“Del immortalide al tempio augustoDove serba la gloria e i suoi tesori.”
“Del immortalide al tempio augustoDove serba la gloria e i suoi tesori.”
“Del immortalide al tempio augustoDove serba la gloria e i suoi tesori.”
“Del immortalide al tempio augusto
Dove serba la gloria e i suoi tesori.”
‘At one of the popular festivities annually celebrated at Naples in honour of the Madonna, the beauty of Rosa’s elder sister captivated the attention of a young painter, who, though through life unknown to “fortune,” was not even then “unknown to fame.” The celebrated and unfortunate Francesco Francanzani, the inamorata of La Signorina Rosa, was a distinguished pupil of the Spagnuoletto school; and his picture of San Giuseppe, for the Chiesa Pellegrini, had already established him as one of the first painters of his day. Francanzani, like most of the young Neapolitan painters of his time, was a turbulent and factious character, vain and self-opinionated; and, though there was in his works a certain grandeur of style, with great force and depth of colouring, yet the impatience of his disappointed ambition, and indignation at the neglect of his acknowledged merit, already rendered him reckless of public opinion.[25]
‘It was the peculiar vanity of the painters of that day to have beautiful wives. Albano had set the example’—[as if any example need be set, or the thing had been done in concert]—‘Domenichino followed it to his cost; Rubens turned it to the account of his profession; and Francanzani, still poor and struggling, married the portionless daughter of the most indigent artist in Naples, and thought perhaps more of the model than the wife. This union, and, still more, a certain sympathy in talent and character between the brothers-in-law, frequently carried Salvator to thestanzaor work-room of Francesco. Francesco, by some years the elder, was then deep in the faction and intrigues of the Neapolitan school; and was endowed with that bold eloquence, which, displayed upon bold occasions, is always so captivating to young auditors. It was at the foot of his kinsman’s easel, and listening to details which laid perhaps the foundation of that contemptuous opinion he cherished through life for schools, academies, and all incorporated pedantry and pretension,[26]that Salvator occasionally amused himself in copying, on any scrap ofboardor paperwhich fell in his way, whatever pleased him in Francesco’s pictures. His long-latent genius thus accidentally awakened, resembled theacqua buja, whose cold and placid surface kindles like spirits on the contact of a spark. In these first, rude, and hasty sketches, Francanzani, as Passeri informs us, saw “molti segni d’un indole spirituosa” (great signs of talent and genius); and he frequently encouraged, and sometimes corrected, the copieswhich so nearly approached the originals. But Salvator, who was destined to imitate none, but to be imitated by many, soon grew impatient of repeating another’s conceptions, and of following in an art in which he already perhaps felt, with prophetic throes, that he was born to lead. His visits to the workshop of Francanzani grew less frequent; his days were given to the scenes of his infant wanderings; he departed with the dawn, laden with his portfolio filled with primed paper, and a pallet covered with oil colours; and it is said, that even then he not only sketched, but coloured from nature. When the pedantry of criticism (at the suggestion of envious rivals) accused him of having acquired, in his colouring, too much of theimpastingof theSpagnuolettoschool, it was not aware that his faults, like his beauties, were original; and that he sinned against the rules of art, only because he adhered too faithfully to nature.’—[Salvator’s flesh colour is as remarkably dingy andSpagnuolettish, as the tone of his landscapes is fresh and clear.]—‘Returning from these arduous but not profitless rambles, through wildernesses and along precipices, impervious to all save the enterprise of fearless genius, he sought shelter beneath his sister’s roof, where a kinder welcome awaited him than he could find in that home where it had been decreed from his birth thathe should not be a painter.
‘Francanzani was wont, on the arrival of his brother-in-law, to rifle the contents of his portfolio; and he frequently found there compositions hastily thrown together, but selected, drawn, and coloured with a boldness and a breadth, which indicated the confidence of a genius sure of itself. The first accents of “the thrilling melody of sweet renown” which ever vibrated to the heart of Salvator, came to his ear on these occasions in the Neapolitanpatoisof his relation, who, in glancing by lamp-light over his labours, would pat him smilingly on the head, and exclaim, “Fruscia, fruscia, Salvatoriello—che va buono,” (“Go on, go on, this is good”)—simple plaudits! but frequently remembered in after-times (when the dome of the Pantheon had already rung with the admiration extorted by his Regulus) as the first which cheered him in his arduous progress.’ p. 94.
The reader cannot fail to observe here how well every thing ismade out: how agreeably every thing is assumed: how difficulties are smoothed over, little abruptnesses rounded off: how each circumstance falls into its place just as it should, and answers to a preconceived idea, like the march of a verse or the measure of a dance: and how completely that imaginary justice is everywhere done to the subject, which, according to Lord Bacon, gives poetry so decided an advantage over history! Yet this is one of our fair authoress’s most severe and literal passages. Her prose-Muse is furnished with wings; and the breeze of Fancy carries her off her feet from the plain ground of matter-of-fact, whether she will or no. Lady Morgan, in this part of her subject, takes occasion to animadvert on an opinion of Sir Joshua’s respecting our artist’s choice of a particular style of landscape painting.
‘Salvator Rosa,’ says Sir J. Reynolds, ‘saw the necessity of trying some new source of pleasing the public in his works. The world were tired of Claude Lorraine’s and G. Poussin’s long train of imitators.’
‘Salvator therefore struck into a wild, savage kind of nature, which was new and striking.’
‘The first of these paragraphs contains a strange anachronism. When Salvatorstruck into a new line, Poussin and Claude, who, though his elders, were his contemporaries, had as yet no train of imitators. The one was struggling for a livelihood in France, the other was cooking and grinding colours for his master at Rome. Salvator’s early attachment to Nature in her least imitated forms, was not the result of speculation having any reference to the public: it was the operation of original genius, and of those particular tendencies which seemed to be breathed into his soul at the moment it first quickened. From his cradle to his tomb he was the creature of impulse, and the slave of his own vehement volitions.’—Note, p. 97–8.
