Book: The Old Masters and Their Pictures

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Besides the elder and younger De Heem and Maria Von Oesterwyck mentioned
at page 258, Jan Van Huysum, 1682-1749, was great in flower painting,
choosing flowers rather than fruit for his brush. If De Heem has been
called the Titian, Van Huysum has been defined as the Correggio, of
flowers and fruit. He reversed the ordinary course of artists by
beginning in a broad style, and progressing into an execution of the
finest details. In masterly drawing and truthfulness he was not inferior
to De Heem, though hardly reckoned his equal in other respects. Even in
Van Huysum's lifetime there was an eager demand for his pictures, of
which he left more than a hundred. There is an excellent fruit and
flower piece by him in Dulwich Gallery, and a masterpiece, 'A Vase with
Flowers,' is in the National Gallery.

Andrian Van der Werff was born in 1659, and died in 1722. He is
honourably distinguished for his pursuit of the ideal, in which he stood
alone among the Dutch artists of his day. He showed much sense of beauty
and elegance of form with great finish, but he had more than
counterbalancing faults. His grouping was artificial, his heads
monotonous, his colouring 'cold and heavy,' with 'a frosty feeling' in
his pictures. His flesh tints resembled ivory, yet his elegance was so
highly prized that he had many royal and noble patrons, for whom he
executed sculptural and mythological pieces. Many of his pictures are in
the Munich Gallery.

Anton Raphael Mengs was born in Bohemia 1728, and died in Rome 1774. His
father was a distinguished miniature painter, and gave his son a careful
education, training him to copy the masterpieces of Michael Angelo and
Raphael from his twelfth year. Unfortunately he remained a copyist and
an eclectic. He drew well, learnt chiaroscuro from studying Correggio,
and colouring from analysing Titian. He was acquainted with the best
technical processes in oil and fresco. All that teaching could do for a
man was done, and to a great extent in vain. For though he worked with
great conscientiousness, fancy and feeling were either originally
lacking, or they were overlaid and stifled by his excess of culture and
severe education. The most successful of his works are portraits, in
which masterly treatment makes up to some extent for the absence of
originality and subtle sympathy. But in his day, and with some reason,
Raphael Mengs was greatly prized, since he figured among a host of
ignorant, careless, and conceited painters. At the age of seventeen he
was appointed court painter to King Augustus of Saxony. He was summoned
to Spain by Charles III., who gave him a high salary. Among his good
works is an 'Assumption' on the high altar of the Catholic Church,
Dresden. An allegorical subject in fresco on the ceiling of the Camera
de Papini in the Vatican has 'beauty of form, delicate observation, and
masterly modelling.' Mengs wrote well on art, though in his writing also
his eclecticism comes out.




NOTE TO PAGE 96.


'I have been told that I have not done justice to Lionardo in
this short sketch. I give in an abridged form the accurate
appreciative analysis of the man and his work in Sir C, and Lady
Eastlake.'--KUGLER. It is stated that the versatility of
Lionardo was against him. He attempted too much for one man and
one life. An additional impediment was produced by his
temperament, 'dreamy, perfidious, procrastinating,' withal
desirous of shining in society. His ideal of the Lord's head is
the highest that art has realised. The apostles' heads are among
the truest and noblest. The countenances of his Madonnas are full
of ineffable sweetness and pathos. 'At the same time he analysed
the monstrous and misshapen, and has left us caricatures in which
he seems to have gloated over hideousness half human, half
brute. He altered and retouched without ceasing, always deferring
the conclusion of the task which he executed with untiring labour
and ceaseless dissatisfaction.' The wonder is not that he should
have left so little, but that he left enough to prove the
transcendent nature of his art. 'There is nothing stranger in
history than the fact that his great fame rests on one single
picture--long reduced to a shadow--on half-a-dozen pictures for
which his hand is alternately claimed and denied, and on
unfinished fragments which he himself condemned.' Lionardo was
too universal to be of any school.




INDEX.

