sixteenth century, 
 while Ghirlandajo 
 died six years before 
 its opening. 
 
 A®* a result of his work on the walls of 
 
 the Sistine Chapel, the fame of 
 Ghirlandajo spread over Italy and fairly 
 took root in his native Florence, where 
 the list of his pictures grew steadily and 
 rapidly. By 1485 he had executed one of 
 his most important commissions—the dec- 
 oration of the Sassetti Chapel in Santa 
 Trinita with frescos representing scenes 
 from the life of St. Francis. The altar- 
 piece was “The Nativity’’, on one side of 
 which, it is interesting to read, was 
 painted the kneeling figure of Francesco 
 Sassetti, donor of the Chapel and a 
 wealthy and influential Florentine banker, 
 
 more dead than alive. 
 The abbot, who had 
 gone to bed, arose on 
 hearing the clamor, 
 believing the monas- 
 tery to be falling 
 down, and finding the 
 monk in a bad condi- 
 tion, began to re- 
 proach David. But 
 the latter replied in a 
 fury, declaring the 
 talents of his brother 
 to be worth more 
 than all the hogs of 
 abbots of his’ sort 
 that had ever in- 
 habited the monas- 
 
 Little is known of 
 his youth. In 1475, 
 when he was twenty-six, he painted certain 
 frescos in the Vatican library at Rome; 
 and evidently he had achieved considerable 
 reputation in his native Florence or he 
 would not have been commanded to join 
 that band of famous men who were be- 
 ginning to turn the Palace of the Pope 
 into the marvellous museum of art it after- 
 wards became. Vasari states that his 
 frescos for the Vespucci family (of which 
 Amerigo, the discoverer, was a member) 
 were his first pictures, and his assertion 
 that one of the kneeling suppliants in 
 Ghirlandajo’s ‘‘Descent from the Cross’’ 
 was a portrait of Amerigo Vespucci was 
 unquestioned until recently. 
 
 While returning from Rome to Florence 
 a year or so later, Ghirlandajo, his brother 
 David, and an assisting , painter named 
 Sebastiano, who was to become their 
 brother-in-law, painted a ‘“‘Last Supper”’ 
 in the fabulously rich Vallombrosan mon- 
 astery at Passignano. According to Va- 
 sari, the painters might have fared better 
 with a poorer brotherhood, for “they 
 found themselves so badly fed and lodged 
 
 and on the other side, that of his wife. 
 
 108 
 
 tery. The abbot be- 
 ing thus brought to 
 his senses, did his best from that moment 
 to treat them like honorable men as they 
 were.”’ 
 
 Ghirlandajo was far from having the 
 poetic, dreamy nature whose material 
 needs must be shielded and supplied by 
 others. But he permitted nothing to in- 
 terfere with his work, and Vasari says that 
 he gave entire charge of his purse and 
 menage to his brother, telling him to 
 “leave me to work, and do thou provide, 
 for now that I have begun to get into 
 the spirit and to comprehend the matter 
 of this art, I grudge that they do not 
 commission me to paint the whole circuit 
 of the walls of Florence with stories.’’ 
 
 In his country, as George Lafenestre ob- 
 serves, Ghirlandajo closed the Fifteenth 
 Century with much of the éclat with 
 which Masaccio opened it. He stands on 
 the last rung of the ladder which rose from 
 Giotto towards the great geniuses of the 
 Renaissance, only some feet below Leo- 
 nardo, his competitor, and Michel Angelo, 
 his pupil. As such, he remains a com- 
 manding figure in Italian art. 
 
HE NATIVITY 
 
 
 
 
 ae 
 
 — ea 
 
 GHIRLANDAJO (1449-1494) Courtesy Maison Ad. Braun & Cie. 
 Luke II, 7 Santa Trinita, Florence 
 
JULES BASTIEN-LEPAGE 
 
 N the little French churchyard 
 of Damvillers in Lorraine, be- 
 neath an old apple-tree that 
 he loved so dearly, rest the 
 mortal remains of a painter for 
 whom France went into mourning in the 
 year 1884—-Jules Bastien-Lepage. He was 
 thirty-six years of age, and his death 
 occurred a month after that of his tal- 
 ented and distinguished young Russian 
 pupil, Marie Baskirt- 
 scheff, just as her 
 
 ASTIEN-LEPAGE was twenty-seven 
 
 the Lorraine peasants is the theme of 
 nearly all his pictures, the Lorraine land- 
 scape is their setting. He painted what 
 he loved, and he loved what he painted.”’ 
 
 To please his parents Bastien-Lepage 
 twice competed for the Prix de Rome in 
 1873 and in 1875 with an ‘‘Annunciation 
 of the Angel to the Shepherds,” that now 
 famous picture which received the medal 
 at the World Exhibition of 1878. Both 
 times he was fortu- 
 nate enough to be un- 
 in 
 
 pictures began to cre- 
 ate a sensation. A 
 touching idyll in her 
 diary tells how she 
 learnt, when she was 
 dying of consumption 
 in her twenty-fourth 
 year, that young Bas- 
 tien had also fallen ill, 
 and been given up as 
 a hopeless case. 
 
 Born in Damvillers, 
 in 1848, Bastien- 
 Lepage as a boy 
 played among the 
 venerable moats 
 which had been con- 
 verted into orchards. 
 Thus in his youth he 
 received the freshest 
 
 when he painted his “Annunciation 
 to the Shepherds.” Its night effect is 
 Rembrandtesque; yet the colors are not 
 harmonized in gold-brown, but in a cool 
 gray silver tone. Observe how simple is 
 the effect of the heavenly appearance upon 
 the shepherds lying ’round the fire of 
 coals. In place of the curly ideal heads of 
 the old sacred painting are those of 
 bristly, unwashed men who, gnarled and 
 weather-beaten, receive the miracle with 
 the simplicity of elemental natures. Fear 
 and abashed astonishment are reflected 
 in their faces, and the plain and homely 
 gestures of their hands correspond to their 
 inward excitement. Even the angel pres- 
 ence is a simple and human conception. 
 
 successful, for ‘‘i 
 Italy Bastien-Lepage 
 would only have been 
 spoilt for art. The 
 model for him was 
 not one of the old 
 masters, but nature 
 as she is in Damvil- 
 lers.”” As evidence 
 of his paradoxical 
 good fortune there 
 was soon exhibited 
 the portrait of his 
 grandfather, ‘‘that 
 marvellous work of a 
 young man of twenty- 
 five ... the first pic- 
 ture in which he was 
 completely himself.’’ 
 
 impressions, being 
 
 brought up in the heart of nature. 
 Having left school in Verdun, where he 
 took several prizes for drawing, he went 
 to study in Paris in 1861. For some 
 months he was a student by day and at 
 night was a postal clerk. This double labor 
 proving impracticable, he gave himself en- 
 tirely to art study, entering the class of 
 Cabanel at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. 
 Fortunately, as Professor Muther com- 
 ments, the outbreak of the Franco- 
 Prussian War prevented Bastien-Lepage 
 from remaining long at the academy. He 
 entered a company of Franc-Tireurs, took 
 part in the defence of Paris, and returned 
 ill to Damvillers. While recuperating he 
 came to know himself and his peculiar 
 talent. ‘‘At once a poet and a realist, he 
 began to look at nature with that simple 
 frankness which those alone possess who 
 have learnt from youth upwards to see 
 with their own eyes instead of trusting to 
 other people’s.”’ As a result, ‘“‘the life of 
 
 110 
 
 Successive pictures 
 showed that he had 
 not merely rusticity and nature to rely 
 upon, but that he was a charmeur in 
 the best sense of the word. By his two 
 pictures, “The Hay Harvest”? and ‘‘The 
 Potato Harvest,’’ in 1878-9, Bastien- 
 Lepage placed himself in the first line of 
 modern French painters. Then he went 
 farther with “‘Joan of Arc,’’ his master- 
 piece in point of spiritual expression. 
 Bastien-Lepage was never robust physi- 
 cally, nor was Parisian life calculated to 
 invigorate him. Slender and delicate, 
 blond with blue eyes and a sharply chis- 
 elled profile, he was of the type which 
 Parisians adore. His studio was be- 
 sieged; there was no entertainment to 
 which he was not invited, no committee, 
 no meeting to pass judgment on pictures 
 at which he was not present. And then, 
 younger than was the young Raphael 
 whom death took at thirty-seven, Bastien- 
 Lepage was stricken with lung trouble and 
 succumbed after a brief illness. 
 

 
 BASTIEN-LEPAGE (1848-1884) Courtesy Maison Ad. Braun & Cie. 
 Luke II, 8 
 
HENRI LEROLLE 
 
 T was both the good and bad 
 . fortune of the remarkable 
 French painter, Henri Lerolle, 
 to be a born artist and to be 
 economically independent. His 
 independence made it possible for him to 
 work entirely to please himself, instead of 
 patrons, and to work in a seclusion that 
 has greatly retarded the full measure of 
 recognition warranted by his genius. Born 
 
 
 
 were subdued and softened until, as in 
 the early pictures o: Lerolle, they even 
 became idyllic. Moreover, the scale of 
 painting over life-size, favored in the 
 early years of the movement, was being 
 abandoned, since it arose essentially from 
 competition with the works of the historical 
 school. To Lerolle the transition to a 
 smaller scale was particularly happy, as 
 being better fitted for intimate studies, 
 
 in Paris in 1848, he 
 early exhibited a de- 
 cided ability to draw, 
 and it does not ap- 
 pear that his parents 
 were opposed to his 
 ‘dabbling in art.’’ On 
 the contrary, while 
 still in his teens Le- 
 rolle became a pupil 
 of Lamothe, of whom 
 even less has been 
 written than about 
 himself. Under this 
 master he studied two 
 years, and made his 
 début at the Paris 
 Salon of 1868 with 
 two canvases, ‘‘Does 
 in the Forest,’’ and 
 “Kitchen Utensils.”’ 
 Neither of these pic- 
 
 N his “‘Arrival of the Shepherds,” Lerolle 
 
 tells pictorially one of the most appealing 
 of the great Bible stories. It is at the 
 moment when the shepherds, having been 
 directed to Bethlehem by the angel of the 
 Lord, entering the stable, “found Mary 
 and Joseph, and the babe lying in a man- 
 ger.” A divine radiance is on the Mother 
 and Child, at whom the wondering shep- 
 herds gaze speechlessly, one with hand 
 upraised and another kneeling. Near them 
 the ass, upon which Mary had ridden 
 into the city of David, stops drinking at 
 a trough and seems to be puzzled by the 
 strange visitation. Joseph prepares to rise 
 from a mound of straw, on which he is 
 seated, as he turns his head toward the 
 group of intruders. This picture is famed 
 for its masterly treatment of light. 
 
 such as his own. 
 
 In 1874 Lerolle be- 
 gan to paint religious 
 pictures, on which he 
 was to specialize for 
 a long time. Six 
 years later he re- 
 ceived a first-class 
 medal at the Salon, 
 with his “In the 
 Country,’’ now in the 
 Luxembourg, follow- 
 ing an honorable men- 
 tion in the 1878 Salon 
 of his ‘Communion 
 of the Apostles.”’ It 
 was in 1883 that he 
 exhibited his most 
 celebrated religious 
 painting, “‘The Ar- 
 rival of the Shep- 
 herds’’; and it was a 
 
 tures, which were fa- 
 
 vorably received by critics and connois- 
 seurs, gave any indication of the future 
 trend of his talent. 
 
 What they did display was a marked 
 ability to paint natural objects in a 
 simple, natural manner. It was at the 
 time that the school of Naturalism was 
 coming into its own in France, a move- 
 ment of which Zola wrote, ‘‘Naturalism 
 does not depend upon the choice of sub- 
 ject. The whole of society is its domain, 
 from the drawing-room to the slum. It is 
 only idiots who would make Naturalism 
 solely the rhetoric of the gutter.’’ Every- 
 thing was to be painted—forges, railway 
 stations, church congregations, barnyards, 
 the workrooms of manual laborers, casinos, 
 studios, sleeping-cars, race-courses, crowded 
 streets, the whole of humanity in all 
 classes of society. The rude and offensive 
 traits which the movement had at first, 
 and which found expression in numbers of 
 peasant, artisan and hospital pictures, 
 
 112 
 
 year or so later that 
 he painted “‘At the Organ,”’ now in pos- 
 session of the Metropolitan Museum. 
 Passing from his religious pictures, Le- 
 rolle’s favorite subjects are large land- 
 scapes with few figures, and his effects of 
 evening light are notable. In 1890 he 
 went over to the Société Nationale des 
 Beaux-Arts, of which he was one of the 
 founders, and to which he sent some very 
 remarkable portraits, historical paintings, 
 nudes and landscapes. The technique of 
 this artist is distinctly modern and per- 
 sonal. His touch is skilled and sure, his 
 color pleasing and carefully studied. 
 Lerolle, in his later period, has developed 
 a fondness for airy interiors of large di- 
 mensions, often the broad expanses of the 
 churches of the last century. In these he 
 has not lost the diffused daylight of his 
 early landscapes, but is enabled to place 
 his figures in a clear, luminous silveriness 
 and to continue his treatment of chiaro- 
 scuro, and make an atmosphere felt. 
 
 \ 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 EEN Oe eS : ce Se OS ‘ Ae ee : REINO A 
 HENRI LEROLLE (1848-) Courtesy Maison Ad. Braun & Cie. 
 
 Luke II, 16 Museum at Carcasonne. France 
 
CORREGGIO 
 
 EWER authenticated facts con- 
 4H cerning Antonio Allegri da 
 | Correggio, contemporary of 
 Leonardo da Vinci, Michel 
 S Angelo and Raphael, have 
 come down to us than are available of the 
 life of any other painter of equal stature 
 in the history of art. This is due to the 
 comparative obscurity in which he lived, 
 far from the great art centers of Venice, 
 Florence and Rome, 
 and this dearth of 
 biographical material 
 has given rise to 
 many interesting leg- 
 ends. There is the 
 story, for instance, 
 that when Titian vis- 
 ited Parma, and Cor- 
 reggio’s frescos were 
 shown by the monks, 
 who disparaged them 
 as poor things which 
 they were disposed to 
 
 
 
 in the manger. 
 
 Ts picture of the Nativity was sug- 
 
 gested to Correggio by a passage in 
 one of the apocryphal gospels which re- 
 lates how St. Joseph, entering the stable 
 at Bethlehem, saw the new-born Child 
 shining with a _ supernatural radiance 
 which lighted up the figure of the Ma- 
 donna bending tenderly over the Infant 
 To the left shepherds 
 draw near, and in the background St. 
 Joseph is seen tethering an ass. 
 
 had been a childhood playmate, but his 
 wife seems to have followed him back to 
 Parma only after an interval of several 
 years. She died on the eighth anniversary 
 of their marriage, and Correggio returned 
 to his native town, where he spent the re- 
 maining years of his life, ‘‘resigned to the 
 obscure monotony of village life and the 
 limitations of easel-painting.’”’? Such a 
 move stands in marked contrast to the 
 crave for full exist- 
 ence, the search for 
 grand opportunities, 
 the love of conflict, 
 fame and favor that 
 so essentially charac- 
 terized artists of the 
 Renaissance. 
 
 Correggio died in 
 1534, at the age of 
 forty, apparently in 
 full possession of his 
 powers. His was a 
 
 Above short life, yet three 
 
 be rid of, the Vene- 
 tian painter ex- 
 claimed, ‘“‘Have a 
 care what you do; if 
 I were not Titian I 
 should wish to be 
 Allegri!’ Also there 
 is his rebuke to the 
 local dignitaries for 
 their poor estimate of 
 
 are angels “‘so exquisitely painted,” says 
 Vasari, “‘that they seem rather to have 
 been showered down from heaven than 
 formed by the hand of the painter.” 
 While the lighting of this picture has been 
 extravagantly praised, its popularity is 
 directly due, not so much to the lights as 
 to the profoundly human interpretation of 
 this most tender of all Biblical subjects. 
 
 years longer than Ra- 
 phael’s; and Raphael 
 accomplished a far 
 greater amount of 
 work, not only as an 
 artist but as a cour- 
 tier, an architect, an 
 antiquary and a 
 teacher of the whole 
 artist-generation just 
 
 Correggio’s work in 
 
 the Parma Cathedral, when he is reported 
 to have declared, ‘‘Turn the cupola upside 
 down and fill it with gold, and even that 
 will not amount to its money’s worth.”’ 
 
 In short, Correggio was all. but unknown 
 to his contemporaries, and when his art 
 was finally discovered the memory of the 
 artist had almost faded from the minds of 
 men, and no reliable biography existed. 
 Even the date of his birth, thought to 
 have been 1494, is problematical, though 
 the place is known to have been the vil- 
 lage of Correggio, near Modena, from 
 which he takes his artist-name. At twenty- 
 eight Correggio left his native village and 
 took up a residence at Parma, where he 
 spent four years painting his frescos in 
 the cloisters of San Paolo, in the Church 
 of San Giovanni and in the dome of the 
 Cathedral. During a visit home in 1520 
 Correggio married a young woman who 
 
 114 
 
 below him. 
 
 Says John Addington Symonds: ‘“‘Gazing 
 at his frescos makes one think of Correggio 
 as a man listening to sweetest flute-playing, 
 and translating phrase after phrase as 
 they pass through his fancy into laughing 
 faces, breezy tresses and rolling mists. 
 Sometimes a grander cadence reaches his 
 ear; and then St. Peter with the keys, or 
 St. Augustine of the mighty brow, or the 
 inspired eyes of St. John, take form be- 
 neath his pencil. But the light airs re- 
 turn, rose and lily faces bloom again for 
 him among the clouds.... It is not in 
 dignity or sublimity that Correggio excels, 
 but in artless grace and tenderness.”’ 
 
 His grave in the Correggio cemetery was 
 marked by a wooden slab with merely 
 ‘““Antonius de Allegris, Pictor,’’ carved 
 upon it, and it is said to have been a 
 hundred years before even a few words cut 
 in stone replaced this first curt record. 
 
HoLy NIGHT 
 
 
 
 CORREGGIO (1494-1534) Courtesy Maison Ad. Braun & Cie. 
 Royal Gallery, Dresden 
 
RAPHAEL 
 
 7 
 
 NUCH of the glory that is 
 Raphael’s is due to the fact 
 that Pope Julius II, at the 
 
 A, age of seventy, decided to 
 such works 
 
 embellish the Vatican with 
 of art as it would ordinarily 
 take a long lifetime to realize. Raphael, 
 with Leonardo da Vinci and Michel An- 
 gelo, was delegated to do an immense 
 
 \ Fa 
 
 friend of Raphael, permitted him to see it, 
 to the end that he might study what 
 Michel Angelo had done. The sight thus 
 afforded him caused Raphael instantly to 
 paint anew his picture of the prophet 
 Isaiah ...and his manner was thereby 
 inexpressibly ameliorated and enlarged, 
 receiving thenceforth an obvious increase 
 of majesty.” 
 
 amount of it. 
 numerous important 
 works in Florence 
 that Raphael, in the 
 autumn of 1508, upon 
 the recommendation, 
 so Vasari says, of his 
 fellow-citizen of Ur- 
 bino, the architect 
 Bramante, received 
 from Pope Julius a 
 summons to Rome, 
 where already many 
 of the most famous 
 artists of Tuscany, 
 Umbria and northern 
 Italy were engaged in 
 the service of that 
 
 It was while engaged on 
 
 HE Sistine Madonna,’”’ so cailed be- 
 
 cause it was executed for the monks 
 of the monastery of San Sisto, is said to 
 be the last Madonna that Raphael painted. 
 It depicts the holy Mother and Child 
 descending out of highest heaven, wor- 
 shipped by St. Sixtus and St. Barbara. 
 The green altar hangings have been drawn 
 back suddenly, disclosing ‘‘a vision that 
 is for all time.’”’ In this picture Raphael 
 united “his deepest thought, his pro- 
 foundest insight, hiscompletest loveliness.” 
 Lubke voices the consensus of opinion in 
 saying that “it is the apex of all religious 
 art, an enlightenment of the world.” 
 
 While Raphael was unknown the Pope did 
 
 not trouble about the 
 subjects of the pic- 
 tures in the hall of the 
 Segnatura, nor how 
 soon they were done; 
 but when Julius found 
 what manner of man 
 he had to paint his 
 walls for him, he was 
 impatient for Ra- 
 phael to decorate an 
 adjoining room, 
 known as the Stanza 
 d’Eliodoro, with pic- 
 tures illustrating the 
 triumphs of _ the 
 Church. He was en- 
 gaged on the frescos 
 
 pontiff. Michel An- 
 gelo was about to be- 
 gin his task of decorating the ceiling of 
 the Sistine Chapel, the walls of which had 
 already been painted by Signorelli, Peru- 
 gino, Botticelli, Pinturicchio and others. 
 Bramante was directing the building of 
 St. Peter’s; and Raphael, being received 
 with marked kindness by His Holiness, at 
 once began decorating in fresco the cham- 
 ber of the Segnatura, the subject being the 
 celebrated ‘‘Disputa.’? Opposite it he 
 painted a second monumental fresco, ‘‘The 
 School of Athens,’”’ and these, with other 
 pictures in a most elaborate decorative 
 scheme, occupied Raphael for two and a 
 half years. 
 
 When, as Vasari says, Pope Julius handed 
 over the first room to Raphael he was 
 a comparatively unknown artist of prom- 
 ise; when he finished it, he was acknowl- 
 edged to have but one rival in Italy— 
 Michel Angelo. Meanwhile the latter had 
 made great strides with his work in the 
 Sistine Chapel which, incidentally, was 
 closed to the outside world while the mas- 
 ter was at work. While Michel Angelo 
 was absent from Rome, ‘‘Bramante, hav- 
 ing a key to the Chapel and being the 
 
 116 
 
 of ‘““The Expulsion of 
 Heliodorus from the Temple of Jerusalem”’ 
 and ‘‘The Miracle of Bolsena,’’ when his 
 work was interrupted by the death of 
 Pope Julius. His successor, Leo X, 
 however, proved no less stanch a patron, 
 and bade Raphael paint “‘The Retreat of 
 Attila,” introducing the figure of the new 
 pontiff as St. Leo arresting the barbarians 
 in their invasion, and on the remaining 
 wall of the room ‘‘The Deliverance of 
 St. Peter,’ in allusion of the escape of 
 Leo X from prison after the battle of 
 Ravenna. 
 With the exception of the Bolsena fresco, 
 Raphael employed in the execution of 
 these pictures a number of assistants, who 
 worked, it is true, from his designs and 
 under his direction, thus making possible 
 the vast amount of work which was ac- 
 complished during his short painting life of 
 eighteen years, twelve of which were spent 
 in Rome, but whose touch too often marred 
 the creations of their master. 
 In the year 1514, after the death of 
 Bramante, the Pope appointed Raphael 
 chief architect of St. Peter’s and the follow- 
 ing year named him inspector of antiquities. 
 

 
 SISTINE MADONNA 
 
 
 
 SS seenhs Se St ide VN 
 
 RAPHAEL (1483-1520) , Courtesy Maison Ad. Braun & Cie. 
 Royal Gallery, Dresden 
 
QUINTEN MATSYS 
 
 — 
 
 
 
 ¥ 
 
 DN 
 
 TARADITION relates that Quin- 
 
 ten Matsys, the ‘‘smith of 
 
 a Antwerp,’”’ became a painter 
 
 y only because his sweetheart, 
 
 the daughter of a painter, 
 
 would not marry a blacksmith. The 
 
 swinging brushwork and broad handling 
 
 which he substituted for the small de- 
 
 tailed touches of the earlier Flemish 
 
 painters bear a certain relation to the 
 vigor demanded by 
 the work of a smithy. 
 A realist to his finger 
 tips was this Flemish 
 master, and he was 
 also. an_ originator. 
 His handling of color 
 was new, for, as Sir 
 William Orpen writes, 
 “instead of placing 
 unbroken blues, reds, 
 yellows, etc., in im- 
 mediate juxtaposition, 
 he marshals his hues 
 into a uniform color- 
 scheme.’’  Disliking 
 smallness in every 
 manifestation of life, 
 he painted figures 
 that still live on can- 
 vas; and when the di- 
 mensions of his pic- 
 
 ture forbade the full-length he contented 
 
 himself with half figures or even heads 
 
 HE greatness of Quinten Matsys as a 
 
 painter is strongly manifested in his 
 “Adoration of the Magi.”’ 
 as this Flemish master was of anything 
 diminutive, he contents himself here with 
 representing heads and part figures, with 
 the single exception of the Child Jesus. 
 In that exceptional figure is shown a 
 striking characteristic of Matsys in his 
 understanding of the child. His predeces- 
 sors had painted infants as diminutive 
 adults, but he painted them as real chil- 
 dren. Notable of this picture also is that 
 with the exception of the Madonna there is 
 not a Dutch or Flemish face in the group. 
 Note the richness of detail in the finely 
 wrought gifts of the kings and the beauty 
 and richness of their raiment. 
 
 and busts rather than reduce his scale to’ 
 
 miniature proportions. 
 
 Antwerp and Louvain dispute one another 
 in claiming to be the birthplace of Matsys. 
 Its date was 1460 and, whether or not he 
 was born in the present Belgian metropolis, 
 it is certain that he died there in 1530. 
 Prior to Matsys the human figure had 
 only held a place equal in importance to 
 landscape and architecture, but he subor- 
 dinates these and gives his actors pre- 
 eminence, endowing them with individu- 
 ality, character and dramatic expression. 
 Invariably his figures are well modelled, al- 
 though they are sometimes lean and angu- 
 lar: and his composition is not always 
 harmonious. In his art are reflected all 
 the opposing tendencies that existed in a 
 metropolis such as Antwerp was in his 
 day and age: a medley of civilizations, 
 varied relations with distant countries, a 
 time pregnant with events—all contrib- 
 
 118 
 
 uting to make a most interesting and 
 kaleidoscopic spectacle. It is probable 
 that Matsys became a painter of Biblical 
 subjects as a result of association and en- 
 vironment. Louvain was not only a city 
 of learning in the fifteenth and sixteenth 
 centuries, but it was a city of churches, and 
 to its university came students from far 
 corners of the Catholic world. 
 
 Beyond the fact that Matsys torsook 
 hammer and anvil in 
 favor of brush and 
 palette at the age of 
 twenty, and was en- 
 rolled in the Guild of 
 Saint Luke at Ant- 
 werp eleven years lat- 
 er, nothing is known 
 as to who were his 
 masters. Art anti- 
 quarians have vainly 
 searched the records 
 for enlightenment on 
 this point. There is 
 a complete absence of 
 any work signed by 
 him during the period 
 of his youth, and 
 none can be in any 
 way identified with 
 him. Curiously 
 enough, it is a puzzle 
 to all the reviewers of his life that no works 
 of Matsys done during his final years of 
 residence in Antwerp are known to exist. 
 It is as though this great painter had spent 
 his last ten or fifteen years in idleness, or 
 was engaged in some other occupation. 
 His masterpiece is the great triptych in the 
 Antwerp Museum, representing the “‘Burial 
 of Christ,” flanked by the “‘Martyrdom of 
 the Two Johns.” The action of this 
 work is intense, and the color, though 
 gorgeous, is well harmonized. 
 
 Other works of Matsys are an ‘“‘Enthroned 
 Virgin,” in the Berlin Gallery; ‘“The Virgin 
 in Glory,’ at Petrograd; and two half- 
 length figures of ‘‘Christ”? and the “Vir- 
 gin,’”’ at Antwerp. 
 
 Matsys was also a genre and portrait 
 painter of strong individuality. He origi- 
 nated character studies of burghers of 
 Antwerp, representing money-changers or 
 misers, in couples or groups, seated at tables. 
 His few surviving portraits are vigorous, 
 and show a skilful rendition of character. 
 
 Contemptuous 
 
THE ADORATION OF THE MAGI 
 
 
 
 & 
 
 QUINTEN MATSYS (1460-1530) Metropolitan Museum of Art 
 Matt. IT, 11 ; New York City 
 
REMBRANDT 
 
 CFAHAT Rembrandt was _ head- 
 
 2) strong and more than a bit 
 
 
 
 contemptuous of not only his 
 critics but of his patrons is 
 made evident by his biog- 
 He was, as Dr. Muther has said, 
 
 raphers. 
 “the first artist who, in the modern sense, 
 did not execute commissions, but expressed 
 
 his own thoughts. The emotions which 
 moved his inmost being were the only 
 things which he ex- 
 pressed on canvas. 
 He does not seem to 
 think that anyone is 
 listening to him, but 
 only speaks with him- 
 self; he is anxious, not 
 to be understood by 
 others, but only to 
 express his moods and 
 feelings.” 
 
 Elsewhere in _ this 
 volume is noted the 
 fact that ‘‘The Night 
 Watch,” a_ univer- 
 saily admitted mas- 
 terpiece, greatly in- 
 jured Rembrandt in the estimation of his 
 contemporaries. This picture was done on 
 commission for one Captain Banning Cocq 
 and his fellows in a burgher military com- 
 pany of Amsterdam. Instead of painting 
 them clearly and recognizably as indi- 
 viduals, Rembrandt painted the scene. 
 Many members of the patrol are lost in 
 shadow, as the painter intended; but those 
 for whom he painted did not want a scene, 
 they wanted to see themselves—and Rem- 
 brandt in refusing them the satisfaction 
 dealt a heavy blow to human vanity. 
 Overwhelmed by his domestic sorrows— 
 he lost his old mother, his young wife and 
 two children within a period of two years— 
 and no longer enjoying any studio patron- 
 age to speak of, Rembrandt turned to 
 nature for consolation. More and more of 
 his time was spent in the country around 
 Amsterdam. Practically all his landscapes 
 were painted between 1640 and 1652. 
 Many of his most exquisite landscape 
 etchings were also executed during this 
 period. The most famous of them all, 
 “The Three Trees,’’ was done in 1643. 
 Of another, known as ‘“‘Six’s Bridge,”’ 
 dated 1645, tradition relates that it was 
 etched against time for a wager at the 
 
 THE Presentation in the Temple’ is dis- 
 
 tinguished for the same marvellous 
 lighting effect that was and is so discon- 
 certing to the sober and practical Dutch 
 mind that abhors shadows as nature does 
 a vacuum. In this painting, the holy light 
 is finely concentrated on the Babe, the 
 Virgin and one or two other figures in 
 the immediate foreground. But how im- 
 measurably is the drama heightened by 
 the mass of black-robed spectators seated 
 and standing in the enveloping shadows 
 of the dimly lighted temple! 
 
 120 
 
 country house of Rembrandt’s most loyal 
 friend, Jan Six, while a servant was in 
 quest of some mustard, needed for their 
 lunch, in a neighboring village. 
 
 Even while his: first wife was alive Rem- 
 brandt seems frequently to have been in 
 want of ready money, and when his 
 mother left him a half-share in a mill at 
 Leyden, in 1640, he at once sold it for 
 cash to his brother and a nephew. Then 
 in 1647, five years 
 after his wife Saskia’s 
 death, he became in- 
 volved in litigation 
 with her family, who 
 wished to prevent the 
 widower painter from 
 being trustee of her 
 estate. In so far as 
 she had made a will 
 in favor of their son, 
 Titus, with an allow- 
 ance for her sister, 
 but with the stipula- 
 tion that Rembrandt 
 should not be legally 
 bound to carry out its 
 provisions, ‘“‘because she had confidence 
 that he would behave in the matter in 
 strict obedience to his conscience,”’ it is 
 difficult to understand exactly how this 
 litigation came to hasten his ruin. The 
 fact remains, however, that between 1654 
 and 1658 the painter was stripped of all 
 the property he had accumulated up to the 
 time of his bereavement, and that ‘‘for 
 the rest of his life he was a sort of nomad, 
 shifting his lodgings with uncomfortable 
 frequency.” 
 
 His second marriage to a domestic in his 
 small household is said to have further 
 offended aristocratic patrons; but she 
 seems to have been a capable and devoted 
 wife until her death, which is supposed to 
 have occurred about 1669. 
 
 His biographers are generally agreed that 
 money, or the want of it, was not a thing 
 to profoundly trouble or more than incon- 
 venience a philosophic dreamer like Rem- 
 brandt. If he had money, he spent it 
 royally; otherwise he went without. The 
 death of this greatest man that Holland 
 ever gave to the world was virtually un- 
 noticed, and only the bare fact of his 
 burial in the Werter-Kerk of Amsterdam is 
 attested by an official two-line entry. 
 
THE PRESENTATION IN THE TEMPLE 
 
 
 
 REMBRANDT VAN RIJN (1606-1669) Courtesy Maison Ad. Braun & Cie. 
 Luke II, 25 Mauritshuis, The Hague 
 
LEONARDO DA VINCI 
 
 7, FAICCASIONALLY,”’ says the 
 Italian historian Vasari, 
 “beauty, grace and ability are 
 
 DN Ye so represented in a single indi- 
 vidual, that whatever he does, 
 
 every action is so divine that he outdis- 
 tances all other men, and clearly displays 
 how his genius is more than the acquire- 
 ment of human art. Men saw this in 
 
 enumerated his talents and capabilities. 
 After dwelling on his capacity as a military 
 engineer and his ability to construct can- 
 nons and _ scaling-ladders, mortars and 
 engines of fair and useful design, he con- 
 cludes: ‘‘In time of peace, I believe I can 
 equal any one in architecture, in con- 
 structing public and private buildings, and 
 
 Leonardo da Vinci, whose personal beauty 
 
 and grace cannot be 
 exaggerated, whose 
 abilities were so ex- 
 traordinary that he 
 could readily solve 
 every difficulty that 
 presented itself.”’ 
 
 Leonardo was born in 
 1452, at Vinci, a forti- 
 fied town located be- 
 tween Florence and 
 Pisa, Italy. He was 
 the natural son of 
 Ser Piero Antonio da 
 Vinci, a notary who 
 soon established him- 
 self in Florence and 
 enjoyed a_ lucrative 
 practice. There Leo- 
 nardo lived until he 
 was twenty-four years 
 
 I NTO the figures of St. Anne and the 
 
 Virgin in this picture Leonardo da 
 Vinci has put all his genius, and in them 
 the interest of the picture centers. One 
 is the mother of the other; but Leonardo 
 chose to represent them both as young 
 with the same youth, and beautiful with 
 the same haunting beauty. Their harmony 
 is exquisite. They are enchantresses, 
 dowered with a strange, ghostly loveliness 
 that seems made all of light and shade— 
 pure spirit, with no admixture of human 
 clay. The less successful figure of the 
 Christ Child may possibly have been 
 painted by a pupil or by an imitator; it is 
 unfinished, but there are weaknesses of 
 execution in the small figure that cannot 
 be attributed to Leonardo. 
 
 conducting water 
 I can execute sculpture, 
 
 in from one place 
 to another. 
 whether in marble, 
 bronze or terra cotta; 
 and in painting I can 
 do as much as any 
 other, be he who he 
 may. Further, I 
 could engage to exe- 
 cute the bronze horse 
 in eternal memory of 
 your father and the 
 illustrious house of 
 Sforza.”’ 
 
 Recognizing the abil- 
 ity of the young 
 Florentine, Lodovico 
 at once commissioned 
 Leonardo to execute 
 the equestrian statue. 
 Endless preparations 
 were made for it, and 
 Leonardo is said to 
 
 of age, having at the 
 
 age of fifteen entered the studio of Andrea 
 Verocchio. This representative of the 
 scientific school of Florentine artists was 
 well fitted to develop his peculiar genius. 
 It was while there that Leonardo was di- 
 rected to paint one of the angels in a pic- 
 ture of ‘St. John Baptizing Christ.” His 
 angel so far surpassed the other figures in 
 beauty that his master, though filled with 
 admiration of his pupil, was so chagrined 
 with himself that he is said to have quit 
 painting and to have devoted the rest of 
 his life to sculpture. 
 
