Now turn to the second little Raphael. This represents the closely cognate subject ofSt. Michael and the Dragon—the angelic as opposed to the human counterpart. The two ideas are at bottom identical—the power of good overcoming evil; the true faith combating heathendom. It is a world-wide myth, occurring in many forms—as Horus and Typhon, as Perseus, as Bellerophon. Hence Michael and George, the superhuman and the human soldier of right, often balance one another, as in these two pictures: you have seen them doing so already in the Madonna della Vittoria: look out for them elsewhere in this conjunction. Both are knights; both are in armour; but one is a man and the other an angel. In this second little picture, St. Michael is seen, clad in his usual gorgeous mail, treading on the neck of the dragon and menacing it with his sword. The dark and lurid landscape in the background contains many fearful forms of uncertain monsters: condemned souls are plagued in it by demons, while a flaming town flares murkily towards heaven in the far distance, the details being taken, as in many such works, from Dante’s Inferno. Or rather, they and the Inferno represent the same old traditional view of Hades. (The figures weighed down with leaden cowls are the hypocrites, while the thieves are tormented by a plague of serpents.) Close comparison of these two little works will give you a good idea of Raphael’s earliest Urbino manner. This fantastic picture, however, though full of imagination, is by no means so pleasing as the dainty St. George beside it.
Go straight from this combat to theGreat St. Michael, also by Raphael, in the Salon Carré. It bears date 1518. Pope Leo X commissioned Raphael to paint this picture as a present for François Ier: the painter—to whom he left the choice of subject—chose St. Michael, the military patron of France, and of the Order of which the king was Grand Master. (You will find a bronze bust of François, wearing the collar and pendant of St. Michael, in the Renaissance Sculpture.) He chose it also, no doubt, because it enabled him to show hisincreased mastery over life and action. This great and noble picture, one of the finest as regards dramatic rapidity ever painted by Raphael, is celebrated for the instantaneous effect of its movement. (Compare the demoniac boy in the Transfiguration at the Vatican.) The warrior archangel has just swooped down through the air, and, hovering on poised wings, is caught in the very act of setting one foot lightly on the demon’s shoulder. The dragon, writhing, tries in vain to lift his head and turn on his conqueror. The noble serenity of the archangel’s face, the perfect grace of his form and attitude, the brilliant panoply of his celestial armour, the sheen of his wings, the light tresses of his hair floating outward behind him (as of one who has traversed space on wings of lightning) cannot fail to be remarked by every spectator. This is Raphael in the fulness of his knowledge and power, yet far less interesting to the lover of sacred art than the boy Raphael of Urbino, the dreamy Raphael of the Sposalizio at Milan, the tender Raphael of the Gran Duca at Florence, or of the Belle Jardinière in this same apartment. Notice that with the progress of Renaissance feeling the demon is now no longer a dragon but a half-human figure, with horns and serpent tail, and swarthy red in colour. He is so foreshortened as not to take up any large space in the composition, which is mainly filled by the victorious figure of the triumphant archangel. The more classical armour bespeaks the High Renaissance. The longer you compare these two extreme phases of Raphael’s art, the more will you note points of advance between them—technical advance, counterbalanced by moral and spiritual retrogression.
End by comparing this St. Michael with Mantegna’s, and with the playful Leonardesque archangel in theVierge aux balances, the last point in the degeneracy of a celestial conception.
Raphael is one of the painters who can best be studied at the Louvre, with comparatively little need for aid from elsewhere.
Pay a special visit to the Louvre one day in order to make adetailed study of Madonnas. Before doing so, however, read and digest the following general statement of principles on the subject.
[People who have not thrown themselves, or thought themselves, or read themselves into the mental attitude of early art, often complain that Italian picture galleries, and museums like Cluny, are too full of merely sacred subjects. But when once you have learnt to understand and appreciate them, to know the meaning which lurks in every part, you will no longer make this causeless complaint. As well object to Greek art that it represents little save the personages of Greek mythology. As a matter of fact, though the Louvre contains a fair number of Madonnas, it does not embrace a sufficient number to give a perfectly clear conception of the varieties of type and the development of the subject—not so good a series in many respects as the National Gallery, though it is particularly well adapted for the study of certain special groups, particularly the Leonardesque-Lombard development.The simplest type of Madonna is that whereOur Ladyappearsalonewith the Divine Infant. This modification of the subject most often occurs as a half-length, though sometimes the Blessed Virgin is so represented in full length, enthroned, or under a canopy. Several such simple Madonnas occur in the Gallery. In the earliest examples here, however, such as Cimabue’s, and the cognate altar-piece of the School of Giotto, the Madonna is seen surrounded by angelic supporters. This forms a second group—Our Lady with Angels. Very early examples of this treatment show the angels in complete isolation, as a sort of framework. (See several parallels in sculpture in Room VI, ground floor, at Cluny.) Grouping as yet is non-existent. No specimen of this very original type is to be found in the Louvre; but in the Cimabue of this Gallery the angels are superimposed, so to speak, while in the Giottesque example close by an elementary attempt is made at grouping them. In later works, the angels are more and more naturally represented, from age to age, singly or in pairs, or else grouped irregularly on either side of Our Lady. You will note for yourself that as the Renaissance developes, the nature of the grouping, both of angels and saints, deviates more and more from the early strict architectural symmetry.A slight variant on the simple pictures of the Madonna and Child are those, of Florentine origin, in which theinfant St.John Baptist, the patron Saint of the City of Florence, is introduced at play with the childish Saviour. This class—theMadonna and Child, with St. John—is well represented in theBelle Jardinière, and several other pictures in the Louvre.Most often, however, the Madonna is seen enthroned, in the centre of the altar-piece or composition, and surrounded by one, two, or three pairs of saintly personages. TheMadonna with Saintsthus forms a separate group of subjects. These saints, you will by this time have gathered, areneverarbitrarily introduced. They were selected and commissioned, as a rule, by the purchaser, and they are there for a good and sufficient reason. Often the donor desired to pay his devotion in this fashion to his own personal patron; often to the patron of his town or village, of the church in which the picture was to be deposited, or of his family or relations. Frequently, again, the picture was avotive offering, as against plague or other dreaded calamity: in which case it is apt to contain figures of the great plague saints, Roch and Sebastian. Ignorant people often object that such sets of saints are not contemporary. They forget that this is the Enthroned Madonna, and that the action takes place in the Celestial City, where the saints surround the throne of Our Lady.As regardsgrouping, in the earlier altar-pieces the selected saints were treated in complete isolation. Most often the Madonna and Child occupy in