HERMIT SAINTRIBERATHE PRADO
Guido was selected. Two hired bravos set upon his servant, thrashed him, and ordered him to tell his master that a similar fate was in store for himself should he begin the decoration of S. Januarius. Guido fled the city; and his pupil, Gessi, was chosen as a substitute. He arrived in Naples with two assistants, who were inveigled on board a boat in the bay and never seen again. The commissioners now yielded and gave the commission to the triumvirate. But a little later they revoked the order and offered Domenichino a handsome remuneration, with a promise of protection, if he would undertake the work. He consented and became immediately the target of an insidious persecution. Threatening letters were sent to him; his character was slandered and his ability as a painter impugned; the plasterers were bribed to mix ashes with the mortar on which his frescoes were to be painted; and finally Ribera prevailed on the viceroy to order some pictures of Domenichino. These were carried from his studio before they were finished, or retouched and ruined before reaching the viceroy. At length, in despair, Domenichino fled to Rome; but was induced to return and shortly afterwards died under suspicion of having been poisoned. The cabal, however, failed of its purpose. The Neapolitan died the same year as Domenichino; the Greek two years later and Ribera painted only one altarpiece for the chapel,The Martyrdom of S. Januarius. The decorations were executed by one, Lanfranco.
For his share in this disgraceful intrigue, and because of his being a foreigner, Ribera incurred the hatred of a large number of Neapolitans. To this, probably is tobe attributed the story which passed into a tradition, that Don Juan of Austria, while on a visit to Naples, induced Ribera’s daughter to elope with him; and, soon growing tired of his victim, placed her in a convent. In consequence of shame and grief, Ribera, so the story goes, sank into a profound melancholy, until one day he left his home and was never again heard of. This is now believed to be a mere fabrication of Neapolitan hatred; the true facts being that Ribera settled down to a life of honor and prosperity and finally died in Naples in 1656.
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In the popular imagination Ribera is associated with pictures of martyrs and ascetics, with scenes of cruelty and suffering and the portrayal of old and wasted bodies. The impression is justified, for the taste of his time demanded these revolting subjects, and Ribera’s own temperament made him more than acquiesce. He represented them with a zest that proves he revelled in his opportunities. But this is only one aspect of Ribera, and even in itself not complete, for it is prone to take no account of the superb artistry with which he invested the unpleasantness of these themes.
Thus, in the example, selected for reproduction here, because it is characteristic of Ribera’s best known subjects, the original has a beauty which in the reproduction may possibly escape observation. The head of thisHermit Saintis of extreme nobility both of technique and expression. In the suggestion of the powerful skull, the boldly modeled flesh and the clustering masses of grizzled hair and beard, there is an unusual feelingfor and realisation of the dignity of human form. It is not merely that the artist has selected a model with a fine head, and rendered its benign and grave distinction, but he has heightened the expression by the expressiveness of the technique. The artist’s sympathetic imagination and extraordinary reverence, not for the saint-idea in his theme but for humanity in its relation to art, have informed the technique with a noble sympathy, grand imagination and a sovereign reverence. For the point, difficult to put into words, is that technique such as this, while it is magnificent as mere representation, achieves the higher quality of expression, and the measure of the latter is the quality of the artist’s conception not only of his subject but even more of his art, as one of the noble mediums of expression. So, in the presence of a work like this, the spectator forgets his dislike of the subject and finds his imagination kindled and his capacity of abstract appreciation heightened. Even the Saint’s back though you may not believe it from the photograph, which has reduced the transparent shadows to opacity and robbed the flesh of its glorious luminosity, adds its quota to the stimulus of the intellectual-esthetic sense. For, in this capacity, not only to delight the sense perception but to stimulate also the intellectual conception of beauty in the abstract, Ribera belongs in the company of Velasquez. He occupies a lower rank because his art, like himself, was less self-centered and controlled; more dependent upon subject and at the mercy of his own impetuous temperament. In the art of both naturalism was lifted mountain-high; but, while Velasquez was the summit,aloof, unapproachable, Ribera is the torrent, racing, often madly, to the valley. Yet in its career there are level pools of quiet pause, and it is these that the general estimation of Ribera has overlooked.
