CHAPTERIII.SPANISH PAINTING.One is accustomed to think of Spanish artists as pupils only, even when rivals of the great masters with whom we are familiar. Such, at least, was my impression, and accordingly, no less was my surprise and suspense than delight, at the first glance at the “Murillo Chamber,” at Seville. The picture which faced me, as I entered, was Christ bending from the cross to embrace St. Felix, of Cantalicio—I might have taken it for Vandyke: next came a St. Joseph, equally admirable, yet different; then a San Leandro—the one might have been from the pencil of Dominichino, the other of Titian; and so I turned, from picture to picture, finding new rivals to every standard and style of excellence. The question then arose of comparison between the Spanish, the Italian, and Flemish schools. Afterwards, at Madrid, I visited repeatedly the Spanish collections, to possess myself thoroughly with them before visiting the Italian and Flemish galleries. A severer test I could not apply, for the gallery of the foreign schools, at Madrid, is the richest in the world. Here are the grander compositions of Vandyke. One of Raphael, theSpasimo, might, if in the Vatican, displace from its throne the Transfiguration. Three or four masterpieces, besides ten others, are from Raphael’s pencil, and form a collection of his works equal to that of the Vatican. Of Titian, there is a gallery in itself—no less than forty paintings all on a large scale. Amongst these is the celebrated one of “Fruitfulness;” a flock of cherubs, just as you may see chickens collected under an inverted basket in the streets of any Spanish town, and which, if anything, would eclipse or rival Murillo in the gracefulness and variety of his infantine conceptions. The result of the comparison was to relieve me from the restraint of habit, and I could, with conviction and boldness now assert, that in painting, Spain has no rival.The Spanish school is most various; but in all its varieties it is natural. It has no particular manner:—manner is no more than systematic or constitutional failing.[328]It is the error to which a man is liable, and which, when he founds a system and instructs others, is more readily caught by his pupils than his merits,—a colourless and unblemished glass is invisible. We become sensible of its presence by its changing the hue or distorting the ray. And so manner in painting either perverts or obscures nature.Nature, in her varieties, has a counterpart in the Spanish school. She is represented darkly in Ribera and Roelas, mildly in Cano, richly in Morales, boldly in Zurbaran, brightly in Velasquez, divinely in Murillo.The school of Spain is solemn. The subjects which were alone worthy to be immortalized, were those which pertained to immortality, and art was dignified no less in its application than its powers. Painting was a religious exercise. The enthusiasm of art was linked to fervour of faith. The studio was an oratory, and “each work was commenced and prosecuted with fasting and prayer.”[329]The lords were the convents; the inmates were sons at once of the founder and of the peasant. For these Spanish art exercised her calling, not to please the caprice of a virtuoso, or to tapestry the walls of a Sybarite. Seville or Cordova presented no Flemish pot-houses. In the productions of their masters, there was none of the extravagant mythology of a Rubens, or the more finished lasciviousness of a Titian; no dissecting-room of a Michael Angelo; none of the finery of a Paolo Veronese. There were neither allegories, portraits, nor giants wrestling with the rocks.The stranger who visits only Madrid will be surprised at such a description, for he has there seen what is called the “Spanish Rooms,” filled with portraits, allegories, extravagances, dwarfs, heathen gods, and historical compositions, and these constitute in his eyes the masterpieces of Spanish art. The reason is this; that at Madrid are collected the paintings of Velasquez, who is so far Spanish only as the want of manner makes him so. Born in Seville, he became a Madrileño, and a parasite. His pictures are all at the capital, and in the style suited to the taste of foreigners. The Spaniards of the capital esteem their painter, and are reacted upon by the estimation in which he is held by foreigners.The thought in all things comes before the execution. What would the work of him who chiselled the Apollo Belvidere have been, if applied to the person of a Souter Johnny? So the art of Velasquez was expended on Philips and abortions. His paintings are common-place domestic scenes, or they are classical, and there he parodies the poets of Greece and travesties their gods. His chief works are beautiful caricatures in oil, without satire and without fun. Before returning to Murillo and Seville, I must say a few words of his chief works.Vulcan’s Forgeis an exquisitely finished group of naked Spaniards, with arms, breasts, shoulders, and loins developed. They are heavy below, as if trampers, not blacksmiths; nor have they been hardened and bronzed by exposure to the air, the furnace, or the sun: they have had their clothes taken off within the hour: the shirts must have been filthy; the bodies are unwashed. The picture is an exposure of nakedness. The walls of the place, and the manners, and the countenances, would appear rather an effort to unidealize the Greek, than to raise the modern to a conception of ancient poetry. In it there is the genius of painting, not the painting of a man of genius.The Belidores.Drunkards; or, Bacchus among his Companions.—These are Castilian peasants engaged in a most un-Spanish debauch. One naked, and bearing a classic wreath, personates Bacchus, with a maudlin solemnity on a sensual countenance. Another presents a full face of coarse and stupid laughter, and wears on his head something between a Spaniard’s sombrero and an Irish hat. This is the picture Wilkie selected from out the treasures of Madrid, to admire, to study, to imitate; copying and recopying it, and so fixing in his own mind the physiognomy of the laughing drunkard with the Irish hat, as thence to bring forth a numerous progeny, sometimes with a hat more, sometimes less, the worse for wear.The Spinners.A Flemish picture, as seen through a magnifying glass: the scene such as Teniers or Ostade might have selected. Two women, a young and an old one, are sitting spinning at the wheel. Between them the back shop is seen with customers and tapestry exposed for sale—and, therefore, this is a painting highly admired by the English. The back-ground is remarkable for its light, or rather for the shades; for painting, like the magic lantern, produces brightness by shutting out the light. Wilkie said of Velasquez, “he paints the very air we breathe;” just so a clear and perfect mirror might be described as glass. One of the pictures of the same master has been called “The Theology of Painting,” and another, “The Philosophy of Light.” His perspectives and distances are not rendered by lines, or by any peculiarity of construction or drawing. He put on the canvas what he saw.If it is wonderful to see a limb or a figure, even when all the picture is consecrated to that effort, break forth, as it were, from the dead surface and rise towards you, how much more to behold that canvas fly open and spread back, so that by the aid of a tremulous ray, breaking across it here and there, you may see around and distinguish things, places, and persons! This is the triumph of the art of painting, and here Velasquez stands alone.The Studio.