such cases a central panel, under its own canopy; while the saints are each enclosed in a separate little alcove or gilded tabernacle. Reminiscences of this usage linger long in Italy. Later on, as art progressed, painters began to feel the stiffness of such an arrangement: they placed the attendant saints at first in regularly disposed pairs on either side the throne, and afterwards in something approaching a setcomposition. With the High Renaissance, the various figures, instead of occupying mere posts round the seat of Our Lady, and gazing at her in adoration, began to indulge in conversation with one another, or to take part in some more or less animated and natural action. This method of arrangement, which culminates for the Florentine school in Fra Bartolommeo, degenerates with the Decadence into confusedand muddled groups, with scarcely a trace of symbols—groups of well-draped models, in which it is impossible to see any sacred significance. TheFlorentinepainters preferred, as a rule, such rather complex grouping: theVenetians, influenced in great part by the severer taste of Giorgione and of Titian, usually show a more simple arrangement.Any one of these various types of Madonna may also be modified by the introduction of akneeling donor. Thus, Van Eyck’s glowing picture of the Chancellor Rollin adoring Our Lady is an example of the simple Madonna and Child, enthroned, accompanied by the donor; though in this case, the composition is further slightly enriched by the dainty little floating angel in the background, who places an exquisitely jewelled crown of the finest Flemish workmanship on the head of the Virgin. The Madonna della Vittoria, again, which we have so fully considered, is essentially a Madonna and Saints, with the kneeling donor. In very early pictures, you will observe that the donors are often painted grotesquely small, while Our Lady and the Saints are of relatively superhuman stature, to mark their superiority as heavenly personages. In later works, this absurdity dies out, and the figure and face of the donor become one of the recognised excuses for early portrait painting. Indeed, portraiture took its rise for the modern world from such kneeling figures.Another point of view from which it is interesting to compare these various Madonnas is that of theNationalityorSchool of Artto which they belong. Theearly Italianrepresentations of Our Lady are usually more or less girlish in appearance, refined in features, and comparatively simple in dress and decoration. The Flemish type is peculiarly insipid, one might often say, even with great artists, inane and meaningless; in the hands of minor painters, it becomes positively wooden. The face here is long and rather thin; the features peaky. The Madonna of Flemish art, indeed, like the Christ of all art, is a sacred type which is seldom varied.Early FrenchMadonnas, once more, are regal and ladylike, sometimes even courtly. They wear crowns as queens, and are better observed in the Louvre in sculpture than in painting. This Gallery hardly suffices to note in full the peculiarities of thesub-typesinvariousItalian schools; but they may still be recognised. Of these, theFlorentineare spiritual, delicate, and strongly ideal; theLombard, intellectual, like well-read ladies; theVenetian, stately and matronly oligarchical mothers, degenerating later into the mere aristocratic nobility, soulless and materialised, of Titian and his followers. TheUmbriansandSieneseare distinguished for the most part by their pure and saintly air of fervent piety.Do not confound with any of thesedevotional Madonnas, with or without select groups of saints, various other classes of picture which somewhat resemble them. Each of these has in early art its own proper convention and treatment: it was a recognised species. AHoly Family, for example, consists, as a rule, of a Madonna, the Infant Christ, St. Joseph, St. Elizabeth, and the child Baptist. Like the other subjects, it is sometimes complicated by the addition of selected Saints as spectators or assessors. ACoronation of the Virgin, again, is an entirely celestial scene, taking place in the calm of the heavenly regions. The Madonna is usually crowned by her Son, but sometimes by angels or by the Eternal Father. (Several interesting examples of this, for comparison, occur in Room VI, ground floor, at Cluny.)Nativities, of course, belong rather to the group of pictorial histories, such as the Life of Christ, or the Seven Joys of Mary. The sculptures in the ambulatory at Notre-Dame give one a good idea of such continuous histories.One interesting set of Madonnas, largely exemplified here, to take a particular example, is the later Lombard type of theSchool of Leonardo. This type, well distinguished by its regular oval features, its gentle smile of inner happiness, and its peculiar waving hair with wisps over the shoulders, is usually regarded as essentially belonging to Leonardo himself and his immediate followers. It is foreshadowed, however, by Foppa, Borgognone, and other early Lombard painters, specimens of whom are not numerous in the Louvre. Leonardo, when he came to Milan to Ludovico Sforza, adopted this local type, which he transfused with Florentine grace and with his own peculiar subdued smile, as one sees it already in the Mona Lisa. From Leonardo, again, it was taken, with more or lesssuccess, by his immediate pupils, Beltraffio, Solario, Cesare di Sesto, and others, as well as by Luini, who was not a pupil of Leonardo himself, but who was deeply influenced by the master’s methods and his works in Milan. The number of these Leonardesque Madonnas in the Louvre is exceptionally great, while Leonardo himself can here be better estimated than in Italy. Nowhere else perhaps, save possibly at Milan, can this type as a whole be compared by the student to so great advantage.While the Madonna herself usually occupies the central panel of votive pictures, it sometimes happens that someother saintis, on his own altar-piece, similarly enthroned; and in that case he is flanked by brother saints, often more important in themselves, but then and there subordinated to him. This special honour under special circumstances is well seen in the case of the St. Lawrence at the far end of the Salle des Primitifs. Particular local saints often thus receive what might otherwise appear undue recognition. For the same reason, minor saints in the group surrounding a Madonna often obtain local brevet-rank (if I may be allowed the simile) over others of far greater general dignity, which they could not lay claim to in any other connection. Thus, in the Nativity by Giulio Romano, to which I called attention in connection with Mantegna’s Madonna, St. Longinus (with his crystal vase) stood on Our Lady’sR, while St. John was relegated to herL—a subordination of the greater to the lesser saint which would only be possible in a chapel actually dedicated to St. Longinus, and where he receives peculiar honour. I now propose to escort you round a few rooms of the Louvre, again calling attention very briefly, from this point of view, to certain special Madonna features only.]
[People who have not thrown themselves, or thought themselves, or read themselves into the mental attitude of early art, often complain that Italian picture galleries, and museums like Cluny, are too full of merely sacred subjects. But when once you have learnt to understand and appreciate them, to know the meaning which lurks in every part, you will no longer make this causeless complaint. As well object to Greek art that it represents little save the personages of Greek mythology. As a matter of fact, though the Louvre contains a fair number of Madonnas, it does not embrace a sufficient number to give a perfectly clear conception of the varieties of type and the development of the subject—not so good a series in many respects as the National Gallery, though it is particularly well adapted for the study of certain special groups, particularly the Leonardesque-Lombard development.