I am not thinking of his portrayals of theImmaculate Conceptionor hisAssumption of the Magdalenin the Academy of San Fernando. These are rather examples of the concessions that Ribera was obliged and perhaps willing to make in the direction of obvious beauty. They satisfied the Spanish taste in female loveliness, but have little abstraction of expression; and are inclined to be sentimentally pretty. It is rather when you visit the gallery in the Prado devoted to Ribera’s works, that you experience a new impression of this artist. With the exception of a powerful but ghastlyMartyrdom of S. Bartholomew, the general suggestion of the gallery is the reverse of the violent and sensational. A sense of grave dignity prevails, which one begins to discover is largely the result of a fine reserve and frequent subtlety in the color schemes. For example, there is a canvas of life-size figures, representing the Holy Trinity. On the Father’s knees lies the limp form of the Christ. It is grievously disfigured with grossly naturalistic blood stains; but one gradually loses the insistence of this in admiration of the elevated beauty of the picture as a whole. The Father’s head, benign and tranquil, is seen against a sky in which are faintly discernible the flocking heads of cherubs. From his shoulders floats a silvery plum-colored drapery, while a mantle of pale rose, lined with violet, lies over the shadowed lapis-lazuli of the under robe. It is a colorscheme of choice splendour, full of subtle stimulus to the intellectual-esthetic imagination.
A very interesting canvas is theS. John the Baptist in the Desertfor the feeling of it is pagan, a trait rarely met with in the art of Spain, which had so rigorously opposed the Humanistic movement. The figure, nude nearly to the waist, is that of a shepherd youth, with large smiling mouth and eyes glancing to one side. The face sets one to thinking of the so-calledS. John the Baptistof the Louvre, attributed to Da Vinci. The Ribera has something of the faun-like suggestion; only it is less subtle, piqueing less to mystery; the suggestion being rather of wild, young animal life, a creature of silent, vacant places, not afraid yet watchful. The figure is at the foot of a big tree-trunk, a red drapery covering the upper part of the legs and the stone on which it is seated. The arms are extended; one aloft, holding a staff, the other lowered to feed a lamb; both forming pliant loops which increase the suppleness of the whole design. In its blend of classical and naturalistic composition and feeling, and the character of the thought which prompted it, the canvas is probably unique in the Spanish School as an example of the direct influence of Humanism.
One turns to aPenitent Magdalen(Prado, 980), not to endorse her very lady-like sentiment, but to admire the way in which the beautiful brown hair is rendered and the exquisite color and texture of the old-rose drapery. A similarly choice treatment of this delicate color, shot with silver light and dove-grey shadows, appears inIsaac Blessing Jacob. Then for another fine exampleof color one may note a half length,S. Simon. Here again is a head of magnificent character; black hair and beard, ruddy features, massive brow, a characterization, generously masculine and vigorous. A warm brown drapery hangs over the slightly yellow-tinted brown of the robe, which shows below it the collar and cuff of a grey shirt; all this placed against a dark olive background. The tonality, organised with extreme delicacy, is in its ensemble superb. Another choice passage of color occurs inS. Bartholomew, where the saint is shown, life size, seated beneath a cliff. He holds across his body a white drapery; or such is your first impression of the hue. But study reveals a more subtle tissue of smoked ivory and grey, woven into the pallor of the white.
However, the finest example of Ribera’s subtle vein of color-expression in this gallery is in theJacob’s Ladder. The sleeping figure reclines horizontally across the foreground, a hand supporting the head, while in the sky are faint suggestions of ascending and descending angels. The foreground consists of slabs of rock out of which, at the back of the figure, rises a tree-trunk, with a broken limb. The figure is clothed in an olive-greyish-brown habit, resembling a monk’s; the hair and beard are black in strong contrast to the pallor of the face, which is slightly flushed with warmth and puffed with sleep. The suggestion of sleep is, indeed, rendered with extraordinary truth; it seems no idle fancy that one hears the breathing and watches the stir of the drapery over the rise and fall of the chest. But the dignity of this canvas depends upon the color scheme, cold,severe, constrained; so opposite to the sensuous, impassioned or splendid; yet withal so stimulating to the imagination. This picture is a grand example of the intellectual-esthetic quality in Ribera’s finest work; placing this artist far above the estimate popularly formed of him. It is not difficult to discover the influence of this large, grave feeling in the earlier work of Murillo and in almost all the work of Zurburán.
THE most popular artist of the Spanish School is unquestionably Murillo. He was the idol of his contemporaries in Andalusia; most admired by connoisseurs and public in the eighteenth century, and, although during the nineteenth century artists and connoisseurs have extolled Velasquez and more recently Goya and El Greco at his expense, to the popular taste Murillo is still in the ascendant.
There must be a good reason both for the depreciation of Murillo on the part of artists and for the continuing appreciation of the public; therefore one must try to discover them impartially. For, while the popular estimation of any particular artist at a given period is apt to be wrong—perhaps more often wrong, than right—it scarcely can hold its own through the chances and changes of over two hundred years without having in it some considerable element of right. What then is the abiding something in Murillo’s art which makes this perennial appeal? For my own part, I believe that, if you can sum it up in a word, it is the spirit of Youth.