 Dr. Richter tells us that when Leonardo 
 was thirty years old he was sent to Milan 
 by Lorenzo de’ Medici, ‘‘to bear a silver 
 lute to his friend Lodovico Sforza.’ This 
 Lodovico Sforza had decided to raise a 
 colossal statue in memory of his father, 
 the famous Duke Francesco, and it is 
 probable that Lorenzo recommended Leo- 
 nardo to do the work. In any event 
 Leonardo wrote Duke Lodovico a letter in 
 which he offered his services and proudly 
 
 122 
 
 have spent. several 
 years studying the structure and anatomy 
 of the horse. 
 Five years after it was begun the model 
 was sufficiently advanced to be unveiled. 
 It was hailed as one of the wonders of the 
 age, was twenty-six feet high, and when 
 cast in bronze was expected to weigh 
 200,000 pounds. Unfortunately, Lodovico 
 suffered reverses and the statue was never 
 cast. 
 Returning from Milan to Florence Leo- 
 nardo was commissioned to paint an altar- 
 piece for the Church of the Annunziata. 
 “For a long time,’”’ says Vasari, “he ap- 
 peared to do nothing at all, but at length 
 produced a cartoon with the Madonna, 
 St. Anne and the Christ, a work which not 
 only filled all the artists with admiration, 
 but brought a continuous procession of 
 people to the hall in the convent where it 
 was exhibited.” It was this composi- 
 tion that Leonardo afterwards repeated in 
 oils for Francis I of France, and which is 
 now in the Louvre. 
 
ST. ANNE, THE VIRGIN, AND CHRIST CHILD 
 
 
 
 LEONARDO DA VINCI (1452-1519) Courtesy Maison Ad. Braun & Cie. 
 ' j Louvre, Paris 
 
MURILLO 
 
 WELLING on the statement 
 that ‘‘to admire one must un- 
 derstand, and what the great 
 majority of people fully under- 
 stand is likely to be mediocre,”’ 
 critics of the work of the Spanish master, 
 Bartolomé Estéban Murillo, are disposed 
 to minimize his genius in direct proportion 
 to his popularity. At the same time, as 
 Lucien Solvay admits, “‘his work has in it 
 
 XJ] 
 
 
 
 <—_ 
 
 Velasquez was to the Spanish nobility.’ 
 Now and then, as in his great canvas, 
 “St. Elizabeth of Hungary Healing the 
 Sick,’’ Murillo came down out of the 
 clouds. In it, writes Theophile Gautier, 
 “the artist takes us into the most thorough- 
 going reality. Instead of angels we have 
 lepers; but Christian art, like Christian 
 charity, feels no disgust at the spectacle. 
 Everything is elevated and ennobled, and 
 
 a true fundamental 
 value; for widespread 
 popular admiration, 
 no matter how super- 
 ficial, has always 
 some just basis.’’ The 
 power of Murillo de- 
 rives from the facts 
 that he was one of 
 the most fertile and 
 industrious painters 
 of his time, and that 
 he had an engaging 
 personality which he 
 was able to get into 
 his canvases. 
 
 Doubtless it would 
 have been better for 
 his fame if he had 
 
 y | N painting this picture of “‘St. John and 
 
 the Lamb,” Murillo was inspired by 
 the words of John the Baptist, quoted by 
 the Apostle John: “Behold the Lamb of 
 God, which taketh away the sin of the 
 world.”’ It is done in his softest and 
 most suave style, in which outlines are 
 lost in the delicate confusion of graduated 
 colors. The mysterious vaporous effect 
 thus obtained has come to be called 
 vaporoso. This picture reflects the senti- 
 mentality of Murillo that so strongly ap- 
 pealed to the eighteenth and nineteenth 
 centuries as to make him considered for 
 nearly two hundred years the foremost of 
 all the great Spanish painters. 
 
 from this revolting 
 theme has been cre- 
 ated a masterpiece.”’ 
 In November, 1874, 
 it was discovered that 
 the largest painting 
 Murilloeverexecuted, 
 “The Vision of St. 
 Anthony,” in the Ca- 
 thedral of Seville, had 
 been mutilated by 
 cutting out the figure 
 of St. Anthony. The 
 Spanish Government 
 sent photographs of 
 the mutilation to its 
 foreign envoys and 
 consuls, with instruc- 
 tions to aid in the 
 
 painted fewer Con- 
 ceptions and Holy Families, with their 
 swarms of cherubic angels and their infant 
 Christs, and taken more pains with those 
 he did paint. He turned out cherubs with 
 the regularity of a factory—all equally 
 fetching, with great black eyes and blond 
 hair and rosy mouths, as if from the same 
 mould. 
 
 In singular contrast to these legions of 
 angels and processions of Madonnas are 
 the begging children of the Seville streets 
 who are prominent in so many of his most 
 famous pictures. They will plead loudly 
 for his glory before the tribunal of pos- 
 terity. In painting them, Murillo must 
 have felt his native Spanish instincts re- 
 vived and quickened. ‘‘It seems as though 
 it were a healthy relief to him thus to 
 give play to the natural blood in his veins, 
 after having so constantly devoted himself 
 to painting supernatural dreams; and if he 
 had not bent his imagination so exclusively 
 to heavenly visions, and had consecrated 
 himself to the study of his kind, as did 
 Velasquez, he would conceivably have been 
 to the plain folk of Spain the painter that 
 
 124 
 
 search for the crimi- 
 nal. Presently a Spaniard turned up in 
 New York with an authentic Murillo, de- 
 scribed as a family heirloom, which he 
 offered to a well-known art dealer. It 
 proved to be the stolen fragment, tacked 
 to a new American stretcher, and much 
 damaged by having been kept rolled too 
 tightly. The dealer bought the picture for 
 $250 and notified the Spanish consul, who 
 had the seller arrested. Later the frag- 
 ment was repaired, and the picture re- 
 stored to its place in the Cathedral of 
 Seville, with public festivities. In his an- 
 nals of the artists of Spain, William Stir- 
 ling ranks Murillo second only to the 
 greatest masters of Italy, as a religious 
 painter. ‘In ideal grace of thought and 
 in force and perfection of style he yields, 
 as all later artists must yield, to that 
 constellation of genius of which Raphael 
 was the principal star. But his pencil was 
 endowed with a power of touching re- 
 ligious sympathies and awakening tender 
 emotions which belonged to none of the 
 Italian painters of the seventeenth cen- 
 tury.” 
 
THE INFANT SL. JOHN 
 
 
 
 ie. 
 London 
 
 Braun & Ci 
 
 1 Gallery, 
 
 Courtesy Maison Ad 
 
 MURILLO (1617-1682) 
 
 Nationa 
 
FRA ANGELICO 
 
 ICHEL ANGELO, that lover 
 of muscular construction and 
 heroic nudity, said of Fra 
 Angelico’s‘‘Flight into Egypt’”’ 
 and its companion panels, 
 
 which individually measure hardly more 
 than a foot square, but each of which might 
 be enlarged to colossal size and worthily 
 decorate a church wall, ‘‘Surely the good 
 monk visited Paradise and was allowed to 
 choose his models 
 
 7 
 p 
 
 —=——P © —— 
 
 was an exception that proved the rule. 
 As the study of the nude body was for- 
 bidden to a monk, he concentrated all his 
 feeling for physical beauty, all his capacity 
 for dramatic expression, on the faces of 
 his saints and angels, and became a unique 
 exponent of religious sentiment. Though 
 his chief glory is a fervor of conviction 
 which passes above and beyond technique, 
 yet, as E. H. Blashfield says, in technique 
 also he sets a worthy 
 example; and he owes 
 
 there.’ Ranking 
 among the great lead- 
 ers of the Florentine 
 Renaissance, in Fra 
 Angelico the artist 
 and the saint worked 
 in such perfect har- 
 mony that we are 
 rarely conscious of 
 any effort on the part 
 of the latter to domi- 
 nate the former. And 
 it is in this fact that 
 one of the greatest 
 secrets of his success 
 lies. He painted the 
 kind of subjects that 
 he liked best to paint, 
 and, as John Adding- 
 ton Symonds _ ob- 
 
 IME has not tarnished the ideal fresh- 
 
 ness of Fra Angelico’s “Flight into 
 Egypt.” It is a diminutive panel—one of 
 a series of thirty-five scenes from the life 
 of Christ—painted to decorate the doors 
 of the presses which held the silver-plate 
 of the Church of the Annunziata, Florence. 
 This 15-inch-square panel is distinguished 
 from its companions in the series by rea- 
 son of the fact that the good Fra is known 
 to have painted it himself, while many of 
 the other panels were done by his pupils. 
 The story it tells of the earliest pilgrimage 
 in the life of Christ is simple and direct. 
 The faces of the Virgin and Joseph in this 
 picture are painted with a beauty and se- 
 renity to which even Fra Angelico does not 
 attain in any other work. 
 
 to his composition, as 
 well as to his convic- 
 tion, the fact that he 
 charms at once the 
 ignorant, the devotee, 
 the dilettante and the 
 trained artist. 
 
 A secret of his artistic 
 power is that, as the 
 Italian critic, I. B. 
 Supino, states, ‘‘He 
 put into his work the 
 flame of an _ over- 
 powering passion; un- 
 der his touch features 
 were beautiful and 
 figures animated with 
 a new mystic grace. 
 His forms are often, 
 it is true, conven- 
 
 serves, ‘‘So essential a 
 
 part of him were his artistic qualities that 
 the fervor of his religious emotion scarcely 
 ever marred the decorative character of 
 his work.”’ 
 
 Vasari, whose description of Fra Angelico 
 has impressed itself upon a dozen genera- 
 tions of readers, calls him a primary artist 
 who happened to be a saint. 
 
 To say, as some do, that Fra Angelico was 
 more interested in the matter of his theme 
 than in its representation is only to say 
 what is true of every great Florentine 
 painter of the Renaissance. In Venice 
 there was a love of painting for its own 
 sake. The great Florentines, on the other 
 hand, were very much more than painters. 
 They were sculptors, poets, men of science, 
 theologians, archaeologists and humanists; 
 and at times their desire to record mere 
 facts of the natural world, or to teach some 
 theological or philosophical dogma, pre- 
 dominated over all purely artistic impulses. 
 Fra Angelico, in whom we have observed 
 the artist and saint in perfect accord, 
 
 tional, and there is a certain sameness in 
 his heads, with their large oval counte- 
 nances; his small eyes, outlined around the 
 upper arch of the eyebrow, with black 
 spots for pupils, sometimes lack expression; 
 his mouths are always drawn small, with 
 a thickening of the lips in the center, and 
 the corners strongly accentuated; the color 
 of his faces is either too pink or too yellow; 
 the folds of his robes (especially of the lower 
 limbs) fall straight and, in the representa- 
 tions of the seated Virgin, expand on the 
 ground as if to form the foot of a chalice. 
 But in his frescos these faults of conven- 
 tional manner almost entirely disappear, 
 giving place to freer drawing, more lifelike 
 expression and acharacterof greater power.” 
 Though Fra Angelico completed the cycle 
 of purely supernatural art, says Cosmo 
 
 ~ Monkhouse, he also led the way to that 
 
 126 
 
 wonderful fusion of the supernatural and 
 natural in which Italian art culminated a 
 century later. _He was the last disciple of 
 Giotto, the first harbinger of Raphael. 
 
THE FLIGHT INTO EGYPT 
 
 
 
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 FRA ANGELICO (1387-1455) Courtesy Maison Ad. Braun & Cie. 
 Matt. I. 13 Academy, Florence 
 
RUBENS 
 
 AINTER, diplomatist, scholar 
 and confidant of rulers and 
 statesmen, Peter Paul Ru- 
 bens was not only the most 
 prolific painter but one of the 
 most picturesque figures in European his- 
 tory. He was born in 1577, one year after 
 the death of Titian. Political complica- 
 tions had driven his father from Antwerp, 
 
 \y 
 
 
 
 
 from his designs. The truth is he estab- 
 lished a picture-factory at Antwerp, and 
 not only engaged assistants to help him on 
 gigantic decorations for churches and 
 palaces, but also farmed out commissions 
 for easel-pictures, landscapes and por- 
 traits. Yet, as Sir William Orpen ob- 
 serves, ‘‘all is so controlled by the master- 
 hand that to any but an expert the whole 
 
 so the boy spent his early childhood in 
 
 exile. His penchant 
 for painting mani- 
 fested itself while he 
 was yet a lad and he 
 was apprenticed to 
 Adam van Noort, a 
 celebrated Flemish 
 artist, and “‘such was 
 his precocity that it 
 was easy to perceive 
 that the intention of 
 nature was for him 
 to become a great 
 painter.”’ 
 
 Fired with enthusi- 
 asm for Italian art, 
 Rubens went to Ven- 
 ice shortly after com- 
 ing of age and some 
 
 THE Return from Egypt’ is considered 
 
 among the foremost masterpieces deal- 
 ing with Biblical subjects, painted by 
 Peter Paul Rubens. He drew strongly on 
 his imagination in painting this picture, 
 which has been called “‘a framed poem.” 
 With what trust the Child, holding Mary’s 
 hand, half leads her and is half guided by 
 Joseph, while the Father of Heaven looks 
 down from a cloud! Note the resemblance 
 of mother and child. The model for both 
 was his second -wife Helena Fourment. 
 She was sixteen and he fifty-three when 
 they were married and her face appears 
 in almost every canvas painted after that 
 time, often several times in one picture. 
 
 appears to be the work of one man.” 
 
 A 
 story is told that the 
 Dean of Malines Ca- 
 thedral was furious 
 when, having ordered 
 a ‘Last Supper” from 
 Rubens, a young 
 apprentice arrived 
 to begin the work. 
 Later on “the great 
 man appeared with 
 his fine presence and 
 the urbane manner 
 that was a bulwark 
 against offence or mis- 
 appreciation. As Ru- 
 bens corrected the 
 work, enlivened the 
 color or the action of 
 the figures, and swept 
 
 copies he made of 
 paintings by Titian 
 and Veronese attract- 
 ed the attention of the Duke of Mantua, 
 into whose service he entered and by 
 whom, in 1603, he was sent on a mission 
 with presents of horses and pictures to 
 Philip III of Spain. The death of his 
 mother recalled him to Antwerp where we 
 soon hear of him as Court Painter to the 
 Stadtholders of Flanders. 
 
 Evidently he prospered, for he married in 
 1609 and the following year ‘‘designed an 
 imposing residence in the Italian style, and 
 had it built on what is now the Rue de 
 Rubens.”” There he founded the School 
 of Antwerp, and the ensuing ten or twelve 
 years were the most tranquil and probably 
 the happiest in the life of Rubens. During 
 this period he executed the works on which 
 his fame most firmly rests, notably his 
 supreme masterpiece, ““The Descent from 
 the Cross,’’ now in the Antwerp Cathedral. 
 Rubens had such an extraordinary number 
 of collaborators that it often is difficult to 
 distinguish works of his own from those 
 executed by artists he employed to work 
 
 You will find the same face on page 187 
 in “The Descent from the Cross.” 
 
 128 
 
 the whole composi- 
 tion towards a unity 
 of effect, the church- 
 man acknowledged the wisdom of the 
 master, and admitted that the money of 
 the chapter had been safely invested.” 
 The fame of Rubens spread over Europe, 
 and in 1622 he was summoned to Paris 
 by the Queen-Mother, Marie de’ Medici, 
 to decorate her favorite Luxembourg Pal- 
 ace. The great series of wall-paintings 
 resulting from this commission are now a 
 glory of the Louvre. 
 
 An important event in art history was the 
 meeting in Spain between Rubens, who 
 was on a special embassage to the Spanish 
 Court, and Velasquez. Although Rubens— 
 was fifty-two and Velasquez only thirty, 
 the two became great friends and the 
 Spanish painter was considerably influ- 
 enced by the Flemish master. 
 
 Politically the great result of his stay in 
 Spain was that Philip IV made Rubens 
 his ambassador to Charles I of England, 
 where he “‘not only arranged terms of peace 
 between England and Spain, but gave a 
 new direction to English painting.”’ 
 
THE RETURN FROM EGYPT 
 
 
 
 PETER PAUL RUBENS (1577-1640) Metropolitan Museum of Art 
 Matt. III, 19 New York City 
 
JOHN EVERETT MILLAIS 
 
 OT long before his election to 
 4 the presidency of the Royal 
 H Academy, Sir John Everett 
 Millais was walking with a 
 friend in Kensington Gardens, 
 
 
 
 SS 
 
 He suddenly stood still by the 
 
 London. 
 small Round Pond and said: “How ex- 
 traordinary it is to think that I once fished 
 for sticklebacks in this very pond, and 
 now here I am a great man, a baronet, 
 
 did. No less a champion than John Rus- 
 kin, whose divorced wife eventually be- 
 came Lady Millais, picked up the gage. 
 He was only the first in a long line of cele- 
 brated critics and connoisseurs to lavish 
 praise upon this canvas. Soon public 
 appreciation was awakened; and today art 
 authorities are almost unanimous in hold- 
 ing that this is one of Millais’ masterpieces 
 and one of the world’s great pictures. 
 
 with a fine house, 
 plenty of money, and 
 everything my heart 
 could desire.’”” And 
 he walked on gaily. 
 This speech describes 
 Millais—his history, 
 his character, even 
 his art, for, as Sizer- 
 anne observes, in his 
 studies of English 
 contemporary art, 
 they all belong to a 
 happy man. At the 
 same time, Miuillais, 
 although never really 
 acquainted with ad- 
 versity, had a severe 
 struggle to obtain rec- 
 ognition. The real 
 title of the picture 
 opposite, for instance, 
 
 C FRIST in the House of His Parents’’ 
 
 is the second picture painted and 
 exhibited by Millais after the formation 
 of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. It 
 provoked an outcry even louder than had 
 attended the exhibition of his ‘Lorenzo 
 and Isabella’ the year before. Most 
 offence was taken at the figure of Mary 
 with a yellow kerchief over her head and 
 dressed like the wife of a small London 
 merchant. The Child Jesus is standing 
 in front of the bench holding his injured 
 hand, while the little St. John is fetching 
 a vessel of water. Mary is kneeling 
 beside the Christ Child, trying to console 
 Him, and Joseph is leaning over to see 
 the wounded hand. At the back is the 
 aged St. Anne trying to draw from the 
 board the nail that has caused the injury. 
 
 Millais was a preco- 
 cious youth. He was 
 English born, but of 
 French descent, the 
 date of his birth being 
 1829 and the place 
 Southampton. It is 
 said that he could 
 trace his ancestry to 
 the family tree of 
 Jean Francois Millet, 
 the famous French 
 peasant painter. He 
 was the youngest pu- 
 pil ever entered at 
 the Royal Academy, 
 being only’ eleven 
 years old at the time. 
 Sketches are in ex- 
 istence, made by him 
 at the age of nine, 
 that are astonishing 
 
 is ‘Christ: “mn° ithe 
 House of His Par- 
 ents,”’ but when it was first hung in the 
 Royal Academy, in 1850, the artist being 
 only twenty-one years old, it was con- 
 temptuously called ‘‘The Carpenter’sShop.’’ 
 Among its many denouncers was the novel- 
 ist Charles Dickens, then at the pinnacle 
 of his fame. Imbued with the concepts 
 of art then current, Dickens penned a 
 violent attack upon the picture: ‘‘In the 
 foreground of the carpenter’s shop is a 
 hideous, wry-necked, blubbering, red-haired 
 boy in a nightgown, who appears to have 
 received a poke in the hand from the stick 
 of another boy with whom he had been 
 playing in an adjacent gutter, and to be 
 holding it up for the contemplation of a 
 kneeling woman so horrible in her ugliness 
 that . . . she would stand out from the rest 
 of the company as a monster in the vilest 
 cabaret in France, or the lowest gin-shop 
 in England.”’ 
 
 Fortunately, not everyone felt as Dickens 
 
 130 
 
 things for a child of 
 that age to have done. 
 At seventeen he exhibited his first picture, 
 which was praised by some of the critics 
 as the best thing in the exhibition. At 
 nineteen he made the acquaintance of two 
 other remarkable young men—Dante Ga- 
 briel Rossetti and Holman Hunt—and with 
 them formed the Pre-Raphaelite Brother- 
 hood which, for all of many admirable 
 qualities, produced some decidedly queer, 
 not to say grotesque work. Of the trio, 
 Millais was the only thoroughly endowed 
 artist. Rossetti was a poet who painted, 
 and Hunt was a doctrinaire who expressed 
 his convictions in paint. 
 
 Millais is one of the very few artists of 
 note who never really had to struggle for 
 a living: but the end of his life was pa- 
 thetic. He had been knighted in 1885, and 
 eleven years later was elected to the 
 presidency of the Royal Academy. He 
 died suddenly, in 1896, having been in 
 office less than six months. 
 
ry 
 
 SIR 
 
 JOHN 
 
 MILLAIS 
 
 
 
 Beers Collection 
 
BERNARDINO LUINI 
 
 — 
 
 y, 
 
 az 
 
 HE Raphael of Lombardy,”’ as 
 Bernardino Luini has _ been 
 
 Nig called, was one of the most 
 y, charming as well as most pro- 
 
 lific artists of the great Re- 
 naissance period. “If he did not equal 
 Leonardo da Vinci in consummate genius,”’ 
 writes Canon Farrar, ‘“‘he surpassed him 
 not only in the multitude of his pictures, 
 but also in the winning loveliness, in the 
 
 
 
 DN 
 
 folding where Luini was working, and 
 missing his footing, or as some say, im- 
 pelled by the artist, impatient perhaps of 
 criticism, fell over backward and was 
 killed. Luini fled the city and found refuge 
 with the head of the powerful Pelucca 
 family at Monza, where he spent two years 
 decorating the Casa Pelucca and, inci- 
 dentally, winning the heart of Laura, the 
 beautiful daughter of the house, over many 
 
 pure and holy spirit 
 ofvpeace, that 
 breathes through 
 them all.”’ Yet, of 
 the life of no other 
 equally eminent 
 painter is so little 
 known. This is due 
 largely to the silence 
 of Vasari regarding 
 Luini, even whose 
 mame, curiously 
 enough, he misspells 
 in his slight reference 
 to one of the most 
 accomplished painters 
 of all time. 
 
 Of his works a similar 
 
 UINT’S “Christ Disputing with the 
 
 Doctors’? is regarded by no less a 
 churchman and connoisseur than Canon 
 Farrar as “one of the loveliest frescos in 
 existence.” The figure of Christ is full of 
 grace and gentle authority. He is stand- 
 ing in animated discourse in a marble 
 recess, and though of pensive mien, His 
 face and attitude radiate assurance. The 
 colors, as in all of Luint’s pictures, are 
 tender and harmoniously blended. The 
 artist has pictured himself at the right as 
 one of the Rabbis, a venerable figure with 
 white hair and beard, and having an ex- 
 pression of mild and self-respecting dignity. 
 
 more eligible suitors. 
 Two of these fought 
 a duel, in which one 
 participant, who was 
 seconded by Luini, 
 was slain and Luini 
 barely escaped with 
 his life. | However, 
 “no persuasion could 
 induce Laura Pelucca 
 to look with favor 
 upon the slayer; and 
 as she insisted upon 
 her preference for the 
 painter, her parents 
 surreptitiously placed 
 her in a convent at 
 Lugano, where, many 
 
 ignorance has until 
 
 recently prevailed, owing perhaps to the 
 fact that his greatest achievement—his 
 frescos—are located in small Italian towns 
 far from the highways of travel; and also 
 because a great many of his easel-pictures, 
 scattered throughout the principal galleries 
 of Europe, have been wrongly attributed to 
 Leonardo da Vinci, by whom Luini was 
 strongly influenced at one period of his 
 career. Of late, however, the researches 
 of Morelli, Crowe and Cavalcaselle, Brun 
 and others, in addition to Ruskin, have re- 
 accorded Luini the position in the history 
 of art that the grace and power of his work 
 entitled him to hold. 
 
 According to a contemporary, Father 
 Sebastian Resta, who states that he knew 
 him personally, Luini was a pupil of 
 Stefano Scotto, a Milanese painter, and 
 never, as has been supposed, studied under 
 Leonardo. Scenes of violence seem to 
 have marked his career, beginning with 
 his important frescos done for the Church 
 of San Giorgio al Palazzo in Milan. While 
 putting the final touches to them, he was 
 visited by the parish priest, who, in order 
 to get a closer view, mounted the scaf- 
 
 132 
 
 years later, she was 
 found by Luini while he was working on 
 his famous ‘Crucifixion’ in the church of 
 that town.” In the Brera Gallery at 
 Milan is a fine “Burial of St. Catherine,”’ 
 in which, according to tradition, Luini gave 
 to the face of the saint the features of Laura 
 Pelucca. 
 The story goes that Luini had fled from 
 Milan because he had killed a man in 
 self-defence; and, seeking refuge in the 
 pilgrimage church at Saronno, was com- 
 pelled by the monks to paint a series of 
 frescos including his ‘“‘Christ Disputing with 
 the Doctors,’’ in return for their protection. 
 He was paid about thirty cents a day, 
 besides a daily portion of food and wine; and 
 so well satisfied was he with this remunera- 
 tion that he gratuitously painted for them 
 “The Nativity” on the cloister wall. ‘‘’Tis 
 almost a pity,’’ said the good monks, “‘that 
 Bernardino did not murder more men, 
 that we might have received from him 
 much more gifts.”’ 
 At the top of his fame, in the full force of his 
 artistic power, Luini suddenly disappeared. 
 The date of his death and his burial place 
 are alike unknown. 
 
‘CHRIST DISPUTING WITH THE DOCTORS 
 
 on 
 
 
 
 ee 
 
 BERNARDINO LUINI (14—, 15—) Santuario della Vergine, Saranno 
 Luke II, 43 
 
ANDREA DEL SARTO 
 
 
 
 
 
 AURIOUSLY, it was the mis- 
 Q4 fortune of Andrea del Sarto, or 
 Andrea d’Agnolo, as he gener- 
 ally signs himself, to be called 
 the ‘‘faultless painter,’’ which 
 is praise that implies a want of ardor, and 
 touches the core of his shortcomings. 
 Over and over he is described as the painter 
 who stops just short of perfect fulfilment, 
 but he ranks high among his contempo- 
 raries, Leonardo da 
 
 Vinci, Michel Angelo S 
 and Raphael. 
 
 Andrea was the son 
 of a tailor named 
 
 ELDOM if ever again did Andrea del 
 Sarto rise to the poetic heights he 
 attained in his “St. John the Baptist.” 
 St. John’s features distinctly resemble 
 
 ‘‘being more anxious to profit by his gains 
 than to see him again.’”’ Her entreaties 
 prevailed, and he obtained royal leave to 
 return to Florence and take his wife to 
 Paris. Instead of doing the latter he re- 
 mained in Florence and “spent the money 
 which Francis I had given him to pur- 
 chase works of art for his palace at Fon- 
 tainebleau, in buying land and building a 
 house near the Annunziata.”’ 
 
 In spite of his indus- 
 try and of his great 
 reputation, Andrea 
 del Sarto never at- 
 tained a position com- 
 
 Agnolo (whence his 
 appellation del Sarto, 
 for Andrea del Sarto 
 merely means “the 
 tailor’s Andrew’’) and 
 when barely of age 
 painted seven frescos 
 from the life of St. 
 Philip Benizzi in the 
 Servite Church of the 
 Annunziata in Flor- 
 ence for the sum of 
 ten florins apiece. 
 
 those of the painter's wife, Lucrezia, who 
 so often sat as his model. Indeed, as 
 Vasari says, “If Andrea took a model 
 from any other face there was always a 
 resemblance to hers in the painting, not 
 only because he had this woman con- 
 stantly before him and depicted her so 
 frequently, but, what is more, because he 
 had her lineaments engraven on his heart.” 
 In widowhood, her pride was to have 
 been the wife of “‘the faultless painter.” 
 
 mensurate to his rare 
 talents. During the 
 siege of Florence he 
 suffered many priva- 
 tions, and welcomed 
 a commission to paint 
 on the walls of the 
 Podesta palace the 
 effigies of some rebels 
 who had been exe- 
 cuted as traitors. Pro- 
 fessing to be ashamed 
 of the task, he an- 
 
 They are marvellous productions for so 
 young an artist and remain his most 
 charming and attractive fresco work. Di- 
 rectly after doing these masterpieces he 
 executed a series of chiaroscuro subjects 
 from the life of John the Baptist in the 
 cloisters of the Scalzo or Barefooted 
 Friars, which reveal his remarkable genius 
 at its peak. 
 
 Of his wife, who posed for so many of his 
 pictures and who was the widow of a 
 Florentine hatter, Vasari records that 
 “ther violent and overbearing temper drove 
 away his favorite pupil, and several of his 
 best apprentices, while her extravagance 
 involved him in constant difficulties. He 
 soon found that he had not only his wife 
 but her father and sisters to keep, com- 
 pelling him to toil incessantly and to 
 neglect his own parents,’ who, if we are 
 to believe Vasari, ‘‘died in miserable 
 poverty.” 
 
 At thirty-two Andrea found a generous 
 patron in King Francis I of France, but 
 while he was enjoying the change from the 
 narrowness and poverty of his Florentine 
 life to the splendor of the French court 
 his wife became impatient for his return— 
 
 134 
 
 nounced that one of his apprentices would 
 do it, but really did it himself, going to 
 and fro by night, and hiding behind a 
 screen when at work. 
 
 His life appears to have been a triple 
 tragedy from the handicap of his marriage, 
 from his own weakness of character and 
 from the fact, as the Messrs. Blashfield 
 point out, that “he came just too soon or 
 too late, at a time when the greatest re- 
 wards fell naturally to three men who 
 possessed the one high spiritual quality 
 denied to Andrea—the inspiration of con- 
 viction.’”’ Nevertheless, no student of his 
 work at its best can escape the potency 
 of his spell. 
 
 He fell a victim to the plague which fol- 
 lowed the sacking of Florence by the 
 Spaniards in 1531, and passed away at 
 forty-five, deserted even by his wife who 
 fled in terror from the house and left him 
 to die alone. She survived him forty years. 
 One day in 1570, it is said, an aged woman 
 stopped in the court of the Annunziata to 
 watch an artist copying Andrea del Sarto’s 
 “Birth of the Virgin.’”? She told him that 
 it was her portrait, and that she was the 
 widow of the artist who painted the fresco. 
 
ST. JOHN THE BAPTIST 
 
 
 
 Courtesy Maison Ad. Braun & Cie. 
 
 ANDREA DEL SARTO (1486-1531) 
 Pitti Gallery, Florence 
 
GIOVANNI BELLINI 
 
 ONG-LIVED as have been 
 many master painters, Gio- 
 vanni Bellini, whom Morelli 
 reckons the greatest painter of 
 Northern Italy in the fifteenth 
 and whom the Blashfields and 
 
 
 
 century, 
 A. A. Hopkins call a ‘“‘master of masters,”’ 
 has the distinction of having been a better 
 painter in- his eighties than he was in the 
 
 recorded that the Grand Turk was so 
 impressed by a portrait of himself painted 
 by Gentile as to ‘“‘scarcely conceive that 
 a mere mortal should have the divinity in 
 himself to paint such a likeness.”’ 
 
 Meanwhile Giovanni began his monu- 
 mental work in Venice, which was to oc- 
 cupy the greater part of his long life and 
 on which, incidentally, he was intermit- 
 
 prime of life. 
 develop that, al- 
 though he _ began 
 painting at an excep- 
 tionally early age, his 
 masterpieces were all 
 the work of his later 
 
 years. 
 Giovanni and his less 
 famous, but older, 
 
 brother, Gentile, were 
 sons of a Venetian 
 artist, Jacopo Bellini, 
 who was their first 
 teacher, but whom 
 they so soon. sur- 
 passed that he mag- 
 nanimously  encour- 
 aged them ‘“‘to do as 
 did the Tuscans, who 
 were perpetually 
 striving among them- 
 
 So slowly, indeed. did he 
 
 GIOVANNI BELLINI was past seventy 
 
 when he painted “The Baptism of 
 Christ,’ one of the finest examples of his 
 art, the greater part of which has perished. 
 Enough remains, however, to justify his 
 fame as the foremost painter of his time 
 in Venice. It is a curious coincidence that 
 Giovanni first began to paint in oil and 
 first began to be recognized as a master 
 painter simultaneously when he was ap- 
 proaching or shortly past fifty. Bellini 
 
 has taken some liberty with scriptural 
 
 text in this work, introducing, for instance, 
 three women witnesses to the baptism. 
 Again, in showing the Father of Heaven 
 surrounded by cloud-embedded cherubs, 
 he omits “the spirit of God descending 
 like a dove’’ and lighting on the ‘‘beloved 
 
 tently assisted by his brother. 
 
 Unfortu- 
 nately these works 
 were destroyed by fire 
 in the sixteenth cen- 
 tury, but Vasari re- 
 cords that they dis- 
 played ‘the golden 
 touch possessed by 
 every Venetian paint- 
 er of importance”’ and 
 “it is the absence in 
 Giovanni of all strain- 
 ing either for expres- 
 sion or technical 
 handling . . . his un- 
 ruffled, quiet perfec- 
 tion that makes him 
 a master of masters.”’ 
 From his twenty-sec- 
 ond year on, that is, 
 from 1450 until his 
 latest known works 
 
 selves to carry off the 
 palm of distinction 
 by outstripping each 
 other.’’ The paternal ambition was realized. 
 Born in Venice about the year 1428, 
 Giovanni when hardly more than a lad 
 painted a picture of the dead Christ for 
 the Order of Barefooted Friars, which, 
 Vasari notes, was so greatly coveted by 
 Louis XI of France that “‘the friars were 
 reluctantly compelled to gratify him.” 
 Not long after several portraits by this 
 master were taken into Turkey by an 
 ambassador, and presented to the Grand 
 Turk, ‘‘whose astonishment and admira- 
 tion were such that, although pictures are 
 prohibited by the Mohametan law, he 
 accepted them with great good will and 
 asked that the master of the work should be 
 sent to him.”’ 
 
 Loath to part with Giovanni, the Venetian 
 Senate commissioned him to decorate the 
 Hall of the Grand Council, while his 
 brother made the journey to Turkey in 
 his place. To the credit of the latter, it is 
 
 Son.” 
 
 It is a masterpiece of Italian art. 
 
 of 1513 and 1514, 
 Giovanni Bellini is in 
 continual growth, an 
 unceasing evolution, so that no less a 
 contemporary than Albrecht Durer, in 
 1506, pronounced him ‘‘the best artist in 
 Venice.”’ Thus Durer, sojourning in 
 Venice, writes to a friend in Germany: 
 “Giovanni Bellini has praised me much, be- 
 fore many noble people. He would much 
 like to have something of mine, and came 
 himself to me and begged me to do some- 
 thing for him and he would pay me well. 
 And everyone says what an upright man 
 he is. I am much attached to him. He 
 is very old, but still the best in painting.” 
 Giovanni’s greatest work having perished 
 in the fires that twice swept the Ducal 
 Palace in Venice, in 1574 and 1577, that 
 which survives is principally ‘‘the things 
 he did to live by, or to lay up money.”’ 
 As State painter to the Republic, writes 
 Richter, ‘‘it fell to Giovanni to paint the 
 official portraits of the Doges,’’ of whom 
 eleven held office during his eighty-six years. 
 
 136 . 
 

 
 THE BAPTISM OF CHRIST 
 
 
 
 Sa SR rele Z 
 
 GIOVANNI BELLINI (1428-1515) Courtesy Maison Ad. Braun & Cie. 
 Matt. III, 16, Luke III, 21 Church of Santa Corona, Vicenza 
 
ARY SCHEFFER 
 
 ET, YZINE April day in 1813 a lad 
 y named Ary (short for Ariel) 
 Scheffer bounded up the stairs 
 
 DN Yi: of a studio-home in Paris and 
 tossed into his mother’s lap 
 
 fifty francs. When he had got his breath 
 he explained that he had sold his first 
 ~picture. Thereafter, his pictures sold— 
 sold for all they were worth—until he 
 
 France was ‘‘so impressed by the quiet 
 manliness of the young artist’”’ that he was 
 invited to her estate at Neuilly to copy 
 certain portraits, and incidentally to give 
 lessons in drawing to the Princess Marie. 
 Of this event we read that “‘the gentle, 
 mild-voiced artist knew his place and did 
 not presume on terms of equality with 
 the Princess who traced a direct pedigree 
 
 quit painting, in 1858. 
 
 enjoyed the favor of 
 the greater part of the 
 aristocracy of France 
 in particular and of 
 Europe in general. In 
 
 the beginning the 
 prices he got for his 
 ~ pictures were not 
 
 large, ‘but there was 
 always enough money 
 so that the gaunt 
 wolf that once 
 scratched and sniffed 
 at the Scheffer studio 
 door was no longer to 
 be seen or heard. 
 
 Five years later we 
 
 find General Lafa- 
 
 In the interim he 
 
 IS “Christ Tempted of Satan’’ shows 
 
 the Franco-Dutch painter, Ary Schef- 
 fer, at the maturity of his genius. It, of 
 course, illustrates the scriptural statement 
 that “‘Again, the devil taketh Him up 
 into an exceeding high mountain, and 
 sheweth Him all the kingdoms of the 
 world, and the glory of them; and saith 
 unto Him, All these things will I give thee, 
 if thou fall down and worship me.” The 
 artist has chosen to paint the tempter and 
 tempted at the dramatic moment when 
 Jesus is preparing to deliver His answer. 
 The benign expression on the face of 
 Christ is one of the triumphs of this canvas, 
 considered by many his best painting. 
 
 to Louis the Great. 
 
 He thought to wait 
 and allow her gradu- 
 ally to show her qual- 
 ity. She tried her 
 caustic wit upon him, 
 and he looked at her 
 out of mild blue eyes 
 and made no reply to 
 her who had played 
 tierce and thrust with 
 every man she had 
 met, and had come 
 off without a scar. 
 But here was a man 
 of pride and poise, far 
 beneath her in a so- 
 cial way, yet who had 
 rebuked her haughty 
 spirit by a simple 
 look.’ Surreptitious- 
 
 yette' writing to a 
 friend in reference to 
 a proposed visit to his Chateau de la 
 Grange: “I do not think you will find it 
 dull here. Among others of our household 
 is a talented young painter by the name 
 of Scheffer.’”? - Incidentally, the young 
 painter was making a portrait of Lafayette 
 that is regarded as one of the best of him 
 in existence. Through his strong Republi- 
 can tendencies Scheffer had very naturally 
 drifted into the company of those who 
 knew Lafayette. The artist knew the his- 
 tory of the great man and was familiar 
 with his American career. Scheffer, as 
 Elbert Hubbard records, in his ‘“‘Eminent 
 Painters,’’ was interested in America, ‘“‘for 
 the radicals with whom he associated were 
 well aware that there might come a time 
 when they would have to seek hastily some 
 hospitable clime where to think was not a 
 crime.’’ Lafayette was sixty-one; Scheffer 
 was twenty-three at the time, but there at 
 once sprang up a warm friendship between 
 them that lasted until the death of the 
 great French patriot. While sojourning 
 with Lafayette, Scheffer met the Duchess 
 of Orleans, and that future Queen of 
 
 ‘his art life into three periods. 
 
 138 
 
 ly, it is intimated, 
 they fell in love and ‘‘there came a decided 
 evolution in his art; but it was not until 
 she had passed away that one could pick 
 out an unsigned canvas and say positively, 
 ‘This is Scheffer’s.’ In all his work one 
 sees that look of soul, and in his best 
 one beholds a use of the blue background 
 that rivals the blue of heaven. No other 
 painter has gotten such effects from colors 
 so simple.”’ 
 Born at Dordrecht, Holland, in 1795, Ary 
 Scheffer studied drawing at Lille, and in 
 1811 went to Paris, where, under Guérin, 
 he had Géricault and Delacroix for fellow 
 students, and with them eventually re- 
 volted against the ultra-classicism of 
 Guérin. 
 The three classes of subjects affected by 
 Scheffe: serve in a general way to divide 
 The third, 
 characterized by religious subjects, dated 
 from 1837. After his forty-fifth year he was 
 largely occupied with sacred themes, and 
 reached his highest achievement in ‘‘Christ 
 Tempted of Satan,” “Christ Weeping over 
 Jerusalem”’ and the “Christ of the Reed.”’ 
 

 
 THE TEMPTATION OF CHRIST 
 
 
 
 
 
 ARY SCHEFFER (1795-1858) Courtesy Maison Ad. Braun & Cie. 
 Matt. IV. Louvre, Paris 
 
VERONESE 
 
 AOLO VERONESE is the 
 wonder and despair of mod- 
 ern painters by reason of the 
 quality, facility and quantity 
 of his work, so much of which 
 
 was done so admirably and so easily as to 
 
 seem incredible. Granting that he may 
 not be so great an artist as Titian, nor so 
 great a poet as Tintoretto, neither of them 
 produced anything which as a downright 
 
 \ 
 
 
 
 one of the first to recognize the genius of 
 Veronese, whose progress he did- much to 
 advance. 
 
 One of his early and interesting commis- 
 sions was to decorate, in conjunction with 
 several of the most celebrated Venetian 
 artists, the newly built Library of St. 
 Mark’s. A prize of honor, over and above 
 the price agreed upon for the work, was 
 to be conferred upon that artist whose 
 
 tour de force of 
 painting equals his 
 ‘Marriage at Cana.” 
 Working side by side, 
 as Veronese did, with 
 Titian and Tintoretto, 
 the whole splendor of 
 Venice is revealed in 
 his canvases, and his 
 decorations in the 
 Ducal Palace immor- 
 talize the pageantry 
 which characterized 
 the Italy of his time. 
 Veronese, whose real 
 name was Paolo Cag- 
 liari, was born in Ve- 
 rona, as his cognomen 
 implies, in 1528. His 
 father was a sculptor, 
 and was ambitious for 
 his son to follow in 
 
 T the ‘Marriage of Cana,”’ Veronese 
 
 assembles in a vast hall and beneath 
 marble porticos numerous illustrious char- 
 acters, from Solyman, Sultan of Turkey, 
 to the Emperor Charles V, and has at the 
 feast many of the famous artists of his 
 day, thus “bequeathing to posterity the 
 most incongruous and at the same time 
 the most truthful and vivid of documents.”’ 
 Painted in his thirty-fifth year, he re- 
 ceived for.it 324 silver ducats and a pipe 
 of wine, besides the cost of materials and 
 his own living expenses while engaged 
 upon the work. Ruskin describes it as 
 “one blaze of worldly pomp.” Many 
 critics pronounce it as beyond question 
 “the masterpiece of modern painting,”’ and 
 as one of the great pictures of the world. 
 
 ’ 
 
 work might be ad- 
 judged superior. 
 “And after all the 
 pictures had been 
 well examined,” 
 writes Vasari, “a 
 golden chain was 
 placed around the 
 neck of Paolo Vero- 
 nese, he, by the 
 opinion of all, being 
 adjudged to have 
 done the best.”’ 
 
 His ‘Marriage at 
 Cana” was painted 
 
 . for the Convent of 
 
 San Giorgio Maggi- 
 ore, and was followed 
 by other large can- 
 vases representing 
 similar Biblical scenes. 
 ‘All these great com- 
 
 his footsteps. But the boy early gave 
 evidence of a marked predilection for 
 painting, and in his early twenties executed 
 decorations for the Mantuan Cathedral 
 that so far surpassed those of his collabo- 
 rators that he found himself the object of 
 considerable ill-will and jealousy. 
 
 Presently we hear of him in Venice, at 
 work on a commission to paint a Corona- 
 tion of the Virgin and other subjects for 
 the sacristy of the Church of San Sebasti- 
 ano. Such was his initial success that he 
 was intrusted with the decoration of the 
 ceiling of the church with scenes from the 
 story of Esther and Ahasuerus. The im- 
 pression created by this work was pro- 
 found. Still under thirty, the fame of the 
 young painter was assured. He found him- 
 self the most popular artist of the day in 
 Venice, ‘‘acknowledged by one and all to 
 be well-nigh the equal of Tintoretto,’’ who 
 was ten years his senior, and ‘‘even to 
 rival Titian,’’ then in his eightieth year. 
 Titian, with characteristic generosity, was 
 
 140 
 
 positions,’’ it has been noted, “‘in spite of 
 their sacred titles, were, in reality, merely 
 reproductions of those sumptuous ban- 
 quets and festive entertainments in which 
 the wealthy Venetians took delight, and 
 which were marked by an ever-increasing 
 degree of state and ceremonial. The pres- 
 ence of Christ and His disciples are but 
 accessories in the scene. The stately 
 Palladian erchitecture and gorgeous cos- 
 tumes, the crowd of musicians, the buf- 
 foons and lackeys, the gold and silver plate, 
 the silken canopies and banners, are all 
 borrowed from Venetian life.’ 
 
 Veronese plainly delighted in portraying 
 such scenes. He is said to have written on 
 the back of one of his drawings: “If I 
 ever have time, I want to represent a 
 sumptuous banquet in a superb hall, at 
 which will be present the Virgin, the 
 Saviour, and St. Joseph. They will be 
 served by the most brilliant retinue of angels 
 which one can imagine . . . to show with 
 what zeal blessed spirits serve the Lord.” 
 
THE MARRIAGE AT CANA 
 
 Courtesy Maison Ad. Braun & Cie. 
 
 PAOLO VERONESE (1528-1588) 
 
 John II, 1 
 
 
 
 Louvre, Paris 
 
GHIRLANDAJO 
 
 HIRLANDAJO painted while 
 his beloved Florence, under 
 the fitful rule of Piero de 
 Medici, was moving swiftly to 
 its doom. The doomsman, in 
 this case, was one Fra Girolamo Savona- 
 rola, whose sermons against the current 
 vanities of the rich and luxurious city 
 filled the fashionable throngs at the 
 Church of San Marco with apprehension. 
 
 “Ghirlandajo,’”’ applauds Vasari, ‘“‘who val- 
 ued glory and honor much more than riches, 
 immediately remitted all the remainder, 
 declaring that he had it much more at 
 heart to give his patron satisfaction than 
 to secure the additional payment for 
 himself.”’ 
 
 Though Ghirlandajo is charged by John 
 Addington Symonds with lacking ‘‘almost 
 every other true poetic quality, he com- 
 
 Eight years before his 
 death, this Florentine 
 master was commis- 
 sioned by Piero de 
 Medici’s privy treas- 
 urer, Giovanni Tor- 
 nabuoni, to decorate 
 the walls of the choir 
 of Santa Maria No- 
 vella, which was un- 
 der the patronage of 
 the impoverished Ric- 
 ci family. Their per- 
 mission was obtained 
 on condition of set- 
 ting the Ricci arms 
 “in the most con- 
 spicuous and honor- 
 able place in that 
 Chapel.”’ Ghirlan- 
 dajo, writes Vasari, 
 “‘actually set the Tor- 
 nabuoni arms in huge 
 scale on the side pilas- 
 ters, whereas’ he 
 painted -the Ricci 
 
 CALLED to Rome in 1481 to help deco- 
 
 rate the Sistine Chapel, Ghirlandajo’s’ 
 
 two principal works were the ‘‘Resurrec- 
 tion’ and the “Calling of Peter and An- 
 drew.’’ Critics and connoisseurs united 
 in praising this latter fresco as one of the 
 very best in the entire series. The scene 
 is on the shores of Lake Gennesaret at the 
 beginning of Christ’s ministry. The cen- 
 tral figure is Jesus himself, with hand 
 uplifted blessing Peter and Andrew whom 
 he has just called as followers. The newly 
 made disciples kneel before the Master, 
 their attitudes and expressions full of deep 
 reverence and humility. On both sides 
 are introduced spectators, in the dress of 
 the day, recognized as members of the 
 Florentine colony then living in Rome. 
 The man in the cloak is the Archbishop 
 Rainoldo Orsini, the Greek Argyropolos 
 is nearer the front, as also is Giovanni 
 Tornabuoni, the Medici privy treasurer. 
 
 bined the art of dis- 
 tributing figures in a 
 given space with per- 
 spective, fair knowl- 
 edge of the nude, and 
 truth to nature, in 
 greater perfection 
 than any other single 
 painter of the age.’’ 
 He painted only fres- 
 cos and tempera pic- 
 
 tures, and never 
 worked in oils. 
 The Messrs. Blash- 
 
 field and A. A. Hop- 
 kins acclaim Ghirlan- 
 dajo ‘‘a true painter, 
 who shows his subtle- 
 ty in characteriza- 
 tion, in differentia- 
 tion of feature, in 
 seizing the personal- 
 ity of each model, in 
 sympathetic compre- 
 hension of widely dif- 
 ferent types of men. 
 
 arms half a foot high on the door of the 
 ciborium in the base of his altar-piece.”’ 
 Incidentally, the painter was to receive 
 for his work 1100 gold ducats. If, how- 
 ever, the frescos greatly pleased him, Tor- 
 nabuoni was to pay 200 ducats more. 
 Nearly four years were required to execute 
 the commission, and for one of those 
 years ‘“‘a touchy and ugly little boy who 
 carried the disproportionately great name 
 of Michel Angelo Buonarotti scrambled dis- 
 contentedly about the scaffolding of the 
 choir, lending a hand here and there, and 
 learning the old art of fresco painting. 
 His teacher, of course, never knew that 
 in the restless apprentice was a Titan in 
 embryo.’ The work done, Tornabuoni is 
 said to have acknowledged it to be well 
 worth the extra 200 ducats, but he begged 
 the painter not to press him for that sum. 
 
 142 
 
 ... His grave and virile style is the link 
 between Masaccio in the beginning and 
 Raphael at the culmination of the art of 
 painting. To the student of the Renais- 
 sance, of Florentine history, or of the 
 ‘human document,’ his portraits of the 
 contemporaries of the Magnificent Lo- 
 renzo and of Savonarola are invaluable; 
 the old town still lives in these frescos, 
 and though the master was not given the 
 ‘walls of Florence to paint,’ as he desired, 
 he portrayed the world within those walls.”’ 
 At the age of forty-five, in the year 1494 
 Ghirlandajo was stricken with what prob- 
 ably was the plague. Hearing of his illness, 
 Tornabuoni regretted his parsimony, and 
 sent him100 ducats, buttoo late. On Janu- 
 ary 11 Ghirlandajo died, and was buried in 
 the Florentine church where his own works 
 make his most beautiful monument. 
 
THE CALLING 
 
 GHIRLANDAJO (1449-1494) 
 Matt. IV, 18 
 
 
 
 OF PETER AND ANDREW 
 
 Noa an ieocage Awan’ 
 
 ae 
 
 Courtesy Maison Ad. Braun & Cie. 
 Sistine Chapel, Rome 
 
PAOLO MICHETTI 
 
 DOARDO DALBONO, the 
 well-known Neapolitan paint- 
 q er, in reviewing his art-student 
 days, recalls a winter evening 
 of 1868 in the life-class of the 
 Art Academy at Naples. It being a chilly 
 day, and the studio not being heated, he 
 was walking to and fro in the rear of the, 
 room, to restore his circulation between 
 poses of the model, when he detected in 
 hiding behind the 
 benches a peasant lad 
 clutching some ragged 
 sheets of paper and 
 the stub of a pencil. 
 He had crawled into 
 the darkest corner of 
 the studio. 
 
 ‘“‘What are you doing 
 there in the dark, in- 
 stead of sitting out 
 “on the benches to 
 draw?’ asked Dal- 
 bono, curiously. 
 “But who will give 
 me a drawing-board 
 and a good piece of 
 drawing paper? Be- 
 sides, they won’t let 
 me sit out there. 
 When the attendant 
 sees me, he puts me 
 out the door,” an- 
 swered the boy, in 
 Abruzzi. 
 
 “Let me see what you’ve drawn.” 
 
 And the boy held forth a drawing that 
 the master of the class, Domenico Mo- 
 relli, pronounced superior to the work of 
 any of the regularly accredited students, 
 regardless of age or advantages. The next 
 day the “‘studio stowaway,’’ whose name 
 was Francesco Paolo Michetti, became a 
 fellow student with and a special charge 
 of Dalbono in the Art Academy of Naples, 
 and in the course of a few years he was to 
 rank as one of the modern masters of 
 Italian art. 
 
 Eulogized by the usually conservative 
 critic, Richard Muther, of the University 
 of Breslau, as ‘“‘a painter of bold and 
 magnificent talent,’’ a genuine product of 
 the wild Abruzzi, Paolo Michetti was the 
 son of a day-laborer, as was his master, 
 Morelli. He was born at Tocco da Casau- 
 ria, near Chieti, in 1851, and his early 
 
 
 
 this subject. 
 
 coins! 
 
 the dialect of the 
 
 MM ICHETTI paints the “Cleansing of the 
 
 Temple’ with an animation and gro- 
 tesque naturalism that is characteristic of 
 his art and is peculiarly appropriate to 
 Christ, records St. John, 
 having ‘‘made a scourge of small cords, 
 drove them all out of the temple, and the 
 sheep and the oxen; and poured out the 
 changers’ money... .” How effectively is 
 the scene of confusion and covetousness 
 portrayed, with the merchants crawling on 
 the steps and clutching for the scattered 
 Tugging at leashes are the white 
 and black sheep, typifying the sacrilegious 
 trade in animals; and standing near the 
 left pillar on the upper steps of the temple 
 is the quiet Christ, His wrath cooling, and 
 with the cords tangled in His hands. 
 
 ‘people. 
 
 144 
 
 years were those of toil and privation. 
 He seems to have had little or no instruc- 
 tion in drawing, and to have received no 
 encouragement to master the art of paint- 
 ing. In fact, he was left an orphan at an 
 early age; and it was his savings from the 
 scant wages he received as a farm laborer 
 that enabled him to go to Naples, and 
 incidentally to become a pupil of Morelli. 
 So rapidly did Michetti develop that he 
 returned to his na- 
 tive place before a 
 great while with such 
 evidences of his abil- 
 ity as an artist that 
 he not only found 
 patrons, but was 
 granted a subsidy by 
 the Province of Chi- 
 eti with which to re- 
 sume his studies in 
 Naples. 
 
 Fortune smiled on the 
 peasant painter and 
 he was enabled to 
 travel extensively, to 
 Rome, Paris and Lon- 
 don in turn, but as 
 early as 1876 he was 
 back in Naples, still 
 seeing and painting 
 genre pictures of 
 peasant life in south- 
 ern Italy, distinguished for their richness 
 of color and dramatic insight. Tiring of 
 Naples in a short time, this leader of the 
 new school of Italian painters settled amid 
 the Abruzzi, close to the Adriatic, in 
 Francavilla 4 Mare, near Ostona. There, 
 in 1877, Michetti painted the work which 
 laid the foundation of his celebrity, ‘‘The 
 Corpus Domini Procession at Chieti,’ a 
 picture that ‘‘rose like a skyrocket in its 
 boisterous, exhilarating medley of bright 
 colors.”’ 
 
 In all his pictures Michetti shows himself 
 an improviser of dexterity, overcoming 
 awesome difficulties with apparent ease, 
 shedding a blaze of color over everything— 
 a man to whom painting was as much a 
 matter of course as spelling is to most 
 The Paris World Exposition of 
 1878 left him a celebrated artist, and from 
 that time his name has been to the Italian 
 connoisseur a symbol for something new, 
 unexpected, extravagant, wild. 
 
THE CLEANSING OF THE TEMPLE 
 
 
 
 op eid PAULO MICHETTI (1852- ) Courtesy Current Literature Pub. 
 ohn II, 
 
 Co. 
 
FRITZ VON UHDE 
 
 REDECESSORS of Fritz von 
 Uhde, in the first part of the 
 nineteenth century, felt they 
 were on the right way in 
 representing Christ in art as 
 
 a specially wise and benevolent Jew. As 
 
 a result, their pictures were either comic 
 
 or conveyed an irreverent satiric sugges- 
 
 + 
 
 
 
 
 upon him which have assisted in making 
 his works more familiar. 
 
 ‘‘The Sermon on the Mount” was Uhde’s 
 first Biblical picture with a scene in the 
 open air. In these and other pictures 
 Uhde shows himself an eminent painter as 
 well as a first-rate psychologist. Every 
 one of these pictures is rich in delicate 
 
 tion. Then came Uhde and set modern spiritual observation. In fact, says 
 Christians in the place of modern Jews, Muther, “‘A trace of tenderness, inward 
 thereby introducing a depthandcordialidyl- 
 new phase of religious N Fritz von Uhde’s “Sermon on the licism runs through 
 
 / 
 
 painting. An age 
 wanting in independ- 
 ence, such as_ the 
 
 Mount,” painted in 1886, the sun has 
 almost set, and its last rays cast a glow 
 
 all the art of Uhde. 
 His Christ — that 
 quiet Being laying 
 
 early part of the last 
 century, was enslaved 
 by classical forms and, 
 as Muther observes, 
 “confined itself to a 
 lukewarm repetition 
 of figures borrowed 
 from the fifteenth 
 century, which be- 
 came so diluted that 
 they gradually as- 
 sumed a Byzantine 
 pattern.” 
 
 When Uhde exhibited 
 his first revolution- 
 ary picture in 1884 
 he had seen life from 
 many angles. His 
 father was an ecclesi- 
 
 upon the field. A peaceful village, its red 
 roofs dimly described, is in the back- 
 ground. Tired and travel-stained, Christ 
 has seated Himself upon a bench in an 
 open field, and is preaching to the “‘poor 
 in spirit’? who have gathered ’round Him. 
 Some are kneeling at His feet. Troops of 
 men and women in various stages of emo- 
 tion are descending from the hillside to 
 hear the preacher. The various gestures 
 of naive humility, pious devotion, edifica- 
 tion and sincere uplifting of the heart are 
 masterly in expression. Anameless yearn- 
 ing, an ardent desire to understand the 
 spoken words, is expressed in the dilated 
 blue eyes of the two women near the 
 preacher, as in the faces of the men. 
 
 His hand so softly 
 down and moving 
 with such _ spiritual 
 calm—is the imper- 
 sonation of benevo- 
 lence, the embodi- 
 ment of brotherly 
 love.” 
 
 At the same time, 
 “In spite of all their 
 wealth of spiritual 
 feeling Uhde’s pic- 
 tures produce an ef- 
 fect upon the major- 
 ity of the _ public 
 that is much more 
 strange than convinc- 
 ing. The naiveté and 
 naturalness quite un- 
 
 astical functionary, 
 
 and the subject of this sketch was born 
 in Saxony in 1848. His career as an artist, 
 for which he studied in Dresden, was in- 
 terrupted by ten years of military serv- 
 ice, two years of which were in the Franco- 
 Prussian War. 
 
 Upon retiring from the army in 1877, 
 with the rank of captain, he again devoted 
 himself to art, going to Paris, where, for a 
 time, he was strongly influenced by 
 Munk4acsy. Two canvases exhibited in 
 1880 in the Paris Salon were the fruits 
 of his residence in that city. 
 
 It was only after his return to his home 
 in Munich, when he was induced to visit 
 Holland, that his views underwent a revo- 
 lution. His expression became richer and 
 his brush more powerful, especially as a 
 Biblical painter. In that field he has 
 scored his most decided successes, associ- 
 ated as they are with those violent attacks 
 
 146 
 
 consciously produced 
 by the old masters, according to the gen- 
 eral supposition, is in Uhde a logical con- 
 clusion, the result of an involved system 
 of ideas. In clothing Biblical personages 
 in the dress of modern peasants, the effect 
 is complicated. 
 Nevertheless, in sheer ability and senti- 
 ment the art of Fritz von Uhde holds a 
 place of its own in modern German art. 
 It is explained that Uhde merely chose 
 modern costume to avoid the medley and 
 confusion of historical costume, and divert 
 no one from the physical character of the 
 motive by an external, antiquarian equip- 
 ment. To justify his conception, may be 
 cited as his accomplices all the old mas- 
 ters of Teutonic origin, and even the 
 Italians of periods other than that of 
 Raphael. It remains to be seen whether 
 later generations will view his pictures 
 as we now see the work of the old masters, 
 

 
 FRITZ VON UHDE (1848-1911) 
 Matt. V, VI, VII 
 
BENJAMIN-CONSTANT 
 
 EAN JOSEPH BENJAMIN- 
 CONSTANT once described 
 himself as having been ‘‘a Pari- 
 sian, born in the flesh in 1845, 
 and born as an artist in 1872, 
 
 on first visiting Morocco. . . . Since then 
 
 I have had no other dream than to be a 
 
 painter of Oriental scenes, to lead the life 
 
 prefaced in painting by Marilhat, Delacroix 
 and Henri Regnault.”’ 
 
 
 
 studio. Ah,’ he continued, ‘“‘you are 
 lucky in England to be free from that 
 affectation of diseased refinement that 
 turns to flabby morbidness, and calls itself 
 ‘new art.’ You Anglo-Saxon-Celts are 
 strong, you go straight to the point, you 
 reach your goal sooner or later. You have 
 patience to wait, you are not disheartened 
 by failure or spoiled by success; and those 
 are qualities in art, as in life, that over- 
 
 This was after the 
 Franco-Prussian War, 
 in which Constant 
 rendered military 
 service; and his road 
 to the Orient led 
 through Christian and 
 Moorish Spain, the 
 occasion being an em- 
 bassage to the Sultan 
 of Morocco. He had 
 been a pupil of Caba- 
 nel, but after his so- 
 journ in Africa he no 
 longer was under the 
 influence of that mas- 
 ter, falling, as he did, 
 under ‘“‘the enchant- 
 ing spell of tropical 
 sunshine.’” That and 
 tropical heat are im- 
 
 THE scene of the picture of ‘Jesus in 
 
 the Great Storm’’ is the Sea of Galilee 
 and the occasion is shortly after the calling 
 of the disciples, when He and certain of 
 them took ship to “pass over unto the 
 other side.’ St. Mark relates: “And 
 there arose a great storm of wind, and the 
 waves beat into the ship. And He was in 
 the hinder part of the ship, asleep on a 
 pillow.” Two of the Apostles are shown 
 here arousing the sleeping Saviour, who, 
 being awakened, “rebuked the wind, and 
 said unto the sea, Peace, be still. And the 
 wind ceased, and there was a great calm.” 
 The violence of the storm is indicated by 
 the absence of oars from the boat which, 
 nevertheless, is scudding the waves, in 
 partial control of the helmsman. 
 
 shadow all the 
 brilliance of easy suc- 
 cess. . ... Better not 
 to have attained per- 
 fection of accomplish- 
 ment than, doing so, 
 to take glory in sink- 
 ing back exhausted, 
 and affect pride in 
 proclaiming the poetic 
 beauty of mental 
 atrophy.” 
 
 It was firmness, ener- 
 gy, solidity that he 
 loved, and any at- 
 tempt at mountebank- 
 ism in art Constant 
 detested-—that is to 
 say, in shirking the 
 difficulties of painting. 
 Critics are not lacking 
 
 pressive elements of 
 
 his representations, and, as Dr. Muther 
 notes, “‘there is a seeming affiliation be- 
 tween the joyous light and color he loves to 
 paint, and his own geniality, which, united 
 with his artistic endowment, places him 
 among the Salon Forty, though one of the 
 youngest.” Indeed, a friend of many 
 years standing speaks of “revelling in that 
 merry, rather solid Constant humor which 
 matched so well his powerful physique and 
 his leonine head. His face was rather that 
 of a comedian—a tragi-comedian—and it 
 was a true index to his manner with his 
 friends, in a measure, too, of his art.”’ 
 
 Not that Benjamin-Constant was other 
 than tremendously in earnest, and took 
 his art in all seriousness. To him any evi- 
 dence of affectation was repugnant, and it 
 was something that he would never tolerate 
 in his pupils. A contemporary English 
 painter was once commenting on the spirit 
 of decadency abroad in the French art 
 world of the period. ‘‘ Décadents!’’ echoed 
 Constant, “‘I will have no décadents in my 
 
 148 
 
 who find fault with 
 Constant for striving for an impressiveness 
 that results in showiness; but none asserts 
 that his work was dishonest. Of so-called 
 impressionistic painting, he once observed: 
 “The Academy does well to shut it out, as 
 port officers shut out the plague. . . . The 
 modern decadent is artistically tubercular, 
 and the impressionist who thinks that his 
 scientific experiments with light and with 
 optic nerves are art is suffering from a 
 lupus; and they are both ugly diseases.” 
 His Oriental canvases reveal Constant to 
 be a fine colorist and a master of technique. 
 After 1880, however, he abruptly changed 
 his manner, devoting himself to mural 
 decorations and to portraits, until his 
 death in 1902. The most prominent exam- 
 ples of the former are a great plafond in the 
 Hotel-de-Ville, Paris, and a series of frescos 
 in the new Sorbonne. He painted impor- 
 tant mural decorations in other cities of 
 France, and was equally distinguished as a 
 portrait painter. Constant visited the 
 United States several times. 
 
EAN JOSEPH BENJAMIN-CONSTANT (1845-1902) 
 att. VIII, 24, Luke VIII, 23 
 
 CHRIST ON THE WATERS 
 
 
 
 Courtesy Current Literature Pub. Co. 
 
LHERMITTE 
 
 EON AUGUSTIN’ LHER- 
 MITTE, who ranks with Bas- 
 tien-Lepage and Millet as a 
 French painter of peasants, 
 was himself the son of a 
 
 peasant. His birthplace was Mont-Saint- 
 Pére, near Chateau-Thierry, a quiet old 
 town where, before the Great War, there 
 infirmly stood a Gothic church surrounded 
 by the moss-grown roofs of thatched houses. 
 There he was born in 
 1844. In the great 
 drive of the Germans 
 toward Paris in 1914 
 the place was virtu- 
 ally wiped out, but 
 has been restored. 
 Lhermitte’s grand- 
 sire was a vine-grower 
 and his father a 
 village schoolmaster. 
 He worked in the field 
 himself, and, like Mil- 
 let, he painted after- 
 wards the _ things 
 which he had done 
 himself in youth. His 
 principal works are 
 pictures of reapers in 
 the field, peasant 
 women in church, 
 young wives nursing 
 their children, rustics 
 at work, here and 
 there masterly water-colors, pastels and 
 charcoal drawings. There is his decora- 
 tion of a hall at the Sorbonne with repre- 
 sentations of rustic life, in his later period 
 occasionally pictures from other circles of 
 life, such as ‘“‘The Fish Market of St. 
 Malo,” ‘‘The Lecture in the Sorbonne,” 
 ‘‘The Musical Soirée,’’ and finally, as a 
 result of the religious tendency of French 
 art in his later years, “Among the Lowly.”’ 
 Although Lhermitte has maintained a 
 studio in Paris during the greater part of 
 his productive life, he has spent most of 
 his time and done most of his work in his 
 native village, living quietly and simply 
 with the peasants. The majority of his 
 pictures, which are ranked among the 
 most robust productionsof modern Natural- 
 ism, were painted in a great glass studio 
 which Lhermitte built in the garden of his 
 ancestral home. 
 
 Contrasting Lhermitte 
 
 
 
 lowly inmates. 
 
 ing near her. 
 
 woman’s knee. 
 
 and _.« Bastien- 
 
 N “Among the Lowly,’’ the French 
 
 peasant painter, Lhermitte, conceives 
 of the Master visiting a typical peasant 
 cottage and manifesting Himself to the 
 He is standing back of a 
 table, His hand raised in benediction. 
 At the left the mother sits with an infant 
 in her arms and three children are stand- 
 Beyond, in an open door- 
 way, stands a man with a boy in his arms; 
 at the right an old couple is seated, a 
 young girl stands behind them, and in the 
 foreground a child leans against the old 
 The reverence of these 
 simple people for the Master is indicated 
 by the fact that the man in the doorway 
 has removed his hat and is listening with 
 his head bowed. Christ would seem to 
 be saying grace over the humble meal on 
 the table before the mother and child. 
 
 150 
 
 Lepage, the critic Muther observes that 
 while the latter, “through a certain soft- 
 ness of temperament, was moved to paint 
 the weak rather than the strong, and less 
 often men in the prime of life than patri- 
 archs, women and children, Lhermitte 
 displays the peasant in all his rusticity. 
 He knows the country and the labors of 
 the field which make the hands horny and 
 the face brown, and he has rendered them 
 in a strictly objective 
 manner, in a great 
 sculptural style. Bas- 
 tien-Lepage is in- 
 clined to refinement 
 and poetic tender- 
 ness; in Lhermitte 
 everything is clear, 
 precise, and sober as 
 pale, bright daylight.” 
 As with his great 
 senior, Millet, Lher- 
 mitte has not come 
 under the influence 
 of any tradition, but 
 he has approached 
 art like the man in 
 the age of stone who 
 first scratched the 
 outline of a mam- 
 moth on a piece of 
 ivory, or like the 
 primeval Greek who, 
 according to legend, 
 invented painting by making a likeness of 
 his beloved with a charred stick upon a 
 wall. Unlike Millet, however, who re- 
 ceived no encouragement in his first artistic 
 attempts, Lhermitte was regarded as a 
 prodigy by his parents, and the same 
 opinion seems to have been held by their 
 friends and neighbors. Growing up in 
 close sympathy with the simple life of an 
 Aisne village, it naturally furnished him 
 with picture subjects and his inborn talent 
 found early development through the 
 generosity of a neighbor who sent him to 
 Paris to study in 1863. His first master 
 was Lecoq de Boisbaudran, who is reputed 
 to have been a much greater teacher than 
 painter. His first successes were in char- 
 coal, and his skill as an aquarellist and 
 etcher is regarded by many as equalling his 
 incontestable talent as a painter. His pic- 
 tures are in the Metropolitan Museum of 
 New York and many foreign galleries. 
 
AMONG THE LOWLY 
 
 
 
 LEON AUGUSTIN LHERMITTE (1844-1925) Metropolitan Museum. 
 New York City 
 
 . 
 
WILL H. LOW 
 
 ROBABLY this American art- 
 ist is better known as an illus- 
 trator than as a figure and 
 genre painter. That he has 
 succeeded in all three depart- 
 
 ments is evidence of his versatility and 
 
 artistic capability. Will H. Low was not 
 intended by his parents to be an artist and, 
 indeed, he received very little encourage- 
 ment to develop himself in that direction. 
 Although he made 
 / 
 
 + 
 
 
 
 
 sketches in his boy- 
 hood, his first real 
 impetus to become 
 ‘an artist was fur- 
 nished by an English 
 painter who was em- 
 ployed in this coun- 
 try in decorating 
 Pullman cars with 
 still-life pictures of 
 flowers and sundry 
 ornaments such as 
 were parlor-and- 
 sleeping-car features 
 
 N this picture of “Christ and the Woman 
 Taken in Adultery,” the artist paints the 
 -woman kneeling at the feet of the Saviour, 
 who has just uttered the words, “‘Neither 
 do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more.” 
 This was after the scribes and Pharisees 
 had brought the accused woman to Him, 
 asking whether she should not be stoned 
 according to the Mosaic law, and had left 
 the two alone, on hearing Christ say, 
 “He that is without sin among you, let 
 him cast the first stone at her.” 
 
 city of his artistic dreams the young 
 American aspirant was caught in a crowd 
 of Parisians who, unknown to him, were 
 making their way to the opening of the 
 Salon. It was in the morning, but despite 
 the fact that he had not breakfasted, he 
 remained all day in that “holy of holies” 
 without a thought of other food than was 
 his to gaze upon in the form of pictures. 
 A sketch made by Low at Barbizon, where 
 he was influenced by 
 association with Mil- 
 let and other painters 
 of that school, gained 
 the favorable notice 
 of Munkdacsy, who 
 advised him to avoid 
 all schooling and de- 
 pend on his natural 
 talent. Millet, how- 
 ever, advised him to 
 the. contrary, and he 
 returned to Paris to 
 study under Carolus 
 
 The Duran. It was while 
 
 in the ’sixties and expression of the hands, bothof the woman he was with Carolus 
 
 seventies. and of the Saviour, is peculiarly eloguent Duran that another 
 
 ria ay Rohe a i in this picture, which ranks high as a re- Andean ante wae 
 any, ew Orka wae ets aS A 
 
 Low’s early education ligious painting of ‘charm and. orgimaiity received into’ the 
 
 was interrupted by 
 ill health and he left 
 school before he was fifteen years old. 
 Despite parental opposition, he persisted in 
 his determination to become an. artist, 
 and by 1870 had made such progress, 
 without the aid of any master, that he 
 went to New York and for two years 
 supported himself as a magazine illus- 
 trator and in making theatrical posters. 
 One of his first magazine commissions 
 came from Harper’s Weekly, as a contrib- 
 utor to which he met and formed a lifelong 
 friendship with Edwin A. Abbey. 
 
 During his early days in New York Low 
 submitted a drawing to the National 
 Academy of Design, which was rejected 
 because it was done in pencil. Subse- 
 quently he was an instructor in that 
 institution for a period of three years, 
 and for more than six years he was chair- 
 man of its school committee. In 1872 he 
 had a painting hung in the Academy 
 Exhibition. The next year, 1873, he went 
 to Paris to study with Géréme at the 
 Ecole des Beaux-Arts. On arriving in the 
 
 by a distinctly modern American artist. 
 
