WON EUF r / & ' / ' t? t Robert Granet Ingres Ary Scheffer Delacroix-^Horace Vernet Dela- roclie Decamps Conclusion 254 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. ST. ELIZABETH OF HUNGARY Murillo 37 THE DRINKERS Velazquez 67 THE FOUR EVANGELISTS Albrecht Durer 97 THE DESCENT FROM THE CROSS . . Rubens , 149 SETTING THE NIGHT WATCH Rembrandt 195 THE ARCADIAN SHEPHERDS Nicholas Poussin . . 271 THE KIVER FORD Claude Lorraine . . . 275 THE SABINES Louis David 305 JUSTICE AND VENGEANCE P. Prud'hon 313 THE HAFT OF THE MEDUSA Theodore Gericault. 319 STBATONICE Ingres , 325 NOTE. This volume is a translation of the second series of the Merveilles de la Peinture, by M. Vi- ARDor, the first part of which was published last year, under the title of ' Wonders of Italian Art/ and received with much approval. It embraces notices of the Spanish, German, Flemish, Dutch, and French Schools, in which M. Viardot has critically examined into the merits of many thousands of the most celebrated paintings. AVONDERS OF PAINTING. CHAPTER I. SPANISH SCHOOLS. IN following historically the progress of the dif- ferent schools of painting, it is to the eternal glory of Italy that she appears as the mother, or at all events as the instructress, of all the others. Although it is true that art sprang into life at the same time in different countries, in Germany, Flanders, and Spain, as well as in Italy, yet here alone did it pass much beyond the period of infancy, unaided. It was in Italy that art grew to maturity without bor- rowing from any, except in its very early days from the Byzantines. Other nations, inheriting through the lessons of their common masters a science already mature, attained, as it were at a bound, whatever perfection they were destined to reach. Wv can hardly ever find in them either discovery, experiments, or progress ; we see no difference separating one age from another, but merely that between individual men. There has never been in Spain, any more than in France, a Cimabue, a Giotto a Fra Angelico, or an Antonello da Messina, and the ' ; ; ,'-; ',' '; : "WP.NDESF OF PAINTING. history of Spanish art, which was the work almost of a single generation, without ancestors or descend- ants, may be entirely comprised within the short period of a century and a half. In Spain, as in Italy and ancient Greece, the art of architecture preceded the others. Before the close of the Middle Ages the cathedrals of Leon, St. Jago, Tarragona, Burgos, and Toledo had arisen, besides the mosques of Cordova and Seville, con- verted into Christian churches after the conquest of Granada. Sculpture, which, as it furnishes the necessary ornaments to architecture, is nearly always its accompaniment, was signalized from the four- teenth century by interesting attempts of native ar- tists. A century later, Diego de Siloe, Alonzo Ber- ruguete, Gaspar Becerra, and several others, went to Italy and brought back to their own country a knowledge of that art which the Italians had learned from ancient statuary. But the school of painting was formed later, and from its very commencement was initiated from others. It was about the year 1418, three years after the arrival of the Florentine, Gherardo Stamina, in Castile, that we find the first traces of what may be termed the art of painting. JUAN ALFON then painted the altar-screens of the old chapel del Sagrario, also those in the chapel of los Reyes nuevos in the cathedral of Toledo. A few years later, during the reign of John II., there came from Florence a certain Dello, and from Flanders the maestro Eogel (Roger, no doubt), who continued in Spain that artistic intercourse with other coun- tries which is especially useful, because art, unlike SPANISH SCHOOLS. 3 literature, is bound by no shackles of difference of idiom, and therefore forms a more intimate and fraternal bond of union between nations than litera- ture can ever do, and unites into a single family ah 1 those who cultivate it. About the year 1450, JUAN SANCHEZ DE CASTRO founded the earliest school of Seville, from which was to emerge the greatest names of Spanish painting ; and five years later, admiration was excited in Castile by the purer forms and the higher style shown in the large altar-screen of the hospital of Buitrago by the maestro Jorge Ingles, who, from the fact that his Christian name was still uncommon in Spain, and also from his sur- name, is supposed to have been an Englishman. At the close of the century, when Christopher Columbus was starting to discover another world, ANTONIO DEL KINCON, the painter of the Catholic kings (he is sup- posed to have studied at Florence under Andrea del Castagno and Ghirlandajo), PEDRO BERRUGUETE, father of the great sculptor Alonzo, INIGO DE CO- MOTES and several others, stimulated by the example of the foreigner, John of Burgundy, began to adorn the walls of the Cathedral of Toledo with their