One imagines Murillo (not without plenty of justification for the idea) as a man who, in a psychological sense, never grew old; retaining to the end the naiveté and simple faith of a child. He continues, therefore, toappeal to adults who have kept something of their youth with them or to those whose study of art has not passed beyond the stage of instinct. For, just as it is possible for a man to have matured understanding and appreciation of a work of art, and yet be like a child amid the intricacies of an electric power-house, wondering, admiring, but without capacity to estimate the value of this plant as compared with another; so a man may be full of knowledge, even to the length of sophistication, and still exhibit the naiveté and unreasoning appreciation of a child in the presence of a work of art. Necessity or chance determined that he should cultivate his higher mental powers in another direction; art is to him only an occasional distraction; his feeling toward it is regulated solely by his instinct. As he would say himself, “I know what I like.”
To tell such a man that he is wrong would be not only cruel but false. From his own standpoint he is not wrong; he is very much in the right, if the end of art is the heightening of a man’s nature through contemplation of the beautiful. This thing is beautiful to him, and through the beauty he sees in it he finds his nature refreshed, purified and enlarged. What more could you advise for him at that particular stage of his artistic development? It is true to the standpoint of his own instinct. Would you have him substitute your standpoint for his? Are you sure that your own leads to any better results for you than his for him? Anyhow, unless he changes his standpoint through convictions that have grown into his mental consciousness and been endorsed by his experience, his last state may beworse than the first. He was honest and sincere before; now he may be only a glib repeater of borrowed preferences.
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Bartolomé Estéban Murillo was born in Seville in 1618, probably on the first day of January. The official catalogue of the Prado begins its reference to the artist’s career with the following significant words:
“When this great artist came into the world, his parents, Gaspar Estéban Murillo and Maria Perez, were living in a humble house in the Calle de las Tiendas. It was but three months since the Virgin Mary, in the mystery of her Immaculate Conception, had been proclaimed the patroness of the Dominions of Philip IV. Under such happy auspices was born thePainter of the Conceptions.”
This dogma of the Conception, which for centuries had occupied the minds of theologians and scholars and captivated the imagination of the faithful, was nowhere held in greater honor than in Spain, and the center of the cult was Seville. Meanwhile, the authority of the Church, as expressed in Councils and Bulls, had maintained a neutral attitude toward the question. When, however, at the end of 1617, Paul V, yielding to the repeated urging of the Crown and Church of Spain, issued a Bull which forbade teaching or preaching in opposition of the dogma, the joy of the Spanish people was profound. Seville herself celebrated the glad tidings in a frenzy of religious rejoicing. A magnificent ceremony was performed in the Cathedral and amid the strains of choir and organ, salvoes of artillery and a
MIRACLE OF THE LOAVES AND FISHESMOSES STRIKING THE ROCKMURILLOHOSPITAL DE LA CARIDAD, SEVILLE
pæan of the bells of the cathedral and churches, Archbishop de Castro swore to maintain and defend this peculiar tenet of his see. It was followed by a splendid entertainment in the bull-ring, where in the presence of enormous throngs the nobles appeared, accompanied by magnificent retinues, and one in particular, Don Melchior de Alcázar, attended by his dwarf and four gigantic negroes, performed prodigies of valor and dexterity. It was recognised that a new era had commenced; that the old dark days of inquisitorial rigor were passed and love and gentleness were to reign henceforth. It was into this atmosphere of sweet religious ecstasy that Murillo was born, destined to become the artist who best succeeded in expressing it.
Murillo’s only teacher was his uncle, Juan de Castillo, who gave his pupil a thorough grounding in drawing, though his own style could not do much to help his pupil’s advance in painting. After a time Juan moved to Cadiz and his nephew, without father or mother, was left to face life alone. He gained a living by painting “bodegones,” or still-life subjects, and pictures of saints, which he sold in theferiaor weekly market. His ambition was to study in Rome and, as a first step, to visit Madrid. Having saved a little money, he made his way on foot to the capital and presented himself to his fellow townsman, Velasquez. The latter received him kindly and obtained permission for the young man to paint in the royal galleries. Here Murillo studied and copied the works of Titian, Rubens, Van Dyck, Ribera and Velasquez himself, to such purpose that the last-named advised him to go to Rome. But Murillo, who had nowbeen three years away from Seville, determined to return thither. The same independent spirit which had enabled him to shift for himself and to leave home and study in wider fields, now assured him that he had gained what he needed without further travel. From the various influences which he had experienced, he discovered a style for himself. He returned to Seville without friends or influence, but opportunity presented itself. The monks of the convent of S. Francis wished their cloister decorated. Murillo applied to them for the commission. They would have preferred a well known artist of the city, but, having little money to offer, engaged the young, unknown painter. Murillo spent three years on this work, and, when it was completed, found himself the most famous painter in Seville. He had taken something from the several styles of the artists he had studied and imprinted upon it his own individuality. This expressed itself particularly in an ability to give reality to his picturing of the story involved in the legends of S. Francis. He had proved himself to be a great illustrator.