The simplest type of Madonna is that whereOur Ladyappearsalonewith the Divine Infant. This modification of the subject most often occurs as a half-length, though sometimes the Blessed Virgin is so represented in full length, enthroned, or under a canopy. Several such simple Madonnas occur in the Gallery. In the earliest examples here, however, such as Cimabue’s, and the cognate altar-piece of the School of Giotto, the Madonna is seen surrounded by angelic supporters. This forms a second group—Our Lady with Angels. Very early examples of this treatment show the angels in complete isolation, as a sort of framework. (See several parallels in sculpture in Room VI, ground floor, at Cluny.) Grouping as yet is non-existent. No specimen of this very original type is to be found in the Louvre; but in the Cimabue of this Gallery the angels are superimposed, so to speak, while in the Giottesque example close by an elementary attempt is made at grouping them. In later works, the angels are more and more naturally represented, from age to age, singly or in pairs, or else grouped irregularly on either side of Our Lady. You will note for yourself that as the Renaissance developes, the nature of the grouping, both of angels and saints, deviates more and more from the early strict architectural symmetry.
A slight variant on the simple pictures of the Madonna and Child are those, of Florentine origin, in which theinfant St.John Baptist, the patron Saint of the City of Florence, is introduced at play with the childish Saviour. This class—theMadonna and Child, with St. John—is well represented in theBelle Jardinière, and several other pictures in the Louvre.
Most often, however, the Madonna is seen enthroned, in the centre of the altar-piece or composition, and surrounded by one, two, or three pairs of saintly personages. TheMadonna with Saintsthus forms a separate group of subjects. These saints, you will by this time have gathered, areneverarbitrarily introduced. They were selected and commissioned, as a rule, by the purchaser, and they are there for a good and sufficient reason. Often the donor desired to pay his devotion in this fashion to his own personal patron; often to the patron of his town or village, of the church in which the picture was to be deposited, or of his family or relations. Frequently, again, the picture was avotive offering, as against plague or other dreaded calamity: in which case it is apt to contain figures of the great plague saints, Roch and Sebastian. Ignorant people often object that such sets of saints are not contemporary. They forget that this is the Enthroned Madonna, and that the action takes place in the Celestial City, where the saints surround the throne of Our Lady.
As regardsgrouping, in the earlier altar-pieces the selected saints were treated in complete isolation. Most often the Madonna and Child occupy in such cases a central panel, under its own canopy; while the saints are each enclosed in a separate little alcove or gilded tabernacle. Reminiscences of this usage linger long in Italy. Later on, as art progressed, painters began to feel the stiffness of such an arrangement: they placed the attendant saints at first in regularly disposed pairs on either side the throne, and afterwards in something approaching a setcomposition. With the High Renaissance, the various figures, instead of occupying mere posts round the seat of Our Lady, and gazing at her in adoration, began to indulge in conversation with one another, or to take part in some more or less animated and natural action. This method of arrangement, which culminates for the Florentine school in Fra Bartolommeo, degenerates with the Decadence into confusedand muddled groups, with scarcely a trace of symbols—groups of well-draped models, in which it is impossible to see any sacred significance. TheFlorentinepainters preferred, as a rule, such rather complex grouping: theVenetians, influenced in great part by the severer taste of Giorgione and of Titian, usually show a more simple arrangement.
Any one of these various types of Madonna may also be modified by the introduction of akneeling donor. Thus, Van Eyck’s glowing picture of the Chancellor Rollin adoring Our Lady is an example of the simple Madonna and Child, enthroned, accompanied by the donor; though in this case, the composition is further slightly enriched by the dainty little floating angel in the background, who places an exquisitely jewelled crown of the finest Flemish workmanship on the head of the Virgin. The Madonna della Vittoria, again, which we have so fully considered, is essentially a Madonna and Saints, with the kneeling donor. In very early pictures, you will observe that the donors are often painted grotesquely small, while Our Lady and the Saints are of relatively superhuman stature, to mark their superiority as heavenly personages. In later works, this absurdity dies out, and the figure and face of the donor become one of the recognised excuses for early portrait painting. Indeed, portraiture took its rise for the modern world from such kneeling figures.
Another point of view from which it is interesting to compare these various Madonnas is that of theNationalityorSchool of Artto which they belong. Theearly Italianrepresentations of Our Lady are usually more or less girlish in appearance, refined in features, and comparatively simple in dress and decoration. The Flemish type is peculiarly insipid, one might often say, even with great artists, inane and meaningless; in the hands of minor painters, it becomes positively wooden. The face here is long and rather thin; the features peaky. The Madonna of Flemish art, indeed, like the Christ of all art, is a sacred type which is seldom varied.Early FrenchMadonnas, once more, are regal and ladylike, sometimes even courtly. They wear crowns as queens, and are better observed in the Louvre in sculpture than in painting. This Gallery hardly suffices to note in full the peculiarities of thesub-typesinvariousItalian schools; but they may still be recognised. Of these, theFlorentineare spiritual, delicate, and strongly ideal; theLombard, intellectual, like well-read ladies; theVenetian, stately and matronly oligarchical mothers, degenerating later into the mere aristocratic nobility, soulless and materialised, of Titian and his followers. TheUmbriansandSieneseare distinguished for the most part by their pure and saintly air of fervent piety.
Do not confound with any of thesedevotional Madonnas, with or without select groups of saints, various other classes of picture which somewhat resemble them. Each of these has in early art its own proper convention and treatment: it was a recognised species. AHoly Family, for example, consists, as a rule, of a Madonna, the Infant Christ, St. Joseph, St. Elizabeth, and the child Baptist. Like the other subjects, it is sometimes complicated by the addition of selected Saints as spectators or assessors. ACoronation of the Virgin, again, is an entirely celestial scene, taking place in the calm of the heavenly regions. The Madonna is usually crowned by her Son, but sometimes by angels or by the Eternal Father. (Several interesting examples of this, for comparison, occur in Room VI, ground floor, at Cluny.)Nativities, of course, belong rather to the group of pictorial histories, such as the Life of Christ, or the Seven Joys of Mary. The sculptures in the ambulatory at Notre-Dame give one a good idea of such continuous histories.
One interesting set of Madonnas, largely exemplified here, to take a particular example, is the later Lombard type of theSchool of Leonardo. This type, well distinguished by its regular oval features, its gentle smile of inner happiness, and its peculiar waving hair with wisps over the shoulders, is usually regarded as essentially belonging to Leonardo himself and his immediate followers. It is foreshadowed, however, by Foppa, Borgognone, and other early Lombard painters, specimens of whom are not numerous in the Louvre. Leonardo, when he came to Milan to Ludovico Sforza, adopted this local type, which he transfused with Florentine grace and with his own peculiar subdued smile, as one sees it already in the Mona Lisa. From Leonardo, again, it was taken, with more or lesssuccess, by his immediate pupils, Beltraffio, Solario, Cesare di Sesto, and others, as well as by Luini, who was not a pupil of Leonardo himself, but who was deeply influenced by the master’s methods and his works in Milan. The number of these Leonardesque Madonnas in the Louvre is exceptionally great, while Leonardo himself can here be better estimated than in Italy. Nowhere else perhaps, save possibly at Milan, can this type as a whole be compared by the student to so great advantage.