 152 
 
 studio, in the seven- 
 teen-year-old person 
 of the late lamented John Singer Sargent. 
 Low recounts an amusing incident of his 
 student days in Paris, which reveals 
 Carolus Duran and his atelier in an inter- 
 esting light. The class was modeling in 
 clay one morning, when one of its mem- 
 bers went into an ante-room. Anticipat- 
 ing his return, a practical joker secured a 
 wet sponge and, mounting a stool, an- 
 nounced his intention to “Let ‘Becky’ 
 have it’? when he entered. The door 
 opened and he flung the sponge. It 
 struck, not the intended victim, but the 
 master, ‘‘brave in his blue velvet coat 
 and yellow silk shirt.”” There was a mo- 
 ment of suspense. Then the master with- 
 drew, closing the door after him. It 
 presently reopened, and Carolus Duran, 
 his disorder repaired, reappeared and was 
 greeted with a stammering apology and 
 explanation. His magnanimity in excusing 
 the mistake and proceeding quietly with 
 the lesson, inspired the wholesome respect 
 of the class. 
 
“HE THAT IS WITHOUT SIN AMONG YOU, 
 LET HIM FIRST CAST A STONE AT HER” 
 
 rs 
 
 
 
 WILL H. LOW (1853- ) Courtesy of the Artist 
 John VIII, 7 
 
PUVIS DE CHAVANNES 
 
 AIERRE CECILE PUVIS DE 
 CHAVANNES, scion of an 
 old Burgundian family which 
 took pride in tracing its gene- 
 alogy back to the year 1152, 
 was born at Lyons, France, where his 
 father was a mining engineer, in 1824. 
 He was intended to be an engineer, but 
 while on a pleasure trip to Italy in his 
 nineteenth year the sight of the Italian 
 works of art opened 
 / 
 
 
 
 a new horizon to his 
 imagination. He de- 
 cided to be an artist, 
 and studied under 
 several masters, one 
 of whom was Dela- 
 croix, and none of 
 whom seems to have 
 been satisfactory to 
 him. He quitted the 
 studio of Couture, for 
 instance, because the 
 master found fault 
 with his way of ren- 
 dering flesh tones and 
 insisted upon Puvis 
 following his own ste- 
 reotyped formula. The instructor went 
 too far, it seems, when he proceeded to 
 alter the entire color-scheme of the study 
 on which the pupil was engaged. ‘‘What, 
 Monsieur,” cried Puvis, in amazement, 
 “is that the way you really see the model?”’ 
 And after that day he never returned to 
 the atelier. 
 
 After leaving Couture he abandoned all 
 idea of learning to paint in the usual 
 fashion, and organized a group of ‘friends 
 who, like himself, wanted to paint from 
 the living model, into a sort of communal 
 academy that existed for a number of 
 years. During nine of those years his pic- 
 tures submitted to the Paris Salon were 
 invariably refused, and things would have 
 gone hard with the artist had he not en- 
 joyed an independent income. Unde- 
 terred by rebuffs and believing strongly in 
 himself, Puvis sent the rejected canvases 
 to private exhibitions in Paris where they 
 occasioned much public merriment. 
 
 It was not until 1859, when he was thirty- 
 five years old, that he conquered the Salon 
 with his ‘“‘Return from Hunting,”’ and re- 
 peated the performance two years later 
 with two mural pictures, ‘‘Peace’’ and 
 
 on a platter. 
 
 N the accompanying picture Puvis de 
 
 ment of Herod, who had appropriated his 
 brother’s wife and thereby inspired her 
 enmity. She was the mother of Salome, 
 whose dancing so delighted Herod that he 
 offered to grant any boon she might crave. 
 Sharing the hatred of her mother for 
 John the Baptist, she asked for his head 
 She is shown here witness- 
 ing the act of the executioner in carrying 
 out the decree inspired by her request. 
 
 154 
 
 “War.’’ For the first time his work was 
 seriously discussed by the critics; he was 
 awarded a medal of the second class, and 
 the government purchased one of his pic- 
 tures. 
 
 Subsequently the city of Amiens secured 
 these two pictures for its new Musée de 
 Picardie, and, needing two more mural 
 paintings to adorn the main staircase of 
 the museum, sent the architect to inter- 
 view the painter. 
 “‘Have you, by good 
 
 Chavannes, who diverted French art ee tiene ce 
 into a new course, paints John in the act that will SAT) ste 
 of paying the price for his public arraign- purpose?” For an- 
 
 swer the artist 
 brought out two im- 
 mense rolls of canvas. 
 “Have I what you 
 want!”’ he exclaimed. 
 “Here they are— 
 ‘Work’ and ‘Rest’. 
 They are of the same 
 dimensions as ‘War’ 
 and ‘Peace’, and were 
 executed to accompa- 
 ny them.” As the 
 city of Amiens was not able to pay for 
 these works at once, the painter gave them 
 to the museum, and their reception was 
 such that the civic authorities ordered a 
 new composition for the same building. 
 This painting, exhibited under the title of 
 ‘‘Ave Picardia Nutrix’’ at the 1865 Salon, 
 created a sensation, and thenceforward the 
 position of Puvis de Chavannes as a mural 
 decorator was assured. 
 
 In 1890 the trustees of the Boston Public 
 Library invited de Chavannes to decorate 
 the staircase of that building, and offered 
 him 200,000 francs (the largest sum he had 
 ever received) for the work, which was to 
 comprise one large painting and eight 
 smaller panels. After much hesitation, due 
 to advancing age and the poor health of 
 his wife, he finally accepted the commission 
 and in 1895, at the age of seventy-one, 
 began work on the pictures, which were 
 finished in 1897. 
 
 Before he had finished his decorations for 
 the French Pantheon he fell ill, but with 
 characteristic determination continued 
 painting until he could no longer hold a 
 brush. His death, in 1898, followed not 
 long after that of his wife. é 
 

 
 THE BEHEADING OF JOHN THE BAPTIST 
 
 
 
 
 
 ws 
 5 
 
 
 
 
 
 PIERRE PUVIS DE CHAVANNES (1824-1898) Courtesy Maison Ad. Braun & Cie. 
 Matt. XIV Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City 
 (Loan from John Quinn Collection) 
 
GUSTAVE MOREAU 
 
 N pictorial art Gustave Moreau 
 is equivalent to Charles Beaude- 
 laire, whose strange and fasci- 
 nating poems strike much the 
 same note as the _ tortured, 
 
 subtilised, morbid but mysterious and 
 captivating creations of Moreau. Every 
 one of his works stands in need of a 
 commentary, and bears witness to a pro- 
 found and peculiar activity of mind. He 
 “gives ear to dying 
 strains, rising faintly, 
 inaudible to the ma- 
 
 Ts much admired picture, known as 
 
 Before the discovery of the famous Cyprus 
 statues no artist would have ventured to 
 adorn a Grecian goddess with flowers, 
 hairpins and a heavy tiara. Attracted to 
 these discoveries, Moreau has been gov- 
 erned by strangely exotic inspirations. He 
 is said to have worked in his studio ‘“‘as 
 in a tower opulent with ivory and jewels.” 
 He delights in arraying his figures in the 
 most costly materials, as the Cyprus dis- 
 coveries give him 
 warrant for doing, in 
 
 jority of.men. Mar- 
 vellous beings pass 
 before him, fantastic 
 and yet earnest. ... 
 An age which went 
 wild over Cabanel 
 and Bouguereau 
 could not possibly be 
 in sympathy with him 
 ...and it is only since 
 the mysterious smile 
 of Leonardo’s women 
 has once more drawn 
 the world beneath its 
 spell that the spirit 
 of Moreau in art has 
 
 “The Apparition” or “The Vision of 
 Salome,” is one of a series dealing with 
 Salome which Moreau painted in 1878. 
 In a sombre hall supported by mighty 
 pillars, sits Herod, half asleep with hash- 
 eesh and motionless as a Hindoo idol. 
 Two women lean at the foot of a pillar. 
 One plays a lute. (Flowers strew the 
 floor. Salome advances and begins to 
 dance. She is loaded with jewels. Sud- 
 denly she pauses and presses one hand 
 to her bosom: she has seen the head of 
 John the Baptist in a blinding halo, and his 
 executioner as he stands leaning on the 
 sword with which he smote the head 
 
 painting their robes 
 in the deepest and 
 most barbaric hues, 
 and in being almost 
 too lavish in his man- 
 ner of adorning their 
 arms and_ breasts. 
 “Every figure of his 
 is a glittering idol.... 
 The capricious gener- 
 ation of the Renais- 
 sance occasionally 
 treated classical sub- 
 jects in this manner, 
 but there is the same 
 difference between 
 Filippino Lippi and 
 
 ae dr weh ie: from the body. Her conscience at having SSS eee 
 Born in Paris in 1825, instigated his death is rending her, as her ticelji_ and Burne- 
 this strange artist face and attitude eloquently reveal. Jones: the former, 
 
 early fell under the 
 
 influence of Delacroix and his own friend, 
 Chassériau. Pursuing his studies in Rome, 
 he imitated such painters as Montegna 
 and Signorelli. He exhibited little, and 
 did not become known until toward the 
 end of his life. The only modern painters 
 with whom he can be compared are 
 Burne-Jones and Puvis de Chavannes. 
 
 In most of his work a complete absence of 
 motion has, says Richard Muther, ‘‘taken 
 the place of the striding legs, the attitudes 
 of the fencing-master, the arms ever- 
 lastingly raised to heaven, and the passion- 
 ately distorted faces which had reigned in 
 French painting since David. He makes 
 spiritual expression his starting point, and 
 not scenic effect. Everything bears the 
 seal of supernatural peace; everything is 
 inspired by inward life and suppressed 
 passion. Even when the gods fight there 
 are no mighty gestures; with e,mere frown 
 they can shake the earth like Zeus.”’ 
 
 156 
 
 - like Shakespeare in 
 the Midsummer Night’s Dream, trans- 
 formed the antique into a blithe and fan- 
 tastic world, whereas the fire of yearning 
 romance burns in the pictures of Moreau.’’ 
 His “Orpheus” is one of his most character- 
 istic and strangely attractive creations, 
 just as those dealing with Salome, in their 
 bizarre sentiment—suggestive of an opium 
 dream—are perhaps his most imaginative. 
 When Moreau died in 1898, he left his 
 eight thousand pictures in water-color and 
 in oil to his native city of Paris to form 
 the Musée Moreau in the Rue de la 
 Rochefoucauld. The most notable of his 
 paintings are ‘Jason,’ “Death of the 
 Young Man,’ ‘‘Prometheus,” ‘‘Hesiod 
 and the Muses,” ‘‘The Sphinx,”’ and ‘‘The 
 Vision of Salome,” in the Luxembourg. 
 From 1892 to 1898 he was professor in the 
 Ecole des Beaux-Arts. At the age of 
 forty-nine he received the Cross of the 
 Legion of Honor. 
 
THE VISION OF SALOME 
 
 
 
 GUSTAVE MOREAU (1826-1893) Courtesy Maison Ad. Braun & Cie. 
 Luxembourg, Paris 
 
RAPHAEL 
 
 ORK, unceasing work, filled 
 
 the days of Raphael in 
 
 Rome. The ingenuity and 
 
 industry of the man were 
 
 “ marvellous. Supplementing 
 his monumental labors in the Palace of 
 the Vatican and his architectural direction 
 of St. Peter’s, in succession to Bramante, 
 more than eighty portraits were painted 
 by him, besides designs innumerable for 
 
 
 
 the work was ultimately brought to a 
 conclusion.”’ 
 
 In two sonnets to this woman, who seems 
 to have been the love of his life, Raphael 
 addresses her as one far above him, vow- 
 ing that he will never reveal her name. 
 It is true that a marriage with the niece 
 of his close friend Cardinal Bibbiena was 
 once arranged for, the date of the wedding 
 set and the Pope was to perform the cere- 
 
 engravings, and even 
 for silver and iron 
 ornaments required 
 by the Church. 
 
 In addition to his 
 work in the papal 
 service, Raphael was 
 also engaged in exe- 
 cuting commissions 
 for the wealthy bank- 
 er Agostino Chigi, 
 not only at his villa 
 near Rome—now the 
 Villa Farnesina— 
 where the fresco of 
 “The Triumph | of 
 Galatea” still adorns 
 _the wall, but in the 
 Chigi family chapel in 
 the Church of Santa 
 Maria del Popolo, 
 
 HIS “Transfiguration’’ is the last pic- 
 
 ture that Raphael painted, and he left 
 it to be finished by one of his pupils. 
 Somewhat declamatory and violent, what 
 it lacks in characterization is made up by 
 its wonderful composition, individual move- 
 ments and dramatic effect. On the top 
 of the mountain, brilliantly lighted in the 
 bright cloud, hovers the transfigured 
 Saviour between Moses and Elias, above 
 three dazzled disciples who have fallen to 
 the ground. Meanwhile a scene of hu- 
 man misery (based on Matthew XVII, 16) 
 is enacted below: the father of the lunatic 
 boy, accompanied by a crowd of people, 
 has come upon the nine other disciples. 
 Of the two women kneeling before the 
 apostles, one is the boy’s mother crying 
 
 mony. But Leo X 
 regarded Raphael as 
 a servant of the 
 Church: he had work 
 for him to do, and 
 moreover, he had 
 fixed ideas concern- 
 ing the glamour of 
 sentimentalism, so he 
 requested that the 
 wedding be _ post- 
 poned from time to 
 time—and meanwhile 
 the lady died. 
 
 Raphael, in addition 
 to decorating the 
 Chigi Palace, was 
 zealous in the papal 
 service of unearthing 
 and preserving the 
 art treasures which 
 
 where he painted his 
 famous Sibyls. His 
 last important deco- 
 rative work were the 
 frescos painted in the 
 Chigi, or Farnesina 
 Palace, representing 
 the mythological story of Cupid and Psyche. 
 Vasari relates of this work that the great 
 banker, having commissioned Raphael to 
 decorate the first floor of his palace, was 
 much disturbed because the painter was 
 so slow setting to work. Even when he 
 started on the frescos, ‘‘Raphael was so 
 occupied with the love which he bore to 
 the lady of his choice, that he could not 
 give sufficient attention to the work. 
 Agostino, therefore, falling at length into 
 despair of seeing it finished, made so many 
 efforts by means of friends and by his 
 own care, that after much difficulty he 
 prevailed on the lady to take up her abode 
 in his house, wHere she was accordingly 
 installed in apartments near those which 
 Raphael was painting; in which manner 
 
 attitude. 
 
 for help. Supplication is in their every 
 And the nine apostles, deeply 
 moved and compassionate, realize their 
 powerlessness to help, because He who 
 might have helped has left them. 
 
 158 
 
 lay buried under the 
 ruins of Rome, and 
 “with a princely mag- 
 nificence sent artists 
 through Italy and 
 Greece to make draw- 
 ings of those antiqui- 
 ties which he was unable to see himself. 
 He was in intimate correspondence with 
 most of the celebrated men of his time; 
 interested himself in all that was going 
 forward; mingled in society, lived in 
 splendor and directed a host of pupils.” 
 His most famous easel-picture of ‘‘The 
 Sistine Madonna’”’ was painted, entirely by 
 his own hand, a year before his death— 
 the result of a fever contracted, some say, 
 while superintending excavations in the 
 malarial quarters of Rome, or, according 
 to others, of a chill gotten while awaiting 
 an audience with the Pope in one of the 
 halls of the Vatican. The dying Raphael 
 sent for his old master Perugino, directed 
 that he should complete certain unfinished 
 work, and expired at thirty-seven. 
 
THE TRANSFIGURATION 
 
 
 
 RAPHAEL (1483-1520) Courtesy Maison Ad. Braun & Cie. 
 Matt. XVII Vatican Gallery, Rome 
 
SEBASTIANO DEL PIOMBO 
 
 QJEBASTIANO LUCIANI, 
 
 called del Piombo, because 
 8 in 1531 Pope Clement VII 
 made him keeper of the 
 Leaden Seal, painted his most 
 celebrated picture, ‘““The Raising of Laza- 
 rus,’* as. a result of his association with 
 Michel Angelo, who designed to make him 
 a rival to Raphael. Sebastiano was a 
 Venetian and was “‘discovered’”’ by Agostino 
 
 
 
 while their collaboration was mutually 
 satisfactory. One supplied what the other 
 lacked. 
 
 At the death of Bramante in 1514, however, 
 a sudden and important change occurred 
 in the so-called school of Rome. Raphael 
 was appointed to succeed Bramante as 
 the papal architect, and the rivalry between 
 him and Michel Angelo became open 
 warfare, with the artistic world of Rome 
 
 Chigi, the Croesus of 
 his time, who was 
 then building on the 
 banks of the Tiber the 
 famous residence that 
 was later to be called 
 the Villa Farnesina. 
 He occasionally visit- 
 ed Venice on business, 
 and he grew tolike the 
 striking and brilliant 
 color work of the 
 younger painter, and 
 persuaded him to join 
 the Roman _§ school. 
 This was the period 
 of the remarkable ar- 
 tistic activity inspired 
 by Pope Julius II 
 
 HE Raising of Lazarus,” painted by 
 
 Sebastiano del Piombo in rivalry with 
 Raphael, is criticized as lacking devo- 
 tional spontaneity. As Canon Farrar 
 states, “the painter is thinking exclusively 
 of the effectiveness of his picture, not of 
 the miracle of Christ’s mercy.” Jesus, 
 with one hand uplifted to heaven, and the 
 other pointing to Lazarus, has just said, 
 “Loose him and let him go.”’ Behind Him 
 St. John is arguing with incredulous Phari- 
 sees. The face of Lazarus is still over- 
 shadowed by the shroud, but his eye is 
 fixed on Christ. Behind Him is Martha, 
 among other women, half horrified. Three 
 men are removing the heavy stone of the 
 
 divided into two 
 camps. Raphael had 
 an advantage in en- 
 joying the favor of 
 Pope Julius, who 
 found him easy to get 
 along with, whereas 
 Michel Angelo was 
 choleric and disposed 
 to be dictatorial. 
 Presently the latter 
 was sent to Florence 
 to build the facade of 
 San Lorenzo, a mis- 
 sion that amounted to 
 exile; and Raphael © 
 was left in undisputed 
 mastery. 
 
 Before leaving Rome 
 
 who, when not other- 
 wise engaged, was 
 ‘“clambering about 
 ‘the scaffoldings of the Vatican,” then being 
 constructed under the architectural direc- 
 tion of Bramante, and decorated by such 
 masters as Michel Angelo and Raphael. 
 Like a great flame, the Renaissance, at 
 the moment when it was on the calendar 
 to be dying, was kindled into new and 
 greater intensity. The torches of genius, 
 however, had been transferred from Flor- 
 ence and Umbria to Rome. 
 
 Sebastiano quickly executed an important 
 decoration in the Villa Chigi. He was then 
 painting with the fluency of a charming 
 improvisator, doubtless in imitation of his 
 master Giorgione. But events soon made 
 him lose his ingenuous_ self-confidence. 
 For at this time the great frescos of Michel 
 Angelo in the Sistine Chapel and of 
 Raphael in the Stanza della Segnatura 
 were opened to the public and Sebastiano 
 must have felt as though he had strayed 
 into an overpowering company. Thanks 
 to his patron, Chigi, Sebastiano soon be- 
 came associated with Raphael, and for a 
 
 sepulchre. 
 
 Mary is at the feet of Jesus. 
 
 160 
 
 Michel Angelo found 
 in Sebastiano del 
 _ Piombo a lieutenant 
 who had quarrelled with Raphael over the 
 decorations of the Villa Chigi and was- 
 ready to’ espouse his cause. It was a 
 strange alliance. According to Vasari, 
 Michel Angelo thought that by assisting 
 Sebastiano with his drawing, and setting 
 him up as a competitor to Raphael, he 
 could triumph over his enemies without in 
 any way compromising his own reputation. 
 Sebastiano tells Michel Angelo, in a letter 
 still extant, of his remark to Pope Julius 
 that he (Sebastiano) could work miracles 
 if Buonarotti helped him. “Of that I have 
 no doubt,’ quoth the Pope. ‘You all 
 learned from him.’’ 
 
 At all events, prompted by the great 
 Florentine, Sebastiano proposed to paint 
 for Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici a picture of 
 “The Raising of Lazarus”? in competition 
 with a picture of the ‘Transfiguration”’ 
 that Raphael had been commissioned to 
 paint. Raphael died before his great picture 
 was completed, so it is not probable that 
 the Cardinal rendered a formal decision. 
 
- oe 
 
 THE RAISING OF LAZARUS 
 
 
 
 SEBASTIANO DEL PIOMBO (1485-1547) , Courtesy Maison Ad. Braun & Cie. 
 John XI, 43 National Gallery, London 
 
MORETTO 
 
 (aL LESSANDRO BONVI- 
 A CINO, more commonly called 
 
 h i Moretto (the Moor), in allu- 
 H sion to his dark complexion, 
 
 Xt 3 was a great painter, who still 
 
 remains comparatively obscure because of 
 the fact that most of his pictures were 
 painted for the religious institutions of his 
 native town of Brescia, Italy, where he 
 was born about the year 1498 and where 
 he died about 1555. 
 If he had lived for 
 long in Venice, where 
 
 
 
 THs scene of “Magdalen at the Feet 
 
 an introducer of novelties exceptional at 
 that period. His “St. Justina,” for in- 
 stance, in the Imperial Gallery at Vienna, 
 is in some ways one of the most original 
 pictures ever painted. Indeed, Moretto is 
 one of the noble army of artistic martyrs, 
 only in his case there was not that lack of 
 technical ability which so often explains a 
 failure to please. 
 
 Being a strong designer, it follows that he 
 .excelled as a deco- 
 rator, and “‘the good 
 Brescians, at least, 
 
 he studied for a pe- 
 riod, he would doubt- 
 less have become one 
 of the most famous 
 of painters. As it is, 
 ‘his is a reputation 
 which must increase 
 with the years, for 
 his work not only has 
 a soundness quite un- 
 common in northern 
 Italy, but a noble, 
 serious charm and 
 quiet dignity as well.”’ 
 
 of the Saviour’ is painted with a 
 realism rather uncommon at the time of 
 Moretto. Yet, how dignified and dis- 
 tinguished is the work! Seated with 
 Jesus at the table is Lazarus, while Judas 
 Iscariot is bearing in food. Note the 
 kneeling Mary’s eloquent facial expression 
 as she anoints the Saviour’s feet and wipes 
 them with her hair. The head and dress 
 of the Magdalen are particularly well real- 
 ized, and the hands are beautifully made, 
 as are the hands and fine head of Christ. 
 
 in Venice 
 
 seem to have known 
 and appreciated a 
 man who filled their 
 churches with noble 
 mural adornments.” 
 Notable among them 
 is his ‘‘Magdalen at 
 the Feet of the Sa- 
 viour.”’ Equally 
 strong was his grasp 
 of character, as evi- 
 denced in his portrait 
 work. As the Abbate 
 Luigi Lanzi observes, 
 
 Contemporary with Moretto 
 were Titian, the supreme young master; 
 Tintoretto and Palma Vecchio. Bellini, 
 an old man, was still alive; and El Greco 
 was a student under Titian. Moretto may 
 have known Albrecht Durer, when the 
 latter made hi3 visit to Venice. The curious 
 thing about Moretto, however, is that with 
 all these inducements to paint in a style 
 nearly approaching the Venetian, he chose 
 to return to Brescia in the hills and to 
 paint quite in his own manner—in cool, 
 silvery tones quite different from what has 
 been called the Venetian “‘golden glow.” 
 
 Moretto is said to have tried to introduce 
 something of the style of Raphael into his 
 work, but their methods were quite differ- 
 ent; although Raphael derived largely 
 from da Vinci, as did most of his succes- 
 sors in north Italy, Moretto included. 
 His cool, silvery quality is nearer to what 
 the moderns have come to feel is the modest 
 truth of nature. That is the feeling en- 
 gendered by his pictures—singular truthful- 
 ness, especially for a painter of those days. 
 It is also as a designer that Moretto makes 
 a very strong appeal, having a wonderful 
 Titianesque power of filling spaces in a 
 grand manner. And he was an innovator, 
 
 162 
 
 ‘‘Moretto, in certain respects, drew better 
 than any of the Venetians. Though he did 
 not have the large Venetian manner of 
 massing figures, his heads are better con- 
 structed and the forms are better made. 
 At times, his drawing of a hand or arm 
 is as precise as if done by Ingres.” 
 Moretto had a peculiar feminine type 
 which he was fond of painting. It persists 
 through his work, usually in some angel or 
 spirit rather than in the central Madonna 
 of the composition. His Madonnas them- 
 selves are apt to be a little tame and to 
 fade, testifying to the difficulty of painting 
 a woman to look at once good and beauti- 
 ful and strong. 
 
 Living and painting in solitude, this artist 
 was one of the first individualists. He 
 does not seem in any way to have been a 
 difficult person to get along with, as was 
 Michel Angelo. On the other hand, his 
 childlike piety is mentioned. Apparentlyhe 
 worked in a sad sincerity, and his works 
 are individual simply because of the innate 
 power and originality of the man. It is told 
 that he was accustomed, when he had a 
 highly important subject, such as the 
 ‘Virgin Mother,”’ to prepare himself for the 
 painting by prayer and fasting. 
 
MARY MAGDALEN AT THE SAVIOUR’S FEET 
 
 
 
 Brescia 
 
 Santa Maria in Calchera, 
 
 (1498-1555) 
 
 MORETTO 
 John XII 
 
 _——_ =~ 
 
HIPPOLYTE FLANDRIN 
 
 O less a painter than the 
 4 Franco-Dutch master, Ary 
 A Scheffer, on visiting the studio 
 ap of Hippolyte Flandrin in Paris 
 aa4 and seeing his newly painted 
 “Christ Blesses Little Children,’ laying 
 aside his own renown, and his years of 
 success, cried to the young painter, ‘‘Ah, 
 if I could only follow the road that you 
 are taking, with the same sureness. Why 
 
 
 
 Encouraged by his master, Flandrin be- 
 gan painting a picture to compete for the 
 Prix de Rome of 1832, having been un- 
 successful in the same attempt a year 
 earlier, and was entered fifth on the list. 
 During the few months allotted him to 
 finish the picture, the young artist was 
 stricken with cholera, and when he was 
 able to resume painting half the allotted 
 time had expired. Nevertheless, he man- 
 
 did not I have, as 
 you do, the lessons 
 of Ingres—those les- 
 sons that there is no 
 longer time for me to 
 enjoy!”’ 
 
 Flandrin, esteemed as 
 the greatest French 
 religious painter since 
 Le Sueur, was the 
 second of three 
 brothers, who all de- 
 voted themselves to 
 painting. During his 
 childhood in Lyons, 
 France, and until well 
 along into youth he 
 manifested no other 
 artistic inclination 
 than a very lively 
 
 HRIST Blesses Little Children’ is a 
 
 painting that is full of grace and 
 charm—the divine grace of the Saviour 
 who adjured his disciples to ‘Suffer little 
 children, and forbid them not, to come 
 unto Me; for of such is the kingdom of 
 heaven.” The scene is on the. shore of 
 Galilee beyond Jordan, where Jesus was 
 followed by a great multitude, including 
 the Pharisees who were bent on tempting 
 Him. It was while He was addressing 
 the multitude that the children were 
 brought to Him for His blessing, to the 
 displeasure of the disciples at having His 
 discourse interrupted. The benign ex- 
 pression of the Saviour and the trusting, 
 
 aged to finish the pic- 
 ture, and it won the 
 coveted prize which, 
 incidentally, was the 
 first one to be award- 
 ed to a pupil of In- 
 gres. Flandrin was 
 accorded a_ public 
 ovation on visiting 
 Lyons, en route to 
 Rome. 
 
 The canvases that 
 Flandrin sent from 
 Rome to Paris during 
 the time he spent in 
 Italy created some- 
 thing ofa furor. One 
 in particular that he 
 had started painting 
 in Rome and brought 
 
 taste for uniforms, 
 accoutrements and 
 the events of mili- 
 tary life, whether in the field or in garrison. 
 “He and his brothers never tired of watch- 
 ing parades or soldiers at drill; and at 
 night, on coming home, they would busy 
 themselves sketching the fascinating mar- 
 tial sights they had witnessed during the 
 day.’ Asa practical result, these military 
 
 sketches gained for them such a local | 
 
 reputation that a sculptor named Foya- 
 tier, being in Lyons in 1821, welcomed the 
 lads into his studio. Hippolyte was then 
 eleven years of age. 
 
 Practicing thrift in every possible way, 
 saving every sou that he could accumulate 
 by making sketches for lithographers, and 
 other “pot boilers,’ Hippolyte finally 
 found himself in position to go to Paris 
 and become a pupil of Ingres. Those who 
 knew Flandrin at the time have the mem-' 
 ory of a young man ‘“‘whose expression 
 was dreamy and of a sweetness of mys- 
 ticism, and whose speech was always 
 quiet and reserved.” 
 
 164 
 
 adoring attitudes of the children combine 
 to give this picture its deserved reputation. 
 
 back with him to 
 finish in Paris, was 
 his ‘Christ Blesses 
 Little Children.” First exhibited at the 
 Paris Salon of 1839, it was highly praised 
 not only by the critics, but by the artists 
 who were then at the head of the French 
 school of painting. Flandrin was the 
 French counterpart of the German Naz- 
 arenes, none of whom is regarded by 
 Muther as his equal. His was a period 
 wherein the antique in art had become so 
 monotonous that people longed for variety 
 of color again. Flandrin himself believed 
 that ‘“‘the finest stream of life only issues 
 from the streams of art and religion when 
 they flow in company.” He valued the 
 older painters ‘‘because they had made 
 painting the true handmaid of religion.” 
 He was made an officer of the Legion of 
 Honor and a member of the French Academy 
 in 1853. During a visit to Rome in 1864 
 he fell a victim to smallpox, died after a 
 brief illness, and was buried in the Paris 
 Church of Saint-Germain des Pres, which 
 his art had adorned. 
 

 
 CHRIST BLESSING LITTLE CHILDREN 
 
 HIPPOLYTE FLANDRIN (1809-1864) Courtesy Maison Ad. Braun & Cie. 
 Matt. XIX, 13, Mark X, 14, Luke XVIII, 16 
 
CHARLES LE BRUN 
 
 ~@HARLES LE BRUN was one 
 
 YH oR of the most precocious painters 
 =) 
 
 
 
 that ever lived. At the age 
 of thirteen he was admitted 
 into the studio of Francois 
 Perrier, who was one of the foremost 
 artists of France in the early part of the 
 seventeenth century. While he was study- 
 ing with Perrier, Le Brun painted por- 
 traits of his father and of his uncle, and 
 
 — 
 
 atmosphere of France had proved dis- 
 couraging. In Rome the younger painter 
 seems to have continued his association 
 with Poussin for some time. 
 
 An interesting story is told about a pic- 
 ture of his entitled ‘‘Horatius Cocles De- 
 fending the Bridge.’’ It had been shown 
 at a féte in Rome; the name of the painter 
 being withheld, but everyone believed it to 
 be by Poussin and complimented him on 
 
 made a pen-drawing 
 of Louis XIII on 
 horseback. His 
 father, a mediocre 
 sculptor, whose pa- 
 tron at the time was 
 a French Minister of 
 State named Seguier, 
 showed this drawing 
 to M. Seguier and the 
 latter was so im- 
 pressed by the talent 
 it displayed that he 
 placed the young ar- 
 tist under Simon 
 Vouet who, in the ab- 
 sence of Nicolas Pous- 
 sin in Rome, was re- 
 garded as the first 
 painter of France. Le 
 Brun was then fifteen 
 years of age. 
 
 When shortly there- 
 
 O* the many pictures that have been 
 painted of “Christ Entering Jerusa- 
 lem,” this one by the French master, 
 Le Brun, painted more than two centuries 
 ago, is still regarded as a masterpiece of 
 pictorial art. Observe with what fidelity 
 the artist has followed the scriptural text: 
 “And they brought the ass, and the colt 
 .. and they set Him thereon. And a 
 very great multitude spread their gar- 
 ments in the way; others cut down 
 branches from the trees, and. strewed 
 them in the way.’’ Considering the num- 
 ber of figures assembled in this picture, 
 their management is admirable in detail. 
 Clearly discernible are certain of the dis- 
 ciples whose devout attitude toward the 
 Master is designed to inspire reverence in 
 the throng thatattended him into Jerusalem. 
 
 it. Knowing nothing 
 about the _ picture, 
 Poussin was _ per- 
 plexed. One day 
 Le Brun _ suggested 
 that they go together 
 and see this myste- 
 rious canvas, evi- 
 dently done by an 
 imitator. Gazing at 
 the picture, Poussin 
 strongly expressed his 
 resentment, but when 
 Le Brun _ confessed 
 that he was the paint- 
 er, Poussin was molli- 
 fied, and warmly con- 
 gratulated his young 
 disciple. 
 
 After four years in 
 Rome, Le Brun re- 
 turned to Paris, where 
 he was employed by 
 
 after he quarrelled 
 
 with Vouet, the boy prodigy initiated a 
 succession of quarrels that make his biog- 
 raphy a catalogue of conflict. Of a violently 
 ambitious nature, and conscious of his 
 superiority to his contemporaries, except- 
 ing possibly Poussin, whose pupil he was 
 to be for an important period in his de- 
 velopment, he was constantly assaulting 
 someone and inviting assault. Parting 
 company with Vouet, Le Brun painted 
 an allegory in glorification of the great 
 Cardinal Richelieu, who was so taken with 
 the work that he ordered three pictures 
 from Le Brun, and obtained a royal au- 
 dience for the impetuous young artist. 
 Le Brun was still under nineteen years of 
 age when he was appointed painter to 
 Louis XIII of France. 
 
 In his twenty-third year Le Brun, receiving 
 a pension from the royal exchequer, set out 
 for Rome in company with his master 
 Nicolas Poussin, to whom the artistic 
 
 166 
 
 the French Minister 
 of Finance, Fouquet, who gave the painter 
 a pension of 12,000 livres. 
 Colbert, succeeding Fouquet, recognized Le 
 Brun’s ability for organization, and together 
 they founded the Academy of Painting and 
 Sculpture, which placed him in a domi- 
 nating position—one which he had long 
 sought. Later, in 1660, these two men 
 founded the famous Gobelin Studios, which 
 at first made not only tapestries but all kinds 
 of furniture needed for the royal palaces. 
 In these two dominating positions Le Brun 
 exerted great influence over the art of his 
 period, and his pompous and emphatic 
 talent was evident in the art of the coun- 
 try long after his death. 
 From 1662, all of the work in the royal 
 palaces was executed under Le Brun’s di- 
 rection. He finished the decoration of the 
 grand staircase at the Palace of Versailles, 
 the Gallery of Apollo in the Louvre and 
 other important works, himself. 
 
THE ENTRY OF CHRIST INTO JERUSALEM 
 
 
 
 CHARLES LE BRUN (1619-1690) Courtesy Maison Ad. Braun & Cie. 
 Matthew XXI, John XII Louvre, Paris 
 
HERMANN PRELL 
 
 HILE a boy in his teens 
 
 4 Hermann Prell drew sur- 
 reptitiously, in the late night 
 
 oN hours after his father had 
 gone to bed, a battle picture 
 
 that contained upward of three hundred 
 figures, and sent it to the German painter, 
 Wilhelm von Kaulbach, who at that time 
 was enjoying great popularity, with a 
 request for his opinion. Kaulbach gave it 
 
 : 
 
 
 
 Prell is by no means a dexterous master of 
 technique. The world will never say of his 
 pictures, “‘What deftness!’’ but rather, 
 ‘What insight!’’ He struggles with color 
 like Millet. There is a certain want of ease 
 in his works. They are sometimes clumsy 
 and labored, harsh and hard. A brilliant 
 conversationalist and a man of mobile and 
 highly strung nature, Prell possesses that 
 other quality which in art stands higher 
 
 in a terse but cordial 
 sentence, ‘‘Become a 
 painter.”’ 
 