—Here, like one of those vaudevilles, in which the wings of a stage are represented, and you hear the plaudits of another audience “within”—the artist is seen at the corner of his picture, the back of it being towards you. There are a dog, dwarfs, and a lady-in-waiting in attendance on an infantine Infanta, who is standing for her portrait. The presence of the royal parents is signified by another stage-claptrap—their reflection in a mirror. All the figures are splendid as separate parts, but there is no dignity in any expression, or any purpose in the whole. When Philip saw this picture, he said, “One thing is wanting,” and taking the palette and the brush, he traced the cross of St. Jago on the artist’s breast.The Surrender of Breda—or the Picture, as it, is called, of the Lances,—from the number and the thickness of the forest of these that appear to the right. This is indeed a grand composition. It owes its power to its being a portrait and a history of the chief figure. The noble and chivalrous Spinola, with an expression of courteous grief, is bending down, and laying his hand upon the shoulder of his commonplace and stern, though vanquished, opponent. The exaltation of triumph is subdued. The victor’s thoughts are with the unfortunate. What a representation of victory! Here, for once, the correctness of the eye has supplied the place of the sight of the mind, and his pencil, like Allan’s in the Polish Exiles, was above himself.The last I shall notice is his Christ upon the Cross,—the only picture of this description, with one exception, which I have found among seventy. It is an immortal work.I cannot quit the Gallery of Madrid without some notice of an incident which fixed two pictures especially on my memory in the description of the Gallery. The two subjoined pictures will be found in Murray’s Hand-book, “No. 121,—Prometheus, a finely painted picture ofGOREandBOWELS;such alone as could be conceived by a bull-fighter, andplease a people whose sports are blood and torture. How different from the same subject by the poetical Titian, See No. 787.” “No. 787,Prometheus,”—compare thepoetical treatment by our Italian, with 121, theBUTCHER PRODUCTIONof the practical Spaniard, Ribera: it is “Æschylus to Torquemada.” I fancied, having examined the two pictures, that the writer had mistaken the one for the other; I therefore returned to the Museum, Guidebook in hand, and remained satisfied that it was the deliberate purpose of the writer to represent the pictures as he has done.ThePrometheusof Titian (121), lies on his back on the earth, with the heels in the air: the top of thethe spectator;—the face is consequently not seen. The hero of Æschylus first endures reproach in silent scorn, and then bursts forth in indignation, claiming unbounded merit for his works.[330]He stands, his face to his accusers and to heaven. Here is a man lying on his back! was thought or suffering to be expressed in a head of shaggy hair? How treat with paint a subject poetically without action and without feature? This, Prometheus! thefore-thinker—this, the stealer of fire from heaven! It is a corpse revived and cast upon the rocks; and the picture, if that of a poet, must have been designed to represent the deluge. The only animated portion of the composition is the eagle—he is] the predominating figure perched upon the body; for by the manner of the fastenings, the man, if not quite dead, could easily have driven him away. The Prometheus of Æschylus is bound so that the winged dog of Jupiter may come undisturbed to his uninvited daily feast. This is no eagle; it is a vulture feeding on carrion: the colouring is from the dissecting-room—but not the anatomy. The bird has laid bare an enormous surface of the putrid flesh, somewhere about the breast, where there could be no such exposure of muscle, and to which, moreover, the eagle’s commission did not extend. Such is “the poetical treatment by our Italian.”In No. 787, the Spanish master has painted a man full of life, not lying where he has been tossed, but held where he is bound. His body writhes; one hand supports him off the ground, the other is raised either in agony or supplication. The drawn lineaments of the face and the expanded mouth, make you listen for the cry it is about to utter, or which has died away. The tormentor is without his reach, and isunseen—you may distinguish where he is, but you have to strain the sight to penetrate the gloom in which he broods;—there is no doubt of the presence of the one, or of the cause of the agony of the other; for from the slightly gashedside,[331]a filament is being drawn away. This is the “blood-battered subject,” the “butcher production of gore and bowels” of our Spaniard.Ribera’s Prometheus would not stand were a Daniel brought to judgment, for the eagle takes a Shylock’s share, having no more right to the entrail, which he is suffered to pilfer by the Spaniard, than to the carrion on which he is gorged by the Italian.Who ever painted such children as Murillo?—the cherubs of Raphael are statuettes; those of Rubens, fœtuses; Murillo’s are children and cherubs. The brood is as prolific as the type is beautiful—golden, rosy, dimpled, sporting in troops, or flying in flocks, and then gathered into his canvas—light as the air; bright as the rainbow, yet of flesh and blood; full of life and grace, of vigour and ease, of health and gladness.Who ever painted such virgins? The Madonnas of Italy are matrons and mothers. Mary holds her Child, or she gazes on Him as she shows Him,—it is maternal love. The Marys of Murillo are scarcely past the verge of childhood; the cheeks are full and ruddy; the form is plump. There is the ethereal, but it is in the expression: the face is upturned, the large eye raised, and the mouth half open, the hands pressed across the breast. The figure is erect—the size natural. They are never the same to look upon, and yet each can only be described in the same words as the rest. These bright Virgins in the sky, these laughing cherubs in the clouds, fill the canvas of Murillo with joy and innocence.The gallery of Seville consists of a convent and its church. The rooms, cloisters, and corridors are all lined with paintings; the church is, in like manner, filled with them, high and low and all around. One chamber is set apart for Murillo: in it eighteen or nineteen of his chief works, nearly all the size of life, are collected. In reviewing them at an interval of nineteen months, it is impossible for me to say to which I would give the preference. One he used to call “mypicture.” It is the St. Thomas of Villanueva, Archbishop of Valencia, distributing alms. It draws neither on the tender nor the ideal, and the selection indicates not the judgment of the artist, but the disposition of the man. “The Adoration of the Shepherds,” is, in colouring and conception, not unlike the “Repose in Egypt” of Correggio, at Parma.Santa Justa and Rufina sustaining the Giralda, is beautifully executed, but incongruous and out of nature, and has neither the pure tints nor the deep dyes of the painter. The celebrated Señora de la Servilleta is a gipsy woman of Triana. I have mentioned these two as the pictures which pleased me the least; although in the St. Felix receiving the Child from the Virgin, how charmingly are infancy, young womanly beauty, and ripe old age grouped and pourtrayed! It is three pictures, not one. That of St. Antonio is fervour without fanaticism. Leandro is majestic and triumphant prelacy, in Venetian brocade, under an oriental sun. Like to it are the two ideal portraits, or rather real portraits, under the names of Leandro and Isidore in the sacristy of the cathedral. There are three Conceptions—una de diversâ—blooming maidens in the same attitude, arrayed in white and blue, with angels in the clouds; and yet there is no monotony. They have the serenity of beauty of the Sevillian maidens, by whom Murillo’s pencil was inspired; but the fulness of the lower part of the face reminded me of the women of modern Rome—the grave, dark-eyed, thoughtful Romans. The Saint Joseph with the Infant Jesus is a high-minded Jew, and the child, a prodigy. This picture recalls one in the cathedral which I may here notice, as in speaking of that building I could think of nothing but itself. The picture I mean is, the “Guardian Angel.” An angel leads a child and points to heaven: the figures are less than life. The picture is dark, the tints are not clear, the outline not distinct: there is no grace in the form of either, no beauty in the face; yet in this consists the triumph of the master—the inward mind shines through the veil, and you are sent at once to the inspiration that has descended, and to the innocence that looks up. This picture is an admirable exponent of the imaginative temperament of Murillo. He could revere, and hope, and