This term to-day perhaps involves a certain depreciatory significance. Men are often illustrators because they cannot find a market for their easel-pictures; or, having obtained a reputation as illustrators, are ambitious to be painters. The fact is, that illustration to-day is confined to books and magazines, and from the publisher’s point of view is designed rather to attract attention to the text than to illuminate it. But in Murillo’s day, as in Raphael’s, illustration was a noble and honored art, the readiest and most efficient way of bringing thesacred truth home to the minds of the unlettered masses, and permitted so grand a scope, that it was also a decoration to monumental buildings. Thus the value of an illustration at that date, while it incidentally might be decorative, depended primarily on the appeal which it made to the hearts and understandings of the people. Murillo was a sincere Catholic; he could feel his subject in accordance with the Church’s teaching, and moreover he had the gift of telling the story in the vernacular; depicting it in familiar guise and investing it with those touches of everyday life that pique and hold the interest of the simplest mind.
To be indifferent to the genius and value of such a gift is to admit oneself a careless student of human nature. It is either that we refuse to be interested in what interests the masses, or that we underrate the virtue of the latter being thus interested. To-day, in our modern experience, there are thousands of illustrators; but if one looks back, say, twenty years, how many are there who have been leaders, in the sense that they have caught the spirit of the age for the first time and given it an expression which the educated and unlearned alike recognise as something vital? This is the point. For the thousands who can perpetuate a tradition, imitate somebody else, or carry on the accepted convention, there will be found but one or two who can synthetise the time-spirit into a new expression. And for the worth-while of doing this? I repeat that, to-day, illustration is mainly a method of amusing vacant minds. But it was not so in the seventeenth century, any more than during the early and the great days of the Renaissance. Itwas something that influenced the lives of millions in their attitude to what, then at least, was of supreme moment, religion. Therefore, to estimate the genius and value of Murillo’s gift of illustration we must not judge it from the standpoint of to-day, but in the light of the needs and desires of his contemporaries. Then we shall realise that what Murillo did for the simple, religious folk of Seville is akin to Raphael’s contribution to the mingled Humanistic and Christian needs of Rome. Both were great illustrators, whose subject matter was religion, and who told their story in the medium that appealed to the sympathy and understanding of the largest number of people of their day. But the very freedom from Humanistic influence which characterised Murillo’s art encreased its value to the people of Seville. It was essentially Spanish in its naturalism and specifically Andalusian in its sentiment.
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Murillo’s method of painting has been described as exhibiting three styles—cold, warm and vaporous. According to this arrangement, the first style (estilo frio) is distinguished by cold coloring and dark shadows; the second (estilo calido) by warmth of coloring, stronger contrasts of luminous light and shade, and by increased plasticity of form; the third, (estilo vaporoso) by the vaporous or misty effects of atmosphere, enveloping the whole or part of the composition. But while his works show this variety of method, they cannot be distributed into periods, definitely characterised by one or another style. Nor will it repay the student to try to docket the different pictures according to any such pigeon-hole
SS. JUSTA AND RUFINAMURILLOPROVINCIAL MUSEUM, SEVILLE
system of division. He will rather become aware that, as Murillo attained to facility and confidence in his own way of rendering his intentions, he perfected his pictorial representation both of the naturalistic motive and of the spiritualised conception, which in whole or in part for the time being occupied his imagination. In some pictures you find the naturalistic motive either predominating or in complete control; in others it is combined with the spiritualised motive; while again, particularly in theConceptions, the spiritualised intention is exclusively apparent. Whether it satisfies your own spiritual sense is another matter.
Nor can these varieties of motive be assigned to special periods of Murillo’s career. For example, after he had established his reputation as a painter ofConceptions, he executed the series of works for the Hospital de La Caridad, in Seville. Two of these are produced on page150. They were selected because they redounded to the reputation of Murillo in his lifetime, and yet exhibit a weakness which more or less is evident in all his works of illustration.