 Forthwith young 
 Prell, who was born 
 in Leipzig, Germany, 
 in 1854, of Rhenish 
 parentage, entered the 
 Academy at Dresden 
 at eighteen. It was 
 at a time when art 
 was passing through 
 a period of transition 
 in Germany, from 
 classicism to realism 
 and it was not until 
 chance brought to his 
 attention a painting 
 by Carl Giissow that 
 Prell began to find 
 himself as a painter of 
 
 RIM realism and a rare imaginative 
 
 quality characterize Prell’s ‘Con- 
 spiracy of Judas,” which is no less distin- 
 guished for its landscape than for the 
 three foreground figures of Judas Iscariot 
 and the two chief priests with whom he is 
 bargaining. It is not in Jerusalem, but 
 outside the city that the dark deed is pic- 
 tured. St. Matthew simply says, “Judas 
 Iscariot went unto the chief priests, and 
 said unto them, What will ye give me, and 
 I will deliver Him unto you? And they 
 covenanted with him for thirty pieces of 
 silver.”’ Judas is shown struggling with 
 his conscience, nervously pulling his beard, 
 while one of the priests hands forth the 
 money. The other priest is reassuring 
 Judas as to the consequence of the deed. 
 
 than the finest virtu- 
 osity: he has honesty 
 and the courage of his 
 convictions. Looking 
 at his works, it is 
 impossible to imagine 
 that he could or would 
 have painted any- 
 thing different from 
 what, as a matter of 
 fact, he has painted. 
 In 1880 Prell returned 
 from Italy to Berlin. 
 Not long afterwards, 
 while on a sketching 
 trip in the Riesenge- 
 birge, taken so that 
 he could paint in the 
 open air, he conceived 
 the idea of what was 
 to be a masterpiece 
 
 power and distinction. 
 
 Equipped with a healthy feeling for reality, 
 Giissow approached nature in a sturdy and 
 robust fashion that inaugurated for a brief 
 period in Berlin an era of yellow kerchiefs 
 and black finger-nails, and on the strength 
 of them was exalted by the critics as a 
 pioneer of realism or else anathematized, 
 according to their aesthetic creed. From 
 him Prell acquired a rugged method of 
 painting muscles and flesh and clothes of 
 many colors, and of setting green beside 
 red and red beside yellow with a new and 
 startling effect. 
 
 His artistic development was interrupted 
 in 1875 by the German compulsory military 
 service law, and he was forced to put aside 
 his painting and serve with the Saxon 
 cavalry for a year. 
 
 Thereafter his progress as a painter was 
 rapid, and he soon realized that mural 
 painting was the medium of his best and 
 strongest expression. By the time he first 
 visited Rome, in 1879, studio painting had 
 become impossible to him. 
 
 168 
 
 of religious painting. , 
 One evening, as he was climbing a hill- 
 road to his lodging, carrying his paint- 
 ing kit and tired after sketching all day, he 
 suddenly saw the great eye of the full moon 
 appear over the crest of a hill, as though to 
 spy some secret and sinister deed. The 
 grim countryside was an appropriate set- 
 ting for some shocking act, and as Prell the 
 next morning made a sketch of the land- 
 scape, with this in mind, he introduced the 
 figures of Judas, and the chief priests per- 
 suading him to the betrayal. The impres- 
 sion thus caught was so strong that, three 
 years later, when he finished the picture, 
 the landscape and atmosphere were slightly 
 altered. It is hard to say which is the more 
 impressive, the landscape or the figures. 
 Early in his reign, the ex-Kaiser Wilhelm II 
 took notice of Prell, who in 1889 painted a 
 portrait of him in the uniform of a German 
 admiral, for which the Kaiser posed with 
 patience unusual to him. Subsequently 
 Prell painted three additional portraits of 
 the Prussian war lord. 
 
_—— 
 
 ; 
 a 
 
 
 
 rr = 
 
 . 
 
 
 
 a 
 
 
 
 HERMANN PRELL (1854- 
 Matt. XXVI 
 
 
 
 ) 
 
 
 
 From a Perry Picture 
 
LEONARDO DA VINCI 
 
 EVER before or since in the 
 annals of the human race 
 H has the same passionate de- 
 sire for knowledge been com- 
 
 aad bined with the same ardent 
 love of beauty, nor have artistic and 
 scientific powers been united in the same 
 degree as they were in Leonardo da Vinci. 
 Painting was only one manifestation of 
 his genius. As sculptor, architect and en- 
 gineer alike he was 
 
 
 
 illustrious in his day; V ERILY I say unto you that one of you 
 shall betray Me.” 
 
 as a philosopher and 
 man of science he has 
 
 I do not think I can express the face of a 
 man who could resolve to betray his Mas- 
 ter, after having received so many bene- 
 fits. But to save time,’’ added Leonardo, 
 “T will, in this case, seek no further; but 
 for want of a better idea I will put in the 
 head of the Prior.”’ The amused Duke 
 advised the Prior to let Leonardo finish the 
 work at his pleasure. 
 
 Nevertheless was Leonardo constantly ac- 
 cused of indolence. 
 Often he made vast 
 preparations and ac- 
 
 This is the mo- complished nothing. 
 
 been justly hailed as 
 the precursor of Gali- 
 leo, of Bacon and of 
 Descartes. Alexander 
 von Humboldt pro- 
 claimed him to be the 
 greatest physicist of 
 the fifteenth century, 
 the one man of his 
 age who “‘united a re- 
 markable knowledge 
 of mathematics with 
 the most admirable 
 intuition of nature’’; 
 and scholars of this 
 day recognize in him, 
 as did Hallam, “a 
 thinker who antici- 
 pated the grander 
 discoveries of modern 
 science.”’ 
 
 ment in Biblical history that Leonardo da 
 Vinci has dramatically re-created in “‘The 
 Last Supper.” Judas (third on the Sa- 
 viour’s right) is guiltily withdrawing the 
 hand extended to the dish, while behind 
 his isolated figure Peter passionately con- 
 sults the beloved disciple John. On the 
 other side, beyond the beckoning Thomas 
 and the amazed apostle James, is the 
 beautiful figure of Philip, whose gesture 
 eloquently speaks to us, “Lord, Thou 
 knowest Iam not he!”’ This, Leonardo’s 
 masterpiece, has so stamped itself upon 
 the imagination of the world that the 
 scene can no longer be visualized in any 
 other fashion. It is, like Hamlet, a fin- 
 ished creation. What remains of the pic- 
 ture, however, is but the pale ghost of 
 what it was as originally painted. 
 
 As John Addington 
 Symonds notes, ‘‘He 
 set before himself 
 aims infinite instead 
 of finite. His designs 
 of wings to fly with 
 symbolize his whole 
 endeavor. He be- 
 lieved in solving the 
 insoluble.”’ 
 
 To make himself rich 
 or famous seems. 
 never to have con- 
 cerned this colossus. 
 As Theophile Gautier 
 says, ‘‘He labored 
 only to prove to him- 
 self that he was su- 
 perior.”? Having cre- 
 ated the one most 
 beautiful of portraits, 
 
 At an early age the 
 
 fame of Leonardo was abroad in Italy, 
 and nobles of state vied with princes of 
 the church in commanding his services. 
 A prodigious worker on occasion and pos- 
 sessed of marvellous facility, Leonardo 
 was, nevertheless, not a quick maker of 
 masterpieces. In painting “The Last 
 Supper,”’ for instance, his procrastination 
 so aggravated the Prior that the Duke 
 Lodovico Sforza was besought to repri- 
 mand the artist for ‘‘“mooning about’’ in- 
 stead of getting on with the work. To 
 his remonstrance Leonardo gently ex- 
 plained how necessary it was for artists to 
 think things out before beginning to paint. 
 “Two heads remain to be done,”’ he said. 
 “T feel unable to conceive the beauty of 
 the celestial grace that must have been 
 incarnate in Our Lord. The other head 
 which causes me thought is that of Judas. 
 
 170 
 
 the one most beautiful 
 picture, the one most beautiful fresco, the 
 one most beautiful cartoon, he was con- 
 tent, and gave his mind to other things. 
 He manufactured all the materials he used, 
 even to his varnishes and colors. He in- 
 vented many serviceable instruments that 
 are still in use, like the saws employed to- 
 day at the Carrara marble quarries. He 
 designed breech-loading cannon, and dem- 
 onstrated the advantages of conical bul- 
 lets. He invented the camera obscura, 
 forestalled Newton and Copernicus in see- 
 ing that the universe was held together by 
 the attraction of gravitation, and was the 
 first to observe that the tides obey the 
 moon. 
 At the same time, Leonardo, in his ad- 
 vancing age, turned from his native Italy to 
 France for recognition and found a patron 
 in King Francis I, in whose arms he died. 
 
THE LAST SUPPER 
 
 
 
 apn hope 
 ne 2 : 5 
 
 
 
 
 
 Courtesy Maison Ad. Braun & Cie. 
 Santa Maria delle Grazie, Milan 
 
 (1452-1519) 
 V, 18, Luke XXII, 19 
 
 LEONARDO DA VINCI 
 Matt. XXVI, 26, Mark XI 
 
FORD MAbDox BROWN 
 
 maSwJORD MADOX BROWN, one 
 of whose distinctions is to have 
 had as a pupil Dante Gabriel 
 Rossetti, was never a member 
 S of the Fre-Raphaelite Brother- 
 hood, the aims and purposes of which are 
 set forth on page 96, but he was so much 
 in sympathy with them and his art was so 
 akin to their own that he has become 
 identified with that phase of English paint- 
 
 
 
 Rembrandt, Titian and Tintoretto, were 
 usually brown in tone, but this brownness 
 was often due, not only to the pigments 
 originally used by the masters, but also to 
 the grime of centuries, to the “tone of 
 time.’’ Seeking to be praised as ‘“‘old 
 masters’’ in their own time, painters used 
 artificial means to make their pictures look 
 brown and give them a Rembrandtesque 
 shadow. Madox Brown reversed the prac- 
 
 ing. 
 
 Madox Brown was 
 six years the senior 
 of Holman Hunt, and 
 was born in Calais, 
 France, at a time 
 when David and the 
 Classicists had im- 
 posed a new artistic 
 idealon France. From 
 childhood, in fact, he 
 was conversant with 
 continental art move- 
 ments—as the major- 
 ity of English paint- 
 ers were not— and 
 after studying at 
 
 S T. JOHN tells us that Jesus, rising 
 from supper, “laid aside his garments,” 
 and “took a towel and girded himself,” 
 and ‘‘poured water into a basin, and be- 
 gan to wash the disciples’ feet and to 
 wipe them with the towel wherewith he 
 was girded.”’ Then Peter said, ‘Lord, 
 dost thou wash my feet? ... Thou shalt 
 never wash my feet.” The humility of 
 Jesus, and the veneration implied in the 
 words of Peter, are splendidly and sympa- 
 thetically rendered in this picture. Judas 
 Iscariot is represented lacing up his san- 
 dals, after his feet have been washed. 
 
 tice by painting his 
 pictures on a white 
 ground, and immedi- 
 ately his color became 
 brighter and truer to 
 Nature. 
 
 One of his most im- 
 portant works—cer- 
 tainly his most im- 
 portant religious pic- 
 ture—was begun late 
 in 1851 and occupied 
 a good part of the 
 following year. It is 
 his ‘‘Christ Washing 
 Peter’s Feet.’” Fred- 
 erick Shields tells of 
 
 Bruges, Ghent and 
 
 Antwerp, he worked for three years in 
 Paris. His desire then was to become a 
 painter of large historical pictures, and in 
 1844 he went to England to compete for 
 a commission to decorate Westminster 
 Hall. Failing in this, he proceeded to 
 Rome and became acquainted with two 
 curious German painters named Cornelius 
 and Overbeck. Leading semi-monastic 
 lives and deliberately cultivating the devo- 
 tional frame of mind of the Italian mas- 
 ters who preceded Raphael, they are 
 credited with being the first “‘Pre-Raphael- 
 ites.” 
 
 Looking at it as they did, Madox Brown 
 perceived that nature was far brighter 
 than it appeared to be in the pictures of 
 his British contemporaries. Since the time 
 of Reynolds, Sir George Beaumont’s dic- 
 tum that a good picture must be a brown 
 picture had been the general opinion, and 
 no English figure painters made any se- 
 rious stand against it till Ford Madox 
 Brown and the Pre-Raphaelites began to 
 exhibit. 
 
 The explanation of this brown-picture cult 
 is simple. Painters had observed that the 
 pictures by the old masters, such as 
 
 172 
 
 attending an exhibi- 
 tion of paintings, including many works 
 of the Pre-Raphaelites at Manchester, 
 England, in 1857, when “‘hung at the very 
 roof was a picture of such power that, 
 slighted as it had been by the judges and 
 unobserved by the general public, it held 
 me riveted—large and simple in the com- 
 position of its masses as Giotto—brilliant 
 and forcible, yet true and refined in its 
 color and lighting, and wonderful in its 
 grasp of human character and passion. 
 ... Permanently confirmed was my first 
 impression that, among all the English pic- 
 tures of sacred subjects there, it alone was 
 worthy to rank with the great Italians.” 
 Apart from the intrinsic merit of the pic- 
 ture in question, it is of historic interest 
 in that it contains portraits of several 
 members of the Pre-Raphaelites circle. The 
 head of Christ is declared to be a literal 
 transcript of F. G. Stephens. Of the 
 Apostles, omitting Judas, the first on the 
 left is William M. Rossetti, brother of 
 Dante Gabriel Rossetti; the second, Hol- 
 man Hunt; the fourth, Holman Hunt, Sr.; 
 the fifth, C. B. Cayley; the sixth, Dante 
 Gabriel Rossetti; and the seventh is be- 
 lieved to be Christina Rossetti, as St. John. 
 
CHRIST WASHING PETER’S FEET 
 
 
 
 ab 
 
 FORD MADOX BROWN (1821-1893) Courtesy Maison Ad. Braun & Cie. 
 John XIII, 6 
 
ANTHONY VAN DYCK 
 
 Roe NTHONY VAN DYCK, born 
 ; at Antwerp in 1599, became 
 
 
 
 a painter~ apprentice when 
 but ten years old, at fifteen 
 entered the studio of Peter 
 
 YING 
 
 Paul Rubens, and at nineteen was a mem- 
 ber of the Guild of Antwerp painters, an 
 honor without precedent in the case of so 
 
 of Charles I at Whitehall, London, and so 
 pleased that monarch with a large picture 
 of the royal family, now in the Gallery of 
 Windsor, that his fortune was made. He 
 was appointed painter to the Court, re- 
 ceived the honor of knighthood, and was 
 granted an annuity of 200 pounds sterling. 
 Horace Walpole records that Van Dyck 
 
 young an artist. 
 shown by the 
 painted at this early 
 stage of his career, 
 notably his “‘Betrayal 
 of Jesus,’ reproduced 
 here. 
 
 Incident to his associ- 
 ation with Rubens, 
 Van Dyck and his 
 fellow students are 
 said on one occasion 
 to have entered the 
 master’s painting 
 room during his ab- 
 sence: and to have 
 inadvertently jostled 
 and injured Rubens’ 
 great ‘‘Descent from 
 the Cross,’’ in course 
 of completion. They 
 were in consternation. 
 Van Dyck was per- 
 
 His precocity is further 
 recognized masterpieces 
 
 YAn DYCK’S “The Betrayal of Jesus’’ 
 at Madrid is generally agreed by 
 critics and connoisseurs to be the most 
 remarkable picture of the betrayal that 
 has ever been painted. It also is con- 
 sidered by many to be Van Dyck’s master- 
 piece. The ferocity of St. Peter, as de- 
 picted, is alive with reality. With a 
 terrific blow he has hewn down Malchus, 
 who lies on the ground screaming in 
 agony, and has dropped his heavy lantern. 
 Christ stands between two old gnarled 
 olive trees, from the boughs of which the 
 glaring light has frightened an owl. Those 
 who have seized Him have fierce and 
 brutal faces, but His own is calm, radiant, 
 beautiful, with the assurance of divinity. 
 
 was sumptuously lodged at Blackfriars, 
 with a summer residence placed at his 
 
 disposal in the coun- 
 try, and both the 
 king and queen em- 
 ployed him _ con- 
 stantly. Nearly forty 
 portraits of Charles I 
 and more than thirty- 
 five of Queen Henri- 
 etta were painted by 
 Van Dyck. The 
 equestrian portraits 
 of the king at Wind- 
 sor and in the Na- 
 tional Gallery, Lon- 
 don; the full-length 
 portrait in the 
 Louvre; those of the 
 queen in the galleries 
 of Windsor, Petro- 
 grad, Dresden, and 
 several groups of the 
 
 suaded to endeavor 
 
 to remedy the injury to the picture. But 
 the keen eye of Rubens detected the work 
 of another hand, and on questioning his 
 pupils was so pleased with the frank ac- 
 knowledgment made by Van Dyck, and so 
 well satisfied with the restoration, that he 
 made no further comment on the matter. 
 The arm of the Magdalen and the throat 
 and chin of the Virgin are the parts said 
 to have been restored by Van Dyck. 
 Sojourning for a time in Genoa, Italy, 
 Van Dyck, although less than twenty-five 
 years old, painted fifty odd portraits still 
 to be seen in the Rosso Palace and in 
 Genoese galleries that are accounted among 
 his masterpieces. On his return to Ant- 
 werp he met with immediate favor and was 
 appointed painter to the Archduchess 
 Isabella. Marie de Medici, driven from 
 France, visited him in his studio; and the 
 Flemish, Spanish and French nobility 
 coveted the honor of being painted by 
 him. 
 
 Presently, he was attracted to the Court 
 
 royal children are ap- 
 proved masterpieces. With three hundred 
 and fifty of his works to point to, England 
 undoubtedly can boast of the finest collec- 
 tion of his paintings. 
 Van Dyck was at the peak of his creative 
 career at forty. From that year there is a 
 perceptible decline in the quality as well 
 as quantity of his work. In fact, the last 
 two years of his life were spent entirely in 
 travelling with his young wife, the grand- 
 daughter of Lord Ruthven. M. Guiffrey 
 states that excess of work, perhaps also 
 excess of indulgence at the table, was the 
 cause of his premature death at forty-two. 
 Posterity assigns to him a place of his 
 own nearer the first than second rank. 
 
 As Fromentin, the French critic, says: 
 
 174 
 
 “The order of precedence which should be 
 given him in the procession of great men 
 has never been exactly determined, but 
 since his death, as during his life, he seems 
 to have retained the privilege of being 
 placed near the throne, and of being a 
 distinguished presence there.” 
 
THE BETRAYAL OF JESUS 
 
 
 
 ANTHONY VAN DYCK (1599-1641) ; The Prado, Madrid 
 Matt. XXVI, 47, Mark XIV, 45, Luke XXII, 47, John XVIII, 1 
 
MICHAEL MUNKACSY 
 
 O modern painting of a religious 
 subject has enjoyed the world- 
 H wide fame of Munkd4csy’s 
 “‘Christ Before Pilate,’’ which, 
 painted in 1881, caught the 
 eye of Europe on its first exhibition in 
 Paris, was subsequently exhibited in most 
 of the European capitals and later, in 
 1886, was exhibited with equal success in 
 the leading cities of the United States. 
 Munkacsy, whose 
 real name was Michael 
 Lieb, was born at 
 Munkacs, Hungary, 
 in 1844, the son 
 of a petty official 
 who died and left 
 the boy an orphan 
 at. an early ‘age. 
 He was apprenticed 
 to a carpenter, and 
 after several years 
 of hard work and 
 privation, chance 
 threw him in the 
 way of the portrait- 
 painter Szamossy at 
 Gyula, who aided 
 and directed him in 
 the fundamentals of 
 . painting, as did also 
 the landscape painter 
 Ligeti, at Budapest, 
 whither Munk4csy 
 went in 1863. 
 
 So rapidly did Munkdacsy master his 
 art, under the direction of Szamossy, that 
 within a year the master had imparted 
 everything he knew to the pupil, who at 
 the age of eighteen was giving drawing 
 lessons himself and earning a livelihood. 
 Achieving a local triumph with a painting 
 of the entire family of a Gyula tailor, 
 young Munk4acsy was encouraged to ex- 
 hibit it in Budapest, and the Art-Union 
 bought it for eighty florins. A small 
 grant from that institution enabled him 
 to study for a year at the Academy in 
 Vienna, after which he proceeded to 
 Munich and thence to Dusseldorf. 
 
 Two years later his first important pic- 
 ture, ‘““The Last Day of a Condemned 
 Man,’’ took Paris by storm, bringing him 
 the Salon gold medal. His future was forth- 
 with assured, and in 1872 he established 
 a residence in Paris, where for several 
 
 
 
 bearing soldier. 
 
 THs famous painting illustrates the 
 
 scene described in Matthew when 
 “Jesus stood before the governor: and 
 the governor asked Him saying, Art Thou 
 the King of the Jews?. 
 unto him, Thou sayest. 
 was accused of the chief priests and 
 elders, He answered nothing.” 
 sitting in judgment, is disposed to deal 
 leniently with the accused Christ, but the 
 Jewish high priest Caiaphas, who is shown 
 exhorting Pilate, demands His death and 
 is supported by all the chief priests and 
 elders who are present. 
 passionate figures in the picture are those 
 of the Roman governor and the spear- 
 The immense popularity 
 of this picture is attributed to its dramatic 
 power and to the fact that it is a familiar 
 subject and “was painted for everybody.” 
 
 176 
 
 years he continued to depict episodes from 
 the popular life of his native country with 
 impressive truthfulness and a_ sombre, 
 blackish coloring. Munk4csy carried off 
 a second Salon medal a couple of years 
 later and simultaneously married the 
 young widow of a rich landed proprietor 
 of the Duchy of Luxemburg. 
 
 This accomplished, he entered upon a 
 new field, painting a series of charming 
 Paris interiors, in 
 which he adopted a 
 richer coloring, but 
 his most important 
 production of this 
 period was ‘“ Milton 
 Dictating Paradise 
 Lost.”” It was not, 
 however, until 1881 
 that he reached his 
 own ideal with the 
 completion of the now 
 world-famous ‘‘Christ 
 Before Pilate,’’ which 
 has been one of the 
 most discussed pic- 
 tures of recent times. 
 To paint the forty 
 personages that oc- 
 cupy the canvas, 
 which is twenty feet 
 wide by twelve and 
 a half feet high, a 
 small army of models 
 had to be kept in - 
 readiness for the painter for a year or more. 
 The size of the picture necessitated the 
 construction of a special studio, and its 
 exhibition that of a special gallery. To 
 pack it, a special arrangement was in- 
 vented. It had its own wagon, and was 
 transported in a special railway car. 
 
 In 1884 Munkdacsy painted his second 
 Biblical subject, “Christ on Calvary,’’ like 
 its predecessor replete with dramatic life, 
 treated in the light of history with ethno- 
 
 And Jesus said 
 And when He 
 
 Pilate, 
 
 The only dis- 
 
 graphic reality and supreme coloristic 
 vigor. It also was brought to America in 
 1887. His subsequent creations were of a 
 
 decorative character, for the Art-Historical 
 Museum in Vienna, and the House of 
 Parliament in Budapest. The strain and 
 disappointment connected with this work 
 brought on a mental disease, and the artist 
 passed the last three years of his life in a 
 sanitarium near Bonn, Germany. 
 
CHRIST BEFORE PILATE 
 
 
 
 MICHAEL MUNKACSY (1844-1900) Courtesy Maison Ad. Braun & Cie. 
 Matt. XXVII, 11, Mark XV, 1, Luke XXIII, 3, John XVIII, 28 John Wanamaker, Philadelphia 
 
REMBRANDT 
 
 7 SZAF the art of Rembrandt, the 
 f most illuminating and pene- 
 trating criticism that has yet 
 
 dX Yi: appeared—a _ key criticism, 
 which reconciles many confus- 
 
 ing and diverse opinions—is furnished by 
 Eugéne Fromentin. It is too long to give 
 in its entirety, but the gist of his argument 
 is that Rembrandt was two beings in one 
 —the first a trained, facile and workman- 
 like Dutch painter of 
 his own time, essen- 
 
 concerned with painting only by the help 
 of light, to draw only with light. He has 
 proved that light exists in itself, independ- 
 ent of exterior form and of coloring; and 
 that it can, by the force and variety of its 
 usage, the power of its effects, the num- 
 ber, the depth and the subtlety of the 
 ideas which it may be made to express, 
 become the principle of a new art. Life 
 he perceived in a dream, as an accent of 
 another world, which 
 renders real life al- 
 
 tially a realist; the 
 second a visionary, a 
 dreamer, an _ idealist 
 
 whose ideal was 
 light. 
 
 The first of these 
 Rembrandts, whom 
 
 Fromentin has called 
 the ‘‘exterior man,’’ 
 possessed a clear 
 mind, a _ vigorous 
 hand, and _ infallible 
 logic; was, indeed, the 
 very opposite of the 
 
 HIS picture illustrates the Roman 
 
 procurator Pilate, washing his hands 
 both literally and figuratively, after he 
 had vainly sought to turn Barabbas over 
 to the crowd, in place of Jesus of Naza- 
 reth. Finding that the Jewish mob was 
 to be appeased by none other than the 
 person of the “‘King of the Jews,” Pilate 
 ordered his page to fetch a ewer and 
 water, and the page is here shown pouring 
 the water over Pilate’s outstretched hands, 
 while a venerable court associate looks on. 
 A group of soldiers symbolizing Roman 
 power may be discerned in the background. 
 
 most cold and makes 
 it seem pale; and his 
 ideal, as in a dream, 
 pursued with closed 
 eyes, is light—the 
 nimbus around ob-. 
 jects, phosphores- 
 cence on a_ black 
 ground.”’ 
 
 What Rembrandt 
 tried to do and did 
 was to place visions 
 on canvas, giving 
 them brilliancy and 
 
 romantic genius so 
 admired by the mod- 
 ern world. Nor was this ‘exterior’? Rem- 
 brandt an inferior painter. His way of 
 seeing was thoroughly healthy, his manner 
 of painting was admirable in directness 
 and simplicity, revealing a determination 
 to make his work comprehensible and 
 veracious. His drawing makes one forget 
 his palette, but his palette forgets nothing 
 that paint is capable of expressing in the 
 Rembrandt manner. In many of his por- 
 traits there is no poetry, no idealism, and 
 yet they are so truly seen and perfectly 
 rendered as to rank among the world’s 
 masterpieces. 
 
 The other Rembrandt—the idealist, the 
 dreamer—is the one most_ generally 
 known and admired. He is recognized as 
 a consummate master of chiaroscuro— 
 and more. The meaning of the word has 
 to be stretched to signify an artist who 
 would ‘“‘conceive light outside of recognized 
 law,’ who would attach to it an extraor- 
 dinary meaning, and make great sacrifices 
 to it. If such is its signification, Rem- 
 brandt is at once defined and judged; for 
 it expresses an idea, a rare eulogy and a 
 criticism. As Fromentin says, ‘‘The whole 
 career of Rembrandt, the dreamer, is 
 
 preserving their frag- 
 ile texture, and yet to 
 do masculine and substantial work, as 
 real as any other. When this dreamer of 
 light “‘used it appropriately, when he 
 used it to express what no other painter 
 in the world has expressed, when, in a 
 word, he accosts with his dark lantern the 
 world of the marvellous, of conscience, the 
 ideal, then he has no peer, because he has 
 no equal in the art of showing the in- 
 visible.”’ 
 
 To Fromentin the principal interest of the 
 famous ‘“‘Night Watch”’ is in the fact that 
 it is to him a clear evidence of struggle— 
 a battle-ground which marks the progress 
 of the reconciliation that was. most nearly 
 effected in his later picture of “The 
 Syndics.”’ 
 
 “Hang these pictures in a very strong 
 light,’’ Rembrandt said in his youth, when 
 speaking of his ‘“‘Passion”’ series. As age 
 came upon him he kept the critics more 
 at a distance. ‘The smell of paint is not 
 good for the health,”’ we read of his saying 
 to one of a group of visitors who came too 
 close to his easel. His domestic troubles 
 served to heighten and deepen his art, and 
 perhaps his best work was done under stress 
 of circumstances. 
 
REMBRAND 
 Matthew XXVII, 24 
 
 PILATE 
 
 
 
 T VAN RIJN (1606-1669) 
 
 WASHING HIS HANDS 
 
 Metropolitan Museum of Art 
 New York City 
 
TITIAN 
 
 — 
 
 Oz 
 
 oy, 
 
 ITIAN, whose real name was 
 Tiziano Vecelli, is regarded by 
 Ruskin as “‘the greatest painter 
 who ever lived’’; and Hazlitt, 
 who would ‘enjoy Raphael’s 
 
 
 
 y, 
 
 DS 
 
 pictures in a collection to look at occasion- 
 
 ally,’ confesses that ‘‘Titian’s are the 
 only ones that I would wish to have hang- 
 ing in the same room with me for com- 
 pany.” This, of course, is superlative 
 praise; but there is 
 no division of critical 
 opinion as to Titian 
 being the greatest 
 painter of the great 
 Venetian school. 
 Living to be nearly 
 a hundred years old, 
 he was born at Pieve, 
 Cadore, in the Veéne- 
 tian Alps, in 1477,and 
 as a boy of eleven ob- 
 tained his first artis- 
 tic employment. in 
 Venice as a_house- 
 painter—not in the 
 modern sense of the 
 term, but as it was 
 understood at a time 
 when the great nobles 
 adorned their palace exteriors with fres- 
 cos. As a pupil of Giovanni Bellini, the 
 young Titian probably acquired that love 
 for color and knowledge of its effects which 
 became the predominant characteristic of 
 his art. All his life Titian appears to have 
 been favored by the great, and early in his 
 career he numbered not only dukes and 
 princes, but kings, popes and emperors 
 among his patrons and correspondents. 
 It was while he was in attendance at the 
 brilliant court of the Duke of Ferrara, in 
 1516, when he lodged in the ducal castle, 
 receiving weekly rations of ‘‘salad, salt 
 meat, oil, chestnuts, tallow candles, 
 oranges, cheese and five measures of wine,” 
 that Titian was commissioned to paint his 
 great ‘“‘Assumption of the Virgin,’’ shown 
 elsewhere in this volume. 
 
 Of his private life little is known, other 
 than that his wife died in 1530, after hav- 
 ing borne him three children—two sons, 
 one of whom was a mediocre painter, the 
 other a scapegrace, and his beautiful 
 daughter Lavinia, whom Titian has immor- 
 talized on canvas. His greatest patron, 
 
 TITIAN was sixty-six years of age when 
 he painted his great “Ecce Homo’’. 
 The surface of this picture of Christ be- 
 fore the people sings with color. In its dis- 
 passionateness, however, it becomes less 
 an expression of the submission of Christ 
 than an exaltation of the imperial power 
 that has Him in charge and for the mob that 
 cries for His blood. The architectural 
 surroundings are magnificent. 
 wonderful details, as in the howling boy 
 at the left and the white form of a girl 
 caught in the throng. Her sudden appari- 
 tion as an element of relief and mystery 
 anticipates by nearly a century a similar 
 device in Rembrandt’s “Night Watch.” 
 
 180 
 
 the Emperor Charles V, was acquired about 
 that time, and we soon hear of him being 
 created a Count Palatine of the Empire, 
 likewise a Knight of the Golden Spur, with 
 many privileges, one of which was the right 
 of entrance to the Imperial Court at any 
 time. Presently he was granted a pension 
 which seems not to have been paid for 
 many years, although he “‘bombarded the 
 imperial treasury with letters.’”’ Much of Ti- 
 tian’s work seems to 
 have been paid for in 
 this unsatisfactory 
 manner, occasioning 
 him many heartburn- 
 ings and disappoint- 
 ments, although _his- 
 tory records him the 
 most fortunate paint- 
 er who ever lived. 
 Titian received sev- 
 eral invitations to 
 Rome, but he does 
 not appear to have 
 gone there until he 
 was nearly seventy, 
 when he was received 
 with great distinction 
 by Pope Paul III. 
 He lodged in the 
 Belvidere; and Vasari, with whom he had 
 become acquainted in Venice, undertook to 
 show him the sights of the city. He met 
 Michel Angelo, whose good opinion of his 
 work Vasari has reported. 
 
 We next hear of him crossing the Alps to 
 join Charles V at Augsburg. Describing 
 the scene of his departure from Venice, a 
 biographer recounts how “every one tried 
 to gain possession of some small work of 
 his, thinking that henceforth he would not 
 deign to paint for any one but the Em- 
 peror.”’ At Augsburg he not only painted 
 the fine portrait of Charles V on the field 
 of Muhlberg, but portraits of many princely 
 personages. The chief object of his call to 
 Augsburg, however, was to paint the 
 portrait of Philip II of Spain. His industry 
 to the very last was amazing. Vasari found 
 him as late as 1566 with the brushes still in 
 his hand; and even in 1574, when he was 
 ninety-seven years of age, he was able to 
 receive Henry III of France with his wonted 
 magnificence. In his ninety-ninth year 
 Titian fell a victim to the plague which 
 desolated Venice in 1576. 
 
 There are 
 
ECCE HOoOMmMo 
 
 
 
 TITIAN (1477-1576) Courtesy Maison Ad. Braun & Cie. 
 John XIX, 5 Imperial Gallery, Vienna 
 
JEAN BERAUD 
 
 Jean Béraud, artistic interpreter 
 
 Ni of Parisian elegance, who has 
 
 found material for numerous 
 
 a pictures in the blaze of the 
 
 theatres, the naked shoulders of ballet-girls, 
 
 the dress-coats of old gentlemen, the 
 
 evening humor of the boulevards or the 
 
 bustle of Monte Carlo, should have painted 
 
 the most provocative and impressive 
 “Road to Calvary”’ 
 
 T is an odd commentary that - 
 
 were content with the emblem of “Isaac, 
 who bore the wood as one carries a cross on 
 his shoulders.’”’ There is not the least 
 trace of the so-called ‘‘Stations of the Cross’”’ 
 in the early times. They seem to have 
 originated with Martin K6tzel, of Niirem- 
 berg, no earlier than 1477. He had visited 
 Jerusalem, and what is traditionally known 
 as the Via Dolorosa, and he commissioned 
 Adam Kraft, a friend of Diirer, to paint 
 
 seven scenes, ending 
 
 done in recent time. DISAVOWING any intention of painting i a crucifixion, at 
 For all his choice a scene that was enacted in Jerusalem Places on the road 
 of gayer subjects, two thousand years ago, Jean Béraud has, etween his house and 
 Béraud, a pupil of on the other hand painted a “Road to the: Chur ees 
 Léon Bonnat, was a & John. The seven 
 
 spiritual descendant 
 of Gustave Courbet, 
 and an art brother of 
 Alfred Stevens. 
 Essentially Béraud 
 has believed realism 
 to be democratic art, 
 which “‘can only exist 
 by the representation 
 of things which the 
 artist can see and 
 handle. For painting 
 is an entirely physical 
 language, and an ab- 
 stract, invisible, non- 
 existent object does 
 not come within its 
 province. Grand 
 painting stands in contradiction to our 
 social conditions, and most ecclesiastical 
 painting in contradiction to the spirit of the 
 century. It is nonsensical for painters to 
 dish up themes in which they have no 
 belief, themes which could only have 
 flourished in some epoch other than our 
 own. Human passions, motives and emo- 
 tions, however, do not change with the 
 passing centuries. In depicting Christ on 
 the path to Calvary I have not imagined a 
 scene enacted precisely two thousand years 
 ago, but such a scene as might be enacted 
 today.” 
 
 Apropos of this great Biblical subject, 
 Canon Farrar suggests that love of horror 
 led the Renaissance painters to aggravate 
 and exaggerate every incident they did not 
 invent, among them, what are known 
 as ‘‘The Stations of the Cross.’’ Early 
 Christians, when they had come to counte- 
 nance the representation of such scenes, 
 
 lamented him.” 
 
 Calvary” as it would appear if the events 
 had occurred today in France. 
 illustrates St. Luke XXIII, 27: “And there 
 followed him a great company of people, 
 and of women, which also bewailed and 
 The _ sinister-looking 
 figure just ahead of Christ in this imagina- 
 tive work is that of Ignorance, and immedi- 
 ately behind Him are figures symbolizing 
 Intolerance, Violence and Hate. 
 ionably gowned woman laughs; her poorer 
 but more merciful sisters weep. A phani- 
 saical professor points to Christ as to a 
 target to be stoned by his boy pupils, as 
 contrasted with a group of schoolgirls 
 kneeling reverently in the foreground. 
 
 182 
 
 original stations were: 
 1. Christ bearing the 
 cross. 2. He falls. 
 3. He meets the Vir- 
 gin. 4. He falls again. 
 5. St. Veronica lends 
 Him the _ handker- 
 chief. 6. He falls a 
 third time. 7. The 
 entombment. 
 