wonder, to bring forth by pencil-strokes, the compassionate calm, with the benevolent anxiety of the angel’s face and the trustingness of that of the child—mingled with the searching expression that follows the angel’s finger, as to find the heavenly realms which those alone like it, can seek or see!The church at the Museum contains the St. Thomas of Zurbaran—held by some to be the finest picture in the world; the St. Dominic, a remarkable carving in wood, by Montañes; and masterpieces by almost all the Sevillian school. I had visited it several times, scarcely noticing two or three pictures by Murillo, placed there as not worthy of admission to the “Murillo Chamber.” One of these, however, haunted me after leaving the Museum. Next morning, and at the earliest hour admittance could be gained, I went to examine it. It was a Virgin, but of a different order from his other Virgins—colossal, looking, not up to heaven, but down on earth; the hands joined and raised, not crossed upon the bosom; the eye cast down, the ball covered. It is not the full front figure upstretched; the left knee rests upon a cloud, yet the right foot is planted with the firmness of a statue. The dishevelled hair flows not on the shoulders, but streams wildly; and the dark blue mantle is whirled about and carried away. The picture is divided into two zones,—the upper one of gold—the sun; the lower one frigid and pale. She floats between heaven and earth. The picture is placed high in the apse. As you approach and recede, she seems now to ascend and now to descend. You cannot tell whether it is an angel coming down to men, or a saint rising to the sky.His other Virgins are beautiful;—this one is heroic: his other figures are flesh and blood, this one is of marble. His other Marys are timid, hopeful, innocent; this is one of consciousness. The others are absorbed and ecstatic; this is a youthful Juno—the Spanish form. The Andalusian features give way to the ideal lines of the Greeks. His other Virgins wear the outward expression of some mental character associating the weakness of humanity with the beauty of nature. Here there is no part you can singly grasp; no feature you can separate, explain, or admire;—fleeting like the cloud, it dazzles like the sun. The vision enters as the tones of music, and returns on the memory like a vessel’s track in the night.Such was the vision which Petrarch beheld when he exclaimed, “Beautiful Virgin! clothed with the sun, crowned by the stars, and so pleasing to the sun that his light he has hidden in thee!” No wonder that the Andalusian peasants’ salutation should be, “Santa Maria purissima,” or the reply, “Sin peccado concebida.”[332]The “Virgin of the Franciscans” is amongst pictures what the Apollo Belvidere is among statues—a constellation of heavenly graces. I felt that it must have a history. I turned over such books as were within reach, but found no mention of it, except in one recent publication, where it is noticed as an extravagant production that had corrupted the taste of Seville; but, on inquiring among the Sevillians, I found that my anticipations were not vain.Imagine Murillo in the fulness of his years, and still in the height of his power, called upon by the corporation of the Cathedral to paint a Virgin for that edifice, to crown at once that unrivalled work, and his own unequalled fame. Imagine him pacing that hall, raising his eyes to its vault, and his mind to the effort. This was not to be a picture to be placed on a wall, enclosed in a chapel, or screened on an altar-frame: it was to be an emblem of descending charity and ascending prayer, radiating through its vastness, and filling its space. Go then to the Museum and contemplate the “Virgin of the Franciscans,” and you will understand why she looks down—why her joined hands are raised—why she is colossal—how she is sublime.When the picture was finished, the Cabildoproceededto judge of it, and exclaimed:Ayach che mamarachio, “Oh! what a daub.” Murillo made a present of it to the Franciscans, the advocates of theessentialpurity of the Virgin. It was suspended under the dome of their church: all Seville poured forth to behold it, the Cabildo among the rest.The Cabildo was personified in a Sevillian connoisseur, who was offended at my admiration. “If you saw it close,” said he, “as I have, you would think nothing of it.” It was useless to tell him that it was designed for the other side of a gulf—that it was painted to represent the heavens; to be seen from—not to touch—the earth. The critic pointed to the contradictions of the cloak flying on the right side, and the hair on the left;—in vain I answered that it was not a ship, and that in that distraction of the elements, in which she stands motionless, consisted the poetry of the work. Murillo has filled the Caridad; and hence his pictures have been less scattered. There are, however, five vacant spaces. Of two the robber still retains possession; two he has sold to an English duke, who has hitherto mistaken the pleasure of possessing a good picture for that of performing a good deed; the fifth, on its way back from Paris, was detained at the Academy of Madrid.Tastebeing as good aplea for plunderas philanthropy: sense or anger suggested to the Sevillians to leave the place of these pictures vacant—they have hung curtains on the empty spaces: seven still remain. Two of these are the largest he has painted, and represent multitudes—the Distribution of loaves and fishes, and Moses striking the rock;—two are Annunciations, in very different styles, the one bright and beautiful, the other large, dark, and solemn; in this one the Virgin is thebeau idéalof a Sevillian in her mantilla;—two are gems in size as well as worth,—a John the Baptist and an infant Christ: the former is especially beautiful:—the seventh is a St. Juan di Dios, the founder of hospitals—a dark picture. The saint is carrying a sick man to the hospital, and an angel, a tall youth with outspread wings, is supporting him. Opposite to it hangs a curtain—let me raise it.In the vesture of a nun, with the halo of a saint and the crown of a queen, Isabella stands over a boy whose head she is laving. The boy bends over a large silver vessel, from which the reflected light illumines his flushed face and winking eye, leaning on the stool which supports the basin: he is suffering, but patient, under the hands that perform the office. How the soft fingers hold—yet scarcely touch—the head!—how gently they apply the napkin! Beside her stands a maiden with a golden jewelled ewer; she watches till the cloth is dry;—an elderly lady looks from behind to counsel and aid her mistress. A second attendant carries a tray with ointment, and over her shoulder, in eastern fashion, hangs a lace embroidered napkin. The service is regal, not dramatic. There are other patients ready to be served. An old man in front is unbinding his leg; another is limping in on crutches from behind: there is no crowd, but there is work prepared for these lovely hands. The queen’s eyes are averted from the sores beneath her touch, and rest on an old woman below, whose upturned face reveals awe and gratitude. The sores on the boy’s head show the blush of granulation; but the care of the queen is still required. Who said the painting made him smell the sore?[333]—it is clean and washed and healthy.There are here no forms of unnatural beings—no forced images—no angels’ wings: it is Isabella in her palace, amidst her ladies, at her ordinary work—nothing that is not simple; nothing that is not true; nothing pictured except that which has been; and pictured that it may prompt others to do the same—nothing that is not common, save that such deeds are as rare as the hands by which they are here performed.Amongst living beings I have seen one whose life is told in this picture—and it is her portrait. Murillo must have known some such one; from her life derived the thought, and from her face the model. She bears no resemblance to his Virgins. There are here no ideal lines—no blushing tints; no childlike innocence is here—that face is mild and solemn, and full of care and tenderness. He must have seen it in a sister.