Neither theMiracle of the Loaves and Fishes, norMoses Striking the Rock, contains any spiritual suggestion; for to the modern imagination at least the figure of Christ in the one and those of Moses and Aaron in the other seem to be invested only with a little symbolical distinction. Further, even the significance of the events is not suggested. If you take away the Christ, whose importance in the composition is already belittled by the group of women on the right, is there anything in the action of the figures and the expression of theirfaces to indicate that they are witnesses of a miracle? The scene becomes nothing more than a huge picnic, conducted on an absurdly meagre commissariat. So too, inStriking the Rock—where is the hint of the agony of thirst or of high-wrought emotion at the miraculous deliverance? But for the two central figures, whose impressiveness, such as it is, is confined to themselves, the incident might be simply that of a party of people gathered about a spring. To myself a very suggestive indication of the shallowness and insincerity of the whole conception is the introduction of the small boy on the sleek plump horse. It is a mere studio device for getting a spot on which to concentrate the light and for lifting one figure above the line of the others.
Another example of this series of Hospital subjects is the very famousS. Elizabeth of Hungary, now in the Prado. The scene is being enacted in the shadowed arcade of an imposing classical building. The saintly Queen, attended by two young ladies, charmingly attired, is washing the scalp of an urchin, who leans over a silver basin. A beggar sits on the ground removing a bandage from a festering sore, and a boy, with an expression on his face of exasperated distress, scratches his head and chest. Meanwhile an old woman sits looking up in worshipful gratitude at the face of the queen, who possibly returns her gaze. For she is turning her head away from the business in which she is engaged, as well as she may, since the head she is bathing shows a disgusting sore. Perhaps you may say that such details are incidental to a clinic, and may quote the example of Rembrandt’sClinic of Dr. Tulp. But thelatter is frankly a naturalistic picture in which the cadaver forms the explanation and focus of the group of eager, intellectual heads, absorbed in the instruction of the master-surgeon. But Murillo’s is an academically disposed composition, involving splendid classical accessories. It is, in the manner of its form, idealised according to the Italian tradition, while in its details grossly naturalistic. Yet Théophile Gautier, moved to a characteristic burst of sentiment, exclaims—“In his picture of S. Elizabeth Murillo takes us into the most thorough-going reality. Instead of angels we are here shown lepers. But Christian art, like Christian charity, feels no disgust at such a spectacle. Everything which it touches becomes pure, elevated and ennobled, and from this revolting theme Murillo has created a masterpiece.” This begs the question which still remains:—Is the reality in this case so rendered, that it becomes “pure, elevated and ennobled”? The answer will depend upon the individual student’s temperament and intellectual attitude.
This picture, indeed, and many others in the Prado arouse a suspicion which becomes more pronounced, when we visit the Museum and the Church of the Hospital de La Caridad in Seville, that, after all, Murillo was not so great a naturalist as he is credited with being. His Street urchins, such as appear in the National Gallery, Dulwich Gallery and the Munich Pinakothek are vigorous transcripts of nature, racy with Sevillian character; but in theHoly Family, calledPajarito(little bird) of the Prado, one discovers already a weakening of the naturalistic grip. The types are local, and thescene, as the mother stops in the winding of her thread to watch the child playing with a dog, while the father holds him tenderly, is such as might be enacted in any happy home of the people. But why the voluminous yellow mantle spread in graceful folds over Joseph’s knees? It is a recollection of Raphael that has inspired this solecism in the everyday naturalness of the scene. Similarly, in one picture after another of Murillo’s you can find the realities of the scene sacrificed to the picture-making devices learned from the Italians. Frequently, as in theVision of S. Antony of Padua, and corresponding subjects, the miraculous nature of the incident gives a plausibility to these formal designs, which I venture to believe is lacking in theS. Elizabeth,Loaves and FishesandStriking the Rock.
Nor is much of the nobility of the Italian method reproduced in Murillo’s use of it. Too frequently its stateliness is invaded by a homeliness which borders on the commonplace. One finds little or nothing of the aristocrat in Murillo’s equipment. He views his subject with the naiveté of an untutored mind and represents it with a simple disregard of anything that might lift it above the commonplace. And this is practically as true of his technique as of his mental approach. There are beautiful passages of color scattered through his works; fine rendering of textures, and preciousmorceauxof still-life. But his color-schemes are regulated by temperament rather than by knowledge and calculation; his brush-work is rarely distinguished and his chiaroscuro frequently has grown blackened with time. It would be impossible to view one of his acknowledged masterpieces beside even a work of secondary interest by Velasquez, without realising at once the hopelessly unbridgeable gulf both of mentality and execution that separates them.