We think this is spirited and just. Sir Joshua, who borrowed from almost all his predecessors in art, was now and then a little too ready to detract from them. We dislike these attempts to explain away successful talent into a species of studied imposture—to attribute genius to a plot, originality to a trick. Burke, in like manner, accused Rousseau of the same kind ofmalice prepensein bringing forward his paradoxes—as if he did it on a theory, or to astonish the public, and not to give vent to his peculiar humours and singularity of temperament.
We next meet with a poetical version of a picturesque tour undertaken by Salvator among the mountains of the Abruzzi, and of his detention by the banditti there. We have much fine writing on the subject; but after a world of charming theories and romantic conjectures, it is left quite doubtful whether this last event ever tookplace at all—at least we could wish there was some better confirmation of it than a vague rumour, and an etching by Salvator of a ‘Youth taken captive by banditti, with a female figure pleading his cause,’ which the historian at once identifies with the adventures of the artist himself, and ‘moralizes into a thousand similes.’ We are indemnified for the dearth of satisfactory evidence on this point by animated and graceful transitions to the history and manners of the Neapolitan banditti, their physiognomical distinctions and political intrigues, to the grand features of mountain scenery, and to the character of Salvator’s style, founded on all these exciting circumstances, real or imaginary. On the death of his father, Vito Antonio, which happened when he was about seventeen, the family were thrown on his hands for support, and he struggled for some time with want and misery, which he endeavoured to relieve by his hard bargains with therivenditori(picture-dealers) in theStrada della Carità, till necessity and chagrin forced him to fly to Rome. The purchase of hisHagarby Lanfranco is the only bright streak in this period of his life, which cheered him for a moment with faint delusive hope.
The art of writing may be said to consist in thinking of nothing but one’s subject: the art of book-making, on the contrary, can only subsist on the principle of laying hands on everything that can supply the place of it. The author of the ‘Life and Times of Salvator Rosa,’ though devoted to her hero, does not scruple to leave him sometimes, and to occupy many pages with his celebrated contemporaries, Domenichino, Lanfranco, Caravaggio, and the sculptor Bernini, the most splendid coxcomb in the history of art, and the spoiled child of vanity and patronage. Before we take leave of Naples, we must introduce our readers to some of this good company, and pay our court in person. We shall begin with Caravaggio, one of thecharacteristicschool both in mind and manners. The account is too striking in many respects to be passed over, and affords a fine lesson on the excesses and untamed irregularities of men of genius.
‘In the early part of the seventeenth century, the manner of the Neapolitan school was purelyCaravaggesque. Michael Angelo Amoreghi, better known asIl Caravaggio(from the place of his birth in the Milanese, where his father held no higher rank than that of a stone mason), was one of those powerful and extraordinary geniuses which are destined by their force and originality to influence public taste, and master public opinion, in whatever line they start. The Roman School, to which the almost celestial genius of Raphael had so long been as a tutelary angel, sinking rapidly into degradation and feebleness, suddenly arose again under the influence of a new chief, whose professional talent and personal character stood opposedin the strong relief of contrast to that of his elegant and poetical predecessor.
‘The influence of this “uomo intractabile e brutale,” thispassionate and intractable man, as he is termed by an Italian historian of the arts, sprang from the depression of the school which preceded him. Nothing less than the impulsion given by the force of contrast, and the shock occasioned by a violent change, could have produced an effect on the sinking art such as proceeded from the strength and even coarseness of Caravaggio. He brought back nature triumphant over mannerism—nature, indeed, in all the exaggeration of strong motive and overbearing volition; but still itwasnature; and his bold example dissipated the languor of exhausted imitation, and gave excitement even to the tamest mediocrity and the feeblest conception.... When on his first arrival in Rome (says Bellori) the cognoscenti advised him to study from the antiques, and take Raphael as his model, he used to point to the promiscuous groups of men and women passing before him, and say, “those were the models and the masters provided him by Nature.” Teased one day by a pedant on the subject, he stopped a gipsey-girl who was passing by his window, called her in, placed her near his easel, and produced his splendidZingara in atto di predire l’avventure, his well-known and exquisite Egyptian Fortune-teller. HisGamblerswas done in the same manner.
‘The temperament which produced this peculiar genius was necessarily violent and gloomy. Caravaggio tyrannized over his school, and attacked his rivals with other arms than those of his art. He was a professed duellist; and having killed one of his antagonists in a rencontre, he fled to Naples, where an asylum was readily granted him. His manner as a painter, his character as a man, were both calculated to succeed with the Neapolitan school; and themaniera Caravaggescathenceforward continued to distinguish its productions, till the art, there, as throughout all Europe, fell into utter degradation, and became lost almost as completely as it had been under the Lower Empire.
‘In a warm dispute with one of his own young friends in a tennis-court, he had struck him dead with a racket, having been himself severely wounded. Notwithstanding the triumphs with which he was loaded in Naples, where he executed some of his finest pictures, he soon got weary of his residence there, and went to Malta. His superb picture of the Grand Master obtained for him the cross of Malta, a rich golden chain, placed on his neck by the Grand Master’s own hands, and two slaves to attend him. But all these honours did not prevent the new knight from falling into his oldhabits.Il suo torbido ingegno, says Bellori, plunged him into new difficulties; he fought and wounded a noble cavalier, was thrown into prison by the Grand Master, escaped most miraculously, fled to Syracuse, and obtained the suffrages of the Syracusans by painting his splendid picture of theSanta Morte, for the church of Santa Lucia. In apprehension of being taken by the Maltese knights, he fled to Messina, from thence to Palermo, and returned to Naples, where hopes were given him of the Pope’s pardon. Here, picking a quarrel with some military men at an inn door, he was wounded, took refuge on board a felucca, and set sail for Rome. Arrested by a Spanish guard, at a little port (where the felucca cast anchor), by mistake, for another person, when released he found the felucca gone, and in it all his property. Traversing the burning shore under a vertical sun, he was seized with a brain-fever, and continued to wander through the deserts of the Pontine Marshes, till he arrived at Porto Ercoli, when he expired in his fortieth year.’ p. 139.