[334]This picture is now in the Academy at Madrid, with two of his masterpieces,—the Dream of the Roman Patrician. The Virgin appeared to him, directing him to build the Church of St. Maria Maggiore. The second represents him narrating his dream to the Pope. This head is the original, which Wilkie has copied for his great picture of Columbus. He was painting it when I first saw that artist, and I was struck by it as singularly inappropriate. I now saw how he had selected it—here it was masterly because suited to the character represented. It is without power, elevation, or resolution; but is noble, soft, pious, and munificent. Wilkie admired it as the founder of a Basilicon, and placed it on the shoulders of the discoverer of America.The Isabella pourtrays charity; the “sleeping Patrician”—rest. The one abstracts the soul from surrounding things; the other subjects you to them:—you lighten your step and fear to tread. The Roman is seated in a chair by the table, on which lies his closed book; he has gently dropped asleep, his head resting on his hand. Nothing is recumbent, but all is still: it is the rest of the spirit rather than the slumber of the frame: the spirit is elsewhere; the sleep so light, yet the abstraction so deep, that you watch for a breathing. The light falls on his reclining head from the vision of Mary and her child above. On the floor near his feet, seated by her work—the work laid down and her head reclining on a cushion—his daughter lies in profound slumber: her dog, curled at her feet, is asleep too. The picture—no, the chamber—is otherwise in darkness. By what door did he enter? Hush! lest they awake!To see this picture, close the windows.I took leave of Murillo. This was the last of his great works that I looked upon; its tone the last to dwell on mine eyes, mingling with those of the St. Isabella and the Mary of the Franciscans, which constitute it in my mind the ideal of painting.I cannot suppress my indignation at such masterpieces being kept and shown in gilt gaudy frames, and huddled together like the wares of an old curiosity shop. The eye is tortured by the glare, and the mind oppressed by the numbers. They were painted for altar-pieces; they were designed to dwell in the glare of the Temple; to be gazed upon by the kneeling penitent on the floor. How is it that, with our virtuoso faith, our religion of sentiment, no one dreams of replacing them on their thrones or pedestals, where, with nothing to distract the thought or oppress the eye, they may, if no longer fitted to inspire devotion, at least fill and raise the heart.Our age has produced a descriptive epic, of which Italy is the scene and heroine. Her fortune, ruins, arts, monuments, are the incidents; the works of her genius are transmuted into verse; and if the marble perished, the Venus and the Gladiator in Childe Harold, would live. But where are the St. John, the Holy Family, the Transfiguration, the Last Supper, the Flight into Egypt, the Descent from the Cross, the Last Judgment? How is it that sculpture’s rainbow-sister has claimed no tribute, and inspired no strain—that all things in Italy are there but Raphael, Titian, Guido, and the Caracci? After seeing Murillo I understood this blank. Byron in his portraits of statues, enters upon no artistic disquisitions—they were to him the subject they represented, as if seen in life, or conceived in fancy; and he brings back from the marble to flesh and blood, and discovers as such the struggle of the Trojan father and the disdainful majesty of the archer-god. The failing head of the Dacian awakens the scene and circumstances of his end, and the great and beautiful grief of the Phrygian mother recalls the desolation of the mother-mistress of cities and of the world. Where was the painting in Italy possessed of such a spell?I may now confess that in Italy I never saw a picture that satisfied my judgment, however much it may have excited my admiration. In admiring one or more, there was an internal struggle to impose upon myself a standard of excellence, in what was the most excellent of known works. The canvases of Murillo reconciled me to myself, by presenting a higher level, or at least a more perfect adaptation. Other masters may have been in artistic powers superior to Murillo, but he excels in a perfect knowledge and judgment of himself in reference to the ends of art. What mortal power or genius could present a Transfiguration so that it should be natural? What truth could there be in the struggle of the Giants and Jupiter? Could you be transported in spirit to the foreground of Purgatory, of the Last Judgment, of a beleaguered Fortress, or a contested Field? What art could render simple an assembly of the gods? The painting might be exquisite, but the attempt would overpower the master, or the subject would be beneath his power.It has been remarked, that when a person becomes an admirer of Murillo, he is wholly fascinated and incapable of all discrimination, admires his master’s defects and despises all others’ merit. I feel that fascination—if fascination it be—where you clearly see the cause. No other painter ever awakened in me curiosity. In him there is the metaphysician no less than the artist. In other painters you may admire the painting—in other pictures the painter. In Murillo it is the poet. Colour is his verse, light and shadow his metre; and his were dreams rather than poetry; or he dreamed as a poet and painted when he awoke. There is no drama in his scenes—it is ecstacy or thought. From the metaphysics of the mind he passed to the psychology of the face: he painted no portraits, and yet every head is one. He selected the head as pourtraying the character, and the character to suit the picture. It is not the beauty of form, but the innate connexion between mind and form which nature herself has traced in making the face the mirror of the mind which he stretched forth his hand to grasp. His own portrait I therefore inquired after, to see if I could recognise the man: it is painted by one of his best pupils. I have already said that I have recognised his “Isabella.” When I meet his “Patrician,” I shall recognise him in like manner. When I saw his own picture I was startled most; for it is the portrait of one who of all living men has exhibited, in the same qualities—that of judging of himself in reference to his work—Lord Metcalfe. Ordinary men resemble not their parents but their age. Extraordinary men of every age are those who can preserve their own likeness, and having a likeness of their own to preserve, resemble each other.[328]“The Spanish artists usually endeavoured to produce an exact imitation of material nature;while the Italians aimed at, and attained higher results. The object of the Spaniards being less difficult of attainment, the perfection with which they imitated nature, passes conception. To that they devoted all the energies of their genius; while you may search in vain in the best productions of Italy,—not excepting the school of Venice, one that most resembles the Spanish,—for anything approaching their success in that respect.”—Wells’sArt. Antiquities of Spain,p.361.[329]These words apply specially to Vicente de Juanes, founder of the School of Valencia.[330]“βραχεῖ δὲ μύθῳ, πάντα συλλήβδην μάθε·Πᾶσαι τέχναι βροτοῖσιν ἐκ Προμηθέως.”[331]In fact Ribera might have taken greater license.“Διὸς δέ τοικτηνὸς κύων, δαφοινὸς ἀετὸς, λάβρωςδιαρταμήσει σώματος μέγα ῥάκος,ἄκλητος ἕρπων δαιταλεὺς πανήμερος,κελαινόβρωτον δ’ ἧπαρ ἐκθοινήσεται.”[332]That the Virgin was born without sin, is a dogma of the Catholic church. The disputes with reference to this subject bear on the mode, viz., whether by retractive grace, or by an original miracle. I mention this, in consequence of the extravagances on this head, which are introduced into Murray’s “Handbook.”[333]Murillo said of the picture of the Dead Prelate, by Valdez, and which stood next to this picture at thecaridad, that he “could not look at it without holding his nose.” It represents putrefaction.[334]I find in Mr. Stirling’s work on “Spanish Artists,” that Murillo had a sister. I find there nothing to contradict, but everything to confirm, the history of Murillo which his brush had taught me.