In fact, it is not until one comes to hisConceptions, that Murillo acquires distinction. In these he shows an originality of idea, to which he has moulded for himself a suitable technique. He has learned to preserve the plasticity of form and yet invest it with a suggestion of being impalpable, and also buoyant, so that it floats of its own lightness. The arrangement of the subject, even to the colors, was prescribed by the Church; being founded upon the vision, recorded in Revelation XII. 1. “And there appeared a great wonder in Heaven; a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars.” It is Murillo’s triumph that he dematerialized the concrete suggestion; created about the figure the luminousness of unearthly light and, while he took for his model a girl of the people, invested herself and her angelic surroundings with the imagined reality of a vision. This, it is needless to add, represents a triumph of technique. In these subjects Murillo proved himself a superior and original painter. As to the quality of feeling expressed in them opinions may differ; but it can scarcely be questioned that it is emotional rather than spiritual. There is nothing in it of soul ecstasy, as in El Greco’s visions; it is the sweet, rapturous sentiment of the warm-blooded, emotional South. TheConceptions, in fact, are the most characteristic product of the Andalusian School and the highest achievement of Murillo.
In conclusion let me quote the observations of the French critic, C. E. Beulé, concerning that portrait of Murillo’s which he painted of himself when he was in the flush of youth with all his possibilities before him. “We find him brilliant, ardent, fresh-colored, the warm blood flowing close under his skin; his eyes black, penetrating, full of fire and fuller still of passion; his forehead high, and modeled with those slight bosses which show a quick but rather feminine intelligence; the lower part of his face (as is frequently the case with his countrymen) less finely cut, and marred by a coarse mouth and the heavy outline of the chin. The total impression is that of a nature in which ardor serves instead of force, a facile but superficial rather than profound intelligence, and, as a prime trait, highly mundane and sensual. Are not these the very qualities we find written in his works?”
Murillo’s end was brought about by a fall from a scaffold. He lingered for a short time, spending his days in contemplation of Campaña’sDescent from the Crossin the Church of Santa Cruz. He died on the third of April, 1682, and was buried, in accordance with his request, beneath this picture.
ALONZO CANO was born in Granada in 1601. He belongs, however, to the School of Andalusia, for he studied in Seville and lived there until his thirty-sixth year. His teachers in painting were Juan de Castillo, the master a few years later of Murillo, and Francisco Pacheco, in whose studio Cano was a fellow-pupil of Velasquez. He also practised architecture and sculpture. Indeed, it was in the latter art that he particularly excelled and gained his first distinction. His teacher had been the celebrated Martinez Montañés, whose instruction was supplemented by the opportunities of studying the antique marbles collected by the Dukes of Alcalá, in their palace in Seville, theCasa de Pilatos. The influence of this training is perceptible in his best paintings which are characterised by excessive refinement of drawing and expression. Yet Cano’s own nature was inclined to violence and lawlessness. Having fought a duel with the painter, Llano y Valdés, and wounded him, he found it convenient to leave Seville and settle in Madrid.
Cano, now in his thirty-sixth year, was kindly received by Velasquez and introduced by him to the Count-Duke Olivares, who employed him in his palace of Buen Retiro. Philip IV expressed a wish to see thenew-comer’s work and, being favorably impressed with it, gave Cano the appointment of drawing-master to the young Prince Baltasar Carlos, and later made him one of his own painters in ordinary. After some seven years of success Cano’s stay in Madrid was terminated as abruptly as his sojourn in Seville. His wife was murdered. According to the artist’s own account, he had returned home to find her dead in bed, clutching a lock of hair and pierced with many wounds, inflicted, apparently, with a pocket-knife. Her jewels were missing and the Italian servant had disappeared. Suspicion was at first directed against this man; but when it became known that the artist had lived on bad terms with his wife, while carrying on an intrigue with another woman, he himself was suspected of the crime. Whether guilty or not, Cano was alarmed for his safety and, giving out that he had left for Portugal, fled East to Valencia. Here he took refuge in a monastery, executing works for many of the neighbouring communities. At length, trusting that the affair had blown over, he returned to Madrid and sought asylum in the house of his friend, the Regidor, Don Rafael Sanguineto. He was, however, arrested and condemned to the ordeal. Pleading his profession as a painter, he was permitted to submit his left hand to the torture and, passing through it without a cry, was adjudged innocent.