We have seen some of the particulars differently related; but this account is as probable as any; and it conveys a startling picture of the fate of a man led away by headstrong passions and the pride of talents,—an intellectual outlaw, having no regard to the charities of life, nor knowledge of his own place in the general scale of being. How different, how superior, and yet how little more fortunate, was the amiable and accomplished Domenichino (the ‘most sensible of painters’), who was about this time employed in painting the dome of St. Januarius!
‘Domenichino reluctantly accepted the invitation (1629); and he arrived in Naples with the zeal of a martyr devoted to a great cause, but with a melancholy foreboding, which harassed his noble spirit, and but ill prepared him for the persecution he was to encounter. Lodged under the special protection of theDeputati, in thePalazzo dell’ Arcivescovato, adjoining the church, on going forth from his sumptuous dwelling the day after his arrival, he found a paper addressed to him sticking in the key-hole of his anteroom. It informed him, that if he did not instantly return to Rome, he should never return there with life. Domenichino immediately presented himself to the Spanish viceroy, theConte Monterei, and claimed protection for a life then employed in the service of the church. The piety of the count, in spite of his partiality to the faction [of Spagnuoletto], induced him to pledge the word of a grandee of Spain, that Domenichino should not be molested; and from that moment a life, no longer openly assailed, was embittered by all that the littleness of malignant envy could invent to undermine its enjoyments and blast its hopes. Calumnies against his character, criticisms on his paintings,ashes mixed with his colours, and anonymous letters, were the miserable means to which his rivals resorted; and to complete their work of malignity, they induced the viceroy to order pictures from him for the Court of Madrid; and when these were little more than laid in in dead colours, they were carried to the viceregal palace, and placed in the hands of Spagnuoletto to retouch and alter at pleasure. In this disfigured and mutilated condition, they were despatched to the gallery of the King of Spain. Thus drawn from his great works by despotic authority, for the purpose of effecting his ruin, enduring the complaints of theDeputati, who saw their commission neglected, and suffering from perpetual calumnies and persecutions, Domenichino left the superb picture of theMartyrdom of San Gennaro, which is now receiving the homage of posterity, and fled to Rome; taking shelter in the solemn shades of Frescati, where he resided some time under the protection of Cardinal Ippolito Aldobrandini. It was at this period that Domenichino was visited by his biographer Passeri, then an obscure youth, engaged to assist in the repairs of the pictures in the cardinal’s chapel. “When we arrived at Frescati,” says Passeri in his simple style, “Domenichino received me with much courtesy; and hearing that I took a singular delight in the belles-lettres, it increased his kindness to me. I remember me, that I gazed on this man as though he were an angel. I remained till the end of September, occupied in restoring the chapel of St. Sebastian, which had been ruined by the damp. Sometimes Domenichino would join us, singing delightfully to recreate himself as well as he could. When night set in we returned to our apartment, while he most frequently remained in his own, occupied in drawing, and permitting none to see him. Sometimes, however, to pass the time, he drew caricatures of us all, and of the inhabitants of the villa; and when he succeeded to his satisfaction, he was wont to indulge in immoderate fits of laughter; and we, who were in the adjoining room, would run in to know his reason, and then he showed us his spirited sketches (spiritose galanterie). He drew a caricature of me with a guitar, one of Canini the painter, and one of the guarda roba, who was lame with the gout, and of the subguarda roba, a most ridiculous figure. To prevent our being offended, he also caricatured himself. These portraits are now preserved by Signor Giovanni Pietro Bellori in his study.”Vita di Domenichino.—Obliged, however, at length, to return to Naples to fulfil his fatal engagements, overwhelmed both in mind and body by the persecutions of hissoi-disantpatrons and his open enemies, he died, says Passeri, “fra mille crepacuori,” amidst athousand heart-breakings, with some suspicion of having been poisoned, in 1641.’ p. 150.
We could wish Lady Morgan had preserved more of thissimplestyle of Passeri. We confess we prefer it to her own more brilliant and artificial one; for instance, to such passages as the following, describing Salvator’s first entrance into the city of Rome.
‘In entering the greatest city of the world at the Ave Maria, the hour of Italian recreation’—(Why must he have entered it at this hour, except for the purpose of giving the author an apology for the following eloquent reflections?)—‘in passing from the silent desolate suburbs of San Giovanni to the Corso (then a place of crowded and populous resort), where the princes of the Conclave presented themselves in all the pomp and splendour of Oriental satraps, the feelings of the young and solitary stranger must have suffered a revulsion, in the consciousness of his own misery. Never, perhaps, in the deserts of the Abruzzi, in the solitudes of Otranto, or in the ruins of Pæstum, did Salvator experience sensations of such utter loneliness, as in the midst of this gaudy and multitudinous assemblage; for in the history of melancholysensationsthere are few comparable to thatsenseofisolation, to thatdesolatenessof soul, which accompanies the first entrance of the friendless on a world where all, save they, have ties, pursuits, and homes.’ p. 174.
When we come to passages like this, so buoyant, so airy, and so brilliant, we wish we could forget that history is not a pure voluntary effusion of sentiment, and that we could fancy ourselves reading a page of Mrs. Radcliffe’s Italian, or Miss Porter’s Thaddeus of Warsaw! Presently after, we learn, that ‘Milton and Salvator, who, in genius, character, and political views, bore no faint resemblance to each other, though living at the same time both in Rome and Naples, remained mutually unknown. The obscure and indigent young painter had, doubtless, no means of presenting himself to the great republican poet of England;—if, indeed, he had then ever heard of one so destined to illustrate the age in which both flourished.’—p. 176. This is the least apposite of all our author’s critical juxtapositions; if we except the continual running parallel between Salvator, Shakspeare, and Lord Byron, as the three demons of the imagination personified. Modern critics can no more confer rank in the lists of fame, than modern heralds can confound new and old nobility.