 In the earlier repre- 
 sentations (as in the 
 Catacombs) the cross 
 is a mere symbol. It 
 becomes in later pic- 
 tures a monstrous and 
 impossible structure 
 which no man could 
 ever carry. The Gospels do not say that 
 Jesus fell or fainted under the cross at all. 
 Probably, as Canon Farrar further says, 
 “the only reason why Simon of Cyrene was 
 made to bear it, was because Jesus was too 
 much weakened by long hours of insult and 
 agony to keep pace with the Roman sol- 
 diers—to whom a crucifixion was an every- 
 day event. The Gospels state simply that 
 Christ was ‘led away’ to be crucified. The 
 notion of His being dragged by ropes, and 
 beaten along, is a wholly apocryphal 
 invention.” 
 
 Of two pictures of the subject painted by 
 Béraud,; the one we reproduce was exhibited 
 in the Paris Salon of 1912. Béraud was 
 born in St. Petersburg, now Petrograd, 
 Russia, of French parentage, in 1849. 
 It was upon the conclusion of the 
 Franco-Prussian War, in which he served 
 with distinction, that he entered the 
 atelier of Bonnat, his one and only master. 
 
 The artist 
 
 A fash- 
 
THE ROAD TO CALVARY 
 
 Recs 
 
 
 
 ae 
 
 
 
 JEAN BERAUD (1849- ) Courtesy Maison Ad. Braun & Cie. 
 
 Matt. XXVII, 31, Mark XV, 20, Luke XXIII, 26, John XIX, 17 
 
 Salon of 1912 
 
EL GRECO 
 
 O longer ago than in the eigh- 
 teen eighties, apart from a 
 H most restricted group’ of 
 painters in Paris, El Greco 
 aad (The Greek) was hardly more 
 _ than a name even to historians of art. To- 
 day he is everywhere regarded as one of 
 the greatest artists of all time, having 
 achieved the high honor of a classification 
 and is called the ‘‘supreme example of the 
 baroque in painting.”’ 
 Domenico  Theoto- 
 copuli, which was his 
 real name, was born 
 of Greek parents on 
 the island of Crete in 
 1545, went to Venice 
 as a young man of 
 twenty-five and is 
 thought to have 
 worked there for a 
 time under Titian. 
 About 1575 he mi- 
 grated to Spain: and 
 settled at Toledo, 
 where he became af- 
 fected by the great re- 
 ligious fervor which 
 was then agitating 
 that country. The 
 first work of importance on which he was 
 engaged in Spain seems to have been a 
 religious picture for the Cathedral of 
 Toledo, then in course of construction and 
 of which he was for a time the architect. 
 In his capacity of architect he designed and 
 carved the retable in which the picture 
 . was hung and for which he was paid 182 
 ducats more than for the picture itself. 
 Indeed, El Greco in his lifetime was more 
 highly esteemed as an architect and sculp- 
 tor than as a painter, and designed several 
 churches and admirable monuments. His 
 most important structure was the church 
 and monastery of the Bernardine monks 
 at San Domenico di Silvos, of which he 
 executed the whole—architecture, sculp- 
 ture and painting. 
 El Greco seemed to take delight in dis- 
 torting natural forms. There is violent 
 movement in his compositions, a strident 
 boldness in his coloring. Something sav- 
 age, brutal even, characterizes his art and, 
 as Dr. Muther notes, “‘his deep earnest- 
 ness gives grandeur to terrible things.” 
 By a curious coincidence the tercen- 
 
 
 
 wounded side, 
 
 N its imaginative appeal this depic- 
 
 tion of “Christ on the Cross’ is a 
 supreme work of art. 
 Christ that El Greco paints, but a curt- 
 ously emaciated figure, over whose head 
 is a tablet bearing the ironical inscription 
 which is translated to read, “‘This is Jesus 
 the King of the Jews.” 
 in the picture are using their hands to 
 catch the blood that streams from the 
 and from the impaled 
 hands and feet of the Saviour. 
 foot of the cross are the two Marys, near 
 whom is Joseph of Arimathea, the rich man 
 who begged and obtained the body of Jesus 
 for burial “in his own new tomb.” 
 
 184 
 
 tenary of El Greco was celebrated in 1914, 
 when the whole of Europe was in turmoil 
 and men were hating and thinking of 
 violence. To a _ generation excited by 
 war the suppressed violence of E] Greco’s 
 pictures was irresistibly attractive. Some 
 very advanced critics and ultra-progressive 
 painters have found in his neurotic tem- 
 perament their ideal old master. 
 
 El Greco is reputed to have held that 
 color was of far more 
 importance than form 
 or drawing, and if 
 this belief was once 
 regarded as ‘“‘a curi- 
 ous anticipation of 
 modern ideas,’’ these 
 “‘modern ideas’’ are 
 themselves now out 
 of date, drawing and 
 design being now 
 generally accepted as 
 the foundation of all 
 good art. 
 
 A reason for the long 
 neglect suffered by 
 El Greco after his 
 death in 1625 is that 
 his pictures were rele- 
 gated to the lumber 
 rooms of Spanish palaces and monasteries; 
 many of them have been lost or painted 
 over beyond recognition. They were not 
 generally admired when they were painted, 
 and, as Justin Blake surmises, ““when the 
 discerning patron who ordered a picture, 
 either for himself or for the church, died, 
 the scandal was hushed up and the picture 
 hidden away.”’ It was not long ago that 
 an El Greco, if one could be found, could 
 be had for a few dollars. One purchased 
 in 1885 for twenty dollars would bring 
 more than that in thousands now. 
 
 It was in France among the artists that 
 the modern appreciation of El] Greco was 
 born. Manet, who traveled in Spain in 
 1865, was among the first to recognize the 
 artistic value of hiswork. Théodore Duret 
 was with Manet in Toledo and after having 
 been shown some of the pictures, bought 
 several El Grecos. Mullet owned one 
 which later became the property of Dégas. 
 The rapid spread of the belated recognition 
 accorded El Greco is amazing, in view of 
 the fact that in his work there is little of 
 the quality that bids for popularity. 
 
 It is not a robust 
 
 The three angels 
 
 At the 
 

 
 EL GRECO (1545-1625) 
 Matt. XXVII, Mark XV, Luke XXIII, John XIX 
 
 Prado, Madrid 
 
RUBENS 
 
 ETER PAUL RUBENS has, 
 among other distinctions, that 
 of having painted about fif- 
 teen hundred pictures, un- 
 doubtedly the greatest output 
 numerically that ever issued from one hand. 
 To approach him it would be necessary 
 to multiply the lives of several painters 
 most fertile in productiveness; and if the 
 
 
 
 country seat in Belgium, and in them may 
 be traced not only a love of beauty in 
 nature, but the pride of the landowner in 
 a handsome and well-ordered estate. — 
 
 Heir as he was of the great Venetians in 
 his painted decorations, Sir William Orpen 
 reminds us, Rubens was a pioneer in all 
 other directions. His portraits, for in- 
 stance, were the inspiration of Van Dyck 
 and the English painters of the eighteenth 
 
 importance, the dimensions and the com- 
 
 plicated character of 
 his works be consid- 
 ered independently of 
 their number, the 
 spectacle, as Eugéne 
 Fromentin exclaims, 
 is ‘“‘astounding, and 
 gives the most lofty, 
 even, one might say, 
 
 the most religious 
 idea of human facul- 
 ties.”’ 
 
 Passions, attitudes of 
 the body, expressions 
 of countenance—all 
 mankind in the mul- 
 tifarious incidents of 
 the great drama of 
 life—passed through 
 his brain, took from 
 
 HE Descent from the Cross,”’ Rubens’ 
 
 masterpiece, is a supreme depiction of 
 noble suffering. Everything is as restrained 
 and concise as a page of Scripture. “Here,” 
 observes Fromentin, ‘are neither gesticula- 
 tions, nor cries, nor horrors, nor excessive 
 tears; scarcely a sob bursts from the 
 Virgin; the intensity of her suffering is 
 expressed only by a gesture, by a face 
 bathed in tears. That of the Magdalen is 
 the best done figure in the picture, the 
 most delicate, the most personal, one of 
 the best that Rubens ever created. The 
 Christ ...no one can forget the effect of 
 that long body, with the small head fallen 
 to one side, so vivid and so limpid in its 
 pallor, whence all pain has passed away.” 
 
 century, his land- 
 scapes anticipated 
 Hobbema and the 
 “natural painters” of 
 England and _  Hol- 
 land; while in pictures 
 like “Le Jardin 
 d’Amour” and “The 
 Dance of the Villag- 
 ers” he is credited 
 with having invented 
 a new style of pas- 
 toral with small fig- 
 ures which Watteau 
 and other later artists 
 developed delight- 
 fully. 
 
 Once on a time the 
 twenty-one pictures 
 painted by Rubens 
 
 it stronger features, 
 more robust forms, 
 became amplified, but not purified, and 
 transfigured into a heroic mould. Even 
 when the work of other hands is seen in 
 his canvases—and his collaborators in 
 painting were comparable to the number 
 of anonymous writers who assisted Alex- 
 andre Dumas—he manages to stamp all 
 with the directness of his character, the 
 warmth of his blood, the magnificence of 
 his vision. ‘‘There is a glory, a trumpet- 
 call, in his grossest works. His was the 
 special gift of eloquence. His language, to 
 define it accurately, is what is called ora- 
 torical. When he improvises he is not at 
 his best; in restraint he is magnificent.” 
 
 It has been said that there are landscapes 
 that soothe and calm the spirit, and land- 
 scapes that exhilarate. Those by Rubens 
 come under the latter category. He was 
 no mystic in his attitude toward nature; 
 he approached her without awe, with the 
 friendly arrogance of a strong man who 
 respects strength. Most of his landscapes 
 were painted in the neighborhood of his 
 
 186 
 
 for the Luxembourg 
 Palace and for many 
 years badly hung in the Louvre were 
 abused as ‘“‘those big bad pictures by Ru- 
 bens.” This was due solely to the fact 
 that they were placed in such a position 
 as to foreshorten the figures to the eye of 
 the spectator. Since their removal to 
 their present room painters and critics 
 cannot find enough to say in praise of 
 them. ‘Have,’ asks J. C. Van Dyke, 
 “the pictures themselves undergone any 
 change? Not in the least. They are merely 
 seen from a proper distance—the distance 
 they were intended to be seen from.” 
 
 If to be always congenially and successfully 
 employed constitutes happiness, Rubens 
 should have been one of the happiest of 
 men. It was his custom to rise at dawn, 
 begin the day by hearing mass, and then to 
 his easel. While painting he could converse 
 without interfering with his work, at which 
 he kept until twilight. Being addicted to 
 gout, he ate and drank sparingly. In his 
 sixty-fifth year this great Flemish painter 
 died and was buried in Antwerp. 
 
THE DESCENT FROM THE CROSS 
 
 
 
 PETER PAUL RUBENS (1577-1640) ; Courtesy Maison Ad. Braun & Cie. 
 Matt. XXVII, Mark XV, Luke XXIII, John XIX Antwerp Cathedral 
 
FRANCIA 
 
 RANCESCO DI MARCO GI- 
 4 ACOMO RAIBOLINI, com- 
 monly called Francia, was an 
 artisan, as well as an artist, in 
 “ that he was a maker of jew- 
 elry and a founder of type. He was, 
 indeed, the first to produce for the great 
 printer, Aldus Manutius, the famous italic 
 type, which was so highly prized, even in 
 the fifteenth century, that a special letter 
 
 
 
 1 64 2 = 
 
 ductions bear the signature of ‘Francia 
 Pictor.”’ 
 
 Having become an established painter of 
 repute in 1499, Francia did not lack work. 
 Orders began pouring in upon him and, ac- 
 cording to Vasari, there soon was hardly a 
 church in Bologna that could not boast a 
 picture from his hand. He also found time 
 to paint many altar-pieces for churches in 
 neighboring towns, some of which are to 
 
 of papal privilege 
 was given to Aldus 
 granting him the sole 
 right to its use—a 
 privilege, however, 
 which did not prevent 
 its being copied 
 throughout Christen- 
 dom. 
 
 Not until he was past 
 thirty did this mas- 
 ter, Francia, of the 
 school of Bologna, 
 turn his attention to 
 painting. His con- 
 verter was one Lo- 
 renzo Costa, his ju- 
 
 HIS noble “Pieta,”’ as most pictures 
 
 are called which portray mourning 
 over the dead body of Christ, was painted 
 originally for a church in Lucca, Italy. 
 “No picture,” writes Julia Cartwright, 
 “has ever been more frequently copied. 
 This is due not only to the richness of 
 coloring and fine balance of composition, 
 but to the purity and tenderness of feeling 
 which the painter-goldsmith reveals.” The 
 dead Christ rests on His mother’s knees, 
 but instead of the usual saints, Mary has 
 for attendants two angels robed in red 
 and green, one reverently supporting the 
 
 be seen in the prin- 
 cipal galleries of Eu- 
 rope. 
 
 The sacking of Bo- 
 logna early in the 
 sixteenth century by 
 Pope Julius II cost 
 Francia an esteemed 
 patron in the person 
 of the Duke Benti- 
 vogli, who was driven 
 from power and ex- 
 iled, but gained him 
 a greater one in the 
 Pope himself, who 
 made him Director 
 of the Mint of Bo- 
 
 nior, who visited Bo- 
 logna in 1483 and 
 shared a studio with 
 Francia, ‘‘one executing goldsmith com- 
 missions on the ground floor, while, above, 
 Costa was engaged in painting pictures.” 
 “Of the two,’ writes Dr. Williamson, 
 “Costa had the greater imagination, the 
 wider knowledge, a larger love of nature 
 and more accuracy in drawing; but Francia 
 was by far the grander colorist, the more 
 deeply religious man of the two, and pos- 
 sessed more innate refinement. ... Soon 
 Francia surpassed his friend, producing 
 works that were much finer in conception, 
 coloring and refinement than Costa could 
 ever have executed.”’ 
 
 Dr. Williamson is inclined to the belief 
 that a ‘‘Crucifixion,’? now in the Library 
 at Bologna, is the earliest picture by 
 Francia that has come down to us. In the 
 Borghese Gallery is a St. Stephen, a single 
 kneeling figure, which is held to be one of 
 the first pictures of this pioneer painter, 
 as are three pictures of the Madonna and 
 Child—one in Berlin, another in Munich, 
 and a third at Pressburg. Francia was 
 accustomed to signing his pictures ‘‘Fran- 
 cia Aurifex,’’ whereas his goldsmith pro- 
 
 188 
 
 head, the other reverently folding his logna, and later, 
 hands at the feet of the Saviour. strangely enough, 
 “save him _— entire 
 
 charge of the provision of money for the 
 
 Cty 
 
 Of Francia’s private life not much is 
 known beyond the fact that he had twe 
 sons, both of whom became artists. He 
 is said to have had no less than two hundred 
 pupils in his heyday, one of whom was 
 Timoteo Viti, believed by some authori- 
 ties to have been Raphael’s first master. 
 Indeed, the great Raphael once sent in care 
 of Francia a picture of St. Cecilia for a 
 church in Bologna, asking him to see to 
 its proper erection and “begging him to 
 repair any injury that might be found on 
 the painting, or any defect, if such might 
 strike him on seeing the work.’’ There 
 exists the copy of a letter, said to have 
 been written by Francia to Raphael, as 
 well as of a sonnet said to have been com- 
 posed by him in praise of Raphael; but 
 the originals have never been produced 
 and their authenticity 1s questioned. At 
 the age of sixty-seven Francia suffered a 
 stroke of apoplexy, and is thought to 
 have been buried in the Church of San 
 Francesco, Bologna. 
 

 
 FRANCIA (1450-1517) National Gallery, London 
 Matt. XXVIII, Mark XV, Luke XXIII, John XIX 
 
JEAN-JACQUES HENNER 
 
 svg Y reviving “the forgotten art of 
 NM painting velvety, soft flesh and 
 CCA of making it vibrate in light,” 
 Jean-Jacques Henner—known 
 as the Alsatian Correggio—has 
 won for himself an important place in 
 modern painting. The key to his secret 
 way of rendering the tint and tender 
 softness of flesh as delicately as possible, 
 and at the same time to illumine and in- 
 
 S, 
 
 
 
 
 § 
 
 was first strongly attracted to religious sub- 
 jects, and ‘“‘like the great Basle master, 
 Henner made a solemn vow always to for- 
 get himself entirely in the subject to be 
 painted.” 
 
 Going to Paris at nineteen, with sixty 
 francs to his name, Henner was admitted 
 to the Ecole des Beaux-Arts with his first 
 exhibited drawing, The sixty francs lasted 
 forty days. He became alarmed, left the 
 
 tensify the clear flesh 
 tone, was found by 
 the painter at that 
 time of evening, 
 which might be called 
 Henner’s hour, when 
 the landscape, over- 
 shadowed by the twi- 
 light, gradually loses 
 color, and only a 
 small blue space in 
 the sky or a silent 
 forest lake still pre- 
 serves the reflection 
 of vanishing daylight. 
 As Muther notes, ‘‘In 
 this tranquil harmony 
 of nature after sun- 
 set, the white pallor 
 of the human body 
 seems to have ab- 
 
 [t was such work as his “Magdalen at 
 the Tomb’’ that earned for Henner the 
 sobriquet of the Alsatian Correggio. For 
 few, if any, painters since Correggio— 
 other than Rembrandt—have shown such 
 mastery in painting flesh that is fairly in- 
 candescent. This figure of Mary at the 
 tomb of the Saviour, for instance, appar- 
 ently gives forth light rather than receives 
 it. What poetry is in the attitude, and 
 what charm in the silhouette! A miracle 
 is being wrought somewhere, and whether 
 it is for better or for worse, Mary is trust- 
 ful and resigned. That the hand that 
 fashioned this marvel of delicate art could 
 paint great battle pictures is one of the 
 unaccountable anomalies of genius. 
 
 academy and began 
 to work for his living 
 until he could afford 
 to live for his work. 
 For eighteen months 
 he existed by paint- 
 ing portraits for 
 which he was paid, 
 according to size, five, 
 ten or fifteen francs. 
 From time to time, 
 in after years of fame 
 and fortune, the art- 
 ist was accustomed 
 to buy back these 
 portraits whenever 
 he could locate them 
 —paying sums which 
 allowed for a generous 
 accumulation of com- 
 pound interest. 
 
 sorbed all the day- 
 
 light and to be giving it forth again, while 
 the surrounding landscape is already merg- 
 ing in colorless shadow.”’ 
 
 Henner was born at Bernwiller, Alsace, in 
 1829, and, we read, had hardly mastered 
 the art of walking when he was discovered 
 trying, in spite of paternal remonstrances, 
 to cover a barn door with pictures. At 
 an early age he was placed under a mas- 
 ter, Charles Goutzwiller, at Altkirch, to 
 whose early training he owed much. Later 
 he was sent to the School of Art at Strass- 
 burg, conducted by Gabriel Guérin; and 
 there the boy of fifteen, timid and of a 
 rustic awkwardness, displayed a tireless 
 and amazingly premature energy for work. 
 He would remain mute in the class for 
 whole days, drawing with patient eager- 
 ness and never laying down pencil or 
 chalk, except to absorb the advice being 
 given by the master to tlie most advanced 
 pupils, who were already painting. 
 
 It was by his study of the work of Hol- 
 bein, at the Basle Museum, that Henner 
 
 190 
 
 Once, it is related, 
 Henner was recalled to Bernwiller by the 
 sudden death of his sister. At sight of her 
 body lying motionless on a wide bench, 
 the pale face showing through the folds 
 of the simple shroud, the painter wept 
 convulsively. Presently, mastering his 
 grief, ‘che took his brushes and drew the 
 scene with a feverish hand, just as he saw 
 it, without any additions, in its rustic 
 orderliness, with the crucifix and holy 
 water on a chair, a lighted taper at the 
 head of the lifeless girl, and, kneeling by 
 her side, the mother buried in: silent and 
 terrible meditation.’””’ The sketch was 
 never finished. 
 During the Crimean War, Henner found 
 it impossible to obtain a canvas large 
 enough for a battle picture. So he turned 
 to the great barn at home, and on a door 
 five yards high and three yards wide, he 
 painted a battle-scene, based solely upon 
 news reports, that attracted admiring 
 throngs of spectators in sabots from all 
 the country ’round. 
 
MARY MAGDALEN AT THE SAVIOUR’S TOMB 
 
 
 
 JEAN JACQUES HENNER (1829-1905) Metropolitan Museum of Art 
 New York City 
 
BOUGUEREAU 
 
 IKE many another artist, 
 William Adolph Bouguereau 
 was thwarted, at the begin- 
 ning of his career, by his 
 
 ; family, excepting his mother. 
 His father, who was a wine and oil mer- 
 chant, first at La Rochelle, France, and 
 afterwards at Bordeaux, wished him to 
 follow in his commercial footsteps, but the 
 lad had a penchant for painting, or rather 
 for pencilling pic- 
 tures on wine bar- 
 
 
 
 , 
 
 tion.’’ That was Assisi. Its art treasures 
 he copied with enthusiasm, as he did later 
 the disentombed frescos at Pompeii which, 
 on returning to France, “he often traced 
 upon the walls and ceilings of his home. 
 They were so true, so exact, that the 
 sculptor, Edmond About, declared to his 
 pupils, ‘If you do not know Pompeii, go 
 see it in the studio of Bouguereau.’ ”’ 
 
 For more than half a century this French 
 master never failed to 
 exhibit at every Salon 
 
 rels and boxes, until, 
 
 as one biographer 
 says, ‘‘finally some of 
 the customers and 
 
 friends of his father 
 became greatly inter- 
 ested in the blond 
 youth of sixteen who, 
 perched all day on a 
 high stool in the 
 counting house, only 
 left the pen for the 
 
 HIS “‘Holy Women at the Tomb of 
 
 Christ,’”’ Bouguereau finished in 1890 
 and exhibited at the Paris Salon. ‘“‘Never,”’ 
 says Maurice Albert, “was the artist more 
 serious, more desperately impeccable. .. . 
 What a severe arrangement of figures, 
 and what impassibility! And yet,” he goes 
 on to say, “that high and mighty door of 
 masonic architecture would scarcely repre- 
 sent the opening to the little vault of 
 Joseph of Arimathea. ... Nor in the three 
 figures, whose discreet tears do not impair 
 
 religious, genre or 
 mythological pictures 
 and portraits, besides 
 mural decorations for 
 houses, theatres and 
 churches. 
 
 Never-ending labor in 
 an enormous produc- 
 tion almost entirely 
 filled the life of Bou- 
 guereau. During the 
 siege of Paris, how- 
 
 pencil.” 
 
 At length his father 
 allowed him to enter 
 the Ecole des Beaux- 
 Arts of Bordeaux— 
 with the express condition that he was 
 not to become a painter, for that was a 
 trade which did not pay. Thus the young 
 life of Bouguereau was illuminated by the 
 odd hours given to his beloved art, and 
 thus, too, we hear of him presently win- 
 ning the first prize for “‘painting the fig- 
 ure,’ in spite of the fact that his com- 
 petitors were all-day students, while he was 
 in the studio only two hours each morning. 
 By the secret aid of his mother he was, 
 at twenty-one, entered, along with Caba- 
 nel, Henner and Gustave Moreau, whose 
 works are represented in this volume, as 
 a pupil of Picot in Paris. ‘There we find 
 him “overflowing with enthusiasm, and 
 spending not more than twenty sous a 
 day, eating hardly anything but bread and 
 cheese, and often going without any 
 dinner.”’ 
 
 Four years later he was awarded the Prix 
 de Rome, and of his stay in Italy we read 
 that the cities of Tuscany and Umbria re- 
 mained with him as the most vibrant of 
 memories. “One city, fairly perfumed with 
 mystic art and holy traditions, particu- 
 larly exerted upon him an intense fascina- 
 
 their calm and gracious modern faces, can 
 one recognize the Galilean Mary Magda- 
 len, Salome and Mary Cleophas.” 
 
 192 
 
 ever, he abandoned 
 the brush for the 
 bayonet, and ‘“‘served 
 his country with pa- 
 triotic vigor.”’ 
 Admitted to be a consummate draughts- 
 man, Bouguereau is yet charged by detrac- 
 tors, such as Dr. Muther, with a lack of sin- 
 cerity in his painting, resulting in a sug- 
 gestion of exaggeration in much of hiswork. 
 Following the Franco-Prussian War, when 
 the painters of France were invited to 
 exhibit at Berlin, Bouguereau, who was 
 almost alone in accepting, declared, “If I 
 have to go to Berlin by myself, I shall go. 
 I consider it a patriotic duty to conquer 
 the German painters in the very capital of 
 the German Empire.”’ 
 
 Bouguereau lost his first wife soon after 
 their marriage. His: second wife was 
 Elizabeth Gardner, of Exeter, New Hamp- 
 shire, a painter of recognized ability who 
 had been one of his pupils in the Julian art 
 schools. Influenced by his American wife, 
 he was instrumental in causing the Julian 
 studios and the Ecole des Beaux-Arts to 
 admit women as students to their classes. 
 Bouguereau died in 1905, an octogenarian, 
 after so short an illness that it may be 
 said of him as of the great masters of the 
 Renaissance — ‘“‘he died with the brush in 
 his hand.”’ 
 
THE HOLY WOMEN AT THE SEPULCHRE 
 
 
 
 & 
 
 WILLIAM ADOLPHE BOUGUEREAU (1825-1905) Courtesy Maison Ad. Braun & Cie. 
 Matt. XXVIII, 1, Mark XVI, 1, Luke XXIV, 1 Antwerp Museum 
 
EUGENE BURNAND 
 
 
 
 to what he has the power of 
 doing,’’ said Goethe once to 
 4 Eckermann, adding, ‘‘most 
 artists want to do more than 
 
 valk 
 
 BEC 
 
 they can, and are only too ready to go 
 beyond the limits which nature has set to 
 
 their talent.’”’ If this is so, the Swiss 
 painter, Eugene Burnand, is an exception 
 
 AN artist rarely confines himself. 
 
 sized, creation of this kind were impossible. 
 Landscapes which seem to have been 
 studied in another world he peoples with 
 beings who pass their lives in contem- 
 plation of the divine. Women and chil- 
 dren, young men and grey-beards live and 
 love and labor as though in an age that 
 knows nothing of the stroke of the clock, 
 and which might be yesterday or a thou- 
 
 that proves the rule. 
 never began to paint 
 a picture that he did 
 not finish, and his am- 
 bition never prompted 
 him to attempt a sub- 
 ject beyond his ca- 
 pacity to execute. 
 
 Burnand, who was 
 born at Moudon, 
 Switzerland, in 1850, 
 was a pupil of Menn 
 and of the French 
 master, Léon Géréme. 
 Still living, at this 
 writing, he has de- 
 voted himself princi- 
 pally to landscape, 
 portrait and historical 
 painting, and has exe- 
 cuted notable pictures 
 in all three depart- 
 ments. There was a 
 time when Burnand 
 shared with another 
 
 For, it is said, he sand years ago. 
 BEING informed by Mary Magdalen 
 
 that the stone had been removed from 
 the door of the sepulchre in which the 
 body of Christ had been placed after the 
 
 crucifixion, and that, according to the Gos- 
 
 pel of John, “They have taken away the 
 Lord out of the sepulchre,” the disciples 
 Peter and John “ran both together: and 
 the other disciple did outrun Peter, and 
 first came to the sepulchre.” Volumes 
 could not describe this scene more clearly 
 and impressively than is done in this pic- 
 ture. Young John, the disciple particu- 
 larly beloved of Christ, has his hands 
 clasped prayerfully, as he races beside the 
 older grizzled disciple. They have just 
 come in sight of the sepulchre and can see 
 that its door is ajar! The militant, impet- 
 uous character of Peter is admirably por- 
 trayed. It was Peter, as John admits, who 
 first entered the sepulchre, although John 
 
 Rendering historical 
 episodes by colors and 
 gestures, Burnand 
 came as a man of fine 
 and austere talent, 
 often Virgilian in his 
 sense of repose, mon- 
 astic in his abnegation 
 of petty superficial 
 
 allurements, despite 
 special attempts at 
 chromatic. effect. 
 
 A feeling for style, in 
 the sense in which it 
 was understood by 
 the old painters, is 
 everywhere evident in 
 his work, and a han- 
 dling of line and com- 
 position in the grand 
 manner which has 
 earned him a high 
 place as an artist. 
 
 Plants, trees and 
 rocks are to Burnand 
 
 naturalized French 
 artist, Hans von 
 Marées, an antipathy 
 to painting from the 
 model. He scoffed at those who would 
 only reproduce existing fact, and thus, in 
 a certain sense, reduplicate nature, accord- 
 ing to Goethe’s saying: ‘If I paint my 
 mistress’ pug-dog true to nature, I have 
 two pugs, but never a work of art.’”’ For 
 this reason Burnand has never used models 
 for the purpose of detailed pictorial studies; 
 and just as little has he been at pains to 
 fix situations in his mind by pencil sketches 
 to serve as notes; for, according to his 
 view, the direct use of motives, as they are 
 called, is only a hindrance to free artistic 
 creation. Furtunately Eugene Burnand 
 has commanded a rich store of vivid 
 memories of what he has seen and studied 
 and profoundly grasped in earlier days, 
 without which, it does not need be empha- 
 
 was the first to reach it; but it was John 
 himself who first ‘‘saw and believed.” 
 
 endowed with a soul 
 quality, are breathing 
 creatures, each with 
 its peculiar physiog- 
 nomy, its individuality, its part to play, 
 and its distinction of being in the choir 
 celestial. ‘“‘By the harmony of air and 
 light with that of which they are the 
 illumination I will make you hear the trees 
 moaning beneath the north wind and the 
 birds calling to their young.”’ As Diirer 
 worked seven times on the same scenes of 
 the Passion, until he found the simplest 
 and most speaking expression, so Burnand 
 has treated the same motives ten and 
 twenty times. He begins an interrupted 
 picture again and again, and—witness his 
 “Peter and John Running to the Tomb,” 
 or his ‘‘Man of Sorrows,’’—adds something 
 to it to heighten the expression, as Leon- 
 ardo died with the consciousness that some- 
 thing was lacking in his ‘‘ Joconde.”’ 
 
 194 
 
he at 
 
 THE Two DISCIPLES RUNNING 
 
 
 
 EUGENE BURNAND (1850- Courtesy Maison Ad. Braun & Cie. 
 John XX, 4 
 
VELASQUEZ 
 
 AW JESPITE the extravagant asser- 
 4 tion of Ruskin that ‘“‘every- 
 thing Velasquez does may be 
 regarded as absolutely right,” 
 until the year 1776 the work 
 of Diego Rodriguez de Silva Velasquez, 
 who was born in Seville in 1599 and died 
 in Madrid sixty-one years later, was 
 scarcely known outside of Spain. In 1776 
 Raphael Mengs wrote: ‘‘How this painter, 
 
 
 
 ducats, to which was added a special re- 
 muneration, Pacheco states, for each work 
 produced. 
 
 Of the first importance in his career was 
 the visit of Rubens, in 1628, on an em- 
 bassage to the Spanish court. A lesser 
 man than Velasquez might have quaked 
 with apprehension when he found the 
 King sitting to Rubens for a portrait in 
 his own studio. But not he who had 
 
 greater than Raphael 
 or Titian, truer far 
 than Rubens or Van 
 Dyck, should have 
 been lost to view is 
 more than I can com- 
 prehend. I cannot 
 find words to describe 
 the splendor of his 
 arts. But, in. the 
 words of Elbert Hun- 
 bard, “the world 
 wagged on in _ its 
 sleepy way, and it 
 was not until 1828 
 that an Englishman, 
 Sir David Wilkie, be- 
 gan quietly to buy 
 up all the stray pic- 
 tures by Velasquez 
 that he could find in 
 Spain. He sent them 
 to England, and the 
 
 THs “Supper at Emmaus,” by Velas- 
 
 quez, serves excellently to illustrate 
 his idealizing power exercised through his 
 intense perception of truth and beauty of 
 light. Here the Spanish master was an 
 innovator—a pioneer painter of light and 
 air, the first painter of aspects. The 
 source of the light is behind the Christ, 
 from whom it seems to glance onto the 
 table-cloth and the outstretched hand and 
 face of the Apostle. The Christ in this 
 picture will bear comparison with the 
 Christ painted by Rembrandt in his picture 
 of the same subject. An abstract resigna- 
 tion is finely expressed in the face, as 
 though the Master were present in the 
 spirit and not in the flesh, and as though 
 he were hardly aware of what his ani- 
 mated companions are saying. 
 
 painted the King a 
 score of times; no 
 one else had been 
 allowedto paint Philip 
 IV and Velasquez 
 was curious to see 
 how the picture would ' 
 come out. In fact, 
 the two painters be- 
 came fast friends, and 
 it was Rubens who 
 persuaded Velasquez 
 to go to Italy in 
 1630, a visit which 
 permitted a_ close 
 study of Titian and 
 Tintoretto and 
 brought about such a 
 change and develop- 
 ment in the style of 
 Velasquez that he 
 definitely became ‘‘a 
 painter only of vis- 
 
 world one day awoke 
 
 to the fact that Velasquez was one of the 
 greatest artists of all time.’’ Of the two 
 hundred and seventy-four pictures that he 
 painted, a majority are now believed to 
 be in America. 
 
 Velasquez passed his boyhood inSeville, also 
 the birth and death place of Murillo. At 
 thirteen he began studying under Fran- 
 cesco Pacheco, with whom he remained 
 five years before becoming his son-in-law, 
 an event which the elder master thus 
 naively records: ‘After five years of edu- 
 cation and training, I married him to my 
 daughter, induced by his youth, integrity 
 and good qualities, and the prospects of 
 his great natural genius.” 
 
 Justifying the prophecy, at the age of 
 twenty-three Velasquez was formally in- 
 stalled in Madrid as one of the specially 
 privileged painters to Philip IV, with a 
 studio in the palace, a residence in the 
 city, and a monthly stipend of twenty 
 
 196 
 
 ible, tangible beings 
 on earth, not of vague and heavenly hosts.”’ 
 Velasquez acquired, in addition to his 
 place as Spanish court painter, several 
 sinecures over a long period of years. As 
 palace marshal, it fell to him to prearrange 
 the royal journey to the Pyrenees in 1660, 
 on the occasion of the betrothal of the 
 Infanta Maria Theresa to Louis XIV of 
 France. When the royal caravan, after a 
 month on the road, reached San Sebastian, 
 the place chosen for the meeting of the 
 French and Spanish courts, it was his office 
 to inspect the ephemeral palace erected on 
 the Island of Pheasants as a conference 
 house for the joint accommodation of the 
 two sovereigns, and to superintend its 
 decoration. Returning home, Velasquez 
 was greeted with joy by his family and 
 friends; for a report of his death, which 
 was but a presage of the end, then close at 
 hand, had preceded him. Shortly after- 
 wards he was stricken with a fatal fever. 
 
CHRIST AND THE PILGRIMS OF EMMAUS 
 
 
 
 VELASQUEZ (1599-1660) Metropolitan Museum of Art 
 Luke XXIV, 30 New York City 
 
CIMA DA CONEGLIANO 
 
 N the little Italian town of 
 Conegliano, on the border of 
 the Voralpen, there is. still 
 standing a modest house marked 
 
 a with a tablet stating simply that 
 it was the birthplace of one Cima, in 
 1459 or 1460, and that he was christened 
 Giambattista. The name of Cima is re- 
 miniscent of the occupation of his fore- 
 fathers, who were cloth-shearers, and the 
 
 
 
 carried on in his Madonnas the tradition 
 of Giovanni Bellini, whose pupil he is be- 
 lieved to have been. Cima is thought to 
 have painted his most celebrated picture, 
 “The Incredulity of St. Thomas,’’ some- 
 time between 1504 and 1506, and it be- 
 longs to the transition stage of his work. 
 Rivalling this picture in popular estima- 
 tion is his ‘‘Madonna and Saints,” now 
 in the Church of Santa Maria dell’ Orto, 
 
 family line, although 
 obscure enough, can 
 be traced back in 
 Conegliano into the 
 early part of the 
 fourteenth century. 
 