While the Madonna herself usually occupies the central panel of votive pictures, it sometimes happens that someother saintis, on his own altar-piece, similarly enthroned; and in that case he is flanked by brother saints, often more important in themselves, but then and there subordinated to him. This special honour under special circumstances is well seen in the case of the St. Lawrence at the far end of the Salle des Primitifs. Particular local saints often thus receive what might otherwise appear undue recognition. For the same reason, minor saints in the group surrounding a Madonna often obtain local brevet-rank (if I may be allowed the simile) over others of far greater general dignity, which they could not lay claim to in any other connection. Thus, in the Nativity by Giulio Romano, to which I called attention in connection with Mantegna’s Madonna, St. Longinus (with his crystal vase) stood on Our Lady’sR, while St. John was relegated to herL—a subordination of the greater to the lesser saint which would only be possible in a chapel actually dedicated to St. Longinus, and where he receives peculiar honour. I now propose to escort you round a few rooms of the Louvre, again calling attention very briefly, from this point of view, to certain special Madonna features only.]
Now, go to the Louvre and test these remarks. Begin at the far end of the Salle des Primitifs. The Cimabue and the Giottesque of the Madonna and Angels we have already considered. Compare them again from our present standpoint. Close to them on theR, beneath the large Giotto of St. Francis, are two pretty little Madonnas, 1620 (I now give the large upper numbers alone) and 1667. The first of theseexhibits below two tiny votaries—the small-sized donors—a Franciscan monk and a Dominican nun, with the robes of their orders; the centre consists of St. Paul and St. Catherine, as the attendant saints on the large Enthroned Virgin. The second has the choir of angels, both surrounding and beneath the throne, with St. Peter (keys), St. Paul (sword), St. John Baptist (camel-hair) and St. Stephen or St. Vincent (robed as deacon). St. Peter and St. Paul in 1625 are similar figures, once surrounding a central panel, with the Madonna now missing. Compare with this 1666, with its Enthroned Madonna of the early almond-eyed type, its group of angels round the throne, and its two saints at the base, John Baptist and Peter. Observe that the types of these also can be recognised. Each saint has regular features of his own, which you can learn to know quite as well as the symbols.
Higher up, 1664, another Madonna and Child, Enthroned, with similar angels, but with the addition of the figure of St Catherine of Alexandria, on whose finger the Christ is placing a ring. This is an early intermediate type of the Marriage of St. Catherine, hardly yet characterized. Most of these Madonnas have the characteristic softness and peculiar cast of countenance of the early School of Siena.
1279, Gentile da Fabriano, is almost a simple Madonna and Child, but for the addition of the smaller donor, Pandolfo Malatesta, Lord of Rimini. This picture shows the bland and round-faced Umbrian type which is closely allied to that of Siena. Both Schools are remarkable for the fervent pietism which blossomed out in full in St. Francis of Assisi and St. Catherine of Siena.
In the beautiful Perugino above, 1564, note the complete transformation in the later Umbrian school of the adoring angels into a graceful pair, and the beginning of an attempt to group in comparatively natural attitudes the accompanying saints, Rose and Catherine.
This feature is still more marked in 1565, also Perugino, (but later) where the Baptist and St. Catherine, well composed, are thrown into the background behind the Madonna. Observe that while earlier piety drapes the Child, in Gentile and still more in Perugino, the growing love for the nudebegins to exhibit itself. A study of haloes is also interesting.
On the opposite orRside, 1315 is a good example of the simple Enthroned Madonna of the School of Giotto. Compare it with that next it, 1316, where the angels are grouped with some attempt at composition.
1397, by Neri di Bicci, is also a characteristic half-length simple Madonna, with the Child still draped after the earlier fashion affected by this belated follower of Giottesque models.
1345, beneath it, by Filippo Lippi or his school, shows a characteristic type of features which this painter introduced,—a modification of the older Florentine ideal: the face is said to be that of his model Lucrezia Buti, the nun with whom he eloped and whom he was finally permitted to marry. The angels in the background show well the rapid advance in the treatment of these accessories. Observe, as you pass, their Florentine lilies. Their features are like those of the Medici children, as seen in numerous works at Florence.
In 1295, by Botticelli, we get that individual painter’s peculiar mystical and somewhat languid type, while the angels are again like Medici portraits. Study these Botticellis for his artistic personality.
1344, by Filippo Lippi, next to it, exhibits Filippo’s very rounded faces, both in Madonna and angels. The type is more human. Here, again, we have the Florentine lily borne by the adoring choir, whose position should be compared as a faint lingering reminiscence of that in the Giottesques and the great Cimabue. Observe, at the same time, the division of the painting as a whole into three false compartments, a suggestion from the earlier type of altar-piece. At the Madonna’s feet are two adoring saints, difficult to identify—Florentine and local, probably. Do not fail to gaze close at the characteristic baby cherubs, perhaps Lucrezia’s. This picture should be compared in all its details with earlier pictures of angel choirs. It is a lovely work. Its delicate painting is strongly characteristic. The relief of the faces should be specially noted.
The Botticelli next it, 1296, introduces us to the infant St. John of Florence whom we meet again in theBelle Jardinièreof Raphael’s Florentine period. Another young St. John close by is full of suggestions of Donatello in the Sculpture Gallery.
493, above the last but one, is a very characteristic Madonna of the Florentine school, closely resembling the type of Botticelli. This once more is a simple Madonna and Child, without accessories.
In 1662, the sanctity has almost disappeared and we get scarcely more than a purely human mother and baby.
On the opposite side, 4573, is a half-length by Perugino, the affected pose of whose neck and the character of whose face you will now recognise; the Madonna floats in an almond-shaped glory of cherubs, which indicates her ascent to heaven. Several similar subjects exist in sculpture at Cluny.
1540, Lo Spagna, is again a simple half-length Madonna, whose purely Umbrian type recalls both Perugino and the earlier examples. Compare the Peruginos, Raphaels, and Lo Spagnas here, and form from them some conception of the Umbrian ideal.
Of the Bellini beside it I have already spoken sufficiently. Observe, here, the absolute nudity of the Child, and the reduction of the angels to sweet little cherub heads among clouds in the background. The graceful arrangement of the attendant saints strikes a Bellini keynote: it was followed in later developments of this subject by Venetian painters. Such half-lengths are common among the School of Bellini.
The treatment by Cima, 1259, introducing landscape, and the peculiarly high Venetian throne, is one of a sort also very frequent for full-length Madonnas at Venice and in the Venetian territory. The grouping of the saints, also, is here transitional. Compare it with the exquisite Lorenzo di Credi opposite.
On the opposite wall, 1367, by Mainardi, shows us a Florentine face, the St. John of Florence, and the typical sweet-faced Florentine angels, holding lilies; in the background, a view of the city.