One is accustomed to think of Spanish artists as pupils only, even when rivals of the great masters with whom we are familiar. Such, at least, was my impression, and accordingly, no less was my surprise and suspense than delight, at the first glance at the “Murillo Chamber,” at Seville. The picture which faced me, as I entered, was Christ bending from the cross to embrace St. Felix, of Cantalicio—I might have taken it for Vandyke: next came a St. Joseph, equally admirable, yet different; then a San Leandro—the one might have been from the pencil of Dominichino, the other of Titian; and so I turned, from picture to picture, finding new rivals to every standard and style of excellence. The question then arose of comparison between the Spanish, the Italian, and Flemish schools. Afterwards, at Madrid, I visited repeatedly the Spanish collections, to possess myself thoroughly with them before visiting the Italian and Flemish galleries. A severer test I could not apply, for the gallery of the foreign schools, at Madrid, is the richest in the world. Here are the grander compositions of Vandyke. One of Raphael, theSpasimo, might, if in the Vatican, displace from its throne the Transfiguration. Three or four masterpieces, besides ten others, are from Raphael’s pencil, and form a collection of his works equal to that of the Vatican. Of Titian, there is a gallery in itself—no less than forty paintings all on a large scale. Amongst these is the celebrated one of “Fruitfulness;” a flock of cherubs, just as you may see chickens collected under an inverted basket in the streets of any Spanish town, and which, if anything, would eclipse or rival Murillo in the gracefulness and variety of his infantine conceptions. The result of the comparison was to relieve me from the restraint of habit, and I could, with conviction and boldness now assert, that in painting, Spain has no rival.
The Spanish school is most various; but in all its varieties it is natural. It has no particular manner:—manner is no more than systematic or constitutional failing.[328]It is the error to which a man is liable, and which, when he founds a system and instructs others, is more readily caught by his pupils than his merits,—a colourless and unblemished glass is invisible. We become sensible of its presence by its changing the hue or distorting the ray. And so manner in painting either perverts or obscures nature.
Nature, in her varieties, has a counterpart in the Spanish school. She is represented darkly in Ribera and Roelas, mildly in Cano, richly in Morales, boldly in Zurbaran, brightly in Velasquez, divinely in Murillo.
The school of Spain is solemn. The subjects which were alone worthy to be immortalized, were those which pertained to immortality, and art was dignified no less in its application than its powers. Painting was a religious exercise. The enthusiasm of art was linked to fervour of faith. The studio was an oratory, and “each work was commenced and prosecuted with fasting and prayer.”[329]The lords were the convents; the inmates were sons at once of the founder and of the peasant. For these Spanish art exercised her calling, not to please the caprice of a virtuoso, or to tapestry the walls of a Sybarite. Seville or Cordova presented no Flemish pot-houses. In the productions of their masters, there was none of the extravagant mythology of a Rubens, or the more finished lasciviousness of a Titian; no dissecting-room of a Michael Angelo; none of the finery of a Paolo Veronese. There were neither allegories, portraits, nor giants wrestling with the rocks.
The stranger who visits only Madrid will be surprised at such a description, for he has there seen what is called the “Spanish Rooms,” filled with portraits, allegories, extravagances, dwarfs, heathen gods, and historical compositions, and these constitute in his eyes the masterpieces of Spanish art. The reason is this; that at Madrid are collected the paintings of Velasquez, who is so far Spanish only as the want of manner makes him so. Born in Seville, he became a Madrileño, and a parasite. His pictures are all at the capital, and in the style suited to the taste of foreigners. The Spaniards of the capital esteem their painter, and are reacted upon by the estimation in which he is held by foreigners.
The thought in all things comes before the execution. What would the work of him who chiselled the Apollo Belvidere have been, if applied to the person of a Souter Johnny? So the art of Velasquez was expended on Philips and abortions. His paintings are common-place domestic scenes, or they are classical, and there he parodies the poets of Greece and travesties their gods. His chief works are beautiful caricatures in oil, without satire and without fun. Before returning to Murillo and Seville, I must say a few words of his chief works.
Vulcan’s Forgeis an exquisitely finished group of naked Spaniards, with arms, breasts, shoulders, and loins developed. They are heavy below, as if trampers, not blacksmiths; nor have they been hardened and bronzed by exposure to the air, the furnace, or the sun: they have had their clothes taken off within the hour: the shirts must have been filthy; the bodies are unwashed. The picture is an exposure of nakedness. The walls of the place, and the manners, and the countenances, would appear rather an effort to unidealize the Greek, than to raise the modern to a conception of ancient poetry. In it there is the genius of painting, not the painting of a man of genius.
The Belidores.Drunkards; or, Bacchus among his Companions.—These are Castilian peasants engaged in a most un-Spanish debauch. One naked, and bearing a classic wreath, personates Bacchus, with a maudlin solemnity on a sensual countenance. Another presents a full face of coarse and stupid laughter, and wears on his head something between a Spaniard’s sombrero and an Irish hat. This is the picture Wilkie selected from out the treasures of Madrid, to admire, to study, to imitate; copying and recopying it, and so fixing in his own mind the physiognomy of the laughing drunkard with the Irish hat, as thence to bring forth a numerous progeny, sometimes with a hat more, sometimes less, the worse for wear.
The Spinners.A Flemish picture, as seen through a magnifying glass: the scene such as Teniers or Ostade might have selected. Two women, a young and an old one, are sitting spinning at the wheel. Between them the back shop is seen with customers and tapestry exposed for sale—and, therefore, this is a painting highly admired by the English. The back-ground is remarkable for its light, or rather for the shades; for painting, like the magic lantern, produces brightness by shutting out the light. Wilkie said of Velasquez, “he paints the very air we breathe;” just so a clear and perfect mirror might be described as glass. One of the pictures of the same master has been called “The Theology of Painting,” and another, “The Philosophy of Light.” His perspectives and distances are not rendered by lines, or by any peculiarity of construction or drawing. He put on the canvas what he saw.
If it is wonderful to see a limb or a figure, even when all the picture is consecrated to that effort, break forth, as it were, from the dead surface and rise towards you, how much more to behold that canvas fly open and spread back, so that by the aid of a tremulous ray, breaking across it here and there, you may see around and distinguish things, places, and persons! This is the triumph of the art of painting, and here Velasquez stands alone.
The Studio.—Here, like one of those vaudevilles, in which the wings of a stage are represented, and you hear the plaudits of another audience “within”—the artist is seen at the corner of his picture, the back of it being towards you. There are a dog, dwarfs, and a lady-in-waiting in attendance on an infantine Infanta, who is standing for her portrait. The presence of the royal parents is signified by another stage-claptrap—their reflection in a mirror. All the figures are splendid as separate parts, but there is no dignity in any expression, or any purpose in the whole. When Philip saw this picture, he said, “One thing is wanting,” and taking the palette and the brush, he traced the cross of St. Jago on the artist’s breast.
The Surrender of Breda—or the Picture, as it, is called, of the Lances,—from the number and the thickness of the forest of these that appear to the right. This is indeed a grand composition. It owes its power to its being a portrait and a history of the chief figure. The noble and chivalrous Spinola, with an expression of courteous grief, is bending down, and laying his hand upon the shoulder of his commonplace and stern, though vanquished, opponent. The exaltation of triumph is subdued. The victor’s thoughts are with the unfortunate. What a representation of victory! Here, for once, the correctness of the eye has supplied the place of the sight of the mind, and his pencil, like Allan’s in the Polish Exiles, was above himself.
The last I shall notice is his Christ upon the Cross,—the only picture of this description, with one exception, which I have found among seventy. It is an immortal work.
