Multitudes—multitudes—stood up in bliss,Made equal to the angels, glorious, fair;With harps, palms, wedding-garments, kiss of peace,And crowned and haloed hair.Each face looked one way like a moon new-lit,Each face looked one way toward its Sun of Love;Drank love, and bathed in love, and mirrored it,And knew no end thereof.Glory touched glory, on each blessèd head,Hands locked dear hands never to sunder more:These were the new-begotten from the deadWhom the great birthday bore.
Multitudes—multitudes—stood up in bliss,Made equal to the angels, glorious, fair;With harps, palms, wedding-garments, kiss of peace,And crowned and haloed hair.
Each face looked one way like a moon new-lit,Each face looked one way toward its Sun of Love;Drank love, and bathed in love, and mirrored it,And knew no end thereof.
Glory touched glory, on each blessèd head,Hands locked dear hands never to sunder more:These were the new-begotten from the deadWhom the great birthday bore.
Christina Rossetti:From House to Home.
This picture was formerly the predella of an altar-piece in San Domenico at Fiesole. It was sold by the monks in 1826 to the Prussian Consul in Rome, from whose nephew it was purchased for our Gallery. "The price paid was £3500. The additional and incidental expenses, in consequence of the demands of the Roman Government before allowing the exportation, were unusually great. Those demands, ostensibly founded on the excellence and celebrity of the picture, were admitted to be partly also suggested by the state of the Papal finances." The British Consul finally paid £700 for the permission of exportation (Director's Report, 1861). The altar-piece to which our picture belonged remains sadly damagedin situ.
Roger van der Weyden[161](Early Flemish: 1400-1464).
See also(p. xix)
This painter was born at Tournai, where he was known as Rogelet de la Pasture. He afterwards went to Brussels, where he assumedhis Flemish name, and where in 1436 he was appointed town painter. For the Hall of Justice there he painted four pictures, which are now lost, but of which the designs are preserved in a set of tapestries in Berne Cathedral. He was the chief master (as a teacher, that is) of the early Flemish school. It was he who carried Flemish art into Italy (see 772), where he was in 1449-1450. "Contemporary Italian writers laud the pathos, the brilliant colouring, and the exhaustive finish of his works." He on his side gained something from the study of Italian masters. The composition of many of his great works—e.g."The Last Judgment" at Beaune, the "Nativity" at Berlin, and "The Adoration of the Magi" at Munich—bears evidence of Italian influence. Nearer home, the school of the Lower Rhine in its later time was an offshoot of his school: and farther up the river, Martin Schongauer, at Colmar, was an immediate pupil of his. He set the fashions in several subjects—such as descents from the cross, and hundreds of followers imitated his designs. What gave his art this wide currency was the way in which it united the older religious feeling, from which Van Eyck had cut himself adrift, with the new naturalism and improved technique which Van Eyck had introduced. His French blood, too, gave his art an element of vivid emotion, which was lacking in the staid control of Van Eyck. He is especially praised for his "representations of human desires and dispositions, whether grief, pain, or joy." He thus painted for the religious needs of the people at large; and though an inferior artist, enjoyed a far wider influence than Van Eyck. "Less intensely realistic than Van Eyck, less gifted with the desire and the power to reproduce the phenomena of nature for their own sake, and in their completeness, he thought more," says Sir F. Burton, "of expressing the feelings common to him and the pious worshippers for whose edification he wrought. His figures exhibit deep, if sometimes rather overstrained, pathos. He strove with naïf earnestness to bring home to the senses the reality of the incidents connected with the last sufferings and death of the Saviour. Still he was naturalistic too, in the sense in which that term applies to all painters of the early Flemish school, in that he imitated with minuteness every object which he thought necessary to his compositions; but of the broad principles of chiaroscuro and subordination which Van Eyck had so wonderfully grasped, he had small perception. His scenes seem filled with the light of early morning. His colour, pale in the flesh-tints with greyish modelling, is varied and delicately rich in the clothing and other stuffs introduced. His landscape abounds in freshness and greenth. Thus he transferred to his oil pictures the light and brilliance of missal painting, an art which perhaps he had himself practised." "He occasionally practised a very different technical method from that usually employed in Flanders—that is to say, he painted in pure tempera colours on unprimed linen, the flesh tints especially being laid on extremely thin, so that the texture of the linen remains unhidden. Other colours, such as a smalto blue used for draperies, are applied in greater body, andthe whole is left uncovered by any varnish" (Middleton). Of this method the present picture is a fine example.
This painter was born at Tournai, where he was known as Rogelet de la Pasture. He afterwards went to Brussels, where he assumedhis Flemish name, and where in 1436 he was appointed town painter. For the Hall of Justice there he painted four pictures, which are now lost, but of which the designs are preserved in a set of tapestries in Berne Cathedral. He was the chief master (as a teacher, that is) of the early Flemish school. It was he who carried Flemish art into Italy (see 772), where he was in 1449-1450. "Contemporary Italian writers laud the pathos, the brilliant colouring, and the exhaustive finish of his works." He on his side gained something from the study of Italian masters. The composition of many of his great works—e.g."The Last Judgment" at Beaune, the "Nativity" at Berlin, and "The Adoration of the Magi" at Munich—bears evidence of Italian influence. Nearer home, the school of the Lower Rhine in its later time was an offshoot of his school: and farther up the river, Martin Schongauer, at Colmar, was an immediate pupil of his. He set the fashions in several subjects—such as descents from the cross, and hundreds of followers imitated his designs. What gave his art this wide currency was the way in which it united the older religious feeling, from which Van Eyck had cut himself adrift, with the new naturalism and improved technique which Van Eyck had introduced. His French blood, too, gave his art an element of vivid emotion, which was lacking in the staid control of Van Eyck. He is especially praised for his "representations of human desires and dispositions, whether grief, pain, or joy." He thus painted for the religious needs of the people at large; and though an inferior artist, enjoyed a far wider influence than Van Eyck. "Less intensely realistic than Van Eyck, less gifted with the desire and the power to reproduce the phenomena of nature for their own sake, and in their completeness, he thought more," says Sir F. Burton, "of expressing the feelings common to him and the pious worshippers for whose edification he wrought. His figures exhibit deep, if sometimes rather overstrained, pathos. He strove with naïf earnestness to bring home to the senses the reality of the incidents connected with the last sufferings and death of the Saviour. Still he was naturalistic too, in the sense in which that term applies to all painters of the early Flemish school, in that he imitated with minuteness every object which he thought necessary to his compositions; but of the broad principles of chiaroscuro and subordination which Van Eyck had so wonderfully grasped, he had small perception. His scenes seem filled with the light of early morning. His colour, pale in the flesh-tints with greyish modelling, is varied and delicately rich in the clothing and other stuffs introduced. His landscape abounds in freshness and greenth. Thus he transferred to his oil pictures the light and brilliance of missal painting, an art which perhaps he had himself practised." "He occasionally practised a very different technical method from that usually employed in Flanders—that is to say, he painted in pure tempera colours on unprimed linen, the flesh tints especially being laid on extremely thin, so that the texture of the linen remains unhidden. Other colours, such as a smalto blue used for draperies, are applied in greater body, andthe whole is left uncovered by any varnish" (Middleton). Of this method the present picture is a fine example.
This picture—"one of the most exquisite in feeling of the early Flemish school" (Poynter)—is full of sincere emotion. "Roger van der Weyden is especially known by his touching conception of some of the scenes of the Passion. He excelled in the lull of suppressed feeling. The picture of the Entombment by him in the National Gallery is as much more sad to the heart than the passionate Italian conception, as a deep sigh sometimes than a flood of tears. We could almost wish those mourners, with their compressed lips, red eyelids, and slowly trickling tears, would weep more—it would grieve us less. But evidently the violence of the first paroxysm of grief is over, and this is the exhaustion after it. The tide is ebbing as with all new sorrow, too soon to flow again. No finer conception of manly sorrow, sternly repressed, exists than in the heads of Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea, who devote themselves the more strenuously to their task in order to conceal their grief. Strange that a painter of such exquisite refinement of feeling should adhere to so hideous a type of Christ as that which appears here" (Mrs. Jameson'sHistory of our Lord, ii. 246). It is interesting to contrast the figure of Christ with that in Francia's picture (180). In painting such subjects the Italians of the best time endured the physical painfulness, the Northern temperament rejoiced in it. The painters in so doing were only meeting the wishes of their patrons. There is a contract, for instance, still in existence in which it is expressly stipulated that the form of our Lord in a picture ordered at Bruges shall be painted "in all respects like a dead man."