Salvator’s first decided success at Rome, or in his profession, was in his picture of Prometheus, exhibited in the Pantheon, when he was little more than twenty, and which stamped his reputation as an artist from that time forward, though it did not lay the immediate foundation of his fortune. In this respect, his rejection by the Academy of St. Luke, and the hostility of Bernini, threw very considerable obstacles in his way. Lady Morgan celebrates thesuccess of this picture at sufficient length, and with enthusiastic sympathy, and accompanies the successive completion of his great historical efforts afterwards, theRegulus, thePurgatory, theJob, theSaul, and theConspiracy of Catiline, with appropriate comments; but, as we are tainted with heresy on this subject, we shall decline entering into it, farther than to say generally, that we think the colouring of Salvator’s flesh dingy, his drawing meagre, his expressions coarse or violent, and his choice of subjects morose and monotonous. The figures in his landscape-compositions are admirable for their spirit, force, wild interest, and daring character; but, in our judgment, they cannot stand alone as high history, nor, by any means, claim the first rank among epic or dramatic productions. His landscapes, on the contrary, as we have said before, have a boldness of conception, a unity of design, and felicity of execution, which, if it does not fill the mind with the highest sense of beauty or grandeur, assigns them a place by themselves, which invidious comparison cannot approach or divide with any competitor. They are original andperfectin their kind; and that kind is one that the imagination requires for its solace and support; is always glad to return to, and is never ashamed of, the wild and abstracted scenes of nature. Having said thus much by way of explanation, we hope we shall be excused from going farther into the details of an obnoxious hypercriticism, to which we feel an equal repugnance as professed worshippers of fame and genius! Our readers will prefer, to our sour and fastidious (perhaps perverse) criticism, the lively account which is here given of Salvator’s first appearance in a new character—one of the masks of the Roman carnival—which had considerable influence in his subsequent pursuits and success in life.
‘Towards the close of the Carnival in 1639, when the spirits of the revellers (as is always the case in Rome) were making a brilliant rally for the representations of the last week, a car, or stage, highly ornamented, drawn by oxen, and occupied by a masked troop, attracted universal attention by its novelty and singular representations. The principal personage announced himself as a certain Signor Formica, a Neapolitan actor, who, in the character of Coviello, a charlatan, displayed so much genuine wit, such bitter satire, and exquisite humour, rendered doubly effective by a Neapolitan accent and national gesticulations, that other representations were abandoned; and gipsies told fortunes, and Jews hung in vain. The whole population of Rome gradually assembled round the novel, the inimitable Formica. The people relished his flashes of splenetic humour aimed at the great; the higher orders were delighted with animprovisatore,who, in the intervals of his dialogues, sung to the lute, of which he was a perfect master, the Neapolitan ballads, then so much in vogue. The attempts made by his fellow-revellers to obtain some share of the plaudits he so abundantly received, whether he spoke or sung, asked or answered questions, were all abortive; while he, (says Baldinucci), “at the head of every thing by his wit, eloquence, and brilliant humour, drew half Rome to himself.” The contrast between his beautiful musical and poetical compositions, and those Neapolitan gesticulations in which he indulged, when, laying aside his lute, he presented his vials and salves to the delighted audience, exhibited a versatility of genius, which it was difficult to attribute to any individual then known in Rome. Guesses and suppositions were still vainly circulating among all classes, when, on the close of the Carnival, Formica, ere he drove his triumphal car from the Piazza Navona, which, with one of the streets in the Trasevere, had been the principal scene of his triumph, ordered his troop to raise their masks, and, removing his own, discovered that Coviello was the sublime author of the Prometheus, and his little troop the “Partigiani” of Salvator Rosa. All Rome was from this moment (to use a phrase which all his biographers have adopted) “filled with his fame.” That notoriety which his high genius had failed to procure for him, was obtained at once by those lighter talents which he had nearly suffered to fall into neglect, while more elevated views had filled his mind.’ p. 253.
Lady Morgan then gives a very learned and sprightly account of the characters of the old Italian comedy, with a notice of Moliere, and sprinklings of general reading, from which we have not room for an extract. Salvator, after this event, became the rage in Rome; his society and conversation were much sought after, and hisimprovisatorerecitations of his own poetry, in which he sketched the outline of his future Satires, were attended by some of the greatest wits and most eminent scholars of the age. He on one occasion gave a burlesque comedy in ridicule of Bernini, the favourite court-artist. This attack drew on him a resentment, the consequences of which, ‘like a wounded snake, dragged their slow length’ through the rest of his life. Those who are the loudest and bitterest in their complaints of persecution and ill-usage are the first to provoke it. In the warfare waged so fondly and (as it is at last discovered) so unequally with the world, the assailants and the sufferers will be generally found to be the same persons. We would not, by this indirect censure of Salvator, be understood to condemn or discourage those who have an inclination to go on the sameforlorn hope: we merely wish to warn them of the nature of the service, and that theyought not to prepare for a triumph, but a martyrdom! If they are ambitious of that, let them take their course.
Salvator’s success in his new attempt threw him in some measure, from this time forward, into the career of comedy and letters: painting, however, still remained his principal pursuit and strongest passion. His various talents and agreeable accomplishments procured him many friends and admirers, though his hasty temper and violent pretensions often defeated their good intentions towards him. He wanted to force his Histories down the throats of the public and of private individuals, who came to purchase his pictures, and turned from, and even insulted those who praised his landscapes. This jealousy of a man’s self, and quarrelling with the favourable opinion of the world, because it does not exactly accord with our own view of our merits, is one of the most tormenting and incurable of all follies. We subjoin the two following remarkable instances of it.
‘The Prince Francesco Ximenes having arrived in Rome, found time, in the midst of the honours paid to him, to visit Salvator Rosa; and, being received by the artist in his gallery, he told him frankly, that he had come for the purpose of seeing and purchasing some of those beautiful small landscapes, whose manner and subjects had delighted him in many foreign galleries.—“Be it known then to your Excellency,” interrupted Rosa impetuously, “thatI know nothing of landscape-painting! Something indeed I do know of paintingfiguresandhistorical subjects, which I strive to exhibit to such eminent judges as yourself, in order that once for all I may banish from the public mind that fantastic humour of supposing I am a landscape, and not an historical painter.”
