Book: The Old Masters and Their Pictures

S >> Sarah Tytler >> The Old Masters and Their Pictures




'_Right Wall_.--"Parnassus." Apollo surrounded by the Muses; on his
right, Homer, Virgil, and Dante. Below on the right, Sappho, supposed to
be addressing Corinna, Petrarch, Propertius, and Anacreon; on the left
Pindar and Horace, Sannazzaro, Boccaccio, and others. Beneath this, in
grisaille, are,--Alexander placing the poems of Homer in the tomb of
Achilles, and Augustus preventing the burning of Virgil's AEneid.

'_Left Wall_.--Above the window are Prudence, Fortitude, and Temperance.
On the left, Justinian delivers the Pandects to Tribonian. On the right,
Gregory IX. (with the features of Julius II.) delivers the Decretals to
a jurist;--Cardinal de' Medici, afterwards Leo X., Cardinal Farnese,
afterwards Paul III., and Cardinal del Monte, are represented near the
Pope. In the socle beneath is Solon addressing the people of Athens.

'_Wall of Egress_.--"The Disputa." So called from an impression that it
represents a Dispute upon the Sacrament. In the upper part of the
composition the heavenly host are present; Christ between the Virgin and
St John the Baptist; on the left, St Peter, Adam, St John, David, St
Stephen, and another; and on the right, St Paul, Abraham, St James,
Moses, St Lawrence, and St George. Below is an altar surrounded by the
Latin fathers, Gregory, Jerome, Ambrose, and Augustine. Near St
Augustine stand St Thomas Aquinas, St Anacletus, with the palm of a
martyr, and Cardinal Buenaventura reading. Those in front are Innocent
III., and in the background, Dante, near whom a monk in a black hood is
pointed out as Savonarola. The Dominican on the extreme left is supposed
to be Fra Angelico. The other figures are uncertain.' ...

'Raphael commenced his work in the Vatican by painting the ceiling and
the four walls in the room called _della Segnatura_, on the surface of
which he had to represent four great compositions, which embraced the
principal divisions of the encyclopedia of that period; namely,
Theology, Philosophy, Poetry, and Jurisprudence.

'It will be conceived, that to an artist imbued with the traditions of
the Umbrian School, the first of these subjects was an unparalleled
piece of good fortune: and Raphael, long familiar with the allegorical
treatment of religious compositions, turned it here to the most
admirable account; and, not content with the suggestions of his own
genius, he availed himself of all the instruction he could derive from
the intelligence of others. From these combined inspirations resulted,
to the eternal glory of the Catholic faith and of Christian art, a
composition without a rival in the history of painting, and, we may also
add, without a name; for to call it lyric or epic is not enough, unless,
indeed, we mean, by using these expressions, to compare it with the
allegorical epic of Dante, alone worthy to be ranked with this
marvellous production of the pencil of Raphael.

'Let no one consider this praise as idle and groundless, for it is
Raphael himself who forces the comparison upon us, by placing the figure
of Dante among the favourite sons of the Muses; and, what is still more
striking, by draping the allegorical figure of Theology in the very
colours in which Dante has represented Beatrice; namely, the white veil,
the red tunic, and the green mantle, while on her head he has placed the
olive crown.

'Of the four allegorical figures which occupy the compartments of the
ceiling, and which were all painted immediately after Raphael's arrival
in Rome, Theology and Poetry are incontestably the most remarkable. The
latter would be easily distinguished by the calm inspiration of her
glance, even were she without her wings, her starry crown, and her azure
robe, all having allusion to the elevated region towards which it is her
privilege to soar. The figure of Theology is quite as admirably suited
to the subject she personifies; she points to the upper part of the
grand composition, which takes its name from her, and in which the
artist has provided inexhaustible food for the sagacity and enthusiasm
of the spectator.

'This work consists of two grand divisions,--Heaven and Earth--which are
united to one another by that mystical bond, the Sacrament of the
Eucharist. The personages whom the Church has most honoured for learning
and holiness, are ranged in picturesque and animated groups on either
side of the altar, on which the consecrated wafer is exposed. St
Augustine dictates his thoughts to one of his disciples; St Gregory, in
his pontifical robes, seems absorbed in contemplation of celestial
glory; St Ambrose, in a slightly different attitude, appears to be
chanting the Te Deum; while St Jerome, seated, rests his hands on a
large book, which he holds on his knees. Pietro Lombardo, Duns Scotus,
St Thomas Aquinas, Pope Anacletus, St Buenaventura, and Innocent III.,
are no less happily characterized; while, behind all these illustrious
men, whom the Church and succeeding generations have agreed to honour,
Raphael has ventured to introduce Dante with his laurel crown, and, with
still greater boldness, the monk Savonarola, publicly burnt ten years
before as a heretic.