 Cima himself appears 
 to have had no dis- 
 position to ornament 
 the cloth-shearing in- 
 dustry, but biograph- 
 ical material concern- 
 ing his early life, and 
 his later career like- 
 wise, iS sO meager 
 that it is not known 
 just how or when he 
 
 OF the existing pictures of “The In- 
 
 credulity of St. Thomas,’’ the three 
 most meritorious as well as celebrated are 
 by Cima da Conegliano and by Duccio. 
 Of the two accredited to Cima, one con- 
 sisting of twelve figures, was painted in 
 1504, and the other, which we reproduce, 
 is believed to have been painted subse- 
 quently. It is a composition of three 
 figures—those of Jesus, of St. Thomas and, 
 anachronistically, of Archbishop Magnus, 
 who was a contemporary of the painter 
 and may have posed for him. It is painted 
 on a wood panel, the upper part rounded, 
 
 Venice. Ruskin has 
 praised and copied 
 the harmonious back- 
 ground of this paint- 
 ing, observing that 
 in this early Renais- 
 sance period ‘‘the arts 
 of Greece and some of’ 
 its religion return and 
 join themselves to 
 Christianity; not tak- 
 ing away its sincerity 
 and earnestness, but 
 making it poetical in- 
 stead of practical. In 
 the following period, 
 even this poetic 
 
 began painting. It is 
 known that he was 
 employed in the 
 neighboring town of 
 Vicenza, in 1488, and 
 the presumption is 
 that, being twenty-eight or twenty-nine 
 years of age at the time, he was a painter. 
 In 1492 he went to Venice and there re- 
 mained until 1516, when he is thought to 
 have retired to Conegliano, where he died 
 in 1517 or 1518. 
 
 Other than the fact that he was twice 
 married, and had eight children, little or 
 nothing is known of the personal life of 
 Cima. He lived in Venice at a time when 
 it is not easy to overestimate the abun- 
 dant excellence of portraiture. Just as the 
 wealth and power of her merchant princes 
 were the source of the success of the State, 
 so the luxury they were able to afford 
 drew to the island city of the Adriatic all 
 the artistic genius of the neighboring main- 
 land. Of the multitude of artists who 
 during this century were adorning the 
 public buildings and private palaces of 
 Venice, only a few of the most celebrated 
 can be enumerated. 
 
 Cima, coming from Conegliano to Venice, 
 
 and the figures are life size. 
 light and shade, Cima, a Venetian, ex- 
 presses in this picture what a Florentine 
 painter would have said in form and action. 
 
 198 
 
 Christianity ex- 
 pressed by the arts 
 became devoted to 
 the pursuit of pleas- 
 ure, and in that they 
 ; persist, except where 
 they are saved by a healthy naturalism or 
 domesticity. But in this period was fifty 
 years of perfect work—the time of the 
 masters, including Luini, Leonardo, Gio- 
 vanni Bellini, Carpaccio, Mantegna, Ver- 
 rocchio, Cima da Conegliano, Perugino and 
 —in date, though only in his earlier life 
 belonging to the school—Raphael.”’ 
 
 Of all the pupils of Giovanni Bellini, among 
 whom was Carpaccio, Cima is considered 
 to be the most significant figure. Perhaps 
 he was too late in coming to Venice, or 
 was not quick of learning, but at any rate 
 his eye was very slow to see things painter- 
 fashion. Nevertheless he developed a dis- 
 tinct individuality. Thanks to his innate 
 architectonic sense, Cima, alone among the 
 Venetian painters of the transition period, 
 discovered linear continuity in composi- 
 tion, that is, the balance of light and the 
 flow of action. He also was the first of the 
 Venetians to recognize the effect of fig- 
 ures outlined against a background of sky. 
 
 With color, 
 
eT! ee 
 
 THE INCREDULITY OF THOMAS 
 
 
 
 CIMA DA CONEGLIANO (1459?-1517?) Courtesy Maison Ad. Braun & Cie. 
 John XX, 24 Academy, Venice 
 
JOHN LA FARGE 
 
 err=7F},0HN LA FARGE is regarded 
 
 by many critics and connois- 
 
 seurs as the greatest religious 
 Ke painter America has ever pro- 
 
 duced. He was born in New 
 York City in 1835 and died there in 1910. 
 Few painters, even in the great Renais- 
 sance period, have been so versatile. His 
 scope ranges from flowers to religious sub- 
 jects, portraits and landscapes; he worked 
 in oil, in water-color, 
 on wood and on glass. 
 His color is varied, 
 sometimes expressed 
 with a charm that 
 suggests the opales- 
 
 A FARGE’S “Ascension” is declared 
 by a critic of such authority as Royal 
 Cortissoz to be “the greatest religious 
 painting of our own time’... “and a 
 
 developed. Comparing the me hods of 
 La Farge with those of the old masters, 
 Cortissoz observes that “‘a great religious 
 painting grew under his hands precisely as 
 it grew under the hands of a Titian or 
 even a Leonardo. When we talk about 
 the man of action as though he had 
 traits decisively separating him from the 
 artist, we should remember that the artist 
 is a man of action in that at least while a 
 dreamer he is also a 
 doer, a maker. La 
 Farge, slowly fashion- 
 ing his picture so that 
 it might become an 
 organic part of an 
 
 cent quality of a  verttably sublime work of art.” Itis one architectural en- 
 pearl; then again it of the largest canvases in America, and semble, sends me 
 is strong, with sharp 1s of golden-glowing composition. Stand- back with heightened 
 and striking con- ing in a group are the twelve apostles, sympathy to thegreat 
 trasts. His drawing gqbove the heads of whom the Son of Man company of his au- 
 
 is always good. His 
 greatest contribution 
 
 is pendant in the air. 
 
 gust predecessors. I 
 
 Around Him is 
 seem only to appre- 
 
 to art, besides his 
 mural paintings, is 
 his successful experi- 
 ments inglass cutting, 
 
 almost a complete circle of angels in atti- 
 tudes of praise and adoration. To the right 
 of the apostles stands the Virgin Mary 
 gazing, with hands uplifted, toward the 
 
 hend a more vital 
 character in the beau- 
 
 in addition to paint- 
 ing and designing. 
 La Farge, in his letters written about his 
 great painting of the ‘‘Ascension”’, de- 
 scribes his methods of work, how he 
 studied the matter of proportioning his 
 figures to the given space, how he pondered 
 over the naturalistic appearance which he 
 wished to establish in the landscape, and 
 so on. In the effort to make some of his 
 figures look at their ease floating in the 
 air, ‘‘I studied what I could,” he writes, 
 “of the people who are swung in ropes and 
 other arrangements across theatres and 
 circuses.” The landscape _ especially 
 troubled him, and on this point he re- 
 cords that he got his mountain effects for 
 this picture one day in Japan. ‘Before 
 me was a space of mountain and cloud 
 and flat land that seemed to me to be 
 what I needed. I gave up my other work 
 and made thereupon a rapid but very care- 
 ful study, so complete that the big picture 
 is only a part of the amount of work put 
 into the study of that afternoon.” 
 
 The appeal of this picture is that of 
 religious painting of the highest order, yet 
 one can see from the foregoing out of what 
 human perplexities and expedients it was 
 
 Saviour miraculously suspended overhead. 
 
 200 
 
 ty of their works 
 when I trace behind 
 their unquestioned 
 
 mysticism endless 
 traits of a more mundane and personal 
 origin.’’ The versatility of John La Farge 
 is curiously reminiscent of the great mural 
 painters of old, who were also portrait- 
 painters, as much at home with a secular as 
 with a sacred subject—in other words, 
 simply great masters of a craft. 
 At one time La Farge was undecided 
 whether to follow law or art asa life-work. 
 It was William M. Hunt who influenced 
 him to become a painter by helping him 
 to appreciate color, as well as to overcome 
 discouraging technical difficulties. His 
 growth as an artist was healthy rather 
 than spectacular. At thirty-four he was a 
 member of the National Academy. In 
 1876 he was engaged for the whole mural 
 decoration of Trinity Church, Boston; 
 and in 1878, he, with the assistance of 
 Saint Gaudens, built the King sepulchral 
 monument at Newport, R. I. In 1886 he 
 visited Japan and the South Sea Islands, 
 making many water-color sketches of na- 
 tive life and scenes. Returning to America, 
 he painted, during the following year, his 
 great altar-piece for the Church of the 
 Ascension in New York. 
 

 
 THE ASCENSION 
 
 f 
 f 
 y 
 £ 
 
 Ree ee) 
 
 
 
 New York City 
 
 Church of the Ascension 
 
 5-1910) 
 
 JOHN LA FARGE (183 
 
 Luke XXIV, 51 
 
ALBRECHT DURER 
 = LBRECHT DURER, whose 
 
 ! 
 
 work best typifies the early 
 art of Germany, was the son 
 <) a 5 of a Hungarian goldsmith 
 <2 who settled in Nuremberg, 
 married and had eighteen children, of 
 whom Albrecht, born in 1471, was the 
 third. His artistic bent was early mani- 
 fested, and seems to have been heartily en- 
 couraged by both his father and mother. 
 
 
 
 they show me much honor and friendship. 
 On the other hand, there are also among 
 them some of the most false, lying, thiev- 
 ish rascals: I would never have believed 
 that such were living in the world. If 
 one did not know them one would think 
 them the best the earth could show. I 
 have many good friends who warn me not 
 to eat and drink with their painters, many 
 of whom are my enemies. They copy my 
 
 His period of appren- 
 ticeship was followed 
 by four years of travel 
 and study, mainly in 
 Germany. Shortly af- 
 ter his return home 
 he briefly records, in 
 1494, that he was 
 married to a Mistress 
 Agnes Frey, whose 
 marriage settlement 
 was 200 florins. In 
 his records and jour- 
 nals thereafter, Diirer 
 only occasionally al- 
 ludes to his wife, who 
 seems to have been 
 a good business wom- 
 an; but it is tradi- 
 tional that his mar- 
 ried life was far from 
 being happy. With 
 his marriage and set- 
 tlement, however, 
 Diirer’s life as a mas- 
 
 HE Four Apostles,’ which Durer 
 
 painted two years before he died, is 
 generally conceded to be his greatest 
 achievement. St. John, contemplating an 
 open Bible in the foreground of one panel, 
 expresses the profound meditation of a soul 
 absorbed in intellectual research. Behind 
 him St. Peter leans over the Book. An 
 aged man, full of contemplative repose, 
 Peter expresses the phlegmatic tempera- 
 ment. The other panel is more objec- 
 tive in illustrating the relation of faith to 
 external life. St. Mark, in the background, 
 looks boldly about him, ready to exhort 
 his hearers to embrace the faith. In the 
 foreground, St. Paul, with sword and 
 Bible, is a challenge incarnate, ready to 
 defend the Holy Word and to punish 
 blasphemers. His is the choleric tem- 
 perament. The coloring of these great 
 panels is warm, natural, vigorous. 
 
 work in the churches 
 and wherever they 
 can find it; and then 
 revile it and say the 
 style is not antique 
 and so not good. The 
 nobles wish me well, 
 but few of the paint- 
 ers.”’ Nevertheless, 
 he concludes, ‘‘Here, 
 I am a gentleman, at 
 home only a hanger- 
 on.’’ 
 
 Diirer was offered a 
 sinecure by the Vene- 
 tian Senate, carrying 
 a salary of 200 ducats 
 a year, if he would 
 remain in Venice; but 
 he declined the offer 
 and in 1507 returned 
 to Nuremberg to exe- 
 cute various works. 
 The year of 1520 he 
 spent with his family 
 
 ter-painter began; 
 
 and for the next eleven years he main- 
 tained a studio in his native city. 
 
 In 1505 Nuremberg was visited by a pes- 
 tilence, and Diirer found occasion and 
 means to go to Venice. Vasari states that 
 he went to Italy primarily to protect his 
 rights against a Venetian engraver who 
 was copying his plates and monogram; 
 for “his wonderful engravings had already 
 penetrated to Italy, and had spread his 
 fame beyond the Alps until it had come 
 to the ears of Raphael, among others, who, 
 a few years later exchanged drawings with 
 him.”’ 
 
 If Diirer did not arrive in Venice a fa- 
 mous man, he was soon by way of being a 
 celebrity. Writing to a friend in Nurem- 
 berg, he says: ‘‘There are so many good 
 fellows among the Italians who seek my 
 company more and more every day ... and 
 
 travellingin the Neth- 
 erlands, selling his prints to defray ex- 
 penses. Financially, the trip was a failure. 
 That Diirer himself regarded ‘“‘The Four 
 Apostles’’ ashismagnum opus isevidenced 
 by a letter he-wrote to the town council 
 of Nuremberg, praying it to receive the 
 panels which he had “painted with greater 
 care than any other,’”’ and on which he 
 inscribed: ‘‘All worldly rulers in these times 
 of danger should beware that they receive 
 not false teaching for the Word of God. 
 For God will have nothing added to His 
 Word nor yet taken away. Hear, there- 
 fore, these four excellent men, Peter, John, 
 Paul and Mark, their warning.” 
 The council accepted the gift and paid the 
 artist; but a century later ‘“‘the ungrateful 
 city sold this memorial of her most illus- 
 trious son to Maximilian of Bavaria, and 
 filled the place of the panels with copies.” 
 
To er 
 
 FOUR APOSTLES 
 
 
 
 a “2 Pas Mi AS ERC IAG ASR SA Sale SE III HOE 5p 
 
 ALBRECHT DURER (1471-1528) 
 
 Courtesy Maison Ad. Braun & Cie. 
 Munich Gallery 
 
LE SUEUR 
 
 Ww, SZAITHER than the fact that he 
 married, had six children and 
 painted more than two hun- 
 PN dred pictures, the life of the 
 French artist, Eustache Le 
 Sueur, was singularly uneventful. His 
 seventeenth-century biography appears in 
 sharp contrast to the biographies of iis 
 artist contemporaries. It can be summa- 
 rized in a sentence: Le Sueur was born 
 1617, lived and died 
 in Paris. If he re- 
 ceived commissions 
 from the king or had 
 noble and powerful 
 patrons, there is no 
 record of his having 
 been on familiar terms 
 with them. He was 
 untouched by favor 
 or by disgrace such 
 as marked the careers 
 of so many artists of 
 the time, notably 
 Charles Le Brun and 
 Pierre Mignard. 
 His father was a 
 wood-turner, or car- 
 penter, and entered his son at the studio 
 of one Master Simon Vouet, when the lad 
 was about fifteen years old. This Vouet 
 had recently returned from Italy with an 
 Italian bride and with a profound ven- 
 eration for the masters of the Italian 
 Renaissance whose fame, at that time, was 
 just beginning to reach into France. As 
 fellow students, under Vouet, Le Sueur had 
 Le Brun and Mignard. Sharing, as he 
 did with his early preceptor, an admiration 
 for Italian art, Le Sueur was an exception 
 to the painters of his age in that he never 
 went to Italy. This most likely was due 
 to the fact that he could not easily have 
 afforded the expense of such a trip. But 
 his works betray evidence of his careful 
 study of Raphael in particular, probably 
 from engravings or from copies cf that 
 great master, made by French painters 
 and exhibited in Paris. At twenty-eight 
 Le Sueur married the daughter of a 
 grocer, who bore him six children of bap- 
 tismal record. 
 At the creation of the French Academy of 
 Painting and Sculpture, in 1648, Le Sueur 
 was one of the founders, and it was about 
 that time that he came into royal favor and 
 
 lected master. 
 
 E SUEUR was commissioned in 1649, 
 
 by the Goldsmiths’ Guild of Paris, to 
 paint ‘St. Paul Preaching at Ephesus.” 
 It is one of the best known, if not most 
 enterprising, compositions of this neg- 
 It is admirable in detail. 
 Note the negro executioner in the fore- 
 ground, a very modern touch and yet 
 striking an exotic note that is unusual in 
 Le Sueur, and the animalesque pose, on 
 hands and knees, of the creature blowing 
 the fire that is to consume the pagan books. 
 St. Paul is a no less convincing figure than 
 evidently is the sermon he is preaching. 
 
 204 
 
 was formally appointed painter to the King. 
 The fact that Le Sueur died at thirty-eight 
 leaving more than two hundred canvases, 
 testifies to his industry. The cause of his 
 death seems to have been a particularly 
 virulent fever that wasted him to the 
 shadow of his never robust self. There are 
 many legends of his friendship with Pous- 
 sin, and of his enmity with Le Brun, but 
 they are not substantiated by recorded fact. 
 Le Sueur was fortu- 
 nate in having the 
 patronage of the 
 Catholic hierarchy of 
 Paris, particularly of 
 the prelates of Notre 
 Dame. It was for 
 that great Cathedral 
 that he painted his 
 “St. Paul Preaching 
 at Ephesus.”’ His 
 works are to be seen 
 in many of the older 
 churches and religious 
 institutions of Paris. 
 Physically delicate 
 himself, it is not sur- 
 prising that the art 
 of Le Sueur is essentially delicate. The 
 term applies to the painter both as re- 
 gards his technique and his moral point of 
 view. His drawing is delicate, as is his color. 
 Neither Le Sueur nor his contemporaries, 
 Mignard and Le Brun, achieved the dis- 
 tinction of originating a national French 
 style of painting; and the kind of painting 
 that we look upon today as being. essen- 
 tially and characteristically French only 
 came into existence when, in 1702, one 
 Antoine Watteau left his home in Valen- 
 ciennes for a studio in Paris. .It was this 
 frail successor to Le Sueur who founded the 
 strongest of all the modern schools of 
 painting. According to Gabriel Rouchés, 
 “During more than two hundred years the 
 reputation of Eustache Le Sueur was as 
 that of Gibraltar, and then it dwindled 
 and disappeared in a strange eclipse. He 
 was able to hold the sympathy and inter- 
 est of such eminent critics as Theophile 
 Gautier, Viardot and Arséne Houssaye. 
 But theirs was the last breath of enthusi- 
 asm that kept his spark of celebrity alive. 
 A decade later the name of this seventeenth- 
 century master was lost in the roar of 
 Paris. Le Sueur was simply forgotten.” 
 
ST. PAUL PREACHING AT EPHESUS 
 
 Hagia gt 
 
 
 
 EUSTACHE LE SUEUR (1617-1655) Courtesy Maison Ad. Braun & Cie. 
 Acts XVII, 15 5 Louvre, Paris 
 
 \ 
 
CARAVAGGIO 
 
 HAT is known as the Nea- 
 politan School of Painters 
 originated with Michelan- 
 4» gelo Amerigi, called Cara- 
 a vaggio after his birthplace 
 near Milan where he first saw the light in 
 1569. Undaunted by the great achieve- 
 ments of the Italian masters who immedi- 
 ately preceded him, Caravaggio sought to 
 form an independent style of his own, in- 
 
 4 
 
 
 
 generation—Velasquez and Rembrandt.” 
 In his own time, Caravaggio’s experiments 
 in interior and artificial lighting were 
 widely imitated, and again are to be seen 
 in modern impressionistic painting. His 
 rejection of noble form—of the idealistic 
 method—in favor of what one sees with 
 the naked eye, and of decorative color in 
 favor of natural, was a sharp and direct 
 challenge of the Renaissance style, and 
 
 stead of slavishly cop- 
 ying Titian, Tinto- 
 retto, Raphael and 
 Michel Angelo. As Sir 
 William Orpen points 
 out, Caravaggio saw 
 the error of his con- 
 temporaries and “‘per- 
 ceiving that art based 
 -on art leads to de- 
 cadence, he gave his 
 whole attention to na- 
 ture and so became a 
 pioneer of realism.” 
 ‘His real fight,” ob- 
 serves Professor 
 Mather, ‘was with 
 the nobility of Ra- 
 
 IS “Death of the Virgin” is one of the 
 
 two undisputed masterpieces of Cara- 
 vaggio. Init the grief of Martha and the 
 other mourners is deeply realistic and 
 moving. In painting this picture Cara- 
 vaggio had carefully studied the impres- 
 sionistic manner of Titian and was begin- 
 ning to adopt a harsh and resolute chia- 
 roscuro with the light restricted and the 
 canvas mostly black. The expression on 
 the face of the dead woman is eloquent of 
 her release from suffering. Caravaggio 
 was fortunate in his model for Mary, as 
 contrasted to the feeble, girlish, common- 
 place and even vulgar women who appear 
 
 outside of Italy where 
 the noble tradition 
 was only incipient, 
 Caravaggio did much 
 to arrest its influence. 
 Mather goes on to 
 say, ‘““From the point 
 of view of modern art 
 there are few more 
 important figures 
 than that of Cara- 
 vaggio. From the 
 point of view of art 
 broadly he has his 
 serious limitations. 
 Most damaging is his 
 waiver of civilization, 
 he looks at low life 
 
 phael. His saints are 
 taken from the streets 
 and often from the 
 gutters. He loves character above all, and 
 wants it proletarian. Within his chosen 
 limitations he admittedly is a powerful 
 and sincere artist.” 
 
 Both at Rome and Naples this sturdy, 
 swaggering Caravaggio appears to have had 
 an immense success. His pictures—espe- 
 cially portraits—are said to have com- 
 manded better prices than were obtained 
 by any of his contemporaries. He boasted 
 himself the greatest painter of all time, 
 and was often believed. From his swarthy 
 tones his school of disciples took the name 
 of Tenebrists. The novelty in his treat- 
 ment chiefly consisted of the use Caravag- 
 gio made of light and shade (technically 
 known as chiaroscuro) to render his pic- 
 tures more dramatically intense. He ex- 
 aggerated his shadows which, to quote 
 Orpen, ‘‘were far too black to be scrupu- 
 lously faithful to nature, but by the em- 
 phasis he thus gave to his lights he pro- 
 duced original and arresting effects which 
 undoubtedly had a powerful influence on 
 the two greatest painters of the next 
 
 to have been usually selected as models 
 in the Post-Renaissance period. 
 
 206 
 
 not with the eyes of 
 a detached artist but 
 with those ofa ruffian. 
 Nor did he live up to his own formula. 
 His contemporaries regarded the Cara- 
 vaggio method as ‘too natural’. A modern 
 realist would make the far more radical 
 criticism that Caravaggio is not natural 
 enough. He really makes no close study 
 of the subtleties of natural appearance or 
 of the actual refinements of illumination. 
 Logically he should have gone forward 
 with Ribera and Velasquez to a real in- 
 vestigation of appearances. But his logic 
 was only that of scorn, and it would doubt- 
 less have somewhat compensated him for a 
 sordid and premature end, could he have 
 foreseen that his biographers would credit 
 him with the ruin of Italian painting.” 
 Caravaggio’s love for the low life, sym- 
 bolized in his famous picture ‘‘The Card 
 Players,’’ led him to commit a murder in 
 a gambling quarrel at Rome. To avoid 
 paying the penalty of this act he escaped 
 to Naples and then to Malta where his 
 fierce temper again landed him in prison. 
 Later, being pardoned, he set forth for 
 Rome, where he died of a fever. 
 
aa 
 
 THE DEATH OF THE VIRGIN 
 
 
 
 CARAVAGGIO (1569-1609) Courtesy Maison Ad. Braun glee 
 ouvre, Paris 
 
DIT LAN 
 
 XCEPT in his portrait work, 
 Titian is said to have painted 
 4 mostly from his own imagina- 
 tion, and only used female 
 models in case of necessity. 
 Indeed, his types of women have little in 
 common with the small, brown, black-eyed 
 maidens who usually are associated with 
 Venice. They are nearer akin to the fair- 
 haired Lombard women or the Dianas and 
 Junos of his Alpine 
 boyhood home in Ca- 
 dore. What we call I 
 the idealism of Titian 
 is not the result of 
 aesthetic reflection, 
 but, as Muther has 
 pointed out, “‘the nat- 
 ural point of view of 
 a man who wandered 
 upon the heights of 
 life, never knew trivial 
 care, nor even expe- 
 rienced sickness; and 
 therefore saw the 
 world healthy and 
 beautiful, in gleaming 
 and majestic splen- 
 dor.”’ 
 
 Overwhelmed with commissions, liberally 
 compensated as a rule, pensioned. and 
 worthily enjoying his good fortune, this 
 great painter, although not very learned, 
 enjoyed his high place in Venetian society, 
 having ‘‘natural intelligence, while famili- 
 arity with courts taught him every proper 
 term of the knight and of the man of the 
 world.’’ His letters to princes and to 
 ministers concerning his pictures are those 
 of a gentleman addressing gentlemen. No 
 rigorist was he, but a boon companion, 
 eating and drinking daintily and heartily, 
 appreciative of music, of luxury, and par- 
 ticularly enjoying the society of gentle- 
 women. . . 
 
 As Taine observes, ‘“‘His painting is healthy, 
 exempt from morbidity and painful com- 
 plications. He painted incessantly, with- 
 out turmoil of the brain and without pas- 
 sion during his whole life of nearly a 
 hundred years. He commenced while still 
 a child, and his hand was naturally obedient 
 to his mind. He declared that his talent 
 was a special grace from heaven; that it 
 was necessary to be thus endowed in order 
 to be a good painter, for otherwise, ‘one 
 
 
 
 behind her. 
 
 N this ‘“‘Assumption,” says Grant Allen, 
 “the scheme of color is so arranged 
 that the spectator’s eye 
 drawn toward the ecstatic figure of the 
 ascending Madonna in the center. She 
 mounts as if of herself, impelled by inner 
 impulse, but on clouds of glory borne by 
 childish angels, the light on whose forms 
 is admirably concentrated. But the spec- 
 tator sees chiefly the rapt shape of Our 
 Lady herself and the brilliant golden haze 
 She holds out her arms to 
 the Lord in heaven. Above, the Almighty 
 Father descends to receive her, floating 
 in a vague halo of luminous cherubim.” 
 
 cannot give birth to any but imperfect 
 works’; that in this art ‘genius must not 
 be agitated.’ Around him beauty, taste, 
 education, the talents of others, reflect 
 back on him, as from a mirror, the bright- 
 ness of his own genius.”’ ; 
 Titian aimed at nothing beyond his art, as 
 did Leonardo da Vinci and Michel Angelo. 
 for example. Daily he designed some- 
 thing in chalk or in charcoal. A supper in 
 congenial company — 
 made the day com- 
 plete. He seems 
 never to have been 
 in a hurry, though 
 always busy. He kept 
 his paintings by him 
 a long time in order to 
 study them carefully 
 and improve them in 
 any and every con- 
 ceivable way. His 
 pictures do not scale 
 off; he used simple 
 colors, “‘especially red 
 and blue, which never 
 deform figures.” Taine | 
 concludes, “It would 
 be necessary to revert 
 to the brightest days of pagan antiquity to 
 find a genius so in accord with his surround- 
 ings, an expansion of faculties so natural 
 and so harmonious, a similar concord of 
 man with himself and with the outer world.” 
 If, comments Claude Phillips, Titian does 
 not soar as high as Leonardo or Michel 
 Angelo, and lacks the ‘‘divine suavity’’ 
 that makes Raphael unique in art, “‘he is 
 wider in scope, more glowing with the life- 
 blood of humanity, more the poet-painter 
 of the world and of its. fairest creatures 
 than any of these. . . . The sacred art of 
 no other painter of the full Sixteenth 
 Century—not even that of Raphael himself 
 —has to an equal degree influenced other ~ 
 painters and molded the style of the world.”’ 
 We are told that Titian prepared his pic- 
 tures with a solid stratum of pigment, 
 which served as a bed upon which to return 
 frequently. Some of these preparations 
 were made with a brush heavily laden with 
 color, the half tints struck in with pure 
 red earth, the lights with white, relieved 
 by touches of the same brush dipped into 
 red, black and yellow. Thus he would give 
 the promise of a figure in four strokes. 
 
 is irresistibly 
 
 208 
 
THE ASSUMPTION 
 
 
 
 TITIAN (1477-1576) Courtesy Maison Ad, Braun & Cie. 
 The Academy, Venice 
 
BOTTICELLI 
 
 ANDRO BOTTICELLI, or, 
 m to use his original name, 
 8 Alessandro di Mariano Fili- 
 pepi, was born at Florence, 
 Italy, in the year 1447. He 
 was revered as a master by both Leonardo 
 da Vinci and Michel Angelo, the latter 
 having been one of his pupils. His father 
 was a Florentine citizen in comfortable 
 circumstances; and Vasari relates that 
 Sandro was educated 
 I 
 
 
 
 with great care, and 
 “instructed in all such 
 things as children are 
 usually taught before 
 they choose a call- 
 ing.’”’ But the boy 
 evidenced a violent 
 antipathy to learning. 
 He was. constantly 
 discontented and ab- 
 solutely refused to 
 give his attention to 
 reading, writing and 
 accounts, says Vasari; 
 until at last his father, 
 despairing of making 
 a scholar of him, 
 placed him in the 
 shop of a goldsmith 
 named Botticello, an old friend and an 
 excellent workman, who taught the boy 
 his trade. 
 
 Sandro was destined for higher things; 
 but he took from his first master not only 
 the name by which he has become famous, 
 but the precision of line and patient atten- 
 tion to detail which marked all his work 
 in after-life. From him, too, he learned 
 the use of gold which he turned to such 
 good account in his painting and to such 
 bad account in his life. For Botticelli 
 was prematurely decrepit at sixty-three, 
 “forced to go on crutches, unable to stand 
 upright, and dependent for his bread upon 
 the charity of others.”’ 
 
 Outgrowing the goldsmithy, young Sand- 
 ro was seized with so passionate a desire 
 to become a painter that his indulgent 
 father placed him with the Carmelite 
 monk, Fra Filippo Lippi, then one of 
 the first masters in Florence. Sandro 
 had found his vocation, and soon attained 
 a degree of perfection that no one had 
 expected from the wayward, eccentric 
 boy. At twenty-two he was considered 
 
 N this picture the Madonna, clad in a 
 dark-green, gold-embroidered robe, and 
 holding the Child in her arms, is sur- 
 rounded by angels, two of whom hold the 
 crown over her head, while two others 
 offer her the book in which she writes the 
 hymn “Magnificat. 
 Symonds has said: 
 
 a? 
 
 “It is not perhaps a 
 mere fancy to imagine that the corolla 
 of an open rose suggested to Botticelli the 
 composition of his best-known picture, 
 the circular ‘Coronation of the Virgin.’ 
 This masterpiece combines and displays 
 all the best qualities of its creator. 
 rare distinction of beauty and mystic calm 
 and resignation in the faces it is unique.” 
 
 210 
 
 preeminently the best painter in Florence. 
 There followed some fifteen years of 
 prosperity, during which period Botticelli 
 enjoyed the patronage of Lorenzo de 
 Medici in Florence, and Pope Sixtus IV 
 in Rome. Commissions came to him 
 from all sides, and his productive energy 
 was amazing. It was during this period 
 that many of his finest works, both in 
 painting and engraving, were executed. 
 
 It is curious. to 
 learn from Vasari 
 that Botticelli, who 
 seems so intensely in 
 earnest, delighted in 
 jesting, and indulged 
 in wild practical jokes 
 at the expense of his 
 pupils and friends 
 which made his work- 
 shop ring with laugh- 
 ter. Nevertheless, a 
 vein of deep melan- 
 choly runs through 
 his works, and even 
 when he most wished 
 to be gay, he was 
 sad, as it were, in 
 spite of himself. “He 
 loved everything that 
 was fair, the shape of the opening rose, 
 the changing ripples on the waves, the 
 grace of the human form; and yet his 
 imagination is ever beating against the 
 walls of mortality, asking what lies with- 
 out, and whither mortals are tending.” 
 Summoned to Rome in 1480 Botticelli 
 was placed in charge of the decoration of 
 the newly erected Sistine Chapel, and 
 executed three large frescos together with 
 the earlier portraits of the series of twenty- 
 eight Popes still to be seen on the upper 
 part of the wall. Working with him were 
 Ghirlandajo and Perugino. Their labors 
 were interrupted by the death of Pope 
 Sixtus, and Botticelli returned to Florence, 
 to fall under the influence of the Dominican 
 friar, Savonarola, whose zeal and eloquence 
 were shaking the pillars of Florentine 
 society. 
 In his breadth and depth of culture, in 
 the varied character of his subjects, in his 
 greatness of aim, and the mystical bent 
 of his genius, Botticelli embodies the 
 diverse elements and conflicting ideas of 
 the early Renaissance. 
 
 John Addington 
 
 For 
 

 
 i 
 
 THE CORONATION OF THE VIRGIN 
 
 
 
 SANDRO BOTTICELLI (1447-1510) Courtesy Maison Ad. Braun & Cie. 
 Uffizi Gallery, Florence 
 
ALBRECHT DURER 
 
 = ws 
 
 HE genius of Albrecht Diirer 
 may hardly be reckoned with- 
 out taking into account the 
 place held by the art of en- 
 graving in the late fifteenth and 
 To most critics 
 
 oy, 
 
 early sixteenth centuries. 
 it is probable that neither his paintings 
 nor his drawings could by themselves have 
 won for Diirer the immense popularity 
 and authority he has enjoyed had he not 
 
 DS 
 
 
 
 mere expansion of the mind that concerns 
 him; but withal he is like Luther—a Man.”’ 
 
 His idea of art was that “it should be 
 
 employed,”’ to use his own words, “‘in the 
 service of the Church to set forth the 
 sufferings of Christ and such like subjects, 
 and it should also be employed to preserve 
 the features of men after their death.” 
 
 The very fact that Diirer’s contemporaries 
 were so loud in praise of the extraordinary 
 
 been a master of ‘“‘the 
 most democratic of 
 the arts,”’ that of en- 
 graving. 
 
 Diirer had to struggle 
 hard for a_ living. 
 Painting not paying, 
 he devoted himself in 
 the main to engrav- 
 ing and etching. 
 Strange to say, into 
 this bread-and-butter 
 work he put his best, 
 with the result that 
 ‘he is the greatest 
 engraver that ever 
 lived,” though his 
 painting was much 
 admired by no less a 
 master than Raphael. 
 Camerarius, his inti- 
 
 OF the fifteen woodcuts in a series illus- 
 
 trating the Apocalypse by Durer, this 
 one of “The Four Horsemen’’ is the most 
 celebrated. It represents the vision de- 
 scribed by St. John in the sixth chapter 
 of Revelation. “For simple grandeur,” 
 writes Professor Thausing, “this design 
 has never been surpassed. What a vivid 
 impression is produced upon the spectator 
 of the impetuosity of the rush forward, an 
 impression which Durer heightens in a 
 masterly way by showing only the fore- 
 fronts of the horses. The riders them- 
 selves, looking angrily forward, one draw- 
 ing a bow, another brandishing a sword, 
 the third swinging a pair of scales behind 
 him, wear the fantastic dress of the day. 
 The fourth horseman is Death, with the 
 
 technical skill with 
 which he could draw 
 straight lines without 
 the aid of a ruler, or 
 the astounding leger- 
 demain with which 
 he reproduced every 
 single hair in a curl, 
 touches cerebral 
 cords, rather than 
 heart-strings. Never- 
 theless, we have such 
 pictures as ‘“The Four 
 Horsemen of the 
 Apocalypse” and 
 ‘‘The Four Apostles,”’ 
 the greatness of which 
 no one denies. Here 
 the mind and hand of 
 the artist were in ac- 
 cord. 
 
 mate friend, writing, 
 a short time after 
 Diirer died, says that, 
 contrary to the pre- 
 vailing impression, “he was not of a 
 melancholy severity nor of a repulsive 
 gravity.’’ His hand was so steady and his 
 touch so fine, we are told, that ‘‘one might 
 have sworn that rule, square or compass 
 had been employed to draw lines which he, 
 in fact, drew with the brush, or very often 
 with pencil or pen, unaided by artificial 
 means, to the great marvel of those who 
 watched him.”’ 
 
 In Diirer the desire to live was entirely 
 absorbed in the desire to think. He was 
 not a man of action, and the records of 
 his life are filled with accounts of what he 
 saw, what he thought, and what others 
 thought of him; coupled with frequent 
 complaints of jealousies and lack of appre- 
 ciation. ‘‘Diirer,’’ says Furst, ‘‘reflects the 
 religious spirit of Protestantism. His ego 
 looms large in his consciousness, and it is 
 the salvation of the soul rather than the 
 
 infernal trident. 
 
 The downtrodden figures 
 in the foreground represent “‘the fourth 
 part of the earth,” which is to be slain. 
 
 212 
 
 The eminence of Al- 
 brecht Diirer is not 
 only that ofa creative 
 artist, but he was, as 
 Cust says, one of the great pioneers of art. 
 Before him, little or nothing had been done 
 north of the Alps to make art a factor in 
 the popular life; and now there is probably 
 no branch of the fine arts which has not 
 been affected in one way or another by 
 his works. He stands, as it were, on the 
 watershed between the Middle Ages and 
 the Renaissance, both in the advancement 
 of art and in the development of the hu- 
 man intellect. 
 