‘Shortly after, a very rich cardinal, whose name is not recorded, called on Salvator to purchase some pictures; and as his Eminence walked up and down the gallery, he always paused before some certainquadretti, and never before the historical subjects, while Salvator muttered from time to time between his clenched teeth, “Sempre, sempre, pæsi piccoli.” When at last the Cardinal glanced his eye over some great historical picture, and carelessly asked the price as a sort of company question, Salvator bellowed forth “Un milione.” His Eminence, stunned or offended, hurried away, and returned no more.’
Other stories are told of the like import. And yet if Salvator had been more satisfied in his own mind of the superiority of his historical pictures, he would have been less anxious to make others converts to his opinion. So shrewd a man ought to have been aware of the force of the proverb aboutnursing the ricketty child.
One of the most creditabletraitsin the character of Salvator is thefriendship of Carlo Rossi, a wealthy Roman citizen, who raised his prices and built a chapel to his memory; and one of the most pleasant and flattering to his talents is the rivalry of Messer Agli, an old Bolognese merchant, who came all the way to Florence (while Salvator was residing there) to enter the lists with him as the clown and quack-doctor of thecommedia della arte.
We loiter on the way with Lady Morgan—which is a sign that we do not dislike her company, and that our occasional severity is less real than affected. She opens many pleasant vistas, and calls up numerous themes of never-failing interest. Would that we could wander with her under the azure skies and golden sunsets of Claude Lorraine, amidst classic groves and temples, and flocks, and herds, and winding streams, and distant hills and glittering sunny vales,
——‘Where universal Pan,Knit with the Graces and the Hours in dance,Leads on the eternal spring;’—
——‘Where universal Pan,Knit with the Graces and the Hours in dance,Leads on the eternal spring;’—
——‘Where universal Pan,Knit with the Graces and the Hours in dance,Leads on the eternal spring;’—
——‘Where universal Pan,
Knit with the Graces and the Hours in dance,
Leads on the eternal spring;’—
or repose in Gaspar Poussin’s cool grottos, or on his breezy summits, or by his sparkling waterfalls!—but we must not indulge too long in these delightful dreams. Time presses, and we must on. It is mentioned in this part of the narrative which treats of Salvator’s contemporaries and great rivals in landscape, that Claude Lorraine, besides his natural stupidity in all other things, was six-and-thirty before he began to paint (almost the age at which Raphael died), and in ten years after was—what no other human being ever was or will be. The lateness of the period at which he commenced his studies, render those unrivalled masterpieces which he has left behind him to all posterity a greater miracle than they would otherwise be. One would think that perfection required at least a whole life to attain it. Lady Morgan has described this divine artist very prettily and poetically; but her description of Gaspar Poussin is as fine, and might in some places be mistaken for that of his rival. This is not as it should be; since the distance is immeasurable between the productions of Claude Lorraine and all other landscapes whatever—with the single exception of Titian’s backgrounds.[27]Sir Joshua Reynolds used to say (such was his opinion of the faultless beauty of his style), that ‘there would be another Raphael before there was another Claude!’
The first volume of the present work closes with a spirited account of the short-lived revolution at Naples, brought about by the celebratedMassaniello. Salvator contrived to be present at one of the meetings of the patriotic conspirators by torchlight, and has left a fine sketch of the unfortunate leader. An account of this memorable transaction will be found in Robertson, and a still more striking and genuine one in the Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz.
We must hasten through the second volume with more rapid strides. Salvator, after the failure and death of Massaniello, returned to Rome, disappointed, disheartened, and gave vent to his feelings on this occasion by his two poems,La Babilonia, andLa Guerra, which are full of the spirit of love and hatred, of enthusiasm and bitterness.[28]About the same time, he painted his two allegorical pictures of ‘Human Frailty,’ and ‘Fortune.’ These were exhibited in the Pantheon; and from the sensation they excited, and the sinister comments that were made on them, had nearly conducted Salvator to the Inquisition. In the picture of ‘Fortune,’ more particularly, ‘the nose of one powerful ecclesiastic, and the eye of another, were detected in the brutish physiognomy of the swine who were treading pearls and flowers under their feet; a Cardinal was recognised in an ass scattering with his hoof the laurel and myrtle which lay in his path, and in an old goat reposing on roses. Some there were who even fancied the infallible lover of Donna Olympia, the Sultana Queen of the Quirinal! The cry of atheism and sedition—of contempt of established authorities—was thus raised under the influence of private pique and long-cherished envy. It soon found an echo in the painted walls where the Conclave sat “in close divan,” and it was bandied about from mouth to mouth till it reached the ears of the Inquisitor, within the dark recesses of his house of terrors.’II.20.
The consequence was, that our artist was obliged to fly from Rome, after waiting a little to see if the storm would blow over, and to seek an asylum in the court of the Grand Duke of Tuscany at Florence. Here he passed some of the happiest years of his life, flattered by princes, feasting nobles, conversing with poets, receiving the suggestions of critics, painting landscapes or history as he liked best, composing and reciting his own verses, and making a fortune, which he flung away again as soon as he had made it, with the characteristic improvidence of genius. Of the gay, careless, and friendly intercourse in which he passed his time, the following passages give a very lively intimation.
‘It happened that Rosa, in one of those fits of idleness to which even his strenuous spirit was occasionally liable, flung down his pencil, and sallied forth to communicate the infection of hisfar nienteto his friend Lippi. On entering hisstudio, however, he found him labouring with great impetuosity on the back-ground of his picture of theFlight into Egypt; but in such sullen vehemence, or in such evident ill-humour, that Salvator demanded, “Che fai, amico?”—“What am I about?” said Lippi; “I am going mad with vexation. Here is one of my best pictures ruined: I am under a spell, and cannot even draw the branch of a tree, nor a tuft of herbage.”—“Signore Dio!” exclaimed Rosa, twisting the paletti off his friend’s thumb, “what colours are here?” and scraping them off, and gently pushing away Lippi, he took his place, murmuring, “Let me see! who knows but I may help you out of the scrape?” Half in jest and half in earnest, he began to touch and retouch, and change, till nightfall found him at the easel, finishing one of the best back-ground landscapes he ever painted. All Florence came the next day to look at hischef-d’œuvre, and the first artists of the age took it as a study.