'In the glory, which forms the upper part of the picture, the Three
Persons of the Trinity are represented, surrounded by patriarchs,
apostles, and saints: it may, in fact, be considered in some sort as a
_resume_ of all the favourite compositions produced during the last
hundred years by the Umbrian School. A great number of the types, and
particularly those of Christ and the Virgin, are to be found in the
earlier works of Raphael himself. The Umbrian artists, from having so
long exclusively employed themselves on mystical subjects, had certainly
attained to a marvellous perfection in the representation of celestial
beatitude, and of those ineffable things of which it has been said that
the heart of man cannot conceive them, far less, therefore, the pencil
of man portray; and Raphael, surpassing them in all, and even in this
instance, while surpassing himself, appears to have fixed the limits,
beyond which Christian art, properly so called, has never since been
able to advance.'[12]

Of Raphael's Madonnas, I should like to speak of three. The Madonna di
San Sisto: 'It represents the Virgin standing in a majestic attitude;
the infant Saviour _enthroned_ in her arms; and around her head a glory
of innumerable cherubs melting into light. Kneeling before her we see on
one side St Sixtus, on the other St Barbara, and beneath her feet two
heavenly cherubs gaze up in adoration. In execution, as in design, this
is probably the most perfect picture in the world. It is painted
throughout by Raphael's own hand; and as no sketch or study of any part
of it was ever known to exist, and as the execution must have been, from
the thinness and delicacy of the colours, wonderfully rapid, it is
supposed that he painted it at once on the canvas--a _creation_ rather
than a picture. In the beginning of the last century the Elector of
Saxony, Augustus III., purchased this picture from the monks of the
convent for the sum of sixty thousand florins (about L6000), and it now
forms the chief boast and ornament of the Dresden Gallery'[13]

The Madonna del Cardellino (our Lady of the Goldfinch): 'The Virgin is
sitting on a rock, in a flowery meadow. Behind are the usual light and
feathery trees, growing on the bank of a stream, which passes off to the
left in a rocky bend, and is crossed by a bridge of a single arch. To
the right, the opposite bank slopes upward in a gentle glade, across
which is a village, backed by two distant mountain-peaks.

'In front of the sitting matronly figure of the Virgin are the holy
children, our Lord and the Baptist, one on either side of her right
knee. She has been reading, and the approach of St John has caused her
to look off her book (which is open in her left hand) at the new comer,
which she does with a look of holy love and gentleness, at the same
time caressingly drawing him to her with her right hand, which touches
his little body under the right arm. In both hands, which rest across
the Virgin's knee, he holds a captive goldfinch, which he has brought,
with childish glee, as an offering to the Holy Child. The infant Jesus,
standing between his mother's knees, with one foot placed on her foot,
and her hand, with the open book, close above his shoulder, regards the
Baptist with an upward look of gentle solemnity, at the same time that
he holds his bent hand over the head of the bird.

'So much for mere description. The inner feeling of the picture, the
motive which has prompted it, has surely hardly ever been surpassed. The
Blessed Virgin, in casting her arm round the infant St John, looks down
on him with a holy complacency for the testimony which he is to bear to
her Son. Notice the human boyish glee with which the Baptist presents
the captured goldfinch, and, on the other hand, the divine look, even of
majesty and creative love, with which the infant Jesus, laying his hand
on the head of the bird, half reproves St John, as it were saying, "Love
them and hurt them not." Notice, too, the unfrightened calm of the bird
itself, passive under the hand of its loving Creator. All these are
features of the very highest power of human art.

'Again, in accompaniments, all is as it should be. The Virgin, modestly
and beautifully draped; St John, girt about the loins, not only in
accord with his well-known prophetic costume, but also as partaking of
sinful humanity, and therefore needing such cincture: the Child
Redeemer, with a slight cincture, just to suggest motherly care, but not
over the part usually concealed, as indeed it never ought to be, seeing
that in Him was no sin, and that it is this spotless purity which is
ever the leading idea in representations of Him as an infant. Notice,
too, his foot, beautifully resting on that of his mother; the unity
between them being thus wonderfully though slightly kept up. Her eye has
just been dwelling on the book of the Prophecies open in her hand; and
thus the spectator's thought is ruled in accordance with the high
mission of the Holy One of God, and thrown forward into the grand and
blessed future. It is a holy and wonderful picture; I had not seen any
in Italy which had struck or refreshed me more.'[14]