works, whilst GALLEGOS, at Salamanca, imitated Albert Diirer without having either studied or known him. But these attempts only became an art when com- merce and war had opened constant communica- tions between Italy and Spain. "When Charles V. united the two peninsulas under the same govern- ment, and founded the vast empire which extended from Naples to Antwerp, Italy had just attained the 4 WONDERS OF PAINTING. zenith of her glory and splendor. Leonardo da Vinci, Michael Angelo, Titian, Kaphael, and Cor- reggio had produced their incomparable master- pieces. On the other hand, the capture of Grana- da, the discovery of America, and the enterprises of Charles V. had just aroused in Spain that intellect- ual movement which follows material commotions and impels a nation into a career of conquests of every kind. At the first news of the treasures to be found in Italy in the studios of the artists, the palaces of the great, and in the churches all the Spaniards interested in art, either as their profes- sion or from love to it for its own sake, flocked to the country of so many marvels, richer in their eyes than Peru or Mexico, where numbers of adventur- ers were then hastening, eager to acquire more ma- terial riches. Only choosing the most illustrious, and those merely who distinguished themselves in painting, we find among those who left Castile for Italy, Alonzo Berruguete, Gaspar Becerra, Navarrete el Mudo ; from Valencia, Juan Joanes and Francisco Bibal- ta ; from Seville, Luis de Vargas ; from Cordova, the learned Pablo de Cespedes. All these eminent men brought back to their ow r n country the taste for and knowledge of an art which they had studied un- der Italian masters. At the same time, foreign ar- tists, attracted to Spain by the bounty of its kings, prelates, and nobles, came to complete the work be- gun by the Spaniards who had studied abroad- Whilst at Burgos, Philip of Burgundy, and at Gra- nada, Torregiani, the illustrious and unfortunate SPANISH SCHOOLS. 5 rival of Michael Angelo, as well as other sculptors, decorated the basilicas and royal sepulchres with their works ; painters in great numbers settled in the principal cities. At Seville, the Fleming, Peter of Champagne, who was called Pedro Campana ; at Toledo, Isaac de Helle and el Greco (Domenico Theotocopuli); at Madrid, Antonio More of Utrecht, Patricio Cajesi, Castello el Bergamasco, Antonio Bizi, Bartolommeo Carducci, and his young brother Vincenzo. This intercourse with foreign countries had, if we may use such an expression, imported art into Spain. Schools were formed. At first timid and humble imitators of their Italian masters, by degrees they became bolder and freer ; they emancipated them- selves from their servitude, asserted their national- ity, and showing both the good and the bad quali- ties of their country, attained at length to indepen- dence and originality of style, and then to boldness and fire, perhaps even beyond reasonable limits. This was almost the same course that art had fol- lowed in Italy, passing from the Florentine-Boman school form to the Venetian color then to the Bolognese effect, imitation, and a mixture of the others. Four principal schools were formed in Spain, not successively, as those in Italy, but almost simultan- eously. These were the schools of Valencia, Toledo, Seville, and Madrid. But the two first were soon merged into the others. The school of Valencia, which had been founded by Juan Joanes, and ren- dered famous by Bibera and the Bibaltas, was united 6 WONDEKS OF PAINTING. like the smaller schools of Cordova, Granada, and Murcia, to the parent school of Seville, whilst that of Toledo, as well as the local schools of Badajoz, Saragossa, and Valladolid were merged in the school of Madrid, when that country town had become the capital of the monarchy through the will of Philip II., and had carried off all supremacy from the an- cient capital of the Goth. There remained, then, Seville and Madrid, Anda- lusia and Castile. "With Luis de Vargas, Villegas de Marmolejo, and Pedro Campana, all pupils of Italy, the brilliancy of the school of Seville begins, which was afterwards carried to greater perfection through the example of the Yalencian, Juan Joanes. It increased, rose, and became Spanish with Juan de las Koelas, the Castillos, Herrera el Yiejo, Pache- co and Pedro de Moya, who brought to it from London the lessons of Van Dyck ; at last it attained its maturity and produced the masterpieces of Spanish art under Velazquez, who left Seville for Madrid as Kibera had left Valencia for Naples, Alonzo Cano, Zurbaran, and, lastly, Murillo, who carried it to its greatest beauty, but who left behind him only feeble copyists, without pupils or followers. At Madrid the school passed through the same phases. Berruguete and Becerra, rather sculptors than painters ; then Navarrete el Mudo, a true painter, all three disciples of Italy, and assisted by the Fleming, Antonio More ; then the families of Castello, Rizi, and Carducci, all Italian by birth, who formed Sanchez Coello, Pantoja de la Cruz, Bereda, Collantes, all assisted to found and render SCHOOL OF VALENCIA. 