‘A few days afterwards, Salvator called upon Lippi, found him preparing a canvas, while Malatesta read aloud to him and Ludovico Seranai the astronomer, the MS. of his poem of the Sphynx. Salvator, with a noiseless step, took his seat in an old Gothic window, and, placing himself in a listening attitude, with a bright light falling through stained glass upon his fine head, produced a splendid study, of which Lippi, without a word of his intention, availed himself; and executed, with incredible rapidity, the finest picture of Salvator that was ever painted. Several copies of it were taken with Lippi’s permission, and Ludovico Seranai purchased the original at a considerable price. In this picture Salvator is dressed in a cloth habit, with richly slashed sleeves, turnovers, and a collar. It is only a head and bust, and the eyes are looking towards the spectator.’II.66.
At one time, his impatience at being separated from Carlo Rossi and other friends was so great, that he narrowly risked his safety to obtain an interview with them. About three years after he had been at Florence, he took post-horses, and set off for Rome at midnight. Having arrived at an inn in the suburbs, he despatched messages to eighteen of his friends, who all came, thinking he had got into some new scrape; breakfasted with them, and returned to Florence, before his Roman persecutors or his Tuscan friends were aware of his adventure.
Salvator, however, was discontented even with this splendid lot,and sought to embower himself in entire seclusion, and in deeper bliss, in the palace of the Counts Maffei at Volterra, and in the solitudes in its neighbourhood. Here he wandered night and morn, drinking in that slow poison of reflection which his soul loved best—planning hisCatiline Conspiracy—preparing his Satires for the press—and weeding out their Neapolitanisms, in which he was assisted by the fine taste and quick tact of his friend Redi. This appears to have been the only part of his life to which he looked back with pleasure or regret. He however left this enviable retreat soon after, to return to Rome, partly for family reasons, and partly, no doubt, because the deepest love of solitude and privacy does not wean the mind, that has once felt the feverish appetite, from the desire of popularity and distinction. Here, then, he planted himself on the Monte Pincio, in a house situated between those of Claude Lorraine and Nicholas Poussin—and used to walk out of an evening on the fine promenade near it, at the head of a group of gay cavaliers, musicians, and aspiring artists; while Nicholas Poussin, the very genius of antiquity personified, and now bent down with age himself, led another band of reverential disciples, side by side, with some learned virtuoso or pious churchman! Meantime, commissions poured in upon Salvator, and he painted successively hisJonasfor the King of Denmark—hisBattle-piecefor LouisXIV., still in the Museum at Paris—and, lastly, to his infinite delight, an Altar-piece for one of the churches in Rome. Salvator, about this time, seems to have imbibed (even before he was lectured on his want of economy by theFoolat the house of his friend Minucci) some idea of making the best use of his time and talents.
‘The Constable Colonna (it is reported) sent a purse of gold to Salvator Rosa on receiving one of his beautiful landscapes. The painter, not to be outdone in generosity, sent the prince another picture, as a present,—which the prince insisted on remunerating with another purse; another present and another purse followed; and this struggle between generosity and liberality continued, to the tune of many other pictures and presents, until the prince, finding himself a loser by the contest, sent Salvator two purses, with an assurance that he gave in,et lui céda le champ de bataille.’
Salvator was tenacious in demanding the highest prices for his pictures, and brooking no question as to any abatement; but when he had promised his friend Ricciardi a picture, he proposed to restrict himself to a subject of one or two figures; and they had nearly a quarrel about it.
‘In April 1662,’ says his biographer, ‘and not long after his return to Rome, his love of wild and mountainous scenery, andperhaps his wandering tendencies, revived by his recent journey, induced him to visit Loretto, or at least to make that holy city theshrineof a pilgrimage, which it appears was one rather of taste than of devotion. His feelings on this journey are well described in one of his ownLettersinserted in the Appendix. “I could not,” says Salvator, “give you any account of my return from Loretto, till I arrived here on the sixth of May. I was for fifteen days in perpetual motion. The journey was beyond all description curious and picturesque: much more so than the route from hence to Florence. There is a strange mixture of savage wildness and domestic scenery, of plain and precipice, such as the eye delights to wander over. I can safely swear to you, that the tints of these mountains by far exceed all I have ever observed under your Tuscan skies; and as for your Verucola, which I once thought a dreary desert, I shall henceforth deem it a fair garden, in comparison with the scenes I have now explored in these Alpine solitudes. O God! how often have I sighed to possess, how often since called to mind, those solitary hermitages which I passed on my way! How often wished that fortune had reserved for me such a destiny! I went by Ancona and Torolo, and on my return visited Assisa—all sites of extraordinary interest to the genius of painting. I saw at Terni (four miles out of the high road) the famous waterfal of Velino; an object to satisfy the boldest imagination by its terrific beauty—a river dashing down a mountainous precipice of near a mile in height, and then flinging up its foam to nearly an equal altitude! Believe, that while in this spot, I moved not, saw not, without bearing you full in my mind and memory.” See p. 277.
He begins another letter, of a later date, on his being employed to paint the altar of San Giovanni de Fiorentini, thus gaily:—
‘Sonate le campane—Ring out the chimes!—At last after thirty years existence in Rome, of hopes blasted and complaints reiterated against men and gods, the occasion is accorded me for giving one altar-piece to the public.’