Piero della Francesca(Umbrian: about 1416-1492).
This great Umbrian master was a native of Borgo San Sepolcro in Umbria, but studied in Florence, where it is probable that he was a pupil of Paolo Uccello (see 583). A combination of the characteristics of the two schools is to be seen in the work of Piero, who had at the same time a marked individuality of his own. "He has the imaginative impulse, the Umbrian sense of an inner, an almost mystic beauty, of a certain aloofness from earth and uplifting of the soaring spirit; and yet on the other side of his character he is strongly scientific; he studies perspective, the projection of shadows, the scheme ofvalues; he fills his work with light and atmosphere, and improves on the oil methods of the earlier Florentines" (Brinton'sRenaissance in Italian Art, iii. 85). "By dignity of portraiture, by loftiness of style, and by a certain poetical solemnity of imagination he raised himself above the level of the mass of his contemporaries. Those who have once seen his fresco of the 'Resurrection' at Borgo San Sepolcro [in the Pinacoteca] will never forget the deep impression of solitude and aloofness from all earthly things produced by it" (Symonds, iii. 170). A copy of this fresco may be seen in the Arundel Society's collection. The picture now before us also well illustrates the skill in dealing with technical difficulties and the solemn grandeur of conception which characterise the painter. Piero della Francesca was so called after his mother,[162]"Francesca's Peter," for, says Vasari, "he had been brought up solely by herself, who furthermore assisted him in the attainment of that learning to which his good fortune had destined him." He received at first a scientific education, and possessed, adds Vasari, "a considerable knowledge of Euclid, inasmuch that he understood all the most important properties of rectilinear bodies better than any other geometrician." In a treatise on perspective, written in the vulgar tongue, he reduced the science to "rules which have hardly admitted of subsequent improvement." These studies influenced Piero's tendencies in art. "The laws of aerial perspective, of the harmony of colours, the proportions of light and shade, and the position of objects in space were equally developed by one whose feeling for precise calculation wentpari passuwith that of pictorial representation. In this combination of science and art he was strictly the precursor of Leonardo da Vinci. Fra Luca Paccioli, a celebrated mathematician, and an intimate friend of Piero, was in later years in constant communication with Leonardo" (Layard, i. 215). Piero probably acquired the new method of oil painting from Domenico Veneziano (see 766), whom he assisted in some wall paintings in S. Maria Nuova in Florence in 1439, and with whom he afterwards worked at Loreto. Some of his best works are to be seen in his native city, and at Arezzo he painted a remarkable series of frescoes for the church of S. Francesco. Piero was also employed at Urbino, where he appears to have been the guest of Raphael's father, Giovanni Santi. He worked also in Rimini and Ferrara, and was called to Rome to paint two frescoes in the Vatican, which were afterwards destroyed to make room for the works of Raphael. His later, like his earlier years, were devoted to mathematical studies, and in his old age "the ban Of blindness struck both palette from his thumb And pencil from his finger." Among his pupils Vasari mentions Perugino and Signorelli.
This great Umbrian master was a native of Borgo San Sepolcro in Umbria, but studied in Florence, where it is probable that he was a pupil of Paolo Uccello (see 583). A combination of the characteristics of the two schools is to be seen in the work of Piero, who had at the same time a marked individuality of his own. "He has the imaginative impulse, the Umbrian sense of an inner, an almost mystic beauty, of a certain aloofness from earth and uplifting of the soaring spirit; and yet on the other side of his character he is strongly scientific; he studies perspective, the projection of shadows, the scheme ofvalues; he fills his work with light and atmosphere, and improves on the oil methods of the earlier Florentines" (Brinton'sRenaissance in Italian Art, iii. 85). "By dignity of portraiture, by loftiness of style, and by a certain poetical solemnity of imagination he raised himself above the level of the mass of his contemporaries. Those who have once seen his fresco of the 'Resurrection' at Borgo San Sepolcro [in the Pinacoteca] will never forget the deep impression of solitude and aloofness from all earthly things produced by it" (Symonds, iii. 170). A copy of this fresco may be seen in the Arundel Society's collection. The picture now before us also well illustrates the skill in dealing with technical difficulties and the solemn grandeur of conception which characterise the painter. Piero della Francesca was so called after his mother,[162]"Francesca's Peter," for, says Vasari, "he had been brought up solely by herself, who furthermore assisted him in the attainment of that learning to which his good fortune had destined him." He received at first a scientific education, and possessed, adds Vasari, "a considerable knowledge of Euclid, inasmuch that he understood all the most important properties of rectilinear bodies better than any other geometrician." In a treatise on perspective, written in the vulgar tongue, he reduced the science to "rules which have hardly admitted of subsequent improvement." These studies influenced Piero's tendencies in art. "The laws of aerial perspective, of the harmony of colours, the proportions of light and shade, and the position of objects in space were equally developed by one whose feeling for precise calculation wentpari passuwith that of pictorial representation. In this combination of science and art he was strictly the precursor of Leonardo da Vinci. Fra Luca Paccioli, a celebrated mathematician, and an intimate friend of Piero, was in later years in constant communication with Leonardo" (Layard, i. 215). Piero probably acquired the new method of oil painting from Domenico Veneziano (see 766), whom he assisted in some wall paintings in S. Maria Nuova in Florence in 1439, and with whom he afterwards worked at Loreto. Some of his best works are to be seen in his native city, and at Arezzo he painted a remarkable series of frescoes for the church of S. Francesco. Piero was also employed at Urbino, where he appears to have been the guest of Raphael's father, Giovanni Santi. He worked also in Rimini and Ferrara, and was called to Rome to paint two frescoes in the Vatican, which were afterwards destroyed to make room for the works of Raphael. His later, like his earlier years, were devoted to mathematical studies, and in his old age "the ban Of blindness struck both palette from his thumb And pencil from his finger." Among his pupils Vasari mentions Perugino and Signorelli.
A picture of great interest from a technical point of view, asshowing an advancing skill, especially in perspective. The feet of Christ are finely "foreshortened"; the tops of the mountains are correctly reflected on the surface of the river in the foreground; in the middle distance there is a foreshortened view of a street leading to a fortified town, and the anatomy of the figure stripping himself for baptism is very carefully rendered. This very realistic figure of a convert strikes a curious note; Piero's paintings are "the working out of problems before our very eyes." In these technical respects Piero resembles Paolo Uccello, while there is also a striking affinity of style between the landscapes of the two painters. "The peculiar construction of these landscapes, with steep mountains of an uncommon type, is the more remarkable because they are the starting-point of all the later achievements in realistic landscape painting" (Richter'sItalian Art in the National Gallery, p. 16). "The study of natural phenomena," says Mr. Monkhouse, "is everywhere apparent. The pomegranate trees are the earliest attempt in the National Gallery to give what may be called the portrait of a particular tree—the habit of its growth, the special character of its leafage. The hedge in Uccello's 'Battle of St. Egidio' is the nearest approach to it. He has striven to imagine the scene as it actually might have happened. Sundry worthies, in strange rich costumes, look on from a further bank. Nothing is 'newer' in the picture than the carefully studied reflections of their garments in the water. The effect, so beautifully rendered by Burne-Jones in his picture of 'Venus's Looking-Glass,' Piero was the first to paint, if not to observe" (In the National Gallery, p. 106).
The subject is the baptism in Jordan. Christ, under the shade of a pomegranate tree, is being "baptized of John in Jordan; and straightway coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens opened, and the Spirit like a dove descending upon him" (Mark i. 9, 10). The spiritual feeling of the scene is enhanced by the sweet presence of the attendant angels,—crowned with wreaths of flowers, instead of the nimbus. It is an old belief that angels watch over men's birth, and so too they are represented as presiding over the new birth, which is typified by the rite of baptism. "What solemnity in the bearing of Christ as He permits John to pour over Him the water of Jordan which is flowing in a shallow stream at his feet! How modest the deportment of the assistant angels at His side! How the trees, whose every leaf in the dense foliageis distinctly outlined, seem even to hush their whispers that nothing may disturb the nearness of God, who looking down from heaven as out of the far distance, makes his presence felt" (Grimm'sLife of Raphael, p. 46). This picture, which seems never to have been finished and shows the under-painting, was formerly the principal altar-piece of the Priory of St. John the Baptist at Borgo San Sepolcro.