Cosimo Rosseli’s, 1482, has again the almond-shaped glory of cherubs, the nude Child, the typical Florentine face (which you may now recognise) and also characteristic Florentine angels; but its St. Bernard and the Magdalen are introducedon clouds after a somewhat novel fashion. The St. Bernard is writing down his vision of the Madonna.
I have already called attention to the beautiful grouping in 1263 by Lorenzo di Credi; but observe now that the exquisite attendant saints, almost statuesque in their clear-cut isolation, still show a reminiscence of the earlier arrangement in tabernacles by the Renaissance archways at their back, combined with the niche in which the Madonna is enthroned. Only by the light of Giottesque examples can we understand the composition of this glorious picture. We do not know the circumstances under which it was produced: but St. Julian was the patron saint of Rimini, as St. Nicolas was of Bari. Both these towns were great Adriatic ports: and I believe it was painted for a merchant of the neighbourhood.
Do not be content in any of these cases with observing merely the points to which I call definite attention; try to compare each work throughout in all its details with others like it. The evolution of the grouping, in fact, will give you endless hints as to the history and development of the art of composition. This picture of Lorenzo’s may be regarded as exemplifying the finest stage in such works: those of later date are less pure and severe—show a tendency to confusion.
This will be quite enough to occupy you for one day. Another morning, proceed into the Long Gallery, where you can similarly compare the High Renaissance types and the Leonardesque Madonnas of the later School of Lombardy.
In the little Madonna of the School of Francia, 1437, observe the position of the attendant saint, the new type of face proper to the art of Bologna, and the way in which, as often, the infant Christ is poised on a parapet.
1553, by Garofalo, shows a later and softer development of a somewhat similar (Ferrarese) type; but the Child, instead of blessing with his two fingers as in most early cases, here displays the growing Renaissance love of variety and novelty: he is asleep in his cradle. Observe his attitude in this and other instances. With all these changes, however, you cannot fail to be struck by the fairly constant persistence of the red tunic and the blue mantle of the Madonna, as well as by the nature of her head-dress in each great School. Never fail toobserve the characteristic head-dresses in the various Schools of Italian art. They will help you, like the faces, to form types for comparison.
1353, by Luini, introduces us at once to the Lombard-Leonardesque class of face and hair. Compare it closely with the Madonnas in the frescoes in the Salle Duchâtel. The introduction of Joseph makes this in essence a Holy Family. Note Luini’s development of the halo of Christ, cruciform in early cases, or composed of a cross inscribed in a circle, into a cross-like arrangement of rays of light.
The two works by Marco da Oggiono, close by, betray similar types, far inferior to Luini’s, with further loss of primitive reverence.
In 1181, Borgognone’s Presentation, an earlier Lombard work, the Madonna faintly foreshadows this Leonardesque type, though the Leonardesque features are far less markedly present than in many other examples by this silvery painter.
1530, by Solario, the famous Madonna of the Green Cushion, may be compared with those by Marco da Oggiono, which it resembles in motive.
In 1599, La Vierge aux Rochers, we get Leonardo’s own personal type, which is also seen in the Madonna and St. Anne of the Salon Carré. Compare all these with the Mona Lisa, for touch and spirit. Then continue your examination through the rest of this room with the Leonardesque types: after which, turn to the School of Venice, beyond them, and note the evolution of the Titianesque types from the primitive Venetians.
On the opposite side of the same room, observe, once more, how Fra Bartolommeo and his School arranged their extremely complex groups of saints into a composition resembling a state ceremonial. From this point on in the evolution of the Santa Conversazione you will see that the arrangement of the saints entirely loses all sense of sacred meaning. Artificial ecstasies replace natural piety. An attempt to be artistic, and a desire to introduce a mode of treatment fitter for the theatre than for the church, at last entirely obscure the original meaning of these groups, which are so full of ardour in Fra Angelico, so full of stateliness in Lorenzo di Credi.
Another day may well be devoted to the quaintly girlishMadonnas of theFlemish School. Begin by observing carefully the Van Eyck of the Salon Carré, which is a Madonna with donor, and the Memling of the Salle Duchâtel, which is a Madonna with donors, not one with saints; the patrons here being merely brought in to introduce the votaries to Our Lady’s notice. From these, proceed to the Early Flemish section of the Long Gallery, and note in detail the evolution of the type in later pictures. I need hardly call attention to the Flemish love for crowns, jewellery, and costly adjuncts. These reflect the wealthy burgher life of Bruges, Ghent, and Antwerp. The translucent colour of the Flemish painters, too, lends itself well to these decorative elements.
The best example of anEarly French Madonnais the beautiful one which hangs by theRhand side of the door in the Salon Carré, leading into the Salle Duchâtel. This exquisite figure, a true masterpiece of its School, should be compared with later French developments in painting, as well as with the admirable collection of plastic works of this School in the Renaissance Sculpture Gallery down stairs. With these may also be mentioned, as a typical French example, the famous miracle-working Notre-Dame-de-Paris, a statue of the thirteenth or fourteenth century, which stands under a canopy against the pillar by the entrance to the choir in the south transept of Notre-Dame, and is popularly regarded as the statue of Our Lady to which the church is dedicated. The close connection between royalty and religion in France, well exemplified in the number of saints of the royal house at St. Germain l’Auxerrois, St. Germain-des-Prés, St. Denis, and elsewhere, is markedly exhibited in the extremely regal and high-bred character always given to French Madonnas. The Florentine, which form in this respect the greatest contrast, are often envisaged as idealised peasant girls, full of soul and fervour, but by no means exalted.
Finally, note as far as is possible with the few materials in this collection, the round-faced, placid type of theGerman Madonna—placid when at rest, though contorted (as the Mater Dolorosa) with exaggerated anguish. The fine wooden statue in the room of the Limoges enamels at Cluny will help to strike the key-note for this somewhat domestic national ideal. The earlyGerman Madonna is as often as not just a glorified housewife.