And allow me to write two or three words with regard to the 'Madonna
della Sedia,' or our Lady of the Chair, an engraving of which used to
charm me when a child. The Virgin, very young and simple-looking in her
loveliness, is seated on a low chair, clasping the Divine Child, who is
leaning in weariness on her breast. In the original picture, St John
with his cross is standing--a boy at the Virgin's knee, but he is absent
from the old engraving. The meek adoring tenderness in the face of the
mother, the holy ingenuousness in that of the child, are expressions to
be long studied.

Of Raphael's cartoons, which, so many of us can see for ourselves, I
cannot trust myself to do more than to repeat what strikes me as a
singularly apt phrase of Hazlitt's, given by Mrs Jameson, that the
cartoons are instances in which 'the corruptible has put on
incorruption.' That from the very slightness of the materials employed,
and the very injuries which the cartoons have sustained, we have the
greatest triumph of art, where 'the sense of power supersedes the
appearance of effort,' and where the result is the more majestic for
being in ruins. 'All other pictures look like oil and varnish, we are
stopped and attracted by the colouring, the penciling, the finishing,
the instrumentality of art; but the on the canvas.... There is nothing
between us and the subject; we look through a frame and see Scripture
histories, and amidst the wreck of colour and the mouldering of material
beauty, nothing is left but a universe of thought, or the broad imminent
shadows of calm contemplation and majestic pains.'

And that Raphael did not neglect the minutest details in these sketches,
will be seen by the accompanying note: 'The foreground of Raphael's two
cartoons, "The Miraculous Draught of Fishes," and "The Charge to
Peter," are covered with plants of the common sea cole-wort, of which
the sinuated leaves and clustered blossoms would have exhausted the
patience of any other artist; but have appeared worthy of prolonged and
thoughtful labour to the great mind of Raphael.'--_Ruskin_.

Whole clusters of anecdotes gather round the cartoons, which, as they
have to do with the work and not the worker, I leave untouched, with
regret. But I must forewarn my readers by mentioning some of the refuted
criticisms which have been applied to the cartoons. Reading the
criticisms and their answers ought to render us modest and wary in
'picking holes' in great pictures, as forward and flippant critics, old
and young, are tempted to pick them. With regard to the 'Miraculous
Draught of Fishes,' a great outcry was once set up that Raphael had made
the boat too little to hold the figures he has placed in it. But Raphael
made the boat little advisedly; if he had not done so, the picture would
have been 'all boat,' a contingency scarcely to be desired; on the
other hand, if Raphael had diminished the figures to suit the size of
the boat, these figures would not have suited those of the other
cartoons, and the cartoon would have lost greatly in dignity and effect.

In the cartoon of the 'Death of Ananias,' carping objectors were ready
to suggest that Raphael had committed an error in time by introducing
Sapphira in the background counting her ill-gotten gains, at the moment
when her no less guilty husband has fallen down in the agonies of death.
It was hours afterwards that Sapphira entered into the presence of the
apostles. But we must know that time and space do not exist for
painters, who have to tell their story at one stroke, as it were.

In the treating of the 'Lame Man at the Beautiful Gate of the Temple,'
some authorities have found fault with Raphael for breaking the
composition into parts by the introduction of pillars, and, farther,
that the shafts are not straight. Yet by this treatment Raphael has
concentrated the principal action in a sort of frame, and thus has been
enabled to give more freedom of action to the remaining figures in the
other divisions of the picture. 'It is evident, moreover, that had the
shafts been perfectly straight, according to the severest law of good
taste in architecture, the effect would have been extremely disagreeable
to the eye; by their winding form they harmonize with the manifold forms
of the moving figures around, and they illustrate, by their elaborate
elegance, the Scripture phrase, "the gate which is called
Beautiful."'--_Mrs Jameson_.

Of Raphael's portraits I must mention that wonderful portrait of Leo X.,
often reckoned the best portrait in the world for truth of likeness and
excellence of painting, and those of the so-called 'Fornarina,' or
'baker'. Two Fornarinas are at Rome and one at Florence. There is a
story that the original of the first two pictures was a girl of the
people to whom Raphael was attached; and there is this to be said for
the tradition, that there is an acknowledged coarseness in the very
beauty of the half-draped Fornarina of the Barberini Palace. The
'Fornarina' of Florence is the portrait of a noble woman, holding the
fur-trimming of her mantle with her right hand, and it is said that the
picture can hardly represent the same individual as that twice
represented in Rome. According to one guess the last 'Fornarina' is
Vittoria Colonna, the Marchesa de Pescara, painted by Seba Piombo,
instead of by Raphael; and according to another, the Roman 'Fornarina'
is no Fornarina beloved by Raphael, but Beatrice Pio, a celebrated
improvisatrice of the time.