 Diirer’s last years were uneventful, and he 
 seems to have been a good deal of an 
 invalid, but he wrote voluminously on ar- 
 tistic and scientific subjects. His last and 
 greatest work, ‘‘The Four Apostles,’’ was 
 painted in 1526. With this Diirer seems to 
 have felt that his labors as a painter 
 were done, as during the next year not 
 even a drawing of importance came from 
 his hand. He died on the sixth of April, 1528. 
 
THE FOUR HORSEMEN OF THE APOCALYPSE 
 
 
 
 ALBRECHT DURER (1471-1528) From the woodcut 
 Revelations VI 
 
GALLERIES 
 
 IN WHICH THE PICTURES ARE LOCATED 
 
 Space does not permit a complete description of the galleries and museums rep- 
 resented in this book, but as a large majority of the pictures are located in a few 
 galleries, a brief history of the more important ones will well cover the ground. 
 
 Museums of art almost invariably originated in collections made by the rich and 
 powerful without at first a more definite purpose than to gratify their own pleasure 
 and curiosity. The art museum as a private institution began in Italy, where in the 
 fourteenth century the rulers and nobility began to make collections of coins and 
 gems. Busts and statues were added later and it was not until the seventeenth cen- 
 tury that pictures and drawings were also introduced. Among the oldest of such 
 collections is that brought together by Cosimo de’ Medici, dating from the early 
 fifteenth century and forming the basis of the present Florentine collections. The 
 Vatican collections trace their origin to Pope Julius II (1503-1513). 
 
 In passing it may be noted that boasting as it does of the Metropolitan Museum of 
 Art in New York, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Corcoran Gallery at Wash- 
 ington, the United States is perhaps the only great nation without a national gallery. 
 
 THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM 
 OF ART, NEW YORK CITY, stands 
 as a substantial denial of the charge that 
 America has no appreciation of or desire 
 fora knowledge ofart. Located in Central 
 Park, the structure is undoubtedly the 
 finest modern art museum in the world. 
 Its galleries are unexcelled from the stand- 
 point of beauty and effectiveness. The 
 collection of paintings is naturally more 
 inclusive of American art than that of 
 any other school, but is quite complete 
 and affords a survey of painting from the 
 Italian primitives to our modern schools. 
 J. Pierpont Morgan was a most generous 
 patron of the Museum and the Benjamin 
 Altman bequest added to the already rich 
 collection of old masters. In addition to 
 
 paintings it includes valuable collections 
 in many fields of art and archaeology. 
 
 ENTRANCE HALL, 
 METROPOLITAN MUSEUM 
 
 
 
 Its latest addition is the American Wing, 
 which records by example the develop- 
 ment of American furniture and domes- 
 tic architecture from colonial days. 
 
 ————————————>]—__—————_- 
 
 THE NATIONAL GALLERY, LON- 
 DON, originated in the Angerstein collec- 
 tion of 38 paintings, of which 29 were 
 by old masters. This was bought by the 
 British nation in 1824 for $280,000. In 
 1832-38 a building, from designs by Wil- 
 kins, was erected to house it. The gift 
 in 1847 by Mr. Vernon of 157 canvases 
 by English painters and the bequest by 
 J. M. W. Turner are among its largest 
 acquisitions. By Turner’s will nineteen 
 thousand pencil and water-color sketches 
 and one hundred canvases were left to 
 the British nation, among them his ‘‘Car- 
 thage’’ which he originally offered for five 
 hundred pounds. Later he was offered 
 five thousand pounds by Sir Robert Peel 
 for the picture, but he had decided to keep 
 it, and his dying request, which was dis- 
 regarded, was that he should be buried 
 in its magnificent folds. 
 
 Sir Robert Peel’s collection of 77 paint- 
 ings and 18 drawings was purchased for 
 The National Gallery in 1875 for $375,900. 
 In 1885, $437,500 was voted by Parliament 
 for the purchase of the ‘‘Madonna degli 
 Ansidei’” by Raphael and Van Dyck’s 
 “‘Charles I on Horseback.”’ 
 
 It is rich in the works of the early Italian 
 masters, such as ‘‘The Raising of Lazarus” 
 
 214 
 
aes 
 
 
 
 " : yh s z od S 
 a © hos 
 
 THE NATIONAL GALLERY, LONDON 
 
 
 
 by Sebastiano del Piombo, the ‘‘Pieta’”’ 
 of Francia and Giovanni Bellini’s ‘‘Doge 
 Loredano,” the first picture secured for 
 the Gallery. 
 
 ———————-}.—_——_—__—__- 
 
 THE LOUVRE, PARIS, contains the 
 rarest specimens of art owned by the 
 French nation. Of the original chateau 
 (the outlines of which are today marked 
 on the stones of the courtyard) we know 
 little, but it is certain that Philip Augustus 
 in 1214 built a fortress at this point and 
 that successive monarchs have altered and 
 added to it, the final wing being completed 
 in 1857. In the course of construction 
 through the centuries each builder em- 
 bodied the spirit and style of his own 
 particular period in the addition so that 
 the different sections form a curious combi- 
 nation of different styles of architecture. 
 The design of the building, as a whole, 
 
 —< 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 eee et 2 iS: 
 bie : Mee 
 
 EAST FACADE, THE LOUVRE 
 
 however, follows a single and unified plan 
 and presents a noble appearance. The 
 east facade, of which a picture is shown, 
 was erected for Louis XIV and has been 
 called the most perfect work of archi- 
 tecture in France. The Pavillon Sully, 
 also illustrated, was constructed during 
 the reign and in the style of the period of 
 Napoleon III. 
 
 The collection of paintings and other 
 works of art made by kings of France had 
 kept pace with the improvements of the 
 buildings, and when in 1793 the convention 
 declared the Louvre a national museum, 
 there were royal collections of fitting size 
 and worth to be placed in it. Francis I 
 had bought ‘‘Mona Lisa’”’ from Leonardo 
 da Vinci for 4,000 gold crowns and from 
 that time on the royal line had been gener- 
 ous patrons of art. Not to be overlooked 
 are the great additions which Napoleon 
 
 
 
 PAVILLON SULLY, THE LOUVRE 
 
 made to the collection through his victori- 
 ous campaign in Italy. -Although many 
 
 -of these were returned to their former 
 
 owners, much of the rich collection of 
 Italian paintings comes from this source. 
 One room is devoted entirely to the series 
 of paintings of the life of Marie de’ Medici, 
 by Rubens, originally made for the 
 palace of the Luxembourg. It also has 
 the finest collection of the modern French 
 painters known as the Barbizon School. 
 Among the world famous examples of 
 sculpture which it possesses are the ‘‘Venus 
 de Milo’’ and the *‘Winged Victory.” 
 
 THE MUSEE DU LUXEMBOURG, 
 PARIS, derives its name from having once 
 
 formed part of the Palais du Luxembourg. 
 The palace was first built in 1616 by 
 
 215 
 
Jacques Debrosse, and was intended to 
 recall to Marie de’ Medici the appearance 
 of her former home, the Pitti Palace of 
 Florence. 
 
 The Musée du Luxembourg § serves 
 as the great exhibition gallery of those 
 modern painters whom France honors by 
 the purchase of their canvases, and con- 
 stitutes the most important collection of 
 modern art in the world. Among foreign 
 painters, America is the best represented. 
 About ten years after the death of each 
 artist, his works are passed upon and 
 removed either to The Louvre, or to pro- 
 vincial museums. 
 
 —_$___.),_____ 
 
 THE PITTI and the UFFIZI GAL- 
 LERIES of FLORENCE are often thought 
 of as a unit, not only because they are 
 both the result of the rule of the Medici 
 family, but because they are connected 
 by a passage, nearly half a mile long. 
 This corridor, built quaintly over houses 
 and shops and crossing the Arno on the 
 Ponte Vecchio, was designed as a means 
 of escape in case of uprisings or other 
 danger. 
 
 The Uffizi was erected in 1560 after 
 designs by Vasari, the biographer of the 
 artists. It was intended for the offices 
 of the Medici family, who were then ruling 
 as Grand Dukes of Tuscany. The collec- 
 tions in the Uffizi are the most important 
 in Florence, as they represent most fully 
 the development of the pictorial art of 
 the High Renaissance. The nucleus was 
 formed by the early Medici and was 
 increased by each generation. The whole 
 was bequeathed to the state in 1737 by 
 Gian Gastone, the last of the Medici family. 
 
 
 
 
 
 UFFIZI PALACE ACROSS THE ARNO 
 
 The Pitti Palace was begun in 1441 by 
 Luca Pitti, in proud rivalry of the power 
 and magnificence of Cosimo de’ Medici. 
 He chose the most famous and extravagant 
 of Florentine architects, Brunelleschi, and 
 gave him express directions to build a 
 palace that should be able to contain in 
 its courtyard the entire Riccardi Palace, 
 the home of Cosimo. The windows of his 
 palace, he said, must be as large as the 
 doors of the Medici Palace, and it was on 
 this plan that the Pitti Palace was started. 
 The walls had risen to the height of only 
 one story when Luca, involved in a con- 
 spiracy against Cosimo’s son, fell from 
 power and it remained for the younger 
 branch of the Medici family a century 
 later to complete it on the scale on which 
 it had been started. One wing is now a 
 residence of the King of Italy. 
 
 neem (aon 
 
 THE IMPERIAL GALLERY, VI- 
 ENNA, was originally formed in the seven- 
 teenth century by the union of the Prague 
 collection of the Emperor Rudolph II 
 (who succeeded to the Austrian throne 
 in 1576), the collection of the Archduke 
 Leopold William, in which were many 
 Dutch and Venetian paintings, and the 
 collection of the Archduke Ferdinand of 
 Tyrol, which contained the ‘“‘Madonna 
 of the Meadow” by Raphael and the ‘“‘St. 
 Justina’”’ of Moretto (considered his finest 
 
 work). 
 —_ oh 
 
 THE BRERA GALLERY, MILAN, is 
 the Palace of Science, Letters and Arts. 
 
 The building itself, erected by Ricchini 
 for a Jesuit College in 1651, is a very 
 
 216 
 
: 
 
 Se Pee 
 — 
 
 We. ee a SR tet ee Oe ee 
 
 oe ees 
 
 hy 
 
 at Ng eh vee eee a 
 
 —_ 2. 
 
 a" a 
 
 
 
 
 
 COURTYARD OF THE BRERA 
 
 beautiful example of the architecture of 
 the High Renaissance. It contains a 
 library of 300,000 volumes, numismatic 
 and archaeological collections, besides the 
 magnificent gallery of Italian paintings, 
 in which is found the most notable gather- 
 ing of the works of painters of the north 
 Italian schools. Among these are the 
 “Marriage of the Virgin’? by Raphael, 
 the marvellous study of the head of Christ 
 for Leonardo’s ‘‘Last Supper,’’ the ‘‘St. 
 John” by Titian and a large series of fres- 
 cos by Luini. 
 
 —_———}.—____ 
 
 ST. PETER’S AND THE VATICAN, 
 
 ROME. The group of buildings which 
 house St. Peter’s Church and the Vatican 
 is recognized throughout the world as a 
 symbol of the power and authority of 
 the Roman Catholic Church. They con- 
 tain in addition to their ecclesiastical 
 
 treasures one of the greatest collections . 
 
 of art in the world. 
 
 The Vatican has been the principal 
 residence of the Popes since their return 
 from Avignon in 1377, and their official 
 residence since the capture of Rome by 
 the Piedmontese in 1870. It originated 
 in the residence built by Pope Symmachus 
 (498-514) adjoining the Basilica of St. 
 Peter’s. 
 
 The architect of the present church was 
 Bramante, but Raphael and Michel Angelo 
 both held this office at a later time and 
 the dome was designed by the versatile 
 Buonarotti. 
 
 The Vatican collection of antique sculp- 
 ture is world famous and is not equalled 
 elsewhere. Among its treasures are the 
 “Laocoén”’ and the “Apollo Belvedere’’. 
 The picture gallery contains many famous 
 religious paintings among which is Ra- 
 phael’s famous ‘‘Transfiguration”, and 
 the fresco painting in the public rooms is 
 beautiful beyond description. Raphael’s 
 fresco work is thought by many critics to 
 excel his oil painting and it is here seen 
 at its height. Fra Angelico’s frescos in 
 the Vatican are a little less perfect than 
 his work at Florence. 
 
 The Sistine Chapel is the Court Chapel 
 where the great papal ceremonies and 
 elections are held. Its architectural fea- 
 tures are the simplest, but its design pro- 
 vides great wall space for decoration. The 
 entire ceiling is covered with the creations 
 of Michel Angelo and the four years he 
 spent with this work early in his life nearly 
 wrecked his health. Years later he com- 
 pleted his great ‘‘Last Judgment’? which 
 completely covers the wall above the 
 altar. On the side walls are frescos of 
 the life of Christ and the life of Moses 
 painted concurrently by Perugino, 
 
 
 
 ae 
 
 
 
 SS 
 
 ST. PETER’S AND THE VATICAN 
 
 217 
 
Pinturicchio, Botticelli, Signorelli, Pier 
 di Cosimo, Ghirlandajo and others. 
 
 The library of the Vatican is perhaps 
 the most important in the world, especially 
 in regard to manuscript sources, if the 
 value of its contents is considered. It 
 contains approximately 50,000 manuscripts 
 and 350,000 printed books. 
 
 — —  -. ——__—__—. 
 
 SAN MARCO, FLORENCE, formerly 
 a convent of the Dominican Order, is of 
 particular interest to the art student 
 because it contains the best work of the 
 saintly Fra Angelico. The convent was 
 richly endowed by Cosimo de’ Medici, 
 who had a cell reserved to which he might 
 
 
 
 CLOISTERS OF SAN MARCO 
 
 withdraw for spiritual refreshment. Al- 
 though Fra Angelico’s panel paintings 
 may be seen in northern Europe, his 
 greater skill as a fresco painter can 
 only be estimated at Florence, where 
 he was painting for his own brethren and 
 for the glorification of the Dominican 
 Order. His paintings have recently been 
 taken from other Florentine galleries and 
 concentrated in San Marco where his 
 greatest work was done. Here, later, 
 worked Fra Bartolommeo and his assistant, 
 Albertinelli. Here came the brilliant and 
 fanatic Dominican reformer, Savonarola, 
 who grew in power from the moment that 
 he preached his first sermon on the Apoca- 
 
 lypse from the pulpit of San Marco. In 
 
 a year he was prior—in two years more 
 he was, in effect, dictator of Florence. 
 Another two years and Rome summoned 
 him in a question of heresy, and excom- 
 municated him for disobedience. Two 
 years of stubborn resistance, and then he 
 was dragged from the convent, tried, un- 
 frocked, hanged and burned. 
 of ——______ 
 
 THE ROYAL PICTURE GALLERY, 
 MADRID (Gallery of The Prado), derives 
 its popular name from its situation on The 
 Prado, a wide boulevard about two miles 
 in length, the chief promenade of Madrid. 
 
 The enlightened Charles III (1759-1788), 
 who had previously been King of Naples, 
 desired to unite in one place the treasures 
 of art that till then had been contained 
 in the various royal residences of Madrid 
 and other cities of Spain. These paintings 
 had been the property of the Spanish Royal 
 House, or had come to it through gift or 
 inheritance through its affiliations with 
 the Royal Houses of France and Austria. 
 Murillo, Velasquez, Titian and Goya are 
 brilliant figures of the Gallery, but it like- 
 wise contains a surprising number of can- 
 vases by Dutch and Flemish painters, - 
 notably many by Peter Paul Rubens. 
 
 In all, the gallery possesses more than 
 two thousand pictures, and was finally 
 opened to the public, as had been the 
 desire of Charles III, in the year 1828. 
 
 *k 
 
 THE MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS, 
 BOSTON, is one of the few great museums 
 that have been founded and conducted 
 entirely from private subscriptions. It 
 was granted a charter in 1870 and a wing 
 of the first building, in Copley Square, 
 Boston, was dedicated in 1876. By 1899, 
 this building had become inadequate, and 
 twelve acres were purchased for the erec- 
 tion of a new museum on Huntington 
 Avenue. This was erected after eight 
 years of planning and experiment, and 
 dedicated in 1909. The Museum contains 
 among other famous paintings the Stuart 
 portraits of George and Martha Washington. 
 
 The arrangement and lighting of the 
 galleries make the Museum of Fine Arts 
 one of the finest museum buildings in 
 the world. Its Department of Prints 
 is one of the finest and most excellently 
 arranged in America. 
 
 218 
 
ARTISTS REPRESENTED. BY SCHOOLS 
 
 AMERICAN SCHOOL 
 
 West, Benjamin, 1738-1820 
 
 La Farge, John, 1835-1910 
 Abbey, Edwin Austin, 1852-1911 
 Low, Will H., 1853- 
 
 Sargent, John Singer, 1856-1925 
 
 BRITISH SCHOOL 
 
 Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 1723-1792 
 
 Blake, William, 1757-1827 
 
 Brown, Ford Madox, 1821-1893 
 Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, 1828-1882 
 Millais, Sir John Everett, 1829-1896 
 Burne-Jones, Sir Edward, 1833-1898 
 Calderon, Philip Hermogenes, 1833-1898 
 Riviére, Briton, 1840—1920 
 
 Dicksee, Sir Francis, 1853-— 
 
 DUTCH SCHOOL 
 
 Rembrandt van Rijn, 1606—1669 
 _ Alma-Tadema, Sir Lawrence, 1836-1912 
 
 FLEMISH SCHOOL 
 
 Matsys, Quinten, 1460-1530 
 Rubens, Peter Paul, 1577-1640 
 Van Dyck, Sir Anthony, 1599-1641 
 van Oost, Jacob, 1637-1713 
 
 FRENCH SCHOOL 
 
 Poussin, Nicolas, 1594-1665 
 
 Le Sueur, Eustache, 1617-1655 
 
 Le Brun, Charles, 1619-1690 
 
 Scheffer, Ary, 1795-1858 
 
 Decamps, Alexandre Gabriel, 1803-1860 
 Flandrin, Hippolyte, 1809-1864 
 Chasseriau, Theodore, 1819-1857 
 Géréme, Jean Léon, 1824-1904 
 
 Puvis de Chavannes, Pierre, 1824-1898 
 Bouguereau, William Adolph, 1825-1905 
 Moreau, Gustave, 1826-1898 
 
 Henner, Jean-Jacques, 1829-1905 
 
 Doré, Gustave, 1833-1883 
 
 Bonnat, Léon, 1833-1922 
 
 Tissot, James Joseph, 1836-1902 
 Laurens, Jean Paul, 1838— 
 
 Cazin, Jean Charles, 1841-1901 
 Lhermitte, Léon Augustin, 1844-1925 
 
 FRENCH SCHOOL 
 
 Benjamin-Constant, J. J., 1845-1902 
 Bastien-Lepage, Jules, 1848-1884 
 Béraud, Jean, 1849— 
 
 Burnand, Eugene, 1850-— 
 
 Lerolle, Henri, 1848-— 
 
 (cont.) 
 
 GERMAN SCHOOL 
 
 Diirer, Albrecht, 1471-1528 
 Munkacsy, Michael, 1844-1900 
 Uhde, Fritz von, 1848-1911 
 Prell, Hermann, 1854— 
 
 ITALIAN SCHOOL 
 
 Angelico, Fra, 1387-1455 
 Masaccio, 1401-1428 
 
 Bellini, Giovanni, 1428-1516 
 Mantegna, Andrea, 1431-1506 
 Botticelli, Sandro, 1447-1510 
 Ghirlandajo, 1449-1494 
 
 Francia, 1450-1517 
 
 Leonardo da Vinci, 1452-1519 
 Cima da Conegliano, 1459?—1517? 
 Albertinelli, Mariotto, 1474-1515 
 Luini, Bernardino, 14—15— 
 Michel Angelo Buonarotti, 1475-1564 
 Titian, 1477-1576 
 
 Palma Vecchio, 1480-1528 
 Raphael Sanzio, 1483-1520 
 Sebastiano del Piombo, 1485-1547 
 Sarto, Andrea del, 1486-1531 
 Correggio, 1494-1534 
 
 Moretto da Brescia, 14982-1555? 
 Bronzino, Agnolo, 1502-1572 
 
 Il Tintoretto, 1518-1594 
 Veronese, Paolo, 1528-1588 
 Caravaggio, 1569-1609 
 
 Allori, Cristofano, 1577-1621 
 Domenichino, 1581—1641 
 
 Rosa, Salvator, 1615-1673 
 Tiepolo, Giovanni Battista, 1696-1770 
 Michetti, Francesco Paolo, 1851- 
 
 SPANISH SCHOOL 
 
 El Greco, 1545-1625 
 
 Collantés, Francisco, 1599-1656 
 Velasquez, Diego, 1599-1660 
 
 Murillo, Bartolomé Estéban, 1617-1682 
 
 219 
 
INDEX OF ARTISTS 
 
 Abbey, Edwin Austin, 56 
 Albertinelli, Mariotto, 102 
 Allori, Cristofano, 84 
 Alma-Tadema, Sir Lawrence, 48 
 Andrea del Sarto, 134 
 
 Angelico, Fra, 98, 126 
 
 Bastien-Lepage, Jules, 110 
 Bellini, Giovanni, 136 
 Benjamin-Constant, J. J., 148 
 Béraud, Jean, 182 
 
 Blake, William, 18, 78, 82 
 Bonnat, Léon, 60 
 
 Botticelli, Sandro, 210 
 Bouguereau, William Adolph, 192 
 Bronzino, Agnolo, 54 
 
 Bronzino, the Younger, 84 
 Brown, Ford Madox, 172 
 Buonarotti, Michel Angelo, 16, 20 
 Burnand, Eugéne, 194 
 Burne-Jones, Sir Edward, 14 
 
 Calderon, Philip Hermogenes, 66 
 
 Lerolle, Henri, 112 
 
 Le Sueur, Eustache, 204 
 Lhermitte, Léon Augustin, 150 
 Low, Will H., 152 
 
 Luini, Bernardino, 132 
 
 Mantegna, Andrea, 62 
 
 Masaccio, 106 
 
 Matsys, Quinten, 118 
 
 Michel Angelo Buonarotti, 16, 20 
 Michetti, Francesco Paolo, 144 
 Millais, Sir John Everett, 130 
 Moreau, Gustave, 156 
 
 Moretto da Brescia, 162 
 Munkdcsy, Michael, 176 
 Murillo, Bartolomé Estéban, 92, 100, 124 
 
 Oost, Jacob van, 70 
 
 Palma Vecchio, 36 
 
 Piombo, Sebastiano del, 160 
 Poussin, Nicolas, 50 
 
 Prell, Hermann, 168 
 
 Caravaggio, Michelangelo Amerigi da, 206 Puvis de Chavannes, Pierre, 154 
 
 Cazin, Jean Charles, 28 
 Chasseriau, Theodore, 80 
 Chavannes, Pierre Puvis de, 154 
 Cima da Conegliano, 198 
 Collantés, Francisco, 46 
 
 Constant, J. J. Benjamin-, 148 
 Correggio, Antonio Allegri da, 114 
 
 Decamps, Alexandre Gabriel, 38 
 
 del Sarto, Andrea, 134 
 
 Dicksee, Frank (Sir Francis), 74 
 Domenichino (Domenico Zampieri), 72 
 Doré, Gustave, 24, 64 
 
 Dyck, Sir Anthony Van, 174 
 
 Durer, Albrecht, 202, 212 
 
 El Greco (Domenico Theotocopuli), 184 
 
 Flandrin, Hippolyte, 26, 164 
 Francia (Raibolini), 188 
 
 Géréme, Jean Léon, 34, 52 
 Ghirlandajo, 108, 142 
 Greco, El (Domenico Theotocopuli), 184 
 
 Henner, Jean-Jacques, 190 
 
 La Farge, John, 200 
 
 Laurens, Jean Paul, 58 
 
 Le Brun, Charles, 166 
 Leonardo da Vinci, 4, 122, 170 
 Lepage, Jules Bastien-, 110 
 
 Raphael Sanzio, 3, 104, 116, 158 
 Rembrandt van Rijn, 42, 120, 178 
 Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 68 
 
 Riviére, Briton, 86 
 
 Robusti, Jacopo (Il Tintoretto), 94 
 Rosa, Salvator, 22 
 
 Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, 96 
 Rubens, Peter Paul, 128, 186 
 
 Sargent, John Singer, 88, 90 
 Sarto, Andrea del, 134 
 
 _ Scheffer, Ary, 138 
 
 Sebastiano del Piombo, 160 — 
 
 Tadema, Sir Lawrence Alma-, 48 — 
 Tiepolo, Giovanni Battista, 32, 44 
 Tintoretto, Il] (Jacopo Robusti), 94 
 Tissot, James Joseph, 40 
 
 Titian, 180, 208 
 
 Tori, Angelo (Bronzino), 54 
 
 Uhde, Fritz von, 146 
 
 Van Dyck, Sir Anthony, 174 
 
 van Oost, Jacob, 70 
 
 van Rijn, Rembrandt, 42, 120, 178 
 Velasquez, Diego, 196 
 
 Veronese, Paolo (Paolo Cagliari), 30, 140 
 Vinci, Leonardo da, 4, 122, 170 
 
 West, Benjamin, 78 
 
 220 
 
INDEX OF PICTURES 
 
 A Christ Child, St. Anne, The Virgin and, 123 
 
 Abel, Cain and, 23 Cleansing of the Temple, The, 145 
 Abraham and Isaac, 33 Complaint, Job’s, 83 
 Adam and Eve, 19, 21 Conception, The Immaculate, 101 
 
 The creation of, 17 : Confusion of Tongues, The, 27 
 Adoration of the Magi, The, 119 Conspiracy of Judas, The, 169 
 Ahasuerus, Esther Preparing to Meet, 81 Coronation of the Virgin, The, 211 
 Amalek is Overcome, 53 Creation, The Days of, 15 
 Among The Lowly, 151 —of Eve, 19 
 Andrew, The Calling of Peter and, 143 —of Man, 17 
 Anne, The Virgin, Christ Child and Saint, 123 Cross, The Descent from the, 187 
 Annunciation, The, 99 Crucifixion, The, 185 
 
 Annunciation to the Shepherds, The, 111 
 
 Anoints the Feet of Christ, Mary Magdalen, 163 D 
 
 Answer to the King, Daniel’s, 87 Daniel’s Answer to the King, 87 
 
 Apocalypse, The Four Horsemen of the, 213 Daughter, Jephtha’s, 59 
 
 Apostles John, Mark, Peter, Paul, 203 David as King, 73 
 
 Arrival of the Shepherds, The, 113 —with the Head of Goliath, 71 
 
 Ascension, The, 201 Days of Creation, 15 
 
 Assumption of the Virgin, The, 209 Death of the Firstborn, The, 49 
 B —of Samson, The, 65 
 
 —of the Virgin, The, 207 
 Delilah, Samson and, 63 
 Deluge, The, 25 
 Descent from the Cross, The, 187 
 Disciples Running to the Sepulchre, The Two, 195 
 Disputing with the Doctors, Christ, 133 
 Doctors, Christ Disputing with the, 133 
 
 Babel, The Tower of, 27 
 
 Baptism of Christ, The, 137 
 
 Baptist, John the, see John the Baptist 
 
 Beheading of John the Baptist, 155 
 
 Birth of St. John the Baptist, 107 
 
 Birth of the Virgin, The, 93 
 
 Birth of Christ, see Nativity 
 
 Blessing Little Children, Christ, 165 E 
 
 Blessing the Sons of J oseph, Jacob, 43 Ecce Homo, 161 
 
 Ererren, Joseph =e By ue ae , Eden, The Expulsion from, 21 
 Joseph Makes Himself Known to his, 41 Egypt, The Flight into, 127 
 
 Burning Bush, Moses and the, 47 The Return from, 129 
 
 Burning of Sodom, The, 31 Elijah and the Fiery Chariot, 79 
 
 Cc ‘ Emmaus, The Supper at, 197 
 Cain and Abel, 23 Entry into Jerusalem, The, 167 
 Calling of Peter and Andrew, The, 143 _ Ephesus, St. Paul Preaching at, 205 
 Calvary, The Road to, 183 Esther Preparing to Meet Ahasuerus, 81 
 Cana, The Marriage at, 141 Eve, The Creation of, 19 
 Chariot, Elijah and the Fiery, 79 Expulsion from Eden, The, 21 
 
 Children, Christ Blessing Little, 165 
 
 Christ, see also Jesus F 
 Christ, The Baptism of, 137 Feet, Christ Washes Peter’s, 173 
 —Before Pilate, 177 Feet of Christ, Mary Magdalen Anoints the, 163 
 —Blessing Little Children, 165 Fiery Chariot, Elijah and the, 79 
 —Disputing with the Doctors, 133 Finding of Moses, The, 45 
 Mary Magdalen Anoints the Feet of, 163 Firstborn, Death of the, 49 
 Mary Magdalen at the Tomb of, 191 Flight into Egypt, The, 127 
 —on the Cross, 185 Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, The, 213 
 —on the Waters, 149 , G 
 —Presented to the People (Ecce Homo), 181 
 The Holy Women at the Tomb of, 193 Gideon, The Stratagem of, 57 
 The Temptation of, 139 Girlhood of Mary Virgin, The, 97 
 —Washes Peter’s Feet, 173 Goliath, David with the Head of, 71 
 
 221 
 
INDEX OF PICTURES 
 
 H 
 
 Habakkuk, The Prophet, 89 
 
 Hagar and Ishmael, 29 
 
 ‘He that is without sin among you,’’ etc., 153 
 Holofernes, Judith with the Head of, 85 
 
 Holy Night, 115 
 
 Holy Women at the Tomb of Christ, The, 193 
 Homo, Ecce, 181 
 
 Horeb, Moses Smites the Rock in, 51 
 Horsemen of the Apocalypse, The Four, 213 
 Hosea, The Prophet, 91 
 
 I 
 
 Immaculate Conception, The, 101 
 Incredulity of Thomas, The, 199 
 Infant St. John with a Lamb, 125 
 Infant Samuel, The, 69 
 
 Isaac, The Sacrifice of, 33 
 
 Isaiah, The Prophet, 89 
 
 Ishmael, Hagar and, 29 
 
 J 
 
 Jacob and Rachel, The Meeting of, 37 
 —Blessing the Sons of Joseph, 43 
 Jephtha’s Daughter, 59 
 Jeremiah, The Prophet, 89 
 Jerusalem, The Entry into, 167 
 Jesus, see also Christ 
 Jesus, The Betrayal of, 175 
 —in the Workshop of Joseph, 131 
 Job’s Complaint, 83 
 Joel, The Prophet, 91 
 John the Baptist, 135 
 The Beheading of, 155 
 The Birth of, 107 
 —with a Lamb, Infant, 125 
 John, Saint (The Apostle), 203 
 —Running to the Sepulchre, Peter and, 195 
 Jonah, The Prophet, 89 
 Joseph Makes Himself Known, 41 
 —Sold by his Brethren, 39 
 Jacob Blessing the Sons of, 43 
 Joseph, Jesus in the Workshop of, 131 
 judas, The Conspiracy of, 169 
 Judgment of Solomon, The, 75 
 Judith with the Head of Holofernes, 85 
 
 K 
 King, Daniel’s Answer to the, 87 
 David as, 73 
 L 
 
 Lamb, Infant St. John with a, 125 
 Last Supper, The, 171 
 Law, Moses Smashes the Tables of the, 55 
 
 Lazarus, The Raising of, 161 
 
 Lion, Samson Kills the, 61 
 
 Little Children, Christ Blesses the, 165 
 Lowly, Among the, 151 
 
 M 
 
 Madonna of the Chair, 3 
 Sistine, 117 
 Magi, The Adoration of the, 119 
 Man, The Creation of, 17 
 Mark, Saint, 203 
 Marriage at Cana, The, 141 
 Marriage of the Virgin, The, 105 
 Mary Magdalen Anoints the Feet of Christ, 163 
 —at the Tomb of Christ, 191 
 Mary Virgin, The Girlhood of, 97 
 Meeting of Jacob and Rachel, The, 37 
 Moses and the Burning Bush, 47 
 The Finding of, 45 
 —Breaking the Tables of the Law, 55 
 —Smites the Rock in Horeb, 51 
 Mount, The Sermon on the, 147 
 
 N 
 Naomi, Ruch and, 67 
 Nativity, Tne, 109 
 Night, Holy, 115 
 
 Oo 
 
 Obadiah, The Prophet, 91 
 
 P 
 
 Paul, Saint, 203 
 —Preaching at Ephesus, 205 
 Peter, Saint, 203 
 —and Andrew, The Calling of, 143 
 —and John Running to the Sepulchre, 195 
 Peter’s Feet, Christ Washes, 173 
 Pieta, 89 
 Pilate, Christ before, 177 
 —Washing his Hands, 179 
 Presentation in the Temple, The, 121 
 —of the Virgin, The, 95 
 
 : Prophets: 
 
 Habakkuk, 89 
 Hosea, 91 
 Isaiah, 89 
 Jeremiah, 89 
 Joel, 91 
 Jonah, 89 
 Obadiah, 91 
 Zephaniah, 91 
 
 Q 
 Queen of Sheba, Solomon and the, 77 
 
 222 
 
INDEX OF PICTURES 
 
 R 
 
 Rachel, The Meeting of Jacob and, 37 
 
 Raising of Lazarus, The, 161 
 
 Rebecca, 35 
 
 Return from Egypt, The, 129 
 
 Road to Calvary, The, 183 
 
 Rock in Horeb, Moses Smites the, 51 
 
 Running to the Sepulchre, Peter and John, 195 
 Ruth and Naomi, 67 
 
 S) 
 
 Sacrifice of Isaac, The, 33 
 Saint Anne, The Virgin, Christ Child and, 123 
 Saint John (The Apostle), 203 
 —and Peter Running to the Sepulchre, 195 
 Saint John (The Baptist), 135 
 —with a Lamb, The Infant, 125 
 The Beheading of, 155 
 The Birth of, 107 
 Saint Mark, 203 
 Saint Paul, 203 
 —Preaching at Ephesus, 205 
 Saint Peter, 203 
 Salome, The Vision of, 157 
 Samson and Delilah, 63 
 The Death of, 65 
 The Youth of, 61 
 Samuel, The Infant, 69 
 Sepulchre, Peter aud John Running to the, 195 
 Sermon on the Mount, The, 147 
 Sheba, Solomon and the Queen of, 77 
 Shepherds, The Annunciation to the, 111 
 The Arrival of the, 113 
 Sistine Madonna, 117 
 Sodom, The Burning of, 31 
 Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, 77 
 The Judgment of, 75 
 Sons of Joseph, Jacob Blessing the, 43 
 Stratagem of Gideon, The, 57 
 Supper at Emmaus, The, 197 
 The Last, 171 
 
 28 
 
 Tables of the Law, Moses Breaking the, 55 
 Temple, The Cleansing of the, 145 
 
 The Presentation in the, 121 
 
 The Presentation of the Virgin in the, 95 
 Temptation and Expulsion from Eden, The, 21 
 Temptation of Christ, 139 
 Thomas, The Incredulity of, 199 
 Tomb, Mary Magdalen at the, 191 
 
 Peter and John Running to the, 195 
 
 The Holy Women at the, 193 
 Tongues, The Confusion of, 27 
 Tower of Babel, The, 27 
 Transfiguration, The, 159 
 
 Vv 
 
 Virgin, Christ Child and St. Anne, The, 123 
 The Assumption of the, 209 
 The Birth of the, 93 
 The Coronation of the, 211 
 The Death of the, 207 
 The Girlhood of Mary, 97 
 The Marriage of the, 105 
 The Presentation of the, 95 
 Vision of Salome, The, 157 
 Visitation, The, 103 
 
 Ww 
 
 Washes Peter’s Feet, Christ, 173 
 Washing his Hands, Pilate, 179 
 Waters, Christ on the, 149 
 Women at the Tomb of Christ, The Holy, 193 
 Workshop of Joseph Jesus in the, 131 
 NG 
 
 Youth of Samson, The, 61 
 
 Z 
 Zephaniah, The Prophet, 9! 
 
 223 
 

 
 
 
 
 
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