I cannot quit the Gallery of Madrid without some notice of an incident which fixed two pictures especially on my memory in the description of the Gallery. The two subjoined pictures will be found in Murray’s Hand-book, “No. 121,—Prometheus, a finely painted picture ofGOREandBOWELS;such alone as could be conceived by a bull-fighter, andplease a people whose sports are blood and torture. How different from the same subject by the poetical Titian, See No. 787.” “No. 787,Prometheus,”—compare thepoetical treatment by our Italian, with 121, theBUTCHER PRODUCTIONof the practical Spaniard, Ribera: it is “Æschylus to Torquemada.” I fancied, having examined the two pictures, that the writer had mistaken the one for the other; I therefore returned to the Museum, Guidebook in hand, and remained satisfied that it was the deliberate purpose of the writer to represent the pictures as he has done.
ThePrometheusof Titian (121), lies on his back on the earth, with the heels in the air: the top of thethe spectator;—the face is consequently not seen. The hero of Æschylus first endures reproach in silent scorn, and then bursts forth in indignation, claiming unbounded merit for his works.[330]He stands, his face to his accusers and to heaven. Here is a man lying on his back! was thought or suffering to be expressed in a head of shaggy hair? How treat with paint a subject poetically without action and without feature? This, Prometheus! thefore-thinker—this, the stealer of fire from heaven! It is a corpse revived and cast upon the rocks; and the picture, if that of a poet, must have been designed to represent the deluge. The only animated portion of the composition is the eagle—he is] the predominating figure perched upon the body; for by the manner of the fastenings, the man, if not quite dead, could easily have driven him away. The Prometheus of Æschylus is bound so that the winged dog of Jupiter may come undisturbed to his uninvited daily feast. This is no eagle; it is a vulture feeding on carrion: the colouring is from the dissecting-room—but not the anatomy. The bird has laid bare an enormous surface of the putrid flesh, somewhere about the breast, where there could be no such exposure of muscle, and to which, moreover, the eagle’s commission did not extend. Such is “the poetical treatment by our Italian.”
In No. 787, the Spanish master has painted a man full of life, not lying where he has been tossed, but held where he is bound. His body writhes; one hand supports him off the ground, the other is raised either in agony or supplication. The drawn lineaments of the face and the expanded mouth, make you listen for the cry it is about to utter, or which has died away. The tormentor is without his reach, and isunseen—you may distinguish where he is, but you have to strain the sight to penetrate the gloom in which he broods;—there is no doubt of the presence of the one, or of the cause of the agony of the other; for from the slightly gashedside,[331]a filament is being drawn away. This is the “blood-battered subject,” the “butcher production of gore and bowels” of our Spaniard.
Ribera’s Prometheus would not stand were a Daniel brought to judgment, for the eagle takes a Shylock’s share, having no more right to the entrail, which he is suffered to pilfer by the Spaniard, than to the carrion on which he is gorged by the Italian.
Who ever painted such children as Murillo?—the cherubs of Raphael are statuettes; those of Rubens, fœtuses; Murillo’s are children and cherubs. The brood is as prolific as the type is beautiful—golden, rosy, dimpled, sporting in troops, or flying in flocks, and then gathered into his canvas—light as the air; bright as the rainbow, yet of flesh and blood; full of life and grace, of vigour and ease, of health and gladness.
Who ever painted such virgins? The Madonnas of Italy are matrons and mothers. Mary holds her Child, or she gazes on Him as she shows Him,—it is maternal love. The Marys of Murillo are scarcely past the verge of childhood; the cheeks are full and ruddy; the form is plump. There is the ethereal, but it is in the expression: the face is upturned, the large eye raised, and the mouth half open, the hands pressed across the breast. The figure is erect—the size natural. They are never the same to look upon, and yet each can only be described in the same words as the rest. These bright Virgins in the sky, these laughing cherubs in the clouds, fill the canvas of Murillo with joy and innocence.
The gallery of Seville consists of a convent and its church. The rooms, cloisters, and corridors are all lined with paintings; the church is, in like manner, filled with them, high and low and all around. One chamber is set apart for Murillo: in it eighteen or nineteen of his chief works, nearly all the size of life, are collected. In reviewing them at an interval of nineteen months, it is impossible for me to say to which I would give the preference. One he used to call “mypicture.” It is the St. Thomas of Villanueva, Archbishop of Valencia, distributing alms. It draws neither on the tender nor the ideal, and the selection indicates not the judgment of the artist, but the disposition of the man. “The Adoration of the Shepherds,” is, in colouring and conception, not unlike the “Repose in Egypt” of Correggio, at Parma.
Santa Justa and Rufina sustaining the Giralda, is beautifully executed, but incongruous and out of nature, and has neither the pure tints nor the deep dyes of the painter. The celebrated Señora de la Servilleta is a gipsy woman of Triana. I have mentioned these two as the pictures which pleased me the least; although in the St. Felix receiving the Child from the Virgin, how charmingly are infancy, young womanly beauty, and ripe old age grouped and pourtrayed! It is three pictures, not one. That of St. Antonio is fervour without fanaticism. Leandro is majestic and triumphant prelacy, in Venetian brocade, under an oriental sun. Like to it are the two ideal portraits, or rather real portraits, under the names of Leandro and Isidore in the sacristy of the cathedral. There are three Conceptions—una de diversâ—blooming maidens in the same attitude, arrayed in white and blue, with angels in the clouds; and yet there is no monotony. They have the serenity of beauty of the Sevillian maidens, by whom Murillo’s pencil was inspired; but the fulness of the lower part of the face reminded me of the women of modern Rome—the grave, dark-eyed, thoughtful Romans. The Saint Joseph with the Infant Jesus is a high-minded Jew, and the child, a prodigy. This picture recalls one in the cathedral which I may here notice, as in speaking of that building I could think of nothing but itself. The picture I mean is, the “Guardian Angel.” An angel leads a child and points to heaven: the figures are less than life. The picture is dark, the tints are not clear, the outline not distinct: there is no grace in the form of either, no beauty in the face; yet in this consists the triumph of the master—the inward mind shines through the veil, and you are sent at once to the inspiration that has descended, and to the innocence that looks up. This picture is an admirable exponent of the imaginative temperament of Murillo. He could revere, and hope, and wonder, to bring forth by pencil-strokes, the compassionate calm, with the benevolent anxiety of the angel’s face and the trustingness of that of the child—mingled with the searching expression that follows the angel’s finger, as to find the heavenly realms which those alone like it, can seek or see!
The church at the Museum contains the St. Thomas of Zurbaran—held by some to be the finest picture in the world; the St. Dominic, a remarkable carving in wood, by Montañes; and masterpieces by almost all the Sevillian school. I had visited it several times, scarcely noticing two or three pictures by Murillo, placed there as not worthy of admission to the “Murillo Chamber.” One of these, however, haunted me after leaving the Museum. Next morning, and at the earliest hour admittance could be gained, I went to examine it. It was a Virgin, but of a different order from his other Virgins—colossal, looking, not up to heaven, but down on earth; the hands joined and raised, not crossed upon the bosom; the eye cast down, the ball covered. It is not the full front figure upstretched; the left knee rests upon a cloud, yet the right foot is planted with the firmness of a statue. The dishevelled hair flows not on the shoulders, but streams wildly; and the dark blue mantle is whirled about and carried away. The picture is divided into two zones,—the upper one of gold—the sun; the lower one frigid and pale. She floats between heaven and earth. The picture is placed high in the apse. As you approach and recede, she seems now to ascend and now to descend. You cannot tell whether it is an angel coming down to men, or a saint rising to the sky.