Fra Filippo Lippi(Florentine: about 1406-1469).
I am poor brother Lippo, by your leave!...Yes, I'm the painter, since you style me so....For me, I think I speak as I was taught;I always see the garden and God thereA-making man's wife: and, my lesson learned,The value and significance of flesh,I can't unlearn ten minutes afterwards....Why can't a painter lift each foot in turn,Left foot and right foot, go a double step,Make his flesh liker and his soul more like,Both in their order?
I am poor brother Lippo, by your leave!...Yes, I'm the painter, since you style me so....For me, I think I speak as I was taught;I always see the garden and God thereA-making man's wife: and, my lesson learned,The value and significance of flesh,I can't unlearn ten minutes afterwards....Why can't a painter lift each foot in turn,Left foot and right foot, go a double step,Make his flesh liker and his soul more like,Both in their order?
Browning:Fra Lippo Lippi.
This and the companion picture by the same artist (667) were painted for Cosmo de' Medici (this one is marked with Cosmo's crest—three feathers tied together in a ring), and are identified with a story told by Vasari, which Browning worked up in his poem on the artist. Cosmo, knowing the artist's ways, kept him under lock and key that his work might be the quicker done, but Lippi one night contrived a way of escape, and "from that time forward," adds Vasari, "Cosmo gave the artist more liberty, and was by this means more promptly and effectually served by the painter, and was wont to say that men of genius were not beasts of burden, but forms of light." Filippo was the son of a butcher, and, being left an orphan, was committed to the charge of the monks of the Carmelite convent close to which his parents had lived. At the age of fourteen or fifteen he was induced to take the vows of the order. At this time he must have seen Masaccio painting in the famous Branacci chapel of the conventual church, S. M. del Carmine. Lippi himself executed some works (now destroyed) in the church, and having by this time found his true vocation, he was in 1431 permitted to leave the convent in order to be free to practise his art. Vasari relates that during an excursion on the Adriatic, Lippi was taken captive by some Moorish pirates. But after a while he found opportunity to draw a whole-length portrait of his master with charcoal on a white wall, which the pirates deemed so marvellous that they set him at liberty. This tale, however, is inconsistent with the facts of Lippi's life as now knownfrom documentary evidence. Lippi enjoyed the patronage of the Medici, and he received sinecure offices also from the Pope. During the years 1431-53 many of his best panel pictures were painted. Among these may be mentioned the "Coronation of the Virgin" (Academy, Florence), in which is introduced a portrait of himself with the tonsure, and bearing a scroll inscribedIs perfecit opus, and the "Virgin adoring the Infant, borne by two Angels" (Uffizi), which was selected by Ruskin for one of his four "Lesson Photographs," and is fully described by him inFors, 1875, p. 307. At the end of the period in question Lippi undertook the principal work of his life, which occupied him for several years, the series of frescoes in the choir of the Duomo at Prato. "These magnificent paintings," says Morelli, "were executed at about the same time as those equally celebrated by Mantegna in the Cappella degli Eremitani at Padua. Whoever would learn to know the aspirations and artistic power of that period in the highest utterances, has only to study those two wall-paintings. If we are carried away by Fra Filippo's grandeur of conception and his pure dramatic vividness, we are enthralled, on the other hand, by Mantegna's greater fulness of expression and his perfect execution" (German Galleries, p. 71). While engaged on these frescoes, the friar-painter was appointed chaplain to the convent of Santa Margherita. Here he became enamoured of one of the nuns, Lucrezia Buti, and having persuaded the abbess to let Lucrezia sit to him for a study of the Madonna, he carried her off to his house. She remained with him for two years, and bore him a son, the renowned painter, Filippino Lippi (293). Her portrait is to be seen in the Virgin of the "Assumption," now in the Communal Gallery at Prato. She was induced to return to the convent, and took fresh vows, but again escaped to seek the friar's protection. The scandal now became serious, and Filippo was threatened with punishment. But Cosmo de' Medici intervened, and the Pope issued a bull releasing the erring pair from their vows and sanctioning their marriage. Lippi's last work was a series of frescoes in the choir of the Duomo at Spoleto. Here he died, from an illness ascribed by some to poison, leaving the work to be finished by his assistant, Fra Diamante. He was buried in the Duomo. Over his tomb Lorenzo de' Medici caused a monument to be erected, and Poliziano wrote Latin couplets to commemorate the fame of the friar-painter. "His art," says Ruskin, "is the finest, out and out, that ever monk did, which I attribute myself to what is usually considered faultful in him, his having run away with a pretty novice out of a convent.... The real gist of the matter is that Lippi did, openly and bravely, what the highest prelates in the Church did basely and in secret; also he loved, where they only lusted; and he has been proclaimed therefore by them—and too foolishly believed by us—to have been a shameful person"[163](Fors Clavigera, 1872, xxii. 4;AriadneFlorentina, vi. § 5n.). In other words, Lippi, while true to his religion, did not shut himself out from the world—to use the theological language, he "sanctified," not "crucified," the flesh. His pictures are "nobly religious work,—examples of the most perfect unison of religious myth with faithful realism of human nature yet produced in this world" (Fors Clavigera, 1876, p. 187). "The human element, with him so naïve and spontaneous, gives," says Burton, "a singular charm to his works. His colour is golden and broad, and his drapery finely cast and of fascinatingly broken tones." Among his pupils (besides his son) were Pesellino and Botticelli.
This and the companion picture by the same artist (667) were painted for Cosmo de' Medici (this one is marked with Cosmo's crest—three feathers tied together in a ring), and are identified with a story told by Vasari, which Browning worked up in his poem on the artist. Cosmo, knowing the artist's ways, kept him under lock and key that his work might be the quicker done, but Lippi one night contrived a way of escape, and "from that time forward," adds Vasari, "Cosmo gave the artist more liberty, and was by this means more promptly and effectually served by the painter, and was wont to say that men of genius were not beasts of burden, but forms of light." Filippo was the son of a butcher, and, being left an orphan, was committed to the charge of the monks of the Carmelite convent close to which his parents had lived. At the age of fourteen or fifteen he was induced to take the vows of the order. At this time he must have seen Masaccio painting in the famous Branacci chapel of the conventual church, S. M. del Carmine. Lippi himself executed some works (now destroyed) in the church, and having by this time found his true vocation, he was in 1431 permitted to leave the convent in order to be free to practise his art. Vasari relates that during an excursion on the Adriatic, Lippi was taken captive by some Moorish pirates. But after a while he found opportunity to draw a whole-length portrait of his master with charcoal on a white wall, which the pirates deemed so marvellous that they set him at liberty. This tale, however, is inconsistent with the facts of Lippi's life as now knownfrom documentary evidence. Lippi enjoyed the patronage of the Medici, and he received sinecure offices also from the Pope. During the years 1431-53 many of his best panel pictures were painted. Among these may be mentioned the "Coronation of the Virgin" (Academy, Florence), in which is introduced a portrait of himself with the tonsure, and bearing a scroll inscribedIs perfecit opus, and the "Virgin adoring the Infant, borne by two Angels" (Uffizi), which was selected by Ruskin for one of his four "Lesson Photographs," and is fully described by him inFors, 1875, p. 307. At the end of the period in question Lippi undertook the principal work of his life, which occupied him for several years, the series of frescoes in the choir of the Duomo at Prato. "These magnificent paintings," says Morelli, "were executed at about the same time as those equally celebrated by Mantegna in the Cappella degli Eremitani at Padua. Whoever would learn to know the aspirations and artistic power of that period in the highest utterances, has only to study those two wall-paintings. If we are carried away by Fra Filippo's grandeur of conception and his pure dramatic vividness, we are enthralled, on the other hand, by Mantegna's greater fulness of expression and his perfect execution" (German Galleries, p. 71). While engaged on these frescoes, the friar-painter was appointed chaplain to the convent of Santa Margherita. Here he became enamoured of one of the nuns, Lucrezia Buti, and having persuaded the abbess to let Lucrezia sit to him for a study of the Madonna, he carried her off to his house. She remained with him for two years, and bore him a son, the renowned painter, Filippino Lippi (293). Her portrait is to be seen in the Virgin of the "Assumption," now in the Communal Gallery at Prato. She was induced to return to the convent, and took fresh vows, but again escaped to seek the friar's protection. The scandal now became serious, and Filippo was threatened with punishment. But Cosmo de' Medici intervened, and the Pope issued a bull releasing the erring pair from their vows and sanctioning their marriage. Lippi's last work was a series of frescoes in the choir of the Duomo at Spoleto. Here he died, from an illness ascribed by some to poison, leaving the work to be finished by his assistant, Fra Diamante. He was buried in the Duomo. Over his tomb Lorenzo de' Medici caused a monument to be erected, and Poliziano wrote Latin couplets to commemorate the fame of the friar-painter. "His art," says Ruskin, "is the finest, out and out, that ever monk did, which I attribute myself to what is usually considered faultful in him, his having run away with a pretty novice out of a convent.... The real gist of the matter is that Lippi did, openly and bravely, what the highest prelates in the Church did basely and in secret; also he loved, where they only lusted; and he has been proclaimed therefore by them—and too foolishly believed by us—to have been a shameful person"[163](Fors Clavigera, 1872, xxii. 4;AriadneFlorentina, vi. § 5n.). In other words, Lippi, while true to his religion, did not shut himself out from the world—to use the theological language, he "sanctified," not "crucified," the flesh. His pictures are "nobly religious work,—examples of the most perfect unison of religious myth with faithful realism of human nature yet produced in this world" (Fors Clavigera, 1876, p. 187). "The human element, with him so naïve and spontaneous, gives," says Burton, "a singular charm to his works. His colour is golden and broad, and his drapery finely cast and of fascinatingly broken tones." Among his pupils (besides his son) were Pesellino and Botticelli.
Here the traditional legend of the Annunciation is faithfully adhered to, and there is much "unusually mystic spiritualism of conception" in the dove, the Spirit of God, proceeding in rays of golden light from the hand of an unseen Presence; but the painter delights to elaborate also every element of human interest and worldly beauty. Note, for instance, the prettiness of the angel's face, the gracefulness of his figure, the sheen of his wings, and the dainty splendour of the Virgin's chamber.
Fra Filippo Lippi(Florentine: 1406-1469).See 666.
Lippi's general characteristics, noticed above under the companion picture (666), may again be seen here. The "other saints" are Sts. Francis (on the spectator's right, with the stigmata), Lawrence, and Cosmas; on the left Sts. Damianus, Anthony, and Peter Martyr—this last a particularly "human" saint. Lippi was a monk himself, and drew his saints in the human resemblance of good "brothers" that he knew. "I will tell you what Lippi must have taught any boy whom he loved. First, humility, and to live in joy and peace, injuring no man—if such innocence might be. Nothing is so manifest in every face by him as its gentleness and rest." It is characteristic of Lippi, too, that the saints should be represented sitting in so pretty a garden. Secondly,—"a little thing it seems, but was a great one,—love of flowers. No one draws such lilies or such daisies as Lippi. Botticelli beat him afterwards in roses, but never in lilies" (Ariadne Florentina, vi. § 9).
Carlo Crivelli(Venetian: painted 1468-1493).See 602.
Gabriele Ferretti (to whose family Pope Pius IX. belonged) was Superior of the Franciscans in the March of Ancona, and died in 1456. Thirty years later his body was found incorrupt, and was deposited in a sarcophagus in the church of S. Francesco ad Alto at Ancona. It is conjectured that the present picture was painted for that church in commemoration of the discovery of the body. The artist shows us the holy man in enjoyment of the vision of the beatified. "The Beato (in Franciscan habit) has been reading or praying, at the entrance of a cave near a church, in a quiet country spot from which a road leads to a town in the distance. Suddenly in the sky the Virgin and Child appear (surrounded by theVesicaglory, see No. 564). He has laid down his book, put off his sandals, and kneels in prayer and adoration.... The masterly treatment of the drapery, the perfection of the forms, the architecture, the sense of spaciousness in the landscape, all point to the maturity of Crivelli's art.... The landscape, for general effect, is one of his best, though the treatment of the rocks and of the foreground is still conventional. The most striking objects in it are the leafless tree-stems, the counterpart, as it were, of the hard and bony human figures of which he was so fond, and therefore an illustration of his love for anatomical forms. His seeking after realism again appears in the two ducks painted with minute precision. In contrast to them we get the festoon of fruit at the top of the picture, illustrating the conventional and decorative aspect of his art. No picture of his suggests more completely both the range and the limitations of Crivelli" (G. M. Rushforth:Carlo Crivelli, pp. 65, 87).
L'Ortolano(Ferrarese: died about 1525).
Giambattista Benvenuti, called L'Ortolano (the gardener) from his father's occupation, is still a problem in art history, details of hislife being so uncertain that even the existence of him is disputed by some critics. There is, however, documentary evidence which proves his existence. This noble picture was, until 1844, the altar-piece of the parochial church of Bondeno, near Ferrara, where it was generally considered the painter's masterpiece. His life and works are generally confounded with those of Garofalo, to which painter Morelli ascribes the present work. "Garofalo's characteristics are apparent in the form of hand, the brown flesh-tints, the drapery, the landscape, and the small stones in the foreground" (Italian Painters: The Borghese and Doria-Pamfili Galleries in Rome, p. 208). On the other hand, Venturi has drawn up a list of works, showing common characteristics and common differences from Garofalo, which he therefore attributes to Ortolano. To this list should be added Lord Wimborne's "St. Joseph presenting the Infant Christ." Among the characteristics noticeable in our picture are houses planted on posts; long, straight streaks in the background turning to white; trees with large, sparse, yellowing leaves. "Garofalo never achieved the rapt expression of St. Demetrius" (see the argument of Venturi quoted in Burlington Fine Arts Club's Catalogue, 1894).
Giambattista Benvenuti, called L'Ortolano (the gardener) from his father's occupation, is still a problem in art history, details of hislife being so uncertain that even the existence of him is disputed by some critics. There is, however, documentary evidence which proves his existence. This noble picture was, until 1844, the altar-piece of the parochial church of Bondeno, near Ferrara, where it was generally considered the painter's masterpiece. His life and works are generally confounded with those of Garofalo, to which painter Morelli ascribes the present work. "Garofalo's characteristics are apparent in the form of hand, the brown flesh-tints, the drapery, the landscape, and the small stones in the foreground" (Italian Painters: The Borghese and Doria-Pamfili Galleries in Rome, p. 208). On the other hand, Venturi has drawn up a list of works, showing common characteristics and common differences from Garofalo, which he therefore attributes to Ortolano. To this list should be added Lord Wimborne's "St. Joseph presenting the Infant Christ." Among the characteristics noticeable in our picture are houses planted on posts; long, straight streaks in the background turning to white; trees with large, sparse, yellowing leaves. "Garofalo never achieved the rapt expression of St. Demetrius" (see the argument of Venturi quoted in Burlington Fine Arts Club's Catalogue, 1894).
In the centre is St. Sebastian, tied to a tree, and pierced with arrows; whilst in the foreground is a cross-bow, lying uselessly. For the story is that Sebastian was a noble youth who was promoted to the command of a company in the Prætorian Guards by the Emperor Diocletian:
"At this time he was secretly a Christian, but his faith only rendered him more loyal to his masters; more faithful in all his engagements; more mild, more charitable; while his favour with his prince, and his popularity with the troops, enabled him to protect those who were persecuted for Christ's sake, and to convert many to the truth. Among his friends were two young men of noble family, soldiers like himself; their names were Marcus and Marcellinus." And when they were tortured for being Christians, Sebastian, "neglecting his own safety, rushed forward, and, by his exhortations, encouraged them rather to die than to renounce their Redeemer. Then Diocletian ordered that Sebastian also should be bound to a stake and shot to death with arrows. The archers left him for dead; but in the middle of the night, Irene, the widow of one of his martyred friends, came with her attendants to take his body away, that she might bury it honourably; and it was found that none of the arrows had pierced him in a vital part, and that he yet breathed. So they carried him to her house, and his wounds were dressed; and the pious widow tended him night and day, until he had wholly recovered" (Mrs. Jameson:Sacred and Legendary Art, 1850, pp. 343, 344).
"At this time he was secretly a Christian, but his faith only rendered him more loyal to his masters; more faithful in all his engagements; more mild, more charitable; while his favour with his prince, and his popularity with the troops, enabled him to protect those who were persecuted for Christ's sake, and to convert many to the truth. Among his friends were two young men of noble family, soldiers like himself; their names were Marcus and Marcellinus." And when they were tortured for being Christians, Sebastian, "neglecting his own safety, rushed forward, and, by his exhortations, encouraged them rather to die than to renounce their Redeemer. Then Diocletian ordered that Sebastian also should be bound to a stake and shot to death with arrows. The archers left him for dead; but in the middle of the night, Irene, the widow of one of his martyred friends, came with her attendants to take his body away, that she might bury it honourably; and it was found that none of the arrows had pierced him in a vital part, and that he yet breathed. So they carried him to her house, and his wounds were dressed; and the pious widow tended him night and day, until he had wholly recovered" (Mrs. Jameson:Sacred and Legendary Art, 1850, pp. 343, 344).
This legend was one of the special favourites with themediæval painters: "the display of beautiful form, permitted and even consecrated by devotion, is so rare in Christian representations, that we cannot wonder at the avidity with which this subject was seized" (ibid.p. 346). It is instructive to compare the noble use of the subject made in this picture, in which the great technical skill of the painter is subordinate to the beautiful display of a sacred legend, with the "St. Sebastian" of Pollajuolo (292), in which, as we have seen, the subject is used solely—and painfully—for the display of such skill. With St. Sebastian is here represented, on his left, his contemporary, St. Demetrius. He is clad in armour, for he also served under Diocletian, being Proconsul of Greece, and like St. Sebastian used his high office to preach Christ. On the other side is St. Roch (for whose legend see 735). He is a much later saint (aboutA.D.1300), and is associated with St. Sebastian as another patron of the plague-stricken. Arrows have been from all antiquity the emblem of pestilence; and from the association of arrows with his legend, St. Sebastian succeeded in Christian times to the honours enjoyed by Apollo, in Greek mythology, as the protector against pestilence.
Angelo Bronzino(Florentine: 1502-1572).See 649.
See also(p. xx)
He wears the robes of his order (with a red cross bordered with yellow), an order established by Cosimo, Duke of Tuscany, and charged with the defence of the coasts against pirates. The knight is a good specimen of the courtier aristocracy with which Cosimo surrounded himself. The knights of St. Stephen afterwards won much honour by their prowess, but they were men of culture also: notice that this one holds a book in his hand, which rests on a table richly carved in the taste of the time. This portrait was presented to the nation by Mr. Watts, R.A.
Garofalo(Ferrarese: 1481-1559).See 81.
This fine picture was originally the principal altar-piece of the church of San Guglielmo (St. William) at Ferrara. Hence the introduction of that saint (on our left)—a beautiful face, into which the artist has put, one may think, all his local piety. Thesaint is in armour, for William—the institutor of the hermit order of Guglielmites—was originally a soldier, and was "given," says one of his biographers, "unto a licentious manner of living, too common among persons of that profession." It was to escape from such temptations that he became a holy penitent, and fought thenceforward in mountain solitudes, as a soldier of Christ against the flesh and the devil. Beside him stands St. Clara, "the very ideal of a gray sister, sedate and sweet, sober, steadfast, and demure." She gazes on a crucifix, for she too had renounced the pomps and vanities of the world. Her wealth of golden hair was cut off, it is said, by St. Francis; her fortune she gave to hospitals, and herself became the foundress of the Order of "Poor Clares." St. Francis stands on the other side of the throne, and besides him is "good St. Anthony" (see under 776).
Rembrandt(Dutch: 1606-1669).See 45.
"This portrait, dated 1640, describes the man well—strong and robust, with powerful head, firm and compressed lips and determined chin, with heavy eyebrows, separated by a deep vertical furrow, and with eyes of keen penetrating glance,—altogether a self-reliant man, who would carry out his own ideas, careless whether his popularity waxed or waned" (J. F. White inEncyclopædia Britannica).
Antonello da Messina(Venetian: 1444-1493)
A picture of special interest as being the earliest known work (it is dated 1465) of Antonello, of Messina in Sicily, who is famous as the man by whom the art of painting in oils, as perfected by the Van Eycks (see 186), was introduced into Venice. Vasari's story is that Antonello saw, on a visit to Naples, a picture by John Van Eyck, in which the brilliancy and fine fusion of the tints so struck him that he forthwith set out for Flanders, ingratiated himself with Van Eyck, and learnt from him the secret of his method. But the dates do not agree with this story. For Van Eyck died in 1440, and Antonello must therefore have been born early in the century, whereas, on the contrary, Vasari expressly states that he died in 1493, aged forty-nine. More probably Antonello learnt the Flemish technique from the painters of that school who are known to have been at Naples in the middle of the fifteenthcentury. In his native town, in the church of S. Gregorio, is a triptych by him, dated 1473. In the same year he was at Venice, where he remained until his death. "His practical mastery of the new method, still unknown in the city of the Lagoons, of glazing in oil colours a ground laid in tempera, must have given Antonello a higher status at Venice than his intrinsic merits as an artist would have warranted. We see that he is at once honoured with a commission from the wardens of S. Cassiano. Unhappily the altar-piece there, so highly praised by Matteo Collaccio and Sabellico, and signed with the year 1473, has long since disappeared. And not only did the church dignitaries of Venice patronise him, but the patricians were eager to have their likenesses taken on the new principle practised by Antonello; and, to judge by the number of portraits he turned out in those years, he must for a time have been the most popular portrait painter in Venice" (Morelli). Of his portraits there is a good example in our Gallery (1141). The splendid portrait in the Louvre is dated 1475; that in the Berlin Gallery, 1478. The "Crucifixion" in our Gallery is dated 1477. "It is evident to me," says Morelli, "that Antonello gradually formed himself by studying the works and seeking the society of the great Venetian masters, till he reached that degree of perfection which we miss in his early Ecce Homos and admire in his portraits of 1475-78. His Italian nature gradually works its way through the Flemish shell in which his first master had encased his hand as well as mind. In this transformation of Antonello as an artist Giovanni Bellini had obviously the greatest share. Whoever visits the churches of Messina, and of the towns and villages along that eastern coast of Sicily as far as Syracuse, will still find in many of them Madonnas, whether in colour or in marble, that remind him of Antonello and Giambellino. And not only did Antonello act powerfully on his own Sicilian countrymen; we also discern his influence in several portraits by painters of Upper Italy—for instance, those of Solario." No. 923, for example, the portrait of a Venetian Senator, by that master, is strongly reminiscent of Antonello's style. In fact, as Sir F. Burton says, "to Antonello and his Flemish education is due that type of portraiture which we find among the Venetian and North Italian painters of his time, and which, under a southern sun, and in the hands of a Titian, expanded itself in the noblest form." (The above account of Antonello follows Morelli: see hisItalian Masters in German Galleries, pp. 376-390).
A picture of special interest as being the earliest known work (it is dated 1465) of Antonello, of Messina in Sicily, who is famous as the man by whom the art of painting in oils, as perfected by the Van Eycks (see 186), was introduced into Venice. Vasari's story is that Antonello saw, on a visit to Naples, a picture by John Van Eyck, in which the brilliancy and fine fusion of the tints so struck him that he forthwith set out for Flanders, ingratiated himself with Van Eyck, and learnt from him the secret of his method. But the dates do not agree with this story. For Van Eyck died in 1440, and Antonello must therefore have been born early in the century, whereas, on the contrary, Vasari expressly states that he died in 1493, aged forty-nine. More probably Antonello learnt the Flemish technique from the painters of that school who are known to have been at Naples in the middle of the fifteenthcentury. In his native town, in the church of S. Gregorio, is a triptych by him, dated 1473. In the same year he was at Venice, where he remained until his death. "His practical mastery of the new method, still unknown in the city of the Lagoons, of glazing in oil colours a ground laid in tempera, must have given Antonello a higher status at Venice than his intrinsic merits as an artist would have warranted. We see that he is at once honoured with a commission from the wardens of S. Cassiano. Unhappily the altar-piece there, so highly praised by Matteo Collaccio and Sabellico, and signed with the year 1473, has long since disappeared. And not only did the church dignitaries of Venice patronise him, but the patricians were eager to have their likenesses taken on the new principle practised by Antonello; and, to judge by the number of portraits he turned out in those years, he must for a time have been the most popular portrait painter in Venice" (Morelli). Of his portraits there is a good example in our Gallery (1141). The splendid portrait in the Louvre is dated 1475; that in the Berlin Gallery, 1478. The "Crucifixion" in our Gallery is dated 1477. "It is evident to me," says Morelli, "that Antonello gradually formed himself by studying the works and seeking the society of the great Venetian masters, till he reached that degree of perfection which we miss in his early Ecce Homos and admire in his portraits of 1475-78. His Italian nature gradually works its way through the Flemish shell in which his first master had encased his hand as well as mind. In this transformation of Antonello as an artist Giovanni Bellini had obviously the greatest share. Whoever visits the churches of Messina, and of the towns and villages along that eastern coast of Sicily as far as Syracuse, will still find in many of them Madonnas, whether in colour or in marble, that remind him of Antonello and Giambellino. And not only did Antonello act powerfully on his own Sicilian countrymen; we also discern his influence in several portraits by painters of Upper Italy—for instance, those of Solario." No. 923, for example, the portrait of a Venetian Senator, by that master, is strongly reminiscent of Antonello's style. In fact, as Sir F. Burton says, "to Antonello and his Flemish education is due that type of portraiture which we find among the Venetian and North Italian painters of his time, and which, under a southern sun, and in the hands of a Titian, expanded itself in the noblest form." (The above account of Antonello follows Morelli: see hisItalian Masters in German Galleries, pp. 376-390).
Christ as the "Saviour of the World," stands with his finger on the edge of a parapet, giving the blessing and gazing into eternity. The picture, being dated 1465,[164]must have beenpainted by Antonello in his twenty-first year. Both in conception and in the ruddy complexion peculiar to the school of Van Eyck (see 222 and 290) it suggests a Flemish influence. Notice also thepentimenti(or corrections): the right hand and border of the tunic were originally higher, and their forms, obliterated by the painter, have now in course of time disappeared. This again shows the hand of an experienced artist.
Paris Bordone(Venetian: 1500-1570).See 637.
A splendid specimen of this painter's portraits, and a type of the face which meets one in nearly every Gallery of Europe; for Bordone, who had (as we have seen) a great vogue as a lady's portrait painter, had yet a way, says Ridolfi, of making such works appear more like fancy portraits than individual portraits. This one is of a girl of the Brignole family, aged eighteen, according to the inscription. In the Brignole Palace at Genoa (now the property of the town) are two magnificent portraits by Bordone. The type here is that of a cruel and somewhat sensual beauty—the eyes, especially, being, "like Mars, to threaten or command"—
Cold eyelids that hide like a jewelHard eyes that grow soft for an hour;The heavy white limbs, and the cruelRed mouth like a venomous flower.
Cold eyelids that hide like a jewelHard eyes that grow soft for an hour;The heavy white limbs, and the cruelRed mouth like a venomous flower.
Swinburne:Dolores.
Since the above note was written, Mr. H. Schütz Wilson has suggested, with some plausibility, that the portrait is of Bianca Cappello (1542-1587), "as pre-eminent in sumptuous voluptuous loveliness, as she was in the crime of her day in Italy." "In the deadly calm of the almost inscrutable lineaments of this remarkable portrait, in which charm and grace are shown behind so much that is terrible, so much that is earthly, sensual, devilish, in those awful eyes, and in that cruel 'red mouth, like a venomous flower,' we see, as I fancy," says Mr. Wilson, "not an obscure girl of a noble family of Genoa, but the counterfeit presentment of the romantically wicked Renaissance heroine, the fair and evil Grand Duchess of Tuscany" (Pall Mall Gazette, November 22, 1888).
Ferdinand Bol(Dutch: 1616-1680).
Bol was the most distinguished of Rembrandt's pupils in portraiture. He was born at Dordrecht, and settled at Amsterdam, where he acquired burgess rights in 1652. One of Bol's portraits in the Louvre has attained the honour of being hung in the Salon Carré. His "Four Regents of the Leprosy Hospital" at Amsterdam is the painter's masterpiece, and one of the finest works of the Dutch School. Bol's pictures are remarkable for a prevailing yellow tone. Up to about the year 1660 he seems to have remained the pupil of Rembrandt. "Unfortunately he did not remain faithful to his early teaching. He made sacrifices to the taste of his time, and abandoned the sober and grave figures, the severe and sustained method of painting, the powerful light and shade of his school, to seek a fresh source of success in overwhelming allegory and in the imitation of Rubens. This was his ruin. His later works, painted in full light, are very inferior to those of an earlier date; their colouring is hard, glaring, and discordant, and in composition they are frequently bombastic and pretentious" (Havard:The Dutch School of Painting, p. 93).
Bol was the most distinguished of Rembrandt's pupils in portraiture. He was born at Dordrecht, and settled at Amsterdam, where he acquired burgess rights in 1652. One of Bol's portraits in the Louvre has attained the honour of being hung in the Salon Carré. His "Four Regents of the Leprosy Hospital" at Amsterdam is the painter's masterpiece, and one of the finest works of the Dutch School. Bol's pictures are remarkable for a prevailing yellow tone. Up to about the year 1660 he seems to have remained the pupil of Rembrandt. "Unfortunately he did not remain faithful to his early teaching. He made sacrifices to the taste of his time, and abandoned the sober and grave figures, the severe and sustained method of painting, the powerful light and shade of his school, to seek a fresh source of success in overwhelming allegory and in the imitation of Rubens. This was his ruin. His later works, painted in full light, are very inferior to those of an earlier date; their colouring is hard, glaring, and discordant, and in composition they are frequently bombastic and pretentious" (Havard:The Dutch School of Painting, p. 93).
The sitter is conjectured to be an astronomer, from the globes on the table before him and from the look on his face as of a man dwelling among the clouds. The picture is signed, and dated 1652.
Van Dyck(Flemish: 1599-1641).See 49.
Painted by Van Dyck from the large picture by Rubens at Mechlin, for an engraver to work from. "One of the too numerous brown sketches in the manner of the Flemish School, which seem to me rather done for the sake of wiping the brush clean than of painting anything. There is no colour in it, and no light and shade;—but a certain quantity of bitumen is rubbed about so as to slip more or less greasily into the shape of figures; and one of St. John's (or St. James's) legs is suddenly terminated by a wriggle of white across it, to signify that he is standing in the sea" (Art of England, p. 44). Ruskin notices the picture as an example of the art which was assailed by the Pre-Raphaelites. A word-picture of the same scene in the Pre-Raphaelite manner, with its literal and close realisation, will be found inModern Painters, vol. iii. pt. iv. ch. iv. § 16.
Meindert Hobbema(Dutch: 1638-1709).