His anxiety to finish this picture in time for a certain festival, kept him, he adds, ‘secluded from all commerce of the pen, and from every other in the world; and I can truly say, that I have forgotten myself, even to neglecting to eat; and so arduous is my application, that when I had nearly finished, I was obliged to keep my bed for two days; and had not my recovery been assisted by emetics, certain it is it would have been all over with me in consequence of some obstruction in the stomach. Pity me then, dear friend, if for the glory of my pencil, I have neglected to devote my pen to the service of friendship.’—Letter to the Abate Ricciardi.
Passeri has left the following particulars recorded of him on the day when this picture (the Martyrdom of Saint Damian and Saint Cosmus) was first exhibited.
‘He (Salvator) had at last exposed his picture in the San Giovanni de’ Fiorentini; and I, to recreate myself, ascended on that evening to the heights ofMonte della Trinità, where I found Salvator walking arm in arm with Signor Giovanni Carlo dei Rossi, so celebrated for his performance on the harp of three strings, and brother to that Luigi Rossi, who is so eminent all over the world for his perfection in musical composition. And when Salvator (who was my intimate friend) perceived me, he came forward laughingly, and said to me these precise words:—“Well, what say the malignants now? Are they at last convinced that Icanpaint on the great scale? Why, if not, then e’en let Michael Angelo come down, and do something better. Now at least I have stopped their mouths, and shown the world what I am worth.” I shrugged my shoulders. I and the Signor Rossi changed the subject to one which lasted us till nightfall; and from this (continues Passeri in his rambling way[29]) it may be gathered howgagliardohe (Salvator) was in his own opinion. Yet it may not be denied but that he had all the endowments of a marvellous great painter! one of great resources and high perfection; and had he no other merit, he had at least that of being the originator of his own style. He spoke, this evening, of Paul Veronese more than of any other painter, and praised the Venetian school greatly.To Raphael he had no great leaning, for it was the fashion of the Neapolitan School to call him hard,di pietra, dry,’ &c. p. 172.
Our artist’s constitution now began to break, worn out perhaps by the efforts of his art, and still more by the irritation of his mind. In a letter dated in 1666, he complains,
‘I have suffered two months of agony, even with the abstemious regimen of chicken broth! My feet are two lumps of ice, in spite of the woollen hose I have imported from Venice. I never permit the fire to be quenched in my own room, and am more solicitous than even the Cavalier Cigoli,’ (who died of a cold caught in painting a fresco in the Vatican). ‘There is not a fissure in the house that I am not daily employed in diligently stopping up, and yet with all this I cannot get warm; nor do I think the torch of love, or the caresses of Phryne herself, would kindle me into a glow. For the rest, I can talk of any thing but my pencil: my canvass lies turned to the wall; my colours are dried up now, and for ever; nor can I give my thoughts to any subject whatever, but chimney-corners,brasiers, warming-pans, woollen gloves, woollen caps, and such sort of gear. In short, dear friend, I am perfectly aware that I have lost much of my original ardour, and am absolutely reduced to pass entire days without speaking a word. Those fires, once mine and so brilliant, are now all spent, or evaporating in smoke. Woe unto me, should I ever be reduced to exercise my pencil for bread!’
Yet after this, he at intervals produced some of his best pictures. The scene, however, was now hastening to a close; and the account here given of his last days, though containing nothing perhaps very memorable, will yet, we think, be perused with a melancholy interest.
‘A change in his complexion was thought to indicate some derangement of the liver, and he continued in a state of great languor and depression during the autumn of 1672; but in the winter of 1673, the total loss of appetite, and of all power of digestion, reduced him almost to the last extremity; and he consented, at the earnest request of Lucrezia and his numerous friends, to take more medical advice. He now passed through the hands of various physicians, whose ignorance and technical pedantry come out with characteristic effect in the simple and matter-of-fact details which the good Padre Baldovini has left of the last days of his eminent friend. Various cures were suggested by the Roman faculty for a disease which none had yet ventured to name. Meantime the malady increased, and showed itself in all the life-wearing symptoms of sleeplessness, loss of appetite, intermitting fever, and burning thirst. A French quack was called in to the sufferer; and his prescription was, that he should drink water abundantly, and nothing but water. While, however, under the care of this Gallic Sangrado, a confirmed dropsy unequivocally declared itself; and Salvator, now acquainted with the nature of his disease, once more submitted to the entreaties of his friends; and, at the special persuasion of the Padre Francesco Baldovini, placed himself under the care of a celebrated Italian empiric, then in great repute in Rome, called Dr. Penna.
‘Salvator had but little confidence in medicine. He had already, during this melancholy winter, discarded all his physicians, and literallythrown physic to the dogs. But hope, and spring, and love of life, revived together; and, towards the latter end of February he consented to receive the visits of Penna, who had cured Baldovini (on the good father’s own word) of a confirmed dropsy the year before. When the doctor was introduced, Salvator, with his wonted manliness, called on him to answer the question he was about to propose with honesty and frankness, viz.Was his disorder curable?Penna, after going through certain professional forms, answered,“that his disorder was a simple, and not a complicated dropsy, and that therefore it was curable.”
‘Salvator instantly and cheerfully placed himself in the doctor’s hands, and consented to submit to whatever he should subscribe. “The remedy of Penna,” says Baldovini, “lay in seven little vials, of which the contents were to be swallowed every day.” But it was obvious to all, that as the seven vials were emptied, the disorder of Rosa increased; and on the seventh day of his attendance, the doctor declared to his friend Baldovini, that the malady of his patient was beyond his reach and skill.