Six years later Cano, desiring to settle in his native city, Granada, obtained through the King’s influence the post of minor-canon in the Cathedral, with the proviso that he should be excused from his choral duties if
APOTHEOSIS OF S. THOMAS AQUINASZURBARÁNPROVINCIAL MUSEUM, SEVILLE
he took orders within a year. He endeavored to conciliate the very natural objections of the Chapter by executing some sculptural embellishments for the Coro. He also worked for the convents of the neighborhood and for private patrons, with one of whom he came into collision respecting the price to be paid for a statue ofS. Antony. The man, who held the office of auditor of Granada, had demurred at the sum asked for a work which had occupied the artist only twenty-five days; whereupon Cano, anticipating Whistler, retorted, “You are a bad reckoner; I have been fifty years learning to make such a statue in twenty-five days.” Then he dashed theS. Antonyto the ground and smashed him. This was a sacrilegious offence that might have brought the artist under the jurisdiction of the Holy Office, but the auditor, instead of reporting the matter to that body prevailed on the Chapter to declare Cano’s seat vacant because he had not according to agreement taken orders. Cano appealed to the King who obtained for him from the Bishop of Salamanca a chaplaincy which entitled the holder to full orders, while at the same time the Nuncio consented to grant him dispensation from saying Mass. So Cano returned in triumph to Granada, but never again would execute any work for the Cathedral. Indeed, it was in works of charity that the last years of his life were chiefly spent. He was so impoverished by them that, when he was stricken with his last sickness, the Chapter voted five hundred reals to “The Canon Cano, being sick and very poor and without means to pay the doctor”; and a week later added another two hundred reals to buyhim “poultry and sweetmeats.” He died on the third of October, 1667.
The Capilla Mayor in the Cathedral of Granada is enriched with sculptural works by Cano’s hand and with some paintings. These represent the “Seven Joys of Mary,”Annunciation,Conception,Nativity,Presentation in the Temple, andAssumption. They are placed so high, that from the floor it is very difficult to see them, while, even when you view them from the nearer approach of the triforium, the colored glass of the windows interferes with their effect. As far as one can judge on the spot and with the aid of photographs they are too flimsy in character for the monumental structure which they are intended to decorate. That this conclusion is correct appears probable when you study Cano’s smaller altar-pieces. Some of them are painted so thinly, with so little variety of values of hue and so little interest of surface, that they seem to be empty. On the other hand, his best works, such as theMother and Childover the Altar of Bethlehem in Seville Cathedral, and theS. Agnesof the Berlin Gallery, are so exquisitely refined that they need to be seen at close range.
The former is regarded as Cano’s masterpiece. The type of the Virgin is of Granada, touched with Moorish warmth, a little more womanly and much more refined than Murillo’s. But, like the latter’s and like Raphael’s Roman Madonnas, it is beautiful only in a physical and emotional way; it has nothing of the spirituality of El Greco’s creations, so absorbed in the mystery of their sacred and miraculous estate. Yet amongthe Madonnas of the Southern artists there is probably none so pure in its loveliness and so lovely in its purity as this one of Cano’s. A similar quality of exquisitely fragrant maidenhood appears in the S. Agnes. Both this and the other canvas represent sentiment, raised to the highest pitch of elevated feeling; yet remaining sentiment. I make the point because Cano, no more than the other Spanish artists, for all the religiosity of their pictures, touched the soul of religion. The only artist of the Spanish School to do this was the alien, El Greco.
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Francisco de Zurbarán was born in 1598 in the little town of Fuente de Cantos in the province of Estremadura. His father, a small farmer, convinced of his son’s talent for drawing, took him to Seville and placed him under the teaching of Roelas. But there is little or no trace of this painter’s influence in Zurbarán’s style. In a general way the latter came under the spell of Ribera and Caravaggio; indeed, at one period of his career Zurbarán in consequence of his dark shadows was nicknamed “the Spanish Caravaggio.” But you cannot become acquainted with Zurbarán’s various subjects without realising that he owed his style chiefly, almost entirely, to himself; that he had shaped it to the needs of his own temperament. He was an out and out naturalist; in a sense the most conspicuously naturalistic painter of the Spanish School. For there is an austerity in his point of view, which separates him from the sentiment of Murillo, the passionate virility of Ribera and the aristocratic distinction of Velasquez.Zurbarán consorted with Monks; took advantage of occasional opportunities of retiring from the world into the quiet of a monastic community; and in the simplicity and frugality of his tastes was at heart a monk. The bare walls of a cell or refectory, the plain habits of the brethren, and the orderly formality of their lives, were more to him than subjects for his brush. They were so in tune with his own instincts, that he derived from them inspiration for his art; affecting not only his habit of seeing but his technique. Both became characterised by largeness and simplicity and by more or less severity.