PAGE

Albino 387
Angelico, Fra 36
Anguisciola 388
Backhuysen 415
Baroccio 385
Bartolommeo, Fra 77
Bellini, The 54
Berchem 407
Bol 402
Bordone 393
Both 418
Botticelli 369
Canaletto 358
Capella, Van de 416
Caravaggio 385
Carpaccio 375
Carracci, The 212
Cellini 69
Claude Loraine 296
Correggio 185
Crivelli 375
Cuyp 255
Domenichino 220
Dow 398
Du Jardin 410
Duerer 169
Eycks, The Van 41
Filippo, Fra 365
Fontana 389
Francia, Il 73
Gaddi 374
Garofalo 377
Ghiberti 31
Ghirlandajo 69
Gibbons, Grinling 359
Giorgione 181
Giotto 8
Gozzoli 366
Greuze 307
Guercino 386
Guido 218
Heem, De 258
Helst, Van der 403
Heyden, Van der 412
Hobbema 406
Holbein 309
Hondecoeter 416
Honthorst 395
Hooch 399
Huysum, Van 418
Kneller 359
Le Brun 303
Lely 355
Leyden, Van 393
Lionardo da Vinci 83
Lipi 376
Luini 378
Maas 401
Mabuse 48
Mantegna 64
Masaccio 34
Matsys 50
Memling 48
Mengs 420
Messina, Da 377
Metzu 259, 401
Michael Angelo 96
Murillo 280
Netcher 402
Orcagna 24
Ostade, Van 400
Palma 379
Pardenone 380
Parmigianino 384
Perugino 373
Pisano 23
Potter 257
Poussin 286
Raphael 125
Rembrandt 245
Romano 382
Rubens 225
Ruysdael 403
Salvator Rosa 222
Sarto, Del 81
Sassa errato 387
Segers 418
Signorelli 367
Snyders 394
Somer, Van 394
Spagna 381
Spagnoletto 386
Steen 396
Teniers, Father and Son 251
Terburg 259, 402
Tintoretto 194
Titian 157
Van Dyck 333
Vasari 388
Velasquez 360
Velde, Van de 411
Velde, Van de, The Younger 414
Veronese 205
Watteau 305
Wouvermans 253

FOOTNOTES:

[1] It is in their unconsciousness and earnestness that a parallel is
drawn between the first Italian painters and the Elizabethean poets. In
other respects the comparison may be reversed, for the early Italian
painters, from their restriction to religious painting, with even that
treated according to tradition, were as destitute of the breadth of
scope and fancy attained by their successors, as the Elizabethean poets
were distinguished by the exuberant freedom which failed in the more
formal scholars of Anne's reign.

[2] Kugler's Handbook of Art.

[3] While writing of goldsmiths that became painters, I may say a word
of a goldsmith who, without quitting his trade, was an unrivalled artist
in his line. I mean Benvenuto Cellini, 1500--1571, a man of violent
passions and little principle, who led a wild troubled life, of which he
has left an account as shameless as his character, in an autobiography.
Cellini was the most distinguished worker in gold and silver of his day,
and his richly chased dishes, goblets, and salt cellars, are still in
great repute.

[4] Kugler's _Handbook of Painting_.

[5] Kugler's _Handbook of Painting_.

[6] See note, page 422.

[7] Mrs Roscoe's _Life of Vittoria Colonna_

[8] Michael Angelo's will was very simple. 'I bequeath my soul to God,
my body to the earth, and my possessions to my nearest relations.'

[9] Lady Eastlake, _History of Our Lord_.

[10] Hare, _Walks in Rome_.

[11] Lanzi, in Hare's _Walks in Rome_.

[12] Rio. _Poetry of Christian Art_, in Hare's _Walks in Rome._

[13] Mrs Jameson.

[14] Dean Alford.

[15] _Imperial Biographical Dictionary_.

[16] Titian's age is variously given; some authorities make it
ninety-nine years, placing the date of his death in 1570 or 7.

[17] Kugler.

[18] The term originated in the French expression, '_du genre bas_.'

[19] He had a peculiar fondness for blue and bronze hues.

[20] It is due to Tintoret to say, that there are modern critics, who
look below the surface, and are at this date deeply enamoured of his
pictures. Tintoret's name now stands very high in art.

[21] Mrs Jameson.

[22] Guido said of Rubens: 'Does this painter mix blood with his
colours?'

[23] _Life of Rubens_.

[24] If I mistake not, this is the same Countess of Arundel who, in her
widowhood, resided in Italy in order to be near her young sons then at
Padua. Having provoked the suspicion of the Doge and Council of Venice,
she was arrested by them on a charge of treason, and brought before the
tribunal, where she successfully pled her own cause, and obtained her
release, the only woman who ever braved triumphantly the terrible 'ten.'