An 'innovation of modern times is to spell Raphael's name in England as
the modern Italians spelt it, _Raffaelle_, a word of four syllables, and
yet to pronounce this Italian word as if it were English, as _Raphael_.
Vasari wrote Raffaello; he himself wrote Raphael on his pictures, and
has signed the only autograph letter we have of his, Raphaello.'[15]

Titian, or Tiziano Vecelli, the greatest painter of the Venetian
School, reckoned worthy to be named with Lionardo, Michael Angelo and
Raphael, was born of good family at Capo del Cadore in the Venetian
State, in 1477. There is a tradition that while other painters made
their first essays in art with chalk or charcoal, the boy Titian, who
lived to be a glorious colourist, made his earliest trials in painting
with the juice of flowers. Titian studied in Venice under the Bellini,
and had Giorgione, who was born in the same year, for his
fellow-scholar, at first his friend, later his rival. When a young man
Titian spent some time in Ferrara; there he painted his 'Bacchus and
Ariadne,' and a portrait of Lucrezia Borgia. In 1512, when Titian was
thirty-five years of age, he was commissioned by the Venetians to
continue the works in the great council-hall, which the advanced age of
Gian Bellini kept him from finishing. Along with this commission Titian
was appointed in 1516 to the office of la Sanseria, which gave him the
duty and privilege of painting the portraits of the Doges as long as he
held the office; coupled with the office was a salary of one hundred
and twenty crowns a year. Titian lived to paint five Doges; two others,
his age, equal to that of Gian Bellini, prevented him from painting.

In 1516, Titian painted his greatest sacred picture, the 'Assumption of
the Virgin.' In the same year he painted the poet Ariosto, who mentions
the painter with high honour in his verse.

In 1530, Titian, a man of fifty-three years, was at Bologna, where there
was a meeting between Charles V, and Pope Clement VII., when he was
presented to both princes.

Charles V, and Philip II, became afterwards great patrons and admirers
of Titian, and it is of Charles V. and Titian that a legend, to which I
have already referred, is told. The Emperor, visiting the painter while
he was at work, stooped down and picked up a pencil, which Titian had
let fall, to the confusion and distress of the painter, when Charles
paid the princely compliment, 'Titian is worthy of being served by
Caesar.' Titian painted many portraits of Charles V., and of the members
of his house. As Maximilian had created Albrecht Duerer a noble of the
Empire, Charles V, created Titian a Count Palatine, and a Knight of the
Order of St Iago, with a pension, which was continued by Philip II., of
four hundred crowns a year. It is doubtful whether Titian ever visited
the Spain of his patrons, but Madrid possesses forty-three of his
pictures, among them some of his finest works.

Titian went to Rome in his later years, but declined to abandon for Rome
the painter's native Venice, which had lavished her favours on her son.
He lived in great splendour, paying annual summer visits to his
birth-place of Cadore, and occasionally dwelling again for a time at
Ferrara, Urbino, Bologna. In two instances he joined the Emperor at
Augsburgh. When Henry III, of France landed at Venice, he was
entertained _en grand seigneur_ by Titian, then a very old man; and when
the king asked the price of some pictures which pleased him, Titian at
once presented them as a gift to his royal guest.

Titian married, as has been recently ascertained, and had three
children,--two sons, the elder a worthless and scandalous priest; the
second a good son and accomplished painter; and a daughter, the
beautiful Lavinia, so often painted by her father, and whose name will
live with his. Titian survived his wife thirty-six years; and his
daughter, who had married, and was the mother of several children, six
years. His second son and fellow-painter died of the same plague which
struck down Titian, in 1566, at the ripe age of eighty-nine years.

Titian is said to have been a man of irritable and passionate temper.
The hatred between him and the painter, Pordenone, was so bitter, that
the latter thought his life in danger, and painted with his shield and
poniard lying ready to his hand. Titian grasped with imperious tenacity
his supremacy as a painter, sedulously kept the secrets of his skill,
and was most unmagnanimously jealous of the attainments of his scholars.
No defect of temper, however, kept Titian from having two inseparable
convivial companions--one of them the architect, Sansovino, and the
other the profligate wit, Aretino, who was pleased to style himself the
'friend of Titian and the scourge of princes.' Though Titian is said, in
the panic of the great plague, to have died not only neglected, but
plundered before his eyes, still Venice prized him so highly, that she
made in his favour the single exception of a public funeral, during the
appalling devastation wrought by the pestilence.