Many other subjects for similar comparative treatment may be found in the Louvre. Pick out for yourself a special theme, such as, for example, the Adoration of the Magi, the Nativity, the Presentation in the Temple, or the Agony in the Garden, and try to follow it out through various examples. Choose also a saint or two, and pursue them steadily through their evolution. Do not think that to examine paintings in this way is to be absorbed by the subject rather than by the art of the painter. Only superficial observers fall into this error. You will find on the contrary that the characteristics of each School and of each artist can best be discovered and observed by watching how each modifies or alters pre-existing and conventional conceptions. In order to thoroughly understand any early picture, you must look at it first as a representation of such-and-sucha given subject, for which a relatively fixed and conventional set of figures or accessories was prescribed by tradition. The number and minuteness of the prescribed accessories will grow upon you as you watch them. You have then to observe howeach School as a wholetreats such works; what feeling it introduces, towards what sort of modification in style or tone it usually tends. Next, you must consider it relatively toits age, as exemplifying a particular stage in the progress of the science and art of painting. Last of all you must carefully estimate what peculiarities are due to the taste, the temperament, the hand, and the technique of theindividual artist. For example, Gerard David’s Marriage at Cana is thoroughly Flemish in all its details; while Paolo Veronese’s is thoroughly Venetian. You may notice the Flemish and Venetian hand, not merely in the figures and the composition as a whole, but even in the extraordinarily divergent treatment of such details as the jars in the foreground, which for David are painted with Flemish daintiness of detail, though coarse and rough in themselves; while Veronese approaches them with Venetian wealth of Renaissance fancy, both in decoration and handling. But the David, again, is not merely Flemish: it has the distinctive marks of that particular Fleming, and should be compared with his lovely portrait of a kneeling donor with his three patronsaints in the National Gallery: while the Veronese is noticeable for the voluptuousness, the over-richness, the dash and spirit, of that large free master of the full Renaissance, the Rubens by comparison among the Venetians of his time. So too, if you study attentively the Botticellis in the Salle des Primitifs, you can notice a close similarity of type in many of his faces with the types in certain pictures by Filippo Lippi and still more in those by other Florentines of the same period; while you are yet even more distinctly struck by the intense individuality and refined spiritual feeling of this very original and soulful master.
In order to study the Louvre aright, in short, you must becontinually comparing. In a word, regard each work, first, as a representation of such-and-such a subject, falling into its proper place in the evolution of its series: second, as belonging to such-and-such a school or nationality: third, as representing such-and-such an age in the historical evolution of the art of painting: fourth, as exhibiting the individuality, the style, the characteristics, the technique, and the peculiar touch of such-and-such an individual painter. Only thus can you study art aright in this or any other gallery.
Try this method on Van Eyck’s Madonna, on Titian’s Entombment, on Sebastiano del Piombo’s Visitation, and on Memling’s little John Baptist, which is one attendant saint from a triptych whose Madonna is missing.
Some other time, consider in detail the two delicately luminousfrescoes by Luini, in the Salle Duchâtel. Before doing so, however, read on the spot the following remarks.
I have spoken here for the most part from the point of view of those visitors who have not travelled much in Italy or the Low Countries. And, as a matter of fact, the Louvre is the first great picture gallery on the Continent visited by nine out of ten English or Americans. In reality, however, since this collection contains several isolated masterpieces of all the great schools, together with several unconnected pictures of minor artists, it requires, almost more than any other great gallery, to be seen by the light of information acquired elsewhere. It ought, therefore, to beexaminedafteras well as, and even more than,beforevisits to other countries. This collection, for example, includes works by Van Eyck, by Memling, by Giotto, by Fra Angelico. But Van Eyck can only be fully understood by those who have visited Ghent; Memling can only be fully understood by those who have visited Bruges: it is impossible really to comprehend Giotto unless you have seen his great series of frescoes in the Madonna dell’ Arena at Padua: it is impossible really to comprehend Fra Angelico unless you have examined the saintly and ecstatic works at San Marco in Florence. Thus you have to bear in mind that the works in the Louvre are onlystray examplesof masters and schools with whom an adequate acquaintance must be obtained elsewhere. It was for this reason that I began these notes with special examples of Mantegna, because he is one of the very few artists, other than French, of whom you can form some tolerably fair conception in Paris alone, to be pieced out afterwards by observation in Italy.
Furthermore, it must be recollected that many artists can only be seen to advantage under theconditions amid whichtheir works were produced. This is especially the case with the Italian painters of the 14th and 15th centuries. They werea school of fresco-painters. Their altar-pieces and other separate panels give but a very inadequate idea of their powers, and especially of their composition. Giotto and Fra Angelico, in particular, cannot possibly be estimated aright by any of their works to be seen north of the Alps. The altar-pieces, being more especially sacred in character, were relatively very fixed in type: they allowed of less variation, less incident, less action, than the histories of saints which frequently form the subjects of frescoes. You can judge of this to a slight extent in the Louvre itself, by comparing the Madonnas at the far end of the Salle des Primitifs with Giotto’s St. Francis which hangs by: for the Madonna was the most sacred and therefore the most bound by custom of any type. You will at once observe how much freer and more naturalistic is the treatment in the episode of the Stigmata than in the comparatively wooden figures of Our Lady by which it is surrounded. Still moreis this the case when we come to compare any of these altar-pieces with frescoes such as those of the Arena at Padua, or Santa Croce at Florence. Similarly with Fra Angelico: the little crowded works which he produced as altar-pieces give a totally different conception of his character and powers than that which we derive from the large and relatively spacious frescoes at San Marco, or in Pope Nicolas’s Chapel at the Vatican. In such works, we see him expand into a totally different manner. Now frescoes, by their very nature, cannot easily be removed from the walls of churches without great danger. Therefore, the school of fresco-painters—that is to say, the Early Italian school—is ill represented outside Italy.
Now Luini, though he belongs to the 16th century, and though he produced some of his most beautiful works as cabinet or panel pictures, was yet almost as essentially a painter in fresco as Fra Angelico or Ghirlandajo. He can best be appreciated in Milan and its neighbourhood. And I will add a few notes here for the benefit of those who know Italy, and who can recall the works they have seen in that country. At the Brera in Milan, an immense number of his frescoes, cut out from churches, can be seen and compared to great advantage. Everybody who has visited that noble gallery must recall at least the exquisite figure of St. Catherine placed in her sarcophagus by angels, as well as the lovely Madonna with St. Antony and St. Barbara, where the face and beard of the aged anchorite somewhat recall the treatment of the old bearded king in the Adoration of the Magi in this gallery. Still better can Luini’s work be understood by those who know the Sanctuary at Saronno, where a splendid series of his frescoes still exists on the wall of the great church in which they were painted. The two frescoes here in the Salle Duchâtel are not quite so fine either as those at Saronno or as the very best examples among the collection at the Brera. Nevertheless, they are beautiful and delicately-toned specimens of Luini’s work, and, if studied in conjunction with other pictures by the same artist in the adjoining rooms, they will serve to give a tolerably just conception of his style and genius.
Luini is essentially aLeonardesque painter. He was not actually a pupil of Leonardo; but like all other Lombard artists of his time, he was deeply influenced by the temperament and example of the Florentine master. If you wish to see the kind of work produced by the Lombard schoolbeforeit had undergone this quickening influence of Leonardo,—been Tuscanised and Leonardised—look at the Borgognones in the Long Gallery. These, again, are not at all satisfactory specimens of that tender, delicate, and silvery colourist. To appreciate Borgognone as he ought to be appreciated, however, you must have seen him at home in the Certosa di Pavia: though even those who know only his exquisitely spiritual altar-piece of the Madonna with the two St. Catherines (of Alexandria and Siena) in the National Gallery will recognise how inadequately his work is represented by the specimens in the Louvre. Nevertheless, these examples, inferior though they be in style and feeling, will serve fairly well to indicate the point to which art had attained in Lombardybeforethe advent of Leonardo. I need not point out their comparatively archaic character, and their close following of earlier methods and motives. Again, if you compare with Borgognone the subsequent group of Leonardesque painters,—Solario and his contemporaries,—whose works hang close by on the left-hand wall of the Long Gallery, you will see how immense was the change which Leonardo introduced into Lombard art. From his time forward, the Leonardesque face, the peculiar smile, the crimped wisps of hair, the subtle tones of colour, and as far as possible the touch and technique of the master, are reproduced over and over again by the next generation of Milanese painters. Among them all, Luini stands preeminently forward as the only one endowed with profound original genius, capable of transfusing the Leonardesque types with new vitality and beauty of his own conceiving. The others are imitators: Luini is a disciple.
These attributes are well seen in the two beautiful frescoes of the Salle Duchâtel. They came to Paris from the Palazzo Litta, that handsome rococo palace in Milan which stands nearly opposite the church of San Maurizio, itself a museum of Luini’s loveliest frescoes, including the incomparable Execution of St. Catherine. The Adoration of the Magi is the most satisfactoryof the two. In it the kings,—Caspar, Melchior, Balthasar,—representing, as ever, the three ages of man and the three old continents,—are treated with a grace and soul and delicacy which Luini has hardly surpassed even at Saronno. The eldest king, as most often, kneels next to the Madonna, who occupies the conventionalRhand of the picture. He has removed his crown, also an habitual feature, and is presenting his gift, while the others are caught just before the act of offering theirs. The exquisite face of this eldest king is highly typical; so is the gently-smiling Leonardesque Madonna. The youngest king is represented as a Moor, as always in German, Flemish, and North Italian art, though this trait is rarer, if it occurs at all, in the Florentine and Central Italian painters. I take it that the notion of the Moor was derived from Venice; for the Three Kings were great objects of devotion in Lombardy and the Rhine country. Their relics, which now repose at Cologne, made a long stay on their way from the East at Milan; and it is to this fact, I fancy, that we must attribute the exceptional frequency of this subject in the art of Northern Italy, as of the Rhenish region. In the background, the usual caravans are seen descending the mountain. Such long trains of servants and attendants are commonly seen in Adorations of the Magi. Camels and even elephants frequently form part of them. Recollect the charming procession in the exquisite Benozzo Gozzoli in the Riccardi Palace. A study of this subject, from the simple beginnings in Giotto’s fresco in the Arena at Padua (where a single servant and a very grotesque camel, entirely evolved out of the painter’s imagination, form the sole elements of the cortège; beyond the Three Kings), down to the highly complex Ghirlandajo in the Uffizi at Florence, (a good copy of which may be seen at the École des Beaux-Arts,) and thence to Luini, Bonifazio and the later Italians, forms a most interesting subject for the comprehension of the historical evolution of art in Italy. Go straight from this picture to the Rubens in the Salon Carré in order to observe the way in which the theme has been treated, with considerable attention to traditional detail, yet with highly transformed feeling, by the great and princely Flemish painter.
The Nativity, in Luini’s second fresco, is also full of traditionalfeatures,—a beautiful work in the peculiar spirit of this gentle artist. Note every one of the accessories and details, observing how they have come from earlier pictures, and also how completely Luini has subordinated them to his own art and his delicate handling. Comparison of these two with the other Luinis in other rooms will give you some idea of his varying manners in fresco and oil-painting. Note that the frescoes represent him best, and are fullest of Luini.
Another picture, which in a wholly different direction exemplifies the need for knowledge of works of art elsewhere, and especially under the conditions in which they were originally painted, is to be found in Carpaccio’sPreaching of St. Stephen, on theRhand wall, shortly after you enter the Salle des Primitifs. This is one of a series of the Life of St. Stephen,—a form of composition of which the only good example in the Louvre is Lesueur’s insipid and colourless set, recounting the biography and miracles of St. Bruno. In Italy, such histories of saints are everywhere common, as frescoes or otherwise. Those who know Venice, for example, will well remember Carpaccio’s own charming series of the Life of St. Ursula, now well arranged round the walls of a single room in the Venice Academy. Still better will they understand the nature of these works if they have seen Carpaccio’s other delicious series of the Life of St. George, in San Giorgio dei Schiavoni, where the pictures still remain, at their original height from the ground, and in their original position, on the walls of the church for which they were painted. Only in such situations can works of this kind be properly estimated. That they can less easily be understood in isolation, you can gather if you look at the four cabinet pictures from the boudoir of Isabella d’Este, by Mantegna, Perugino, and Costa, which hang not far from this very St. Stephen in the same room of the Louvre. The size of the figures, in particular, is largely dictated by the shape of the room, the distance from the eye, and the character of the space which the painter has to cover.
This St. Stephen series, again, once existed entire as five pictures, all by Carpaccio, in the Scuola (or Guild) of St.Stephen at Venice. Similar sets of other saints still exist in the Scuola di San Rocco and other Guilds in the city. The first of the group, which represents the saint being consecrated as deacon by St. Peter, is now in the Berlin Gallery. The second, the Preaching of St. Stephen, is the one before which you are now standing. The third, St. Stephen disputing with the Doctors, is at the Brera in Milan. The fourth, the Martyrdom of St. Stephen, is at Stuttgardt. The fifth and last, St. Stephen Enthroned, between St. Nicolas and St. Thomas Aquinas, has disappeared from sight, or at least its present whereabouts is unknown to me. It is interesting to look out for such companion works in widely separated galleries.
Rightly to understand this picture, once more, one should know Carpaccio. And fully to know him one must have spent some time in Venice. But even without that knowledge, it is pleasant here to remark the familiar acquaintance with oriental life, which is equally visible in the neighbouring picture of the School of Bellini representing the reception of a Venetian Ambassador at Cairo. The mixed character of the architecture and the quaint accessories are all redolent of Carpaccio’s semi-mediæval and picturesque sentiment. The pellucid atmosphere, the apparent realism, the underlying idealism, the naïveté of the innocent saint in his deacon’s robes, counting hisfirstly,secondly, andthirdlyon his fingers, irrespective of persecution, and the glow and brilliancy of the Venetian colouring, here approaching its zenith, all combine to make this daintily simple picture one of the most attractive in this part of the Louvre. Recollect it when you go to Milan and Venice, and let it fall into its proper place, in time, in your mature conception of the painter and the epoch in which he lived.
Nor is this all. It must be borne in mind that while the Louvre is one of the noblest collections of pictures in Europe, it differs from most other fine collections in the fact that its most important and valuable works arenot of native origin, nor of one race, school, or period. The pictures at Florence are almost all Florentine: the pictures at Venice are almost all Venetian. At Bruges and Antwerp we have few but Flemish works: at the Hague and Amsterdam, fewbut Dutch. In the Louvre, on the contrary (as at Dresden and Munich), we get several masterpieces ofallthe great schools, with relatively few minor works of the groups to which they belong, by whose light to understand them. In short, this is a gallery of purple patches. The gems of the collection are the Raphaels, the Titians, the Leonardos, an exquisite Van Eyck, a splendid Memling, a few fine Murillos, a number of great Rubenses. To understand all these, we must know something of Florentine art, Umbrian art, Venetian art, Flemish art, Spanish art, and so forth. The finest pictures of any in the collection are not French at all, and cannot wholly be comprehended by the light of works in this gallery alone. Therefore it is best, if possible,to return to the Louvreafter visiting every other great school of art in Europe. On the other hand, a few great artists are here very amply represented; among them I may particularise Raphael, Titian, Mantegna, Leonardo and the Leonardesque school, Gerard Dou, and Rembrandt.
As a further example of the light cast by pictures elsewhere on those in this Gallery, however, I prefer to take a single little subject from the predella ofFra Angelico’sgloriousCoronation of the Virgin: I mean the compartment which represents St. Dominic and his brethren being fed by angels in the monastery of St. Sabina at Rome. Anybody who looks at Fra Angelico’s painting, even in these smaller works, can recognise at once his tender, saintly, and devout manner. He is permeated by a spirit of adoring reverence, which comes out in every one of his angels and martyrs. Fewer people, however, note that the angelic friar was also a loyal and devotedDominican. Whatever he paints is to the glory of God: but it is also to the glory of St. Dominic and of the order that he founded. This beautiful altar-piece, for instance, was produced by the Dominican painter of Fiesole for the Dominican church of St. Dominic at Fiesole. The saint himself, with his little red star, is everywhere apparent: and those who have visited Fra Angelico’s own Dominican monastery of San Marco at Florence will recollect that the founder and his red star similarly occur in almost every fresco in that beautiful building. They will also recollect that this very subjectof the brethren fed by angels forms the theme for a beautiful but much later fresco by Sogliani in the Great Refectory of the same monastery. Such an episode is admirably adapted for one of those large pictures representing a repast of some sacred character which it was usual to place on the end wall of conventual dining halls. Compare it also with a Spanish treatment of a similar miracle by Murillo, in the Cuisine des Anges. Note the simplicity and sobriety of the Early Italian work, as contrasted with the strained feeling and insistence upon mere effects of luminosity and glory in the showy Spanish painting. The moral of all such half-allegorical miracles is clearly this:—Our order is sustained by God’s divine providence.
I have said already that aGerman Last Supperin this collection (German Room) betrays the influence of Leonardo’s great fresco on the wall of the monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie at Milan, of which an early copy by a pupil of Leonardo’s exists in the Louvre (Lwall of the Long Gallery). But in order thoroughly to understand Leonardo’s Last Supper, again, we must similarly compare it with many previous representations of the same sacred scene. The type, in fact, was begun among nameless Byzantine and early Christian artists, whose work can best be studied in Italy. It found its first notable artistic expression in Giotto’s fresco at Santa Croce at Florence, where the traditional type is considerably transformed: and this Giottesque Last Supper was repeated over and over again by many copyists, who each introduced various modifications. Ghirlandajo once more transformed the type at San Marco and the Ognissanti; and from Ghirlandajo, Leonardo borrowed part of his arrangement, while transfusing it with an entirely new element of life and action, at a dramatic moment, which marks this great painter’s style, and is a distinct move forward in the art of composition. Each work of art down to the end of the 16th century can thus only be fully understood by considering it in its proper place, as one of a continuous evolutionary series. Every painter took much from those who went before: his individuality can best be gauged by observing how he transformed and modified what he borrowed.
Now takeGhirlandajo’s Visitationin the Salle des Primitifs as an example of a work which in quite a different way, requires to be understood by light from elsewhere. Note how admirably the figures here are balanced against the sky and the archway in the background. In itself, this is a beautiful and striking picture; but it is also a good illustration of those subjects which cannot adequately be understood by consideration of works in this Gallery alone. The attitudes and costumes of the two principal personages are strictly conventional: nay, if you compare the St. Elizabeth in this Visitation with the same saint in the Mantegna almost opposite, you will see that her dress and features remain fairly typical, even in two such very distinct schools as the Paduan and the Florentine. The relative positions of the Madonna and her elder cousin have come down to Ghirlandajo from a very remote antiquity: they were adopted, with modification, by Giotto, in his fresco of this subject in the Madonna dell’ Arena at Padua. But Giotto also introducedan archin the background, which persists in almost all later representations. His arch, however, is blind—you do not see the sky through it. So is Taddeo Gaddi’s, in his closely similar Visitation at Santa Croce in Florence: but the figures here still more nearly approach the positions of the Ghirlandajo, and they stand more directly framed, as it were, by the arch behind them. Skipping many intermediate examples, each of which leads up to this picture, we come to this beautiful embodiment of Ghirlandajo’s, which, while retaining the simplicity of composition in the earlier examples, shows a fine artistic instinct in the way in which the chief characters are silhouetted in the gap of the archway. Ghirlandajo accepted the older tradition, while transforming it with the skill and taste of the early Renaissance after his own fashion. Those who have visited Florence will remember how Pacchiarotto, in his admirable presentation of the same subject, now in the Belle Arti in that town—which, like this one, is a Visitation with selected saints as spectators—has closely followed Ghirlandajo’s treatment with still further modifications: while the noble embodiment of the same scene by Mariotto Albertinelli, in the Uffizi, consists of the two central figures in the Ghirlandajo or the Pacchiarotto, cut out, as it were, andpresented separately with noble effect against a background of sky seen through the archway. In such a case we see distinctly how the individual work can only fairly be judged as a development of motives borrowed from others which have preceded it, and how in turn it gives rise later to still further modifications of its own conception. If you have not yet visited Florence, bear in mind this work when you see the Pacchiorotto and the Albertinelli. It is a good plan for the purposes of such comparison to carry about photographs of other pictures in the same series. You may go straight from the Ghirlandajo here to the Sebastiano del Piombo in the Salon Carré; and thence again to a copy of Pontormo’s Visitation in the Long Gallery (Rside, near the Fra Bartolommeo), which is interesting as showing a survival of the arch, treated with far less effect, and thrown away as an element in the composition. Here the attendant saints have become a confused crowd, and the degradation of Fra Bartolommeo’s balanced grouping is very conspicuous. Make one picture thus cast light upon another.