These qualities are represented in the great altarpiece,The Apotheosis of S. Thomas Aquinas, executed when Zurbarán was only twenty-seven years old and generally considered his masterpiece. It is to be seen to-day under very favorable conditions in the Provincial Museum of Seville, for it is hung high in a good light and can be viewed from various distances. These advantages of placing no doubt count in the impression, differing so widely from the usual circumstances under which the altar-pieces of Spain are to be studied. But the impression received of theS. Thomasis that, with the exception of theFuneral of Count Orgaz, it is the noblest ceremonial picture that one has met in Spain. It is due to the magnificence of its organic simplicity and bigness, which give the composition an emphasis and carrying force. And what is true of the large masses, viewed from a distance, is equally true on a nearer view of the details. The latter resolve themselves into finely treated surfaces of drapery and particularly into the punctuating emphasis of keenly
MIRACLE OF S. HUGOZURBARÁNPROVINCIAL MUSEUM, SEVILLE
characterised heads. The altar-piece was painted for the Church of the College of S. Thomas; whose founder, Archbishop Diego de Deza is represented below; kneeling opposite to the Emperor Charles V, who presumably had been a patron of the foundation. One has but to look at the reproduction of this picture (p. 163) to feel sure that all the heads are portraits; that of S. Thomas, “The Angelic Doctor,” being, tradition says, a portrait of the Prebendary of Seville in Zurbarán’s time. While each head is individualized, it is interesting to note how they are assembled into generic groups; the monkish type represented in the archbishop and his attendants; the man-of-the-world in the Emperor’s group; the type of the thinker and spiritual leader in the four doctors of the Church, Gregory, Ambrose, Augustine, Jerome. Nor is there any less distinction of character in the S. Paul and S. Dominic, in the right upper corner. It is less manifest, however, in the Christ, and scarcely to be found in the figure of the Virgin. Two other points may be noted, as helping to explain the magistral impression of this canvas. In the first place, the effect of wide-openness in the upper part of the composition, where the clouds of glory are thronged with cherub heads, is carried down into the lower part by the view of the street, seen at a distance and dotted with intentionally minute figures, so as not to interfere with the emphasis of the groups in the foreground. The result of this continuance of lighted space is to create a unity in the composition, binding into an ensemble the three tiers of figures. Again, it is remarkable with what a comprehension of large, structural principles, Zurbarán has distributed the masses, respectively, of the plain and of the embellished draperies. The purpose of the whole pageant is to glorify S. Thomas and incidentally the Dominican order. The key and climax, therefore, of the whole is S. Thomas’s black and white habit. To secure its emphasis the cardinal’s red and the rich copes with their sumptuously embroidered orphreys have been massed about it. Meanwhile a portion of this enrichment is repeated below in the archbishop’s robes and the emperor’s cloak, and more faintly in the figures in the clouds. Here too S. Dominic supplies an echo of the black and white, which in turn are massed in the lower foreground. It is this fine ground-work, distribution and climax of black and white, which more than anything give this composition so noble a distinction: a certain chaste, choice, austere dignity.
Near this picture in the Provincial Museum of Seville hangs another fine example of Zurbarán’s originality of composition;The Virgin Blessing Various Monks. The white-frocked brothers are kneeling in two groups, left and right of the central figure of the Virgin. She stands robed in delicate rose, with her arms extended, each hand on the head of a monk. Meanwhile her blue mantle, fastened at the throat with a magnificent jewel, is held suspended by two cherubs, so that its volume forms a canopy of protection over the kneeling groups, and the upper part, curving like a bowl, is filled high with angel heads floating in divine glory. Here again is architectonic simplicity, allied with grandeur, in the distribution of the masses of white, rose, deep blue andgolden yellow, and again an extraordinary interest of characterization.
The quality of intense, austere sincerity is represented also inMiracle of S. Hugo(p. 166) which is in the same Museum. Indeed, it is in Seville that you realise the nobility of Zurbarán’s art. The examples in the Prado are by comparison commonplace; except thePortrait of a Ladyin one of the upper galleries. This introduces us to the character of the artist’s work after he settled in Madrid, whither he was sent for by the king. Portraits of women of fashion now occupied him. There is a good example in the Metropolitan Museum which, in pose and style of costume and low toned harmony, resembles the one in the Prado. In the latter, however, the silk fall of the drapery is drawn forward over the skirt by the lady’s hand, so that its folds are more voluminous, and the whole figure, in consequence, is freer in design than the one in New York. As for the other picture in the Metropolitan Museum,S. Michael the Archangel, it is very hard to credit its attribution to Zurbarán. Where else among the artist’s works can you find so palpable an attempt to imitate Raphael? It has nothing of the originality, breadth and determined naturalism that distinguish Zurbarán. If the latter really painted it, he must have done so in his student days with Roelas.
Zurbarán died in Madrid, probably in 1662. He is held in high estimation by the Spanish, but scarcely appreciated at his true worth by foreigners. To see him at his best, alongside of Murillo’s work, as you can in Seville, is to be disposed to question the latter’s claimto be considered the greatest artist of the Sevillian School. Certainly, as compared with Murillo, Zurbarán was more unequivocally the naturalist; he was at least as good a painter; a better, one may even think; and the qualities of his mind were superior. He had not the popular trait of sentiment and passion; but the higher gift of intellectuality and the rarer one of cold, dispassionate vision.