From an engraving of a portrait of Titian by himself, which is before
me, I can give the best idea of his person. He looks like one of the
merchant princes, whom he painted so often and so well, in richly furred
gown, massive chain, and small cap, far off his broad forehead: a
stately figure, with a face--in its aquiline nose and keen eyes, full of
sagacity and fire, which no years could tame.

Towards the close of Titian's life, there was none who even approached
the old Venetian painter in the art which he practised freely to the
last. Painting in Italy was everywhere losing its pre-eminence. It had
become, even when it was not so nominally, thoroughly secularized;--and
with reason, for the painters by their art-creed and by their lives were
fitter to represent gods and goddesses, in whom no man believed, than to
give earnest expression to a living faith. Even Titian, great as he was,
proved a better painter of heathen mythology than of sacred subjects.

But within certain limits and in certain directions, Titian stands
unequalled. He has a high place for composition and for drawing, and his
colouring was, beyond comparison, grand and true. He was great as a
landscape painter, and he was the best portrait painter whom the world
ever saw. In his painting is seen, not, indeed, the life of the spirit,
but the life of the senses 'in its fullest power,' and in Titian there
was such large mastery of this life, that in his freedom there was no
violence, but the calmness of supreme strength, the serenity of perfect
satisfaction. His painting was a reflection of the old Greek idea of the
life of humanity as a joyous existence, so long as the sun of youth,
maturity, health, and good fortune shone, without even that strain of
foreboding pain, and desperate closing with fate, which troubled the
bliss of ancient poet or sculptor. A large proportion of Titian's
principal pictures are at Venice and Madrid.

Among Titian's finest sacred pictures, are his 'Assumption of the
Virgin,' now in the Academy, Venice, where 'the Madonna, a powerful
figure, is borne rapidly upwards, as if divinely impelled; ..,
fascinating groups of infant angels surround her, beneath stand the
apostles, looking up with solemn gestures;' and his 'Entombment of
Christ,' a picture which is also in Venice. Titian's Madonnas were not
so numerous as his Venuses, many of which are judged excellent examples
of the master. His 'Bacchus and Ariadne,' in the National Gallery, is
described by Mrs Jameson, 'as presenting, on a small scale, an epitome
of all the beauties which characterize Titian, in the rich, picturesque,
animated composition, in the ardour of Bacchus, who flings himself from
his car to pursue Ariadne; the dancing bacchanals, the frantic grace of
the bacchante, and the little joyous satyr in front, trailing the head of
the sacrifice.'

Titian's landscapes are the noble backgrounds to many of his pictures.
These landscapes were not only free, but full. 'The great masters of
Italy, almost without exception, and Titian, perhaps, more than any
other (for he had the highest knowledge of landscape), are in the
constant habit of rendering every detail of their foregrounds with the
most laborious botanical fidelity; witness the Bacchus and Ariadne, in
which the foreground is occupied by the common blue iris, the aquilegia,
and the wild rose; _every stamen_ of which latter is given, while the
blossoms and leaves of the columbine (a difficult flower to draw) have
been studied with the most exquisite accuracy.'--_Ruskin_.

In portraits, Titian conveyed to the sitters and transferred to his
canvas, not only a life-likeness, but a positively noble dignity in that
likeness. What in Van Dyck and Sir Joshua Reynolds was the bestowing of
high breeding and dainty refinement, became under Titian's brush
dignity, pure and simple, very quiet, and wonderfully real. There is
this peculiarity in connection with the number of portraits which Titian
executed, that many of them have descended to us without further titles
than those of 'A Venetian Senator,' 'A Lady,' etc., etc., yet of the
individual life of the originals no one can doubt. With regard to
Titian's portraits of women, I have already referred to those of his
beautiful daughter, Lavinia. In one portrait, in the Berlin Museum, she
is holding a plate of fruit; in another, in England, the plate of fruit
is changed into a casket of jewels; in a third, at Madrid, Lavinia is
Herodias, and bears a charger with the head of John the Baptist. A
'Violante'--as some say, the daughter of Titian's scholar, Palma, though
dates disprove this--sat frequently to Titian, and is said to have been
loved by him.

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