7 illustrious the school of Castile, to which the great Velazquez had just united the school of Andalusia. From the union of these schools was formed Pareja and Carreno, who, while living at Madrid, appear still to belong to Seville. Claudio CoeDo, the last of these generations of artists, died at the time when Luca Giordano arrived in Spain, and with him per- ished the whole race. Afterwards, at the latter end of the eighteenth century, we only find one other striking personality ; and he, though powerful, is singular and fantastic, without master and without; pupils, Francisco Goya. SCHOOL OF VALENCIA. It is only right that this school should be men- tioned before those of Andalusia and Castile, for it; was especially through it that the lessons of Italy came to Spain. Their common imitator was the Valencian JU^N JOANES (1523-1579), whose real) name was Vincente Juan Macip. It is supposed that when he was studying at Home he took a fancy, then pretty common, to latinize one of his names, and to make it his painter's surname ; from that, through habit and corruption, came the name given him by his compatriots. Of this generation of Spanish artists, formed by contact with the Italians, the first is Joanes, and the last Murillo. We see from this, how important are the works of Joanes, which are very rare, except in Madrid. They are all entitled on this account to attention and respect. In the Museo del Rey, we may distinguish one of Christ bearing the Cross, which is an evident, though 8 WONDERS OF PAINTING. not servile, imitation of Raphael's Spasimo ; a Mar- tyrdom of St. Agnes, which not even that by Dome- nichino must make us forget ; an enormous Last Supper, which would have been called an admirable work but for Leonardo da Vinci having chosen the same subject ; and lastly, a series of six pictures re- lating, like the cantos of a poem, the Life of St. Stephen, a capital work. At the first glance, we may recognize in Joanes a direct pupil of the Roman school. Nevertheless, he did not study under Raphael, as he was born in 1523, and Raphael died in 1520 ; but he studied before his works and under his immediate disciples, such as Giulio Romano, il Fattore, or Perino del Vaga. Palomino in his Parnaso Espanol Pintoreseo, declares that Joanes is equal to Raphael in some parts and superior to him in others. This is sheer blasphemy. The Diccionario Historico confines itself to asserting that before the best works of Joanes one might well hesitate, and scarcely know whether they were to be attributed to the master or pupil, and that if it were not known that one of the two was an imitator, one might be embarrassed to say to which of the two artists the palm was to be awarded. This eulogy also surpasses all bounds of truth. But we may say that Joanes possesses the purity of design, the beauty of form, and the power of expres- sion which distinguish the Roman school personified in its chief. His perspective is exact and scientific, although rather short, and if his coloring has not the Venetian ease or Andalusian fire, it is yet warm and bright, and he possesses great firmness of touch. SCHOOL OF VALENCIA. 9 Notwithstanding his importance as the leader of this school, and his merit as an artist, Juan Joanes is still almost unknown out of Spain, and is not very popular even there. The reason of this is, that being of an almost ascetic piety, and preparing him- self for the execution of every picture of those pic- tures which were to be admired and worshipped in the churches by taking the sacrament, Joanes lived as a hermit, far from the crowd and the Court. He did not paint royal features, and hired poets did not make sonnets in his praise ; during his lifetime his works never crossed the seas or the Pyrenees addressed to foreign princes, as a sort of petition ; and, since his death, they have not loaded the wagons of conquering generals. After Joanes, there appeared at Valencia two painters, father and son, so alike in style and man- ner that it was said indifferently of their works : " It is by the EIBALTAS " (es de los Ribidtas). How- ever, FRANCISCO, the father of JUAN, has left the greater number of works, because he lived seventy years and his son only thirty-one. They both died in 1628. In the Museum at Madrid may be found the Four Evangelists, a Dead Christ, sustained by angels, and a St. Francis of Assist, whom an angel is consoling and filling with holy ecstasy by playing on his celestial lute ; but it is not specified to which of the two these comp si tijns belong. The Eibal- tas bring us down to RIBEHA (1588-1656), who was, when quite young, the pupil of -the one and the fