Portrait of Jacques Callot Engraved by Vosterman after the painting of Van DyckPortrait of Jacques Callot Engraved by Vosterman after the painting of Van Dyck
Still his work was copying and engraving from the drawings of others. Had he been under a master less interested and sympathetic than the good Parigi, it is possible that his peculiar talent would never have declared itself. At all events, Parigi urged him, and theurging seems to have been necessary, to improve his drawing, to drop the burin and study the great masters. Especially Parigi prayed him to cultivate his precious talent for designing on a very small scale the varied and complicated compositions with which his imagination teemed. His taste for whatever was fantastic and irregular in aspect had not been destroyed by his study of the beautiful. The Bohemian side of human nature, the only nature for which he cared, still fascinated his mind, whether it had or had not any influence upon his activities, and Parigi's remonstrances were silenced by his appreciation of the comic wit sparkling in his pupil's sketches.
We see little of Callot among his friends of this period, but the glimpses we get reveal a lovable and merry youth in whose nature is a strain of sturdy loyalty, ardent in work and patient in seeking perfectness in each individual task undertaken, but with a curious contrasting impatience as well, leading him frequently to drop one thing for another, craving the relaxation of change. An anecdote is told of him that illustrates the sweet-tempered blitheness of spirit with which he quickly won affection.
In copying a head he had fallen into an error common among those who draw most successfully upon a small scale, he had made it much too large. His fellow-students were prompt to seize the opportunity of jeering at him,and he at once improvised a delightful crowd of impish creatures on the margin of his drawing, dancing and pointing at it in derision.
His progress under Parigi's wise instruction was marked, but it was four years after his arrival in Florence before he began to engrave to any extent from his own designs. In the meantime, he had studied architecture and aerial and linear perspective, and had made innumerable pen and pencil drawings from nature. He had also begun to practice etching, attaining great dexterity in the use of the needle and in the employment of acids.
In 1617—then twenty-five years old—he produced the series of plates which he rightly deemed the first ripe fruits of his long toil in the domain of art. These were the delightfulCapricci di varie figurein which his individuality shone resplendent. They reproduced the spectacle of Florence as it might then have been seen by any wayfarer; street people, soldiers, officers, honest tradesmen and rogues, mandolin players, loiterers of the crossways and bridges, turnpike-keepers, cut-throats, buffoons and comedians, grimacing pantaloons, fops, coquettes, country scenes, a faithful and brilliant study of the time, the manners, and the place. Parigi was enthusiastic and advised his pupil to dedicate the plates to the brother of the Grand Duke.
After this all went well and swiftly. Passing over many plates, important and unimportant, we come three years later to theGreat Fair of Florence, pronounced by M. Meaume, Callot's masterpiece. "It is doubtful," says this excellent authority, "if in Callot's entire work a single other plate can be found worthy to compete with theGreat Fair of Florence. He has done as well, perhaps, but never better."
At this time his production was, all of it, full of life and spirit, vivacious and fluent, the very joy of workmanship. He frequently began and finished a plate in a day, and his long apprenticeship to his tools had made him completely their master. In many of the prints are found traces of dry point, and those who looked on while he worked have testified that when a blank space on his plate displeased him he was wont to take up his instrument and engrave a figure, a bit of drapery, or some trees in the empty spaces, directly upon the copper, improvising from his ready fancy.
For recreation he commonly turned to some other form of his craft. He tried painting, and some of his admirers would like to prove that he was a genius in this sort, but it is fairly settled that when once he became entangled in the medium of color he was lost, producing the heaviest and most unpleasing effects, and that he produced no finished work in this kind. He contributedto the technical outfit of the etcher a new varnish, the hard varnish of the lute-makers which up to that time had not been used in etching, and which, substituted for the soft ground, enabled him to execute his marvelous little figures with great lightness and delicacy, and also made it possible for him to keep several plates going at once, as he delighted to do, turning from one to another as his mood prompted him.
This Florentine period was one of countless satisfactions for him. More fortunate than many artists, he won his fame in time to enjoy it. His productions were so highly regarded during his lifetime that good proofs were eagerly sought, and to use Baldinucci's expression, were "enfermées sous sept clefs." He was known all over Europe, and about his neck he wore a magnificent gold chain given him by the Grand Duke Cosimo II, in token of esteem. In the town which he had entered so few years before in the gipsy caravan, he was now the arbiter of taste in all matters of art, highly honored, and friend of the great. When Cosimo died and the pensions of the artists were discontinued, Callot was quite past the need of princely favors, and could choose his own path. He had already refused offers from Pope and emperor and doubtless would have remained in Florence had not Prince Charles of Lorraine determined to reclaim him for his native place.
In 1621 or 1622 he returned to Nancy, never again to live in Italy. He went back preeminent among his countrymen. He had done in etching what had not been done before him and much that has not been done since. He had created a new genre and a new treatment. He had been faithful to his first lesson from Duccio and had become eloquent in his use of simple outline to express joy, fear, calm or sorrow, his work gaining from this abandonment of shadows a largeness and clearness that separates him from his German contemporaries and adds dignity to the elegance and grace of his figures. His skill with the etching needle had become so great that technical difficulties practically did not exist for him. What he wished to do he did with obvious ease and always with distinction. His feeling for synthesis and balance was as striking as his love of the curious, and as these qualities seldom go together in one mind, the result was an art extremely unlike that of other artists. It was characteristic of him that he could not copy himself, and found himself completely at a loss when he tried to repeat some of his Florentine plates under other skies.
Arrived at Nancy, he found Henry II, the then reigning Duke of Lorraine, ready to accord him a flattering welcome, and under his favor he worked with increasing success. Among the plates produced shortlyafter his return is one calledLes Supplices, in which is represented all the punishments inflicted throughout Europe upon criminals and legal offenders. In an immense square the revolting scenes are taking place, and innumerable little figures swarm about the streets and even upon the roofs of the houses. Yet the impression is neither confused nor painful. A certain impersonality in the rendering, a serious almost melancholy austerity of touch robs the spectacle of its ignoble suggestion. Inspection of this remarkable plate makes it easy to realize Callot's supreme fitness for the tasks that shortly were to be laid upon him.
He was chosen by the Infanta Elisabeth-Claire-Eugenie of Austria to commemorate the Siege of Breda, in a series of etchings, and while he was in Brussels gathering his materials for this tremendous work he came to know Van Dyck, who painted his portrait afterward engraved by Vosterman, a superb delineation of both his face and character at this important period of his eminent career. Soon after the etchings were completed, designs were ordered by Charles IV, for the decorations of the great carnival of 1627. Callot was summoned to Paris to execute some plates representing the surrender of La Rochelle in 1628, and the prior attack upon the fortress of St. Martin on the Isle of Ré. In Paris he dwelt with his old friend Israel Henriet, who dealt largelyin prints and who had followed with keen attention Callot's constantly increasing renown. Henriet naturally tried to keep his friend with him in Paris as long as possible, but Callot had lost by this time the vagrant tendencies of his youth. He was married and of a home-keeping disposition, and all that Henriet could throw in his way of stimulating tasks and congenial society, in addition to the formidable orders for which he had contracted, detained him hardly longer than a year. Upon leaving he made over all his Parisian plates save those of the great sieges to Henriet, whose name as publisher appears upon them.
Callot's return to Nancy marked the close of the second period of his art, the period in which he painted battles with ten thousand episodes revealed in one plate, and so accurately that men of war kept his etchings among their text-books for professional reference. The next demand that was made upon him to represent the downfall of a brave city came from Louis XIII, upon the occasion of his entering Nancy on the 25th of September, 1633. By a ruse Richelieu had made the entry possible, and the inglorious triumph Louis deemed worthy of commemoration by the accomplished engraver now his subject. Neither Callot's high Lorraine heart nor his brilliant instrument was subjugated, however, and he respectfully begged the monarch to absolve him from atask so revolting to his patriotism. "Sire," he said, "I am of Lorraine, and I cannot believe it my duty to do anything contrary to the honor of my Prince and my Country." The king accepted his remonstrance in good part, declaring that Monsieur of Lorraine was very happy to have subjects so faithful in affection. Certain courtiers took Callot to task, however, for his refusal to obey the will of His Majesty, and to them Callot responded that he would cut off his thumb rather than do violence to his sense of honor. Some of the artist's historians have made him address this impetuous reply to the king himself, but M. Meaume reminds us that, familiar with courts, he knew too well the civility due to a sovereign to make it probable that he so forgot his dignity. Later the king tried to allure Callot by gifts, honors and pensions, but in vain. The sturdy gentleman preferred his oppressed prince to the royal favor, and set himself to immortalizing the misfortunes of his country in the superb series of etchings which he called "Les Misères de la Guerre." He made six little plates showing in the life of the soldier the misery he both endures and inflicts upon others. These were the first free inspiration of the incomparable later set called "Les Grandes Misères," "a veritable poem," M. Meaume declares, "a funeral ode describing and deploring the sorrows of Lorraine." These sorrows so much afflicted himthat he would gladly have gone back to Italy to spend the last years of his life, had not the condition of his health, brought on by his indefatigable labor, prevented him.
He lived simply in the little town where he had seen his young visions of the spirit of art, walking in the early morning with his elder brother, attending mass, working until dinner time, visiting in the early afternoon with the persons, many of them distinguished and even of royal blood, who thronged his studio, then working until evening. He rarely attended the court, but grew constantly more quiet in taste and more severe in his artistic method, until the feeling for the grotesque that inspired his earlier years were hardly to be discerned. Once only, in the tremendous plate illustrating the Temptation of Saint Anthony, did he return to his old bizarre vision of a world conceived in the mood of Dante and Ariosto.
Callot died on the 24th of March, 1635, at the age of forty-three. Still a young man, he had passed through all the phases of temperament that commonly mark the transit from youth to age. And he had used his art in the manner of a master to express the external world and his convictions concerning the great spiritual and ethical questions of his age. He enunciated his message distinctly; there were no tender gradations, no uncertaintiesof outline or mysteries of surface in his work. It is the grave utterance of the definite French intelligence with a note of deeper suggestion brought from those regions of ironic gloom in which the Florentine recorded his sublime despair.
Among the more interesting pictures acquired by the Metropolitan Museum within the past two years are the panels by Carlo Crivelli, representing respectively St. George and St. Dominic.
Crivelli is one of the fifteenth century Italian masters who show their temperament in their work with extraordinary clearness. His spirit was ardent and his moods were varying. With far less technical skill than his contemporary, Mantegna, he has at once a warmer and more brilliant style and a more modern feeling for natural and significant gesture. His earliest known work that bears a date is the altar-piece in S. Silvestro at Massa near Fermo; but his most recent biographer, Mr. Rushworth, gives to his Venetian period before he left for the Marches, the Virgin and Child now at Verona, and sees in this the strongest evidences of his connection with the School of Padua. Other important pictures by him are at Ascoli, in the Lateran Gallery, Rome, in the Vatican, in the Brera Gallery at Milan, in the BerlinGallery, in the National Gallery at London, in Frankfurt (the Städel Gallery), in the Museum of Brussels, in Lord Northbrook's collection, London, in the Boston Museum, in Mrs. Gardiner's collection at Boston, and in Mr. Johnson's collection at Philadelphia. The eight examples in the National Gallery, although belonging for the most part to his later period, show his wide range and his predominating characteristics, which indeed are stamped with such emphasis upon each of his works that despite the many and great differences in these, there seems to be little difficulty in recognizing their authorship. No. 788,The Madonna and Child Enthroned, surrounded by Saints, an altarpiece painted for the Dominican Church at Ascoli in 1476, is the most elaborate and pretentious of the National Gallery compositions, but fails as a whole to give that impression of moral and physical energy, of intense feeling expressed with serene art, which renders theAnnunciation(No. 739) both impressive and ingratiating. The lower central compartment is instinct with grace and tenderness. The Virgin, mild-faced and melancholy, is seated on a marble throne. The Child held on her arm, droops his head, heavy with sleep, upon her arm in a babyish and appealing attitude curiously opposed to the dignity of the Child in Mantegna's group which hangs on the opposite wall. His hand clasps his mother's finger andhis completely relaxed figure has unquestionably been studied from life. At the right and left of the Virgin are St. Peter and St. John, St. Catherine of Alexandria and St. Dominic, whole-length figures strongly individualized and differentiated. St. John in particular reveals in the beauty of feature and expression Crivelli's power to portray subtleties and refinements of character without sacrificing his sumptuous taste for accessories and ornament. The Saint, wearing his traditional sheep skin and bearing his cross and scroll, bends his head in meditation. His brows are knit, his features, ascetic in mold and careworn, are eloquent of serious thought and moral conviction. By the side of St. Peter resplendent in pontifical robes and enriched with jewels, he wears the look of a young devout novice not yet so familiar with sanctity as to carry it with ease. He stands by the side of a little stream, in a landscape that combines in the true Crivelli manner direct realism with decorative formality. The St. Dominic with book and lily in type resembles the figure in the Metropolitan, but the face is painted with greater skill and has more vigor of expression. Above this lower stage of the altarpiece are four half-length figures of St. Francis, St. Andrew the Apostle, St. Stephen and St. Thomas Aquinas, and over these again are four pictures showing the Archangel Michael trampling on the Dragon, St. Lucy the Martyr, St. Jerome and St.Peter, Martyr, all full length figures of small size and delicately drawn, but which do not belong to the original series. The various parts of the altarpiece were enclosed in a splendid and ornate frame while in the possession of Prince Demidoff in the latter half of the nineteenth century and the whole is a magnificent monument to Crivelli's art. The heavy gold backgrounds and the free use of gold in the ornaments, together with the use of high relief (St. Peter's keys are modeled, for example, almost in the round, so nearly are they detached from the panel) represent his tendency to overload his compositions with archaic and realistic detail, but here as elsewhere the effect is one of harmony and corporate unity of many parts. The introduction of sham jewels, such as those set in the Virgin's crown and in the rings and medallions worn by Peter, fails to destroy the dignity of the execution. It may even be argued that these details enhance it by affording a salient support to the strongly marked emotional faces of the saints and to the vigorous gestures which would be violent in a classic setting.
St. Dominic From a panel by Carlo CrivelliSt. Dominic From a panel by Carlo Crivelli
A quite different note is struck in the grave little composition belonging to an altarpiece of early date in which two infant angels support the body of Christ on the edge of the tomb. Nothing is permitted to interrupt the simplicity of this pathetic group. In the much morepassionate rendering of a similar subject—thePietàin Mr. Johnson's collection—the child angels are represented in an agony of grief, their features contorted and their gestures despairing. The little angels of the National Gallery picture, on the contrary, are but touched by a pensive sorrow. One of them rests his chin upon the shoulder of the Christ half tenderly, half wearily; the other in fluttering robes of a lovely yellow, applies his slight strength to his task seriously but without emotion. The figure of Christ, tragically quiet, with suffering brows, the wound in the side gaping, is without the suggestion of extreme physical anguish that marks the figure in the BostonPietà. The sentiment with which the panel is inspired is one of gentleness, of resignation, of self-control and piety. The same sentiment is felt in the companion panel, now in the Brussels Gallery—The Virgin and the Child Jesus—which originally, with thePietà, formed the central double compartment of a triptych at Monte Fiore, near Fermo. The sad coloring of the Virgin's robe—a dull bluish green with a gold pattern over an under robe of pale ashes of roses, the calm, benign features, the passive hands, are all in the spirit of subdued feeling. The child alone, gnomish in expression and awkward in a straddling attitude upon his mother's knee, fails to conform to the general gracious scheme.
In theAnnunciationalready mentioned, we haveanother phase of Crivelli's flexible genius—a phase in which are united the pomp and splendor of his fantastic taste with the innocence and sweetness of his most engaging feminine type. It would be difficult to imagine a more demure and girlish Virgin than the small kneeling figure in the richly furnished chamber at the right of the panel. The glory of her fate is symbolized by the broad golden ray falling from the heavens upon her meekly bowed head. Her face is pale with the dim pallor that commonly rests upon Crivelli's flesh tones, and her clasped hands have the exaggerated length of finger and also the look of extraordinary pliability which he invariably gives. Outside the room in the open court kneels the Angel of the Annunciation and by his side kneels St. Emedius, the patron of Ascoli, with a model of the city in his hands. These figures are realistic in gesture and expression, interested, eager, responsive, filled with quick life and joyous impulse. The richly embroidered garment of the angel, his gilded wings, his traditional attitude, neither overpower nor detract from the vivid individuality of the beautiful face so firmly yet so freely modeled within its delicate hard bounding line. This feeling of actuality in the scene is carried still farther by the introduction of a charming little child on a balcony at the left, peering out from behind a pillar with naive curiosity and half-shy, half-bold determinationto see the end of the adventure. All this is conceived in the spirit of modernity and the personal quality is unmistakable and enchanting. There is no excess of emotion nor is there undue restraint. There is a blithe sense of the interest of life and the personality of human beings that gives a value to the subject and a meaning beyond its accepted symbolism. On the technical side, also, the panel has remarkable merit even for this expert and careful painter. His Venetian fondness for magnificent externals finds ample expression in the rich accessories. A peacock is perched on the casement of the Virgin's room, flowers and fruits, vases and variegated marbles all come into the plan of the handsome environment, and are justified artistically by the differentiation of textures, the gradation of color, the research into intricacies of pattern, the light firm treatment of architectural structure, and the skilful subordination of all superficial detail to the elements of the human drama, the figures of which occupy little space, but are overwhelming in significance.
In the Metropolitan Museum, New York. St. George From a panel by Carlo CrivelliIn the Metropolitan Museum, New York. St. George From a panel by Carlo Crivelli
It is interesting to compare thisAnnunciationwith the two small sextagonal panels of the same subject in the Städel Museum at Frankfurt which are earlier in date. In many respects the compositions are closely similar. There is the same red brick wall, the same Oriental rug hanging from the casement, the types of Angeland Virgin are the same, but in the Frankfurt panel there is more impetuous motion in the gesture of the Angel, who hardly pauses in his flight through air to touch his knee to the parapet. His mouth is open and the words of his message seem trembling on his lips. Although all the outlines are severely defined with the sharpness of a Schiavone, the interior modeling is sensitive and delicate and in the case of the Virgin, tender and softly varied, so that the curve of the throat and chin seem almost to ripple with the breathing, the young chest swells in lovely gradation of form under the close bodice, and the whole figure has a graciousness of contour, a slim roundness and elasticity by which it takes its place among Crivelli's many realizations of his ideal type as at least one of the most lovable if not the most characteristic and personal. Especially fine, also, is the treatment of the drapery in these two admirable little panels. The mantle surrounding the angel billows out in curling folds as eloquent of swift movement as the draperies of Botticelli's striding nymphs; and the opulent line of the Virgin's cloak is superb in its lightly broken swirl about the figure. The hair, too, of both the Angel and the Virgin, waves in masses at once free and formal, with something of the wild beauty of Botticelli's windblown tresses. The analogy between the two painters, the ardent and poetic Florentine and the no less ardent and at times almost as poetic Venetian(if we accept his own claim to the title), might be further dwelt upon, although it would be easy to overemphasize it. One attribute, certainly, they had in common and it is the one that most completely separates each of them from his fellows—the exultantverve, that is, with which the human form is made to communicate energy of movement in their compositions. It is impossible to believe that either of them ever painted a tame picture. If, however, Crivelli could not be tame he could be insipid, escaping tameness by what might be called the violence of his affectation. TheSt. Georgein the Metropolitan Museum is an instance of his occasional use of a type so frail and languid in its grace and so sentimental in gesture and expression as to suggest caricature. Another example dated 1491 is theMadonna and Child Enthronedin the National Gallery. On either side of the melancholy Madonna are St. Francis and St. Sebastian. The latter is pierced by arrows and tied to a pillar, but so far from wearing the look of suffering or of calm endurance, he has a trivial glance of deprecation for the observer, and his figure is wholly wanting in the force of young manhood. A striking contrast to this effeminate mood may be found in No. 724, also aMadonna Enthroned, between St. Jerome and St. Sebastian, a late signed picture of Crivelli's declining talent, with a predella below the chief panel in which appear St. Catherine,St. Jerome in the Wilderness, the Nativity, the Martyrdom of St. Sebastian again, and St. George and the Dragon. The little compartment containing the scene of the Nativity is quite by itself among Crivelli's works for intimate and homely charm. The simplicity of the surroundings and the natural attitudes of the people have an almost Dutch character, borne out by the meticulous care for detail in the execution united to an effect of chiaro-oscuro very rare in early Italian art and hardly to be expected in a painter of Crivelli's Paduan tendencies. The St. George is more characteristic, with an immense energy in its lines. In arrangement it recalls the St. George of Mrs. Gardiner's collection and despite its small size is almost the equal of that magnificent example in concentration and fire.
In the Metropolitan Museum, New York. Pietà From a panel by Carlo CrivelliIn the Metropolitan Museum, New York. Pietà From a panel by Carlo Crivelli
Still another type, and one that combines dignity and much spirituality with naive realism, is theBeato Ferretti(No. 668), showing an open landscape with a village street at the right and a couple of ducks in a small pond at the left, the Beato kneeling in adoration with a vision of theVirgin and Childsurrounded by theMandorlaorVericaglory appearing above. The kneeling saint is realistically drawn and his face wears an expression of intense piety. The landscape is marked by the bare twisted stems of trees, that seem to repeat the rigid and conceivably tortured form of the saint. A beautifulbuilding with a domed roof is seen at the right. At the top of the picture across the cloud-strewn sky is a festoon of fruits, Crivelli's characteristic decoration.
In the Städel Gallery at Frankfort. A Panel by Carlo Crivelli (a)In the Städel Gallery at Frankfort. A Panel by Carlo Crivelli(a)
In all these pictures Crivelli reveals himself as an artist filled with emotional inspiration, to whom the thrill of life is more than its trappings, and one, moreover, who observes, balances and differentiates. The society of his saints and angels is stimulating; the element of the unexpected enters into his work in open defiance of his pronounced mannerism. It is possible to detect beneath the close and manifold coverings of his ornate decoration a swift flame of imaginative impulse such as Blake sent into the world without such covering. He would have pleased Blake by this nervous energy and by his pure bright coloring, despite the fact that he signed himself "Venetus." He painted in tempera and finished his work with care and deliberation. It is remarkable that so little of his mental fire died out in the slow process of his execution. It is still more remarkable that in spite of his reactionary tendencies, his archaistic use of gold and relief at a moment when all great artists were renouncing these, he is intensely modern in his sentiment. He seems to represent a phase of human development at which we in America have but recently arrived; a phase in which appreciation of ancient finished forms of beauty is united to a restless eagernessand the impulse toward exaggerated self-expression. He is supposed to have been born about 1440, which would make him a contemporary of the two Bellini, of Hans Memling and of Mantegna. Had he only been able to give his imagination a higher range—had he possessed a more controlling spiritual ideal, had the touch of self-consciousness that rests like a grimace on the otherwise lovely aspect of much of his painting, been eliminated, he would have stood with these on the heights of fifteenth century art. We are fortunate to have in America the Boston MuseumPietà, which shows him in one of his most temperate moods, thePietàof Mr. Johnson's collection, which is the emphatic expression of his least restrained moments, theSt. Georgeof Mrs. Gardiner's collection, in which his grasp of knightly character and pictorial grace is at its best, and these two strongly contrasted types of the Metropolitan Museum.
In the Städel Gallery at Frankfort. A Panel by Carlo Crivelli (b)In the Städel Gallery at Frankfort. A Panel by Carlo Crivelli (b)
The art gallery of Cassel is well known to connoisseurs as containing a group of Rembrandts of the first order. The earliest example is a small painting of a boy's head supposed to be a portrait of the artist at the age of twenty or one and twenty; Dr. Bode considers 1628 too late rather than too early as the probable date, and the same authority warns us against considering such studies in the light of serious portraiture: "It had never occurred to the young artist," he says, "to make a dignified portrait of himself at the time when he painted these pictures." The execution is clumsy, the color is dull and heavy and of the brownish tone common to Rembrandt's early painting, and much of the drawing—as in the rings of hair escaping to the surface from the thick curling mass—is meaningless and indefinite, but the distribution of light and shade is not unlike that of Rembrandt's later work and the touch has a certain bold freedom that seems to have been his from the first whenever he served as his own model, even while his handling was still hard and primin his portraits of others. Another work ascribed to his early period, about 1634, is the "Man with a Helmet," also commonly known as a self-portrait, fluent in execution and vivacious and lifelike in expression, yet not without that hint of conscious pose common with the artist in his endeavors to force the note of character. The blunt, strong features are strikingly like those of the authenticated portraits of the artist, but Dr. Karl Voll, Director of the Alt Pinakothek at Munich, declares that the idea of a "self-portrait," attractive as it is, can hardly in this case be upheld. Whoever the sitter may have been, the painting is an amazing example of dexterity of hand and acute observation. The sharp glitter of the helmet, the contrasting flesh-like quality of the painting in the face, the light vigorous drawing of the moustache and hair, give an impression of the artist's mastery of his craft hardly to be surpassed at any period of his life. Far less poetic in its color-scheme and chiaro-oscuro than the youthful portrait belonging to Mrs. Gardiner's collection, it is even more eloquent of the ease with which he managed his tools. Of a still greater charm, with subtler problems met and solved, is the portrait of Saskia van Ulenburgh, whom he married in Amsterdam in the year 1634, the probable date of the Cassel portrait. At all events the young woman carries in her hand a spray of rosemary, the symbol of betrothal, and her dress has the richness of aDutch bride's equipment. Here we see Rembrandt's art in perhaps its most delicate and psychologically interesting phase. The character revealed by the small pretty features has neither extraordinary force nor marked individuality. The lines are neither deep-cut nor broad. One is reminded of a fine little etching in which the plate has been bitten only to a moderate depth and which requires a sensitive handling in the printing to produce anything like richness. Yet the result is rich in the fullest sense of the term. It depends for its quality not only upon the splendid color-scheme formed by the dark red of the velvet hat and gown, the white of the feather, the gold and gray and dull blue of the trimmings and ornaments, the beautiful jewels, with which Rembrandt then as later produced an appearance of great magnificence, the bright red-gold of the hair falling lightly over the softly modeled brow, and the fair warm tones of the flesh glowing as from living health and physical energy: it depends as much upon the deep research into the expression that has resulted in the intimate portraiture possible only to genius and seldom found even in the work of the great masters, never, so far as the writer's observation has gone, in the work of their later years. The smile that hesitates at the corner of the whimsical little mouth, the tender modulations of surface on the forehead and about the straight-gazing honest eyes, the swift suggestions of movement and playof mood in the flexible contours, the gaiety and sweetness and singular purity of the girlish face, are evoked with magisterial authority and precision. Never surely has there been a finer example of Dutch care and thoroughness in the observation and rendering of minute detail united to breadth of effect. The painting of the jewels and embroideries is wrought to a singularly perfect finish. It is almost as though the artist had set himself to extract the utmost beauty of which the textures of stuffs and gems are capable, to prove how much more enchanting was the beauty of the brilliant blond demure little face daintily poised above them. Dr. Bode calls the picture "one of the most attractive, not only of his early pictures, but of all his works."
Courtesy of Berlin Photographic Company. Saskia From a portrait by RembrandtCourtesy of Berlin Photographic Company. Saskia From a portrait by Rembrandt
To Rembrandt's early years also are ascribed certain careful studies of old men's heads and several portraits of younger men. Among these are one of the writing-master Coppenol and one of the poet Krul, the former painted in 1632, the latter in 1633. The Krul portrait is the more striking of the two, and the pictorial costume with the broad hat casting its lucent shadow over the fine brow, the silken jacket with its gleaming reflections and the wide white ruffles at neck and sleeve on which the light blazes full, adds to the dignity and richness of the effect. It is easy, however, to agree with Dr. Voll in ranking the splendid portrait of an unknown man, of somefive or six years later date, far above the Krul portrait in artistic quality. Although excessively warm in tone it has in addition to excellent construction and a lifelike aspect a nobility of bearing that imposes itself directly and irresistibly upon the spectator.
The portrait of Coppenol is not easily analyzed and Dr. Bode notes that the likeness to the authenticated portraits of the famous drawing master is not altogether convincing. Simpler and homelier in appearance than the portrait of Krul, this solid and even heavy figure seated comfortably in an armchair, the well-drawn hands busy with mending a quill pen, the glance reflective, but hardly thoughtful, the mouth under the small fair moustache slightly indeterminate, the head covered with short hair, the smooth fat face three-quarters in light, presents at first glance a commonplace aspect enough. But returning to it from the Krul or even from the more masterly later portrait, the spectator is certain to be deeply impressed by the quiet yet searching execution that takes account of every significant change in plane or outline in the large cheek and full chin. From the very commonplace of the pose and type one gains a special pleasure, since the power of the artist to irradiate an ordinary subject is the more clearly seen. The serene light enveloping the good head and falling gently on the background brings no thought of method or pigment to the mind, and the fleshlike qualityof the face and hands is as near imitation of reality as is possible within the bounds of synthetic art. It is easy to agree with Dr. Bode's opinion that the homely simple portraits painted in ordinary costume and under ordinary conditions of light during Rembrandt's first three years in Amsterdam are intellectually more worth while than the earlier more personal works. The theory is that he turned them out in competition with his contemporaries and eclipsed them on their own ground.
The portrait of "Rembrandt's Father in Indoor Dress," of the preceding year (1631), is in a quite different manner, and closely resembles the painting in Boston of an old man with downcast eyes, from the same model. The bald head and scanty beard, the wrinkled face and slightly uncertain mouth, are familiar to all students of Rembrandt's art. In 1631 Rembrandt was still in his father's house and one gains some notion of the old miller's amiability from the frequency with which he appeared in etchings and paintings and the variety of the poses which he took on behalf of his ardent son, adjusting his expression to his assumed character with no little dramatic skill. Never in his later years did Rembrandt so delicately render the patience and discipline of age. In this alert, unprepossessing yet kindly face we can read a not too fanciful history of the temperament of the sitter. We see, at all events, the mark of a sympathetic mind.
The next picture in the collection to mark a special period and one of brilliant achievement in Rembrandt's career is the so-called "Woodcutter's Family," belonging to the decade between 1640 and 1650. After an old fashion the Holy Family is represented as seen in a painting before which a curtain is partly drawn. The mother sits by the side of a cradle from which she has lifted the child who clings to her neck while she presses him to her in a close embrace. In the farther corner of the room is the figure of the father in his carpenter's apron, and in the center a cat is crouching near some dishes on the floor. The room is filled with a mild sunlight that filters through the air and falls across the figures of the mother and child and across the broad expanse of floor. The simplicity and poetic feeling in lighting and gesture are worthy of Rembrandt's prime, and there is no trace of the extreme drama that marks the religious compositions at Munich. The color is beautiful and the tone mysterious. Nevertheless one misses the precious quality of the earlier craftmanship as it shines in such lovely paintings as the "Saskia" and the "Portrait of a Young Woman." In these the painter shows that he was still young, that he had arrived at a skill of hand that permitted him to use his medium with ease and certainty, but that he had not yet ceased to attempt what lay just beyond his powers. His brush still sought out subtle refinements of modeling with the patience that alliedhim to the earlier Dutch and Flemish masters. He had, no doubt, the instinctive feeling of ardent youth, the assumption of time ahead for the carrying out of all projects, and his brilliant manipulations of his pigment showed neither haste, nor as yet the complete confidence that leaves untold the detail of the story for the imagination of the audience to supply. He was not ready to sacrifice everything else to that light and atmosphere of which he made his own world in his later years. Characteristic of his most winning use of this light that he created for his own purposes is the portrait of Nicholas Bruyningh, Secretary of one of the divisions of the Courts of Justice at Amsterdam: one of the most salient and brilliant of the Rembrandts in the Cassel Gallery. This portrait belongs to the year 1652 when the artist was about forty-five years old, and it is a superb example of matured genius. The subject offered an opportunity for daring handling and pictorial arrangement upon which Rembrandt seized with a full understanding of its possibilities. The beautiful gay face with its suggestion of irresponsibility glows from a mist of atmosphere that veils all minor detail, leaving in strong relief the mass of curling hair, the smiling dark eyes, the smiling mouth unconcealed by the slight moustache, the firmly modeled nose and pliant chin, with the tasseled collar below catching the point of highest light. It is the poetry of good humor, of physical beauty, of content withlife and life's adventures. It also marks what Herr Knackfuss calls Rembrandt's "softer manner" in which all sharp outlines of objects are effaced, and the lights gleam from a general darkness. More than "The Sentinel," which sometimes is given as the starting point for this departure in style, it has the appearance of a dramatic emergence from shadow. From having been a painstaking craftsman Rembrandt at this time had become a dramatist selecting from his material those elements best adapted to sway the emotions. He has lost himself—or found himself—in the expression of character; not merely character as one element in a picture's interest, but character astheelement. In this picture of Nicholas Bruyningh we cannot escape from the merry careless temperament. We cannot as in the early portrait of Saskia linger in dalliance over charming accessories and beautifully discriminated textures until we reach by moderate degrees the eloquence of the profoundly studied face. Bruyningh's face is like the "tirade" of a French play—it is rendered at white heat and in one inconceivably long breath. Its significance is so intensified as to produce a profound feeling in a sympathetic spectator.
Courtesy of Berlin Photographic Company. In the Cassel Museum. Nicholas Bruyningh From a portrait by RembrandtCourtesy of Berlin Photographic Company. In the Cassel Museum. Nicholas Bruyningh From a portrait by Rembrandt
If we compare it with the badly named "Laughing Cavalier" of Franz Hals we see clearly enough the difference between drama and realism. Drama as defined by Robert Louis Stevenson consists not of incident but ofpassion that must progressively increase in order that the actor may be able to "carry the audience from a lower to a higher pitch of interest and emotion." This also defines Rembrandt's painting at all periods. As one approaches the human face in his pictures one becomes aware of an emotional quality that is irresistible, and in a portrait like that of Bruyningh the emotional quality is almost isolated from incident or detail. It is the great moment of the third act when the audience holds its breath.
"The Standard Bearer" is not accepted by Dr. Bode as a fine work or even as certainly original, the version of the same subject in Baron G. du Rothschild's collection having made much deeper an impression upon him. The Cassel version is nevertheless a work of great distinction, the grave and beautiful face and shining armor looking out of a luminous atmosphere that has more of the Rembrandtesque quality than many authenticated works of Rembrandt's riper period. The work is engaging, personal, striking, and if not entirely great certainly possessed of many of the qualities of greatness.
While the Cassel collection does not contain any of the superb self portraits of Rembrandt's later years, the one example in this kind having authority without great interest, it does include one biblical picture of unusual importance belonging to the year 1656, the "Jacob Blessing his Grandchildren," which is, however, unfinished.The square, direct brush strokes suggest those of Hals, the drapery is thinly painted with a flowing medium, the black shadows on the face of Jacob cut sharply into the half tones, there is little discrimination in the textures and the background comes forward. But the faces of the children are charming in characterization, recalling the simple tenderness of the "Girl Leaning Out of the Window" at Dulwich, one of the most enchanting embodiments of youth ever achieved by Rembrandt, and the woman, Israelitish in type, with large eyes and features rather abruptly defined, is an attractive attempt to realize feminine beauty, a task in which Rembrandt was never dexterous, however.
Of the two landscapes, that with the ruined castle is the most impressive, but neither compares favorably with the dainty perfection of the landscape etchings.
If we add to these examples the studies of old men's heads and the delightful portrait of the artist's sister holding a pink in her hand, we realize that the group as a whole covers many phases of Rembrandt's constantly changing inspiration. He betrayed in his later works the impatience of those to whom few years are left in which to complete their accomplishment, but he kept the sensitiveness of his youth well into his brief prime, although he transferred it from the field of form to that of light. It betrays itself in the quality of that lightwhich absorbs all that is ugly, coarse, or ultra real in its poetizing glamour. From the tender explicit craftsmanship of the wonderful Saskia to the golden mist enveloping the figure of Nicholas Bruyningh, is a long step, but not longer than many a painter has taken in his progress from youth to maturity. The special comment upon Rembrandt's character as a painter which we are able to gather from the Cassel pictures is that in casting off the trammels of particularity he did not become less receptive to poetic influences. He grew more and more a dreamer, and in losing the clear objective manner of his early portraits he substituted not the idle carelessness which in the work of a painter's later years is apt to be condoned as freedom, but the generalization that excludes vulgarities of execution and makes necessary increased mastery of the difficult craft of painting.
Fantin-Latour was born in 1836, was the son of a painter, and was educated at Paris under his father's guidance and that of Lecoq and Boisbaudeau, professor at a little art school connected with the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. One of the most interesting painters of the little group in France whose work began to come before the public about the middle of the nineteenth century, a close friend of Whistler, a passionate admirer of Delacroix, and an inspired student of the old masters, he managed to preserve intact an individuality that has a singular richness and simplicity seen against the many-colored tapestry of nineteenth-century art. Rubens, Velasquez, Rembrandt, Franz Hals, and Nicolaas Maas, Pieter de Hooch and Vermeer of Delft, Watteau and Chardin, Van Dyck, Titian, Tintoret, and Veronese were his true masters and his copies of their works are said by his enlightened critic, M. Arsène Alexandre, to have a masterly quality of their own, to be far removed from the conventionality of facsimiles, and to bear upon an underlyingfidelity of transcription an impress of individual sentiment. He sought to be faithful to the originals beyond external imitation, by seeking to render the original tone of the painting in its first freshness, as it appeared before time and varnish had yellowed and darkened it. He thus made himself familiar with the technical methods of the great periods of painting, and, coming into his inheritance of modern ideas and ideals, he was able to achieve a beauty of execution much too rarely sought by his contemporaries, although his intimate companions like himself frequented the Louvre with a considerable assiduity, spending upon the old masters the enthusiasm which they withheld from the later academic school of painting.
His earlier subjects were largely Biblical and historical. He then passed to domestic scenes and in 1859, 1861, and 1863 was painting his pictures ofLes LiseursandLes Brodeuseswhich showed the charming face of his sister with her sensitive smiling mouth and softly modeled brows, and later that of his wife. At the Salon of 1859 he and Whistler both submitted subjects drawn from family life, Whistler hisAt the Pianowith his own sister and his niece, little Annie Haden, for the models, and Fantin his painting of young women embroidering and reading, only to have their canvases refused. Fantin was not, however, a martyr to his predilections in art. He early obtained admission to the Salon although he had enough rejectedwork to permit him to appear among the painters exhibiting in the famous little "Salon des Refusés" of 1863. He received medals and official recognitions. But his modesty of taste led him to hold himself somewhat apart and exclusive among those who shared his likings. His portrait of himself, painted in 1858, shows a dreamy young man with serious, almost solemn, eyes, sitting before his easel, and looking into the distance with the expression of one who sees visions.
As a matter of fact he did see visions and attempted to fix them with his art. An ardent lover of music, he was eager to translate the emotions aroused by it into the terms of his own art. As early as 1859 he was in England, to which he returned in 1861 and 1864, and while there he was surrounded by a group of people who shared his enthusiasm for German music. There he first became familiar with Schumann's melodies, and made the rare little etching representing his English friends, Mr. and Mrs. Edwards, playing one of Schumann's compositions, Edwards with his flute and Mrs. Edwards at the piano. In 1862 he had the very tempered satisfaction of finding that Wagner, already beloved by him, had reached the public taste through the labors of the courageous Pasdeloup. "I always regret," he wrote to Edwards, "seeing the objects of my adoration adored by others, especially by the masses. I am very jealous when I love."
In order to celebrate Wagner's triumph over these masses, however, he at once made the lithograph calledVenusberg, from which sprang the very different oil version of the same subject which together with theHommage à Delacroix, the story of which M. Bénédite has recounted, was admitted to the Salon of 1864. Fantin's lithographs, a number of which are in the print room of the Lenox Library building in New York City, show clearly his preoccupation with music, and an interesting article on this phase of his temperament appeared in theRevue des Deux Mondes, September 15, 1906. Naturally a worshiper, he did not confine himself to commemorating only the musicians who were his favorites. In lithography and painting he exalted such diverse heroes of the different arts as Stendhal, Hugo, Baudelaire, Delacroix, Manet, Schumann, Weber, Berlioz, and Wagner. In 1877 his enthusiasm for Wagner revived in his work, and compositions based on the Ring music followed each other in rapid succession. Wolfram gazing at the evening star, or following with enchanted eyes Elizabeth's ghostly figure as it moves slowly up the hill toward the towers of Wartburg; the Rhine maidens playing with rhythmic motions in the swirling waters, with Alberic, crouched in the foreground, watching them; Sieglinde, giving Siegmund to drink, as hounded and pursued he sinks at the door of Hunding's dwelling; the evocation of Kundry by Klingner;Siegfried blowing his horn and receding from the enticements of the Rhine maidens—these are among the subjects that engaged him. It would be difficult to describe his manner of interpretation. Quite without theatrical suggestion, it combines a dramatic use of dark and light and a feeling for palpable atmosphere hardly equaled by Rembrandt himself, with a remarkably certain touch. Nothing could better emphasize the value of technical drill to a poetic temperament than these imaginative drawings. In them Fantin gives full rein to his emotional delight in tender visions and twilight dreams. The lovely rhythm of his lines, the rise and fall of his sensitive shadows and lights that play and interplay in as strict obedience to law as the waves of the sea, his delicate modeling by which he brings form out of nebulous half-tones with the slightest touches, the least discernible accents, the accurate bland drawing, the ordered composition, the subtle spacing, the innumerable indications of close observation of life—all these qualities combine to give an impression of fantasy and reality so welded and fused as to be indistinguishable to the casual glance.