‘The friends of Salvator now suggested to him their belief that his disease was brought on and kept up by his rigid confinement to the house, so opposed to his former active habits of life; but when they urged him to take air and exercise, he replied significantly to their importunities, “I take exercise! I go out! if this is your counsel, how are you deceived!” At the earnest request, however, of Penna, he consented to see him once more; but the moment he entered his room he demanded of him, “if henowthought that he was curable?” Penna, in some emotion, prefaced his verdict by declaring solemnly, “that he should conceive it no less glory to restore so illustrious a genius to health, and to the society he was so calculated to adorn, than to save the life of the Sovereign Pontiff himself; but that, as far as his science went, the case was now beyond the reach of human remedy.” While Penna spoke, Salvator, who was surrounded by his family and many friends, fixed his penetrating eyes on the physician’s face, with the intense look of one who sought to read his sentence in the countenance of his judge ere it was verbally pronounced;—but that sentence was now passed! and Salvator, who seemed more struck by surprise than by apprehension, remained silent and in a fixed attitude! His friends, shocked and grieved, or awed by the expression of his countenance, which was marked by a stern and hopeless melancholy, arose and departed silently one by one. After a long and deep reverie, Rosa suddenly left the room, and shut himself up alone in his study. There in silence, and in unbroken solitude, he remained for two days, holding no communication with his wife, his son or his most intimate friends; and when at last their tears and lamentations drew him forth, he was no longer recognisable. Shrunk, feeble, attenuated, almost speechless, he sunk on his couch, to rise no more!
‘Life was now wearing away with such obvious rapidity, that his friends, both clerical and laical, urged him in the most strenuous manner to submit to the ceremonies and forms prescribed by the Roman Catholic church in such awful moments. How much the solemn sadness of those moments may be increased, even to terrorand despair, by such pompous and lugubrious pageants all who have visited Italy—all who still visit it, can testify. Salvator demanded what they required of him. They replied, “in the first instance to receive the sacrament as it is administered in Rome to the dying.”—“To receiving the sacrament,” says his confesser Baldovini, “he showed no repugnance (non se mostrò repugnante); but he vehemently and positively refused to allow the host, with all the solemn pomp of its procession, to be brought to his house, which he deemed unworthy of the divine presence.”
‘The rejection of a ceremony which was deemed in Rome indispensably necessary to salvation, and by one who was already stamped with the church’s reprobation, soon took air; report exaggerated the circumstance into a positive expression of infidelity; and the gossipry of the Roman Anterooms was supplied for the time with a subject of discussion, in perfect harmony with their slander, bigotry, and idleness. “As I went forth from Salvator’s door,” relates the worthy Baldovini, “I met theCanonica Scornio, a man who has taken out a license to speak of all men as he pleases. ‘And how goes it with Salvator?’ demands of me this Canonico. ‘Bad enough, I fear.’—‘Well, a few nights back, happening to be in the anteroom of a certain great prelate, I found myself in the centre of a circle of disputants, who were busily discussing whether the aforesaid Salvator would die a schismatic, a Huguenot, a Calvinist, or a Lutheran?’—‘He will die, Signor Canonico,’ I replied, ‘when it pleases God, a better Catholic than any of those who now speak so slightingly of him!’—and so I pursued my way.”
‘On the 15th of March Baldovini entered the patient’s chamber. But, to all appearance, Salvator was suffering great agony. “How goes it with thee, Rosa?” asked Baldovini kindly, as he approached him. “Bad, bad!” was the emphatic reply. While writhing with pain, the sufferer after a moment added:—“To judge by what I now endure, the hand of death grasps me sharply.”
‘In the restlessness of pain, he now threw himself on the edge of the bed, and placed his head on the bosom of Lucrezia, who sat supporting and weeping over him. His afflicted son and friend took their station at the other side of his couch, and stood watching the issue of these sudden and frightful spasms in mournful silence. At that moment a celebrated Roman physician, the Doctor Catanni, entered the apartment. He felt the pulse of Salvator, and perceived that he was fast sinking. He communicated his approaching dissolution to those most interested in the melancholy intelligence, and it struck all present with unutterable grief. Baldovini, however, true to his sacred calling, even in the depth of his human affliction, instantly despatched the youngAgosto to the neighbouring Conventdella Trinità, for the holy Viaticum. While life was still fluttering at the heart of Salvator, the officiating priest of the day arrived, bearing with him the holy apparatus of the last mysterious ceremony of the church. The shoulders of Salvator were laid bare, and anointed with the consecrated oil: some prayed fervently, others wept, and all even still hoped; but the taper which the Doctor Catanni held to the lips of Salvator, while the Viaticum was administered, burned brightly and steadily! Life’s last sigh had transpired, as Religion performed her last rite.’ p. 205.
Salvator left a wife and son, (a boy of about thirteen), who inherited a considerable property, in books, prints, and bills of exchange, which his father had left in his banker’s hands for pictures painted in the last few years of his life.
We confess we close these volumes with something of a melancholy feeling. We have, in this great artist, another instance added to the list of those who, being born to give delight to others, appear to have lived only to torment themselves, and, with all the ingredients of happiness placed within their reach, to have derived no benefit either from talents or success. Is it, that the outset of such persons in life (who are raised by their own efforts from want and obscurity) jars their feelings and sours their tempers? Or that painters, being often men without education or general knowledge, overrate their own pretensions, and meet with continual mortifications in the rebuffs they receive from the world, who do not judge by the same individual standard? Or is a morbid irritability the inseparable concomitant of genius? None of these suppositions fairly solves the difficulty; for many of the old painters (and those the greatest) were men of mild manners, of great modesty, and good temper. Painting, however, speaks a language known to few, and of which all pretend to judge; and may thus, perhaps, afford more occasion to pamper sensibility into a disease, where the seeds of it are sown too deeply in the constitution, and not checked by proportionable self-knowledge and reflection. Where an artist of genius, however, is not made the victim of his own impatience, or of idle censures, or of the good fortune of others, we cannot conceive of a more delightful or enviable life. There is none that implies a greater degree of thoughtful abstraction, or a more entire freedom from angry differences of opinion, or that leads the mind more out of itself, and reposes more calmly on the grand and beautiful, or the most casual object in nature. Salvator died young. He had done enough for fame; and had he been happier, he would perhaps have lived longer. We do not, in one sense, feel the loss of painters so much as that of other eminent men. They may still be saidto be present with us bodily in their works: we can revive their memory by every object we see; and it seems as if they could never wholly die, while the ideas and thoughts that occupied their minds while living survive, and have a palpable and permanent existence in the forms of external nature.