[25] Here is the description of a very different Rembrandt which appears
in this year's Exhibition of the Works by Old Masters: 'There is no
portrait here which equals Rembrandt's picture, from Windsor, "A Lady
Opening a Casement;" a not particularly appropriate name, because the
picture represents no such action. The lady is simply looking from an
open window, her left hand raised and resting at the side of the
opening. We believe there is nothing left to tell who this lady was,
with the grave, sad eyes, and lips that seem to quiver with a trouble
hardly yet assuaged collar, almost a tippet, for it falls below her
shoulders, together with lace cuffs. A triple band of large pearls goes
about her neck, and she has similar ornaments round each wrist. She
wears a mourning robe and black jewellery.... This picture, which
resembles in most of its qualities a pair, of somewhat larger size,
which were here last year, and also came from the Royal collection, is
signed and dated "Rembrandt, F. 1671." It is, therefore, a late work of
his. What wonderful harmony is here, of light, of colour, of tone. How
nearly perfect is the keeping of the whole picture; as a whole, and also
in respect of part to part. Could anything be truer than the breadth of
the chiaroscuro? Notice how beautifully, and with what subtle
gradations, the light reflected from her white collar strikes on her
slightly faded cheek; how tenderly it seems to play among the soft
tangles of the hair that time has thinned.'--_Athenaeum_.

[26] He had been called the Titian of flower and fruit painters. He
preferred fruit for his subject. His works are not common in England.
His masterpiece, 'The Chalice of the Sacrament,' crowned with a stately
wreath, and sheaves of corn and bunches of grapes among the flowers, is
at Vienna.

[27] Sir W. Stirling Maxwell.

[28] Sir W. Stirling Maxwell.

[29] Hare, _Wanderings in Spain_.

[30] Hare's _Wanderings in Spain_.

[31] The spelling is an English corruption of the French Claude.

[32] Poussin had a villa near Ponte Molle, and the road by which he used
to go to it is still called in Rome 'Poussin's walk.'

[33] Claude's summer villa is still pointed out near Rome.

[34] _Imperial Biographical Dictionary_.

[35] Madame Le Brun, whose maiden name was Vigee, born 1755, died 1842,
was an excellent portrait painter.

[36] Wornum.

[37] Wornum.

[38] Supposed to be a niece of Sir Thomas More's.

[39] Rev. J. Lewis, 1731.

[40] Wornum.

[41] A still more famous picture by Holbein is that called 'The Two
Ambassadors,' and believed to represent Sir Thomas Wyatt and his
secretary.

[42] Walpole.

[43] Walpole.

[44] Dwarfs figured at Charles's court, as at the court of Philip IV. of
Spain.

[45] The notion that Van Dyck sacrificed truth to grace is absolutely
contradicted by certain critics, who bring forward as a proof of their
contradiction what they consider the 'over-true' picture of the Queen
Henrietta Maria, shown at the last exhibition of the works of Old
Masters. The picture seems hardly to warrant the strong opinion of the
critics.

[46] Walpole.

[47] Walpole.

[48] Lady Eastlake and Dr. Waagen's works on Italian, Flemish, and Dutch
Art, modelled on Kugler.

[49] A lunette is a small picture, generally semicircular, surmounting
the main picture in an altar-piece.

[50] The Dutch still more than the Italian artists belonged largely to
families of artists bearing the same surnames.

[51] A picture with one door of two panels is called a diptych, with two
doors of three panels a triptych, with many doors and panels a
polyptych.

[52] Fairholt's 'Homes and Haunts of Foreign Artists.'

[53] Alchemists, like hermits, still existed in the seventeenth century.

[54] Bartholomew Van der Helst, 1613-1670, was another great Dutch
portrait painter. His portrait pieces with many figures are famous. An
'Archery Festival,' commemorating the Peace of Westphalia, includes
twenty-four figures full of individuality and finely drawn and coloured.
One of his best works is 'In the Workhouse,' at Amsterdam. Two women and
two men are conversing together in the foreground. There is a man with a
book, and a preacher delivering a sermon in the background.

[55] It may be that Ruysdael's straggling life was reflected in his
lowering skies and stormy seas.

[56] Other eminent painters, such as Van de Velde, Wouvermans, and
Berchem often supplied cattle and figures to Hobbema's landscapes.

[57] Was the apparently greater success of these partly denaturalised
Dutch landscape painters, as contrasted with the adversity of Ruysdael
and Hobbema, due to the classic mania?

[58] Peter Gysels was another painter of 'still life.' His butterflies
are said to have been rendered with 'exquisite finish.'


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