Hobbema, who disputes with Ruysdael the place of best Dutch landscape painter, was a friend of the latter, and perhaps his pupil: certainly works of the two are sometimes remarkably alike. Thus it has been pointed out that Hobbema's No. 996 shows the influence of Ruysdael, whilst Ruysdael's No. 986 recalls Hobbema's. Often, too, they painted the same country; comparee.g.No. 986 with Hobbema's No. 832. Like Ruysdael, too, Hobbema was a painter without honour in his own country, and nine-tenths of his known works are in England, where he was first appreciated, and where he was the means of influencing many of our landscape painters, notably Nasmyth. His pictures were often ascribed to other painters, now considered greatly his inferiors, in order to obtain better prices. It has been remarked as a curious fact that until the middle of the eighteenth century no engraver thought it worth while to reproduce any of Hobbema's pictures; and Sir Joshua Reynolds in hisTour in Holland(1781) makes no reference to Hobbema, though he must have seen some of his pictures. Even a hundred years ago they were not much sought after; now they are more valued than those of any landscape painter and fetch very large prices at auctions. Recently one of them sold for as much as £8820. This appreciation is due in part to the fact that Hobbemas are very rare; the known works by him number hardly more than a hundred. Of Hobbema's life very little is recorded. His name (like that of Alma Tadema) betokens Frisian origin. His birthplace is unknown, but he appears to have been born at Amsterdam, and to have been the scholar of Jacob Ruysdael in landscape painting. Ruysdael was the witness at his marriage. This was in 1668. In the same year he was appointed one of the sworn gaugers for the excise of the town. "Thus, a century before Burns, fortune played upon one of the greatest of landscape painters the same trick that she played in his case upon the most spontaneous of poets." Hobbema was not the only painter of his time who had to eke out a bare subsistence by employment more lucrative than the production of masterpieces. Salomon van Ruysdael was also a frame-maker; Van Goyen speculated in houses, picture-dealing, and tulips; and Jan Steen was an innkeeper. The coincidence of Hobbema's marriage and his appointment as gauger of wines and oil was not by chance. The archives throw a curious light upon the public morals of Amsterdam at the time of its greatest prosperity. By a deed executed in the month of his marriage, Hobbema admits that he owes his appointment to the influence of a companion of his wife, like her a servant in the employment of the burgomaster, and in consideration of this he agrees to pay her, so long as he holds the place, an annual sum of 250 florins. Posterity owes this servant of the burgomaster a grudge, for after taking up the appointment, Hobbemascarcely painted any more. The post cannot, however, have been lucrative, for he died in evil circumstances—in a house directly opposite to that in which Rembrandt had died forty years before. The painter of works, any one of which is now worth a small fortune to its possessor, was buried in a pauper's grave.In spite of the resemblance to Ruysdael above noted, Hobbema's best and most characteristic works are quite distinct. Ruysdael is the painter of the solitude of nature, of rocks and waterfalls; Hobbema of the Dutch "fields with dwellings sprinkled o'er." The pervading tone of Ruysdael is dark and sombre; that of Hobbema is drowsy and still. A second characteristic of Hobbema is his fondness for oak foliage, and a certain "nigglingness" in his execution of it. Seee.g.832, 833. "They (Hobbema and Both) can paint oak leafage faithfully, but do not know where to stop, and by doing too much, lose the truth of all, lose the very truth of detail at which they aim, for all their minute work only gives two leaves to nature's twenty. They are evidently incapable of even thinking of a tree, much more of drawing it, except leaf by leaf; they have no notion nor sense of simplicity, mass, or obscurity, and when they come to distance, where it is totally impossible that leaves should be separately seen, being incapable of conceiving or rendering the grand and quiet forms of truth, they are reduced to paint their bushes with dots and touches expressive of leaves three feet broad each." "No word," Ruskin elsewhere adds, "has been more harmfully misused than that ugly one of 'niggling.' I should be glad if it were entirely banished from service and record. The only essential question about drawing is whether it be right or wrong; that it be small or large, swift or slow, is a matter of convenience only. But so far as the word may be legitimately used at all, it belongs especially to such execution as this of Hobbema's—execution which substitutes, on whatever scale, a mechanical trick or habit of hand for true drawing of known or intended forms." A second objection to Hobbema's method may be mentioned besides its "trickiness." His "niggling" touch is extended from the foreground to objects farther off, and thus "a middle distance of Hobbema involves a contradiction in terms; it states a distance by perspective, which it contradicts by distinctness of detail" (Modern Painters, vol. i. pt. ii. sec. ii. ch. v. § 17, sec. vi. ch. i. § 22; vol. v. pt. vi. ch. v. § 6). In spite, however, of such defects, the works of Hobbema have an enduring charm for their incisiveness of touch, and warmth of light. He had not Ruysdael's variety nor his depth of poetic feeling. The forest glade and the watermill are almost all he paints. But these he paints so firmly and decisively that they live for ever, and upon them he casts a warm and golden tone which never fails to please.
Hobbema, who disputes with Ruysdael the place of best Dutch landscape painter, was a friend of the latter, and perhaps his pupil: certainly works of the two are sometimes remarkably alike. Thus it has been pointed out that Hobbema's No. 996 shows the influence of Ruysdael, whilst Ruysdael's No. 986 recalls Hobbema's. Often, too, they painted the same country; comparee.g.No. 986 with Hobbema's No. 832. Like Ruysdael, too, Hobbema was a painter without honour in his own country, and nine-tenths of his known works are in England, where he was first appreciated, and where he was the means of influencing many of our landscape painters, notably Nasmyth. His pictures were often ascribed to other painters, now considered greatly his inferiors, in order to obtain better prices. It has been remarked as a curious fact that until the middle of the eighteenth century no engraver thought it worth while to reproduce any of Hobbema's pictures; and Sir Joshua Reynolds in hisTour in Holland(1781) makes no reference to Hobbema, though he must have seen some of his pictures. Even a hundred years ago they were not much sought after; now they are more valued than those of any landscape painter and fetch very large prices at auctions. Recently one of them sold for as much as £8820. This appreciation is due in part to the fact that Hobbemas are very rare; the known works by him number hardly more than a hundred. Of Hobbema's life very little is recorded. His name (like that of Alma Tadema) betokens Frisian origin. His birthplace is unknown, but he appears to have been born at Amsterdam, and to have been the scholar of Jacob Ruysdael in landscape painting. Ruysdael was the witness at his marriage. This was in 1668. In the same year he was appointed one of the sworn gaugers for the excise of the town. "Thus, a century before Burns, fortune played upon one of the greatest of landscape painters the same trick that she played in his case upon the most spontaneous of poets." Hobbema was not the only painter of his time who had to eke out a bare subsistence by employment more lucrative than the production of masterpieces. Salomon van Ruysdael was also a frame-maker; Van Goyen speculated in houses, picture-dealing, and tulips; and Jan Steen was an innkeeper. The coincidence of Hobbema's marriage and his appointment as gauger of wines and oil was not by chance. The archives throw a curious light upon the public morals of Amsterdam at the time of its greatest prosperity. By a deed executed in the month of his marriage, Hobbema admits that he owes his appointment to the influence of a companion of his wife, like her a servant in the employment of the burgomaster, and in consideration of this he agrees to pay her, so long as he holds the place, an annual sum of 250 florins. Posterity owes this servant of the burgomaster a grudge, for after taking up the appointment, Hobbemascarcely painted any more. The post cannot, however, have been lucrative, for he died in evil circumstances—in a house directly opposite to that in which Rembrandt had died forty years before. The painter of works, any one of which is now worth a small fortune to its possessor, was buried in a pauper's grave.
In spite of the resemblance to Ruysdael above noted, Hobbema's best and most characteristic works are quite distinct. Ruysdael is the painter of the solitude of nature, of rocks and waterfalls; Hobbema of the Dutch "fields with dwellings sprinkled o'er." The pervading tone of Ruysdael is dark and sombre; that of Hobbema is drowsy and still. A second characteristic of Hobbema is his fondness for oak foliage, and a certain "nigglingness" in his execution of it. Seee.g.832, 833. "They (Hobbema and Both) can paint oak leafage faithfully, but do not know where to stop, and by doing too much, lose the truth of all, lose the very truth of detail at which they aim, for all their minute work only gives two leaves to nature's twenty. They are evidently incapable of even thinking of a tree, much more of drawing it, except leaf by leaf; they have no notion nor sense of simplicity, mass, or obscurity, and when they come to distance, where it is totally impossible that leaves should be separately seen, being incapable of conceiving or rendering the grand and quiet forms of truth, they are reduced to paint their bushes with dots and touches expressive of leaves three feet broad each." "No word," Ruskin elsewhere adds, "has been more harmfully misused than that ugly one of 'niggling.' I should be glad if it were entirely banished from service and record. The only essential question about drawing is whether it be right or wrong; that it be small or large, swift or slow, is a matter of convenience only. But so far as the word may be legitimately used at all, it belongs especially to such execution as this of Hobbema's—execution which substitutes, on whatever scale, a mechanical trick or habit of hand for true drawing of known or intended forms." A second objection to Hobbema's method may be mentioned besides its "trickiness." His "niggling" touch is extended from the foreground to objects farther off, and thus "a middle distance of Hobbema involves a contradiction in terms; it states a distance by perspective, which it contradicts by distinctness of detail" (Modern Painters, vol. i. pt. ii. sec. ii. ch. v. § 17, sec. vi. ch. i. § 22; vol. v. pt. vi. ch. v. § 6). In spite, however, of such defects, the works of Hobbema have an enduring charm for their incisiveness of touch, and warmth of light. He had not Ruysdael's variety nor his depth of poetic feeling. The forest glade and the watermill are almost all he paints. But these he paints so firmly and decisively that they live for ever, and upon them he casts a warm and golden tone which never fails to please.
Hans Memlinc(Early Flemish: 1430-1494).
It is only in the Hospital of St. John at Bruges that the art of this exquisite painter can be properly studied. There, as among the Fra Angelicos at San Marco in Florence and the Giottos at the Arena in Padua, one may see the great works of a mediæval painter in the very surroundings which first produced them. (Copies of some of Memlinc's works at Bruges and elsewhere are included in the Arundel Society's collection.) The Hospital is, as it were, a shrine of Memlinc. Around this fact legends grew. In one of the pictures, it was said, a portrait of the artist might be discovered; on the sculptured ornaments of a porch enframing one of its subjects, an incident of the master's life might be traced,—his danger as he lay senseless in the street, his rescue as charitable people carried his body to the hospital. It came to be told how the great artist began life as a soldier who went to the wars under Charles the Bold, and came back riddled with wounds from the field of Nancy. Wandering homeward in a disabled state in 1477, he fainted in the streets of Bruges, and was cured by the Hospitallers. Unknown to them and a stranger to Bruges, he gave tangible proofs of his skill to the brethren of St. John, and showed his gratitude by refusing payment for a picture he had painted. Unfortunately all this is a myth. Of his real life little is known, but it is enough to refute the legends that for so long passed current. In 1477 he was under contract to furnish an altar-piece for the guild chapel of the booksellers of Bruges; this picture, preserved under the name of the "Seven Griefs of Mary," is now one of the principal treasures of the Gallery of Turin. His many pictures for the Hospitallers were painted in 1479 and 1480. He was born at Mayence on the Rhine. His name (which should not be spelt Memling) was probably derived from the town of Memmelinck (now Medenblik) in the north-east of Holland, to which place his family presumably belonged. He is known from the town records to have been settled in Bruges in his own house in 1479. He must have been a citizen of some wealth, for in the next year he was one of those who contributed to a loan raised by Maximilian of Austria to push hostilities against France. In 1487 he lost his wife. In 1494 he died, his children being still minors, and was buried in the Church of St. Giles (see a document cited in theAthenæumof 2nd February 1889).This is all that documentary evidence has disclosed about Memlinc's life. If the evidence of his pictures may be taken, his life must have been gentle and peaceful. For Memlinc's place in the history of art is among the leaders of the "Purist" School (see under 663). He was, we may say, the Fra Angelico of Flanders. In technique he used the methods perfected by the Van Eycks. "In drawing a comparison between Memlinc and his predecessors and contemporaries,[165]he is found inferior to John Van Eyck in power of colour and chiaroscuro, as well as in searching portraiture; to Van der Weyden in dramatic force; to Dierick Bouts and Gheeraert David in beauty and finish of landscape" (Weale's monograph on Memlinc, published by the Arundel Society). But Memlinc had a sentiment and an ideal of his own to which none of his Flemish contemporaries attained. "Van Eyck saw with his eye, Memlinc begins to see with his spirit. The one copied and imitated; the other copies, imitates,—and transfigures. Van Eyck, without any thought of an ideal, reproduced the virile types which passed before his eyes. Memlinc dreams as he looks, chooses what is most lovable and delicate in human forms, and creates above all as his feminine type a choice being who was unknown before his time, and has disappeared since. They are women, but women seen according to the tender predilections of a spirit in love with grace, nobility, beauty." Memlinc's men, on the other hand, do not compare advantageously with Van Eyck's. There is more vigour in the latter, more framework, more muscle, more blood. "Memlinc's art is very human, but there is in it no trace of the villainies and atrocities of his time. His ideal is his own. It foreshadowed perhaps the Bellinis, the Botticellis, the Peruginos, but not Leonardo, nor the Tuscans, nor the Romans of the Renaissance. Imagine in the midst of the horror of the century a privileged spot, a sort of angelic retreat where the passions are silenced and troubles cease, where men pray and worship, where physical and moral deformities are transfigured, where new sentiments come into being and sweet usages grow up like the lilies: imagine this and you will have an idea of the unique soul of Memlinc and of the miracle which he works in his pictures" (Fromentin:Les Maitres d'Autrefois).
It is only in the Hospital of St. John at Bruges that the art of this exquisite painter can be properly studied. There, as among the Fra Angelicos at San Marco in Florence and the Giottos at the Arena in Padua, one may see the great works of a mediæval painter in the very surroundings which first produced them. (Copies of some of Memlinc's works at Bruges and elsewhere are included in the Arundel Society's collection.) The Hospital is, as it were, a shrine of Memlinc. Around this fact legends grew. In one of the pictures, it was said, a portrait of the artist might be discovered; on the sculptured ornaments of a porch enframing one of its subjects, an incident of the master's life might be traced,—his danger as he lay senseless in the street, his rescue as charitable people carried his body to the hospital. It came to be told how the great artist began life as a soldier who went to the wars under Charles the Bold, and came back riddled with wounds from the field of Nancy. Wandering homeward in a disabled state in 1477, he fainted in the streets of Bruges, and was cured by the Hospitallers. Unknown to them and a stranger to Bruges, he gave tangible proofs of his skill to the brethren of St. John, and showed his gratitude by refusing payment for a picture he had painted. Unfortunately all this is a myth. Of his real life little is known, but it is enough to refute the legends that for so long passed current. In 1477 he was under contract to furnish an altar-piece for the guild chapel of the booksellers of Bruges; this picture, preserved under the name of the "Seven Griefs of Mary," is now one of the principal treasures of the Gallery of Turin. His many pictures for the Hospitallers were painted in 1479 and 1480. He was born at Mayence on the Rhine. His name (which should not be spelt Memling) was probably derived from the town of Memmelinck (now Medenblik) in the north-east of Holland, to which place his family presumably belonged. He is known from the town records to have been settled in Bruges in his own house in 1479. He must have been a citizen of some wealth, for in the next year he was one of those who contributed to a loan raised by Maximilian of Austria to push hostilities against France. In 1487 he lost his wife. In 1494 he died, his children being still minors, and was buried in the Church of St. Giles (see a document cited in theAthenæumof 2nd February 1889).
This is all that documentary evidence has disclosed about Memlinc's life. If the evidence of his pictures may be taken, his life must have been gentle and peaceful. For Memlinc's place in the history of art is among the leaders of the "Purist" School (see under 663). He was, we may say, the Fra Angelico of Flanders. In technique he used the methods perfected by the Van Eycks. "In drawing a comparison between Memlinc and his predecessors and contemporaries,[165]he is found inferior to John Van Eyck in power of colour and chiaroscuro, as well as in searching portraiture; to Van der Weyden in dramatic force; to Dierick Bouts and Gheeraert David in beauty and finish of landscape" (Weale's monograph on Memlinc, published by the Arundel Society). But Memlinc had a sentiment and an ideal of his own to which none of his Flemish contemporaries attained. "Van Eyck saw with his eye, Memlinc begins to see with his spirit. The one copied and imitated; the other copies, imitates,—and transfigures. Van Eyck, without any thought of an ideal, reproduced the virile types which passed before his eyes. Memlinc dreams as he looks, chooses what is most lovable and delicate in human forms, and creates above all as his feminine type a choice being who was unknown before his time, and has disappeared since. They are women, but women seen according to the tender predilections of a spirit in love with grace, nobility, beauty." Memlinc's men, on the other hand, do not compare advantageously with Van Eyck's. There is more vigour in the latter, more framework, more muscle, more blood. "Memlinc's art is very human, but there is in it no trace of the villainies and atrocities of his time. His ideal is his own. It foreshadowed perhaps the Bellinis, the Botticellis, the Peruginos, but not Leonardo, nor the Tuscans, nor the Romans of the Renaissance. Imagine in the midst of the horror of the century a privileged spot, a sort of angelic retreat where the passions are silenced and troubles cease, where men pray and worship, where physical and moral deformities are transfigured, where new sentiments come into being and sweet usages grow up like the lilies: imagine this and you will have an idea of the unique soul of Memlinc and of the miracle which he works in his pictures" (Fromentin:Les Maitres d'Autrefois).
In front is a portrait of the donor of the picture. On the Virgin's left is St. George with the dragon—not a very dreadful dragon, either—"they do not hurt or destroy" in the peaceful gardens that Memlinc fancied. Notice how the peaceful idea is continued in the man returning to his pleasant home in the background to the left. The Virgin herself is typical of the feminine idea in early Flemish art. "It must be borne in mind that the people of the fifteenth century still lived in an age when the language of symbols was rich and widely understood.... The high forehead of the Virgin and wide arching brows tell of her intellectual power, her rich longhair figures forth the fulness of her life, her slim figure and tiny mouth symbolise her purity, her mild eyes with their drooping eyelids discover her devoutness, her bent head speaks of humility. The supreme and evident virtue which reigns in all these Madonnas is an absolute purity of heart" (Conway'sEarly Flemish Painters, pp. 109, 110).