His other Virgins are beautiful;—this one is heroic: his other figures are flesh and blood, this one is of marble. His other Marys are timid, hopeful, innocent; this is one of consciousness. The others are absorbed and ecstatic; this is a youthful Juno—the Spanish form. The Andalusian features give way to the ideal lines of the Greeks. His other Virgins wear the outward expression of some mental character associating the weakness of humanity with the beauty of nature. Here there is no part you can singly grasp; no feature you can separate, explain, or admire;—fleeting like the cloud, it dazzles like the sun. The vision enters as the tones of music, and returns on the memory like a vessel’s track in the night.
Such was the vision which Petrarch beheld when he exclaimed, “Beautiful Virgin! clothed with the sun, crowned by the stars, and so pleasing to the sun that his light he has hidden in thee!” No wonder that the Andalusian peasants’ salutation should be, “Santa Maria purissima,” or the reply, “Sin peccado concebida.”[332]
The “Virgin of the Franciscans” is amongst pictures what the Apollo Belvidere is among statues—a constellation of heavenly graces. I felt that it must have a history. I turned over such books as were within reach, but found no mention of it, except in one recent publication, where it is noticed as an extravagant production that had corrupted the taste of Seville; but, on inquiring among the Sevillians, I found that my anticipations were not vain.
Imagine Murillo in the fulness of his years, and still in the height of his power, called upon by the corporation of the Cathedral to paint a Virgin for that edifice, to crown at once that unrivalled work, and his own unequalled fame. Imagine him pacing that hall, raising his eyes to its vault, and his mind to the effort. This was not to be a picture to be placed on a wall, enclosed in a chapel, or screened on an altar-frame: it was to be an emblem of descending charity and ascending prayer, radiating through its vastness, and filling its space. Go then to the Museum and contemplate the “Virgin of the Franciscans,” and you will understand why she looks down—why her joined hands are raised—why she is colossal—how she is sublime.
When the picture was finished, the Cabildoproceededto judge of it, and exclaimed:Ayach che mamarachio, “Oh! what a daub.” Murillo made a present of it to the Franciscans, the advocates of theessentialpurity of the Virgin. It was suspended under the dome of their church: all Seville poured forth to behold it, the Cabildo among the rest.
The Cabildo was personified in a Sevillian connoisseur, who was offended at my admiration. “If you saw it close,” said he, “as I have, you would think nothing of it.” It was useless to tell him that it was designed for the other side of a gulf—that it was painted to represent the heavens; to be seen from—not to touch—the earth. The critic pointed to the contradictions of the cloak flying on the right side, and the hair on the left;—in vain I answered that it was not a ship, and that in that distraction of the elements, in which she stands motionless, consisted the poetry of the work. Murillo has filled the Caridad; and hence his pictures have been less scattered. There are, however, five vacant spaces. Of two the robber still retains possession; two he has sold to an English duke, who has hitherto mistaken the pleasure of possessing a good picture for that of performing a good deed; the fifth, on its way back from Paris, was detained at the Academy of Madrid.Tastebeing as good aplea for plunderas philanthropy: sense or anger suggested to the Sevillians to leave the place of these pictures vacant—they have hung curtains on the empty spaces: seven still remain. Two of these are the largest he has painted, and represent multitudes—the Distribution of loaves and fishes, and Moses striking the rock;—two are Annunciations, in very different styles, the one bright and beautiful, the other large, dark, and solemn; in this one the Virgin is thebeau idéalof a Sevillian in her mantilla;—two are gems in size as well as worth,—a John the Baptist and an infant Christ: the former is especially beautiful:—the seventh is a St. Juan di Dios, the founder of hospitals—a dark picture. The saint is carrying a sick man to the hospital, and an angel, a tall youth with outspread wings, is supporting him. Opposite to it hangs a curtain—let me raise it.
In the vesture of a nun, with the halo of a saint and the crown of a queen, Isabella stands over a boy whose head she is laving. The boy bends over a large silver vessel, from which the reflected light illumines his flushed face and winking eye, leaning on the stool which supports the basin: he is suffering, but patient, under the hands that perform the office. How the soft fingers hold—yet scarcely touch—the head!—how gently they apply the napkin! Beside her stands a maiden with a golden jewelled ewer; she watches till the cloth is dry;—an elderly lady looks from behind to counsel and aid her mistress. A second attendant carries a tray with ointment, and over her shoulder, in eastern fashion, hangs a lace embroidered napkin. The service is regal, not dramatic. There are other patients ready to be served. An old man in front is unbinding his leg; another is limping in on crutches from behind: there is no crowd, but there is work prepared for these lovely hands. The queen’s eyes are averted from the sores beneath her touch, and rest on an old woman below, whose upturned face reveals awe and gratitude. The sores on the boy’s head show the blush of granulation; but the care of the queen is still required. Who said the painting made him smell the sore?[333]—it is clean and washed and healthy.
There are here no forms of unnatural beings—no forced images—no angels’ wings: it is Isabella in her palace, amidst her ladies, at her ordinary work—nothing that is not simple; nothing that is not true; nothing pictured except that which has been; and pictured that it may prompt others to do the same—nothing that is not common, save that such deeds are as rare as the hands by which they are here performed.
Amongst living beings I have seen one whose life is told in this picture—and it is her portrait. Murillo must have known some such one; from her life derived the thought, and from her face the model. She bears no resemblance to his Virgins. There are here no ideal lines—no blushing tints; no childlike innocence is here—that face is mild and solemn, and full of care and tenderness. He must have seen it in a sister.[334]
This picture is now in the Academy at Madrid, with two of his masterpieces,—the Dream of the Roman Patrician. The Virgin appeared to him, directing him to build the Church of St. Maria Maggiore. The second represents him narrating his dream to the Pope. This head is the original, which Wilkie has copied for his great picture of Columbus. He was painting it when I first saw that artist, and I was struck by it as singularly inappropriate. I now saw how he had selected it—here it was masterly because suited to the character represented. It is without power, elevation, or resolution; but is noble, soft, pious, and munificent. Wilkie admired it as the founder of a Basilicon, and placed it on the shoulders of the discoverer of America.
The Isabella pourtrays charity; the “sleeping Patrician”—rest. The one abstracts the soul from surrounding things; the other subjects you to them:—you lighten your step and fear to tread. The Roman is seated in a chair by the table, on which lies his closed book; he has gently dropped asleep, his head resting on his hand. Nothing is recumbent, but all is still: it is the rest of the spirit rather than the slumber of the frame: the spirit is elsewhere; the sleep so light, yet the abstraction so deep, that you watch for a breathing. The light falls on his reclining head from the vision of Mary and her child above. On the floor near his feet, seated by her work—the work laid down and her head reclining on a cushion—his daughter lies in profound slumber: her dog, curled at her feet, is asleep too. The picture—no, the chamber—is otherwise in darkness. By what door did he enter? Hush! lest they awake!
To see this picture, close the windows.
I took leave of Murillo. This was the last of his great works that I looked upon; its tone the last to dwell on mine eyes, mingling with those of the St. Isabella and the Mary of the Franciscans, which constitute it in my mind the ideal of painting.
I cannot suppress my indignation at such masterpieces being kept and shown in gilt gaudy frames, and huddled together like the wares of an old curiosity shop. The eye is tortured by the glare, and the mind oppressed by the numbers. They were painted for altar-pieces; they were designed to dwell in the glare of the Temple; to be gazed upon by the kneeling penitent on the floor. How is it that, with our virtuoso faith, our religion of sentiment, no one dreams of replacing them on their thrones or pedestals, where, with nothing to distract the thought or oppress the eye, they may, if no longer fitted to inspire devotion, at least fill and raise the heart.
Our age has produced a descriptive epic, of which Italy is the scene and heroine. Her fortune, ruins, arts, monuments, are the incidents; the works of her genius are transmuted into verse; and if the marble perished, the Venus and the Gladiator in Childe Harold, would live. But where are the St. John, the Holy Family, the Transfiguration, the Last Supper, the Flight into Egypt, the Descent from the Cross, the Last Judgment? How is it that sculpture’s rainbow-sister has claimed no tribute, and inspired no strain—that all things in Italy are there but Raphael, Titian, Guido, and the Caracci? After seeing Murillo I understood this blank. Byron in his portraits of statues, enters upon no artistic disquisitions—they were to him the subject they represented, as if seen in life, or conceived in fancy; and he brings back from the marble to flesh and blood, and discovers as such the struggle of the Trojan father and the disdainful majesty of the archer-god. The failing head of the Dacian awakens the scene and circumstances of his end, and the great and beautiful grief of the Phrygian mother recalls the desolation of the mother-mistress of cities and of the world. Where was the painting in Italy possessed of such a spell?
I may now confess that in Italy I never saw a picture that satisfied my judgment, however much it may have excited my admiration. In admiring one or more, there was an internal struggle to impose upon myself a standard of excellence, in what was the most excellent of known works. The canvases of Murillo reconciled me to myself, by presenting a higher level, or at least a more perfect adaptation. Other masters may have been in artistic powers superior to Murillo, but he excels in a perfect knowledge and judgment of himself in reference to the ends of art. What mortal power or genius could present a Transfiguration so that it should be natural? What truth could there be in the struggle of the Giants and Jupiter? Could you be transported in spirit to the foreground of Purgatory, of the Last Judgment, of a beleaguered Fortress, or a contested Field? What art could render simple an assembly of the gods? The painting might be exquisite, but the attempt would overpower the master, or the subject would be beneath his power.
It has been remarked, that when a person becomes an admirer of Murillo, he is wholly fascinated and incapable of all discrimination, admires his master’s defects and despises all others’ merit. I feel that fascination—if fascination it be—where you clearly see the cause. No other painter ever awakened in me curiosity. In him there is the metaphysician no less than the artist. In other painters you may admire the painting—in other pictures the painter. In Murillo it is the poet. Colour is his verse, light and shadow his metre; and his were dreams rather than poetry; or he dreamed as a poet and painted when he awoke. There is no drama in his scenes—it is ecstacy or thought. From the metaphysics of the mind he passed to the psychology of the face: he painted no portraits, and yet every head is one. He selected the head as pourtraying the character, and the character to suit the picture. It is not the beauty of form, but the innate connexion between mind and form which nature herself has traced in making the face the mirror of the mind which he stretched forth his hand to grasp. His own portrait I therefore inquired after, to see if I could recognise the man: it is painted by one of his best pupils. I have already said that I have recognised his “Isabella.” When I meet his “Patrician,” I shall recognise him in like manner. When I saw his own picture I was startled most; for it is the portrait of one who of all living men has exhibited, in the same qualities—that of judging of himself in reference to his work—Lord Metcalfe. Ordinary men resemble not their parents but their age. Extraordinary men of every age are those who can preserve their own likeness, and having a likeness of their own to preserve, resemble each other.
[328]“The Spanish artists usually endeavoured to produce an exact imitation of material nature;while the Italians aimed at, and attained higher results. The object of the Spaniards being less difficult of attainment, the perfection with which they imitated nature, passes conception. To that they devoted all the energies of their genius; while you may search in vain in the best productions of Italy,—not excepting the school of Venice, one that most resembles the Spanish,—for anything approaching their success in that respect.”—Wells’sArt. Antiquities of Spain,p.361.
[329]These words apply specially to Vicente de Juanes, founder of the School of Valencia.
[330]
“βραχεῖ δὲ μύθῳ, πάντα συλλήβδην μάθε·Πᾶσαι τέχναι βροτοῖσιν ἐκ Προμηθέως.”
“βραχεῖ δὲ μύθῳ, πάντα συλλήβδην μάθε·Πᾶσαι τέχναι βροτοῖσιν ἐκ Προμηθέως.”
“βραχεῖ δὲ μύθῳ, πάντα συλλήβδην μάθε·
Πᾶσαι τέχναι βροτοῖσιν ἐκ Προμηθέως.”
[331]In fact Ribera might have taken greater license.
“Διὸς δέ τοικτηνὸς κύων, δαφοινὸς ἀετὸς, λάβρωςδιαρταμήσει σώματος μέγα ῥάκος,ἄκλητος ἕρπων δαιταλεὺς πανήμερος,κελαινόβρωτον δ’ ἧπαρ ἐκθοινήσεται.”
“Διὸς δέ τοικτηνὸς κύων, δαφοινὸς ἀετὸς, λάβρωςδιαρταμήσει σώματος μέγα ῥάκος,ἄκλητος ἕρπων δαιταλεὺς πανήμερος,κελαινόβρωτον δ’ ἧπαρ ἐκθοινήσεται.”
“Διὸς δέ τοι
κτηνὸς κύων, δαφοινὸς ἀετὸς, λάβρως
διαρταμήσει σώματος μέγα ῥάκος,
ἄκλητος ἕρπων δαιταλεὺς πανήμερος,
κελαινόβρωτον δ’ ἧπαρ ἐκθοινήσεται.”
[332]That the Virgin was born without sin, is a dogma of the Catholic church. The disputes with reference to this subject bear on the mode, viz., whether by retractive grace, or by an original miracle. I mention this, in consequence of the extravagances on this head, which are introduced into Murray’s “Handbook.”
[333]Murillo said of the picture of the Dead Prelate, by Valdez, and which stood next to this picture at thecaridad, that he “could not look at it without holding his nose.” It represents putrefaction.
[334]I find in Mr. Stirling’s work on “Spanish Artists,” that Murillo had a sister. I find there nothing to contradict, but everything to confirm, the history of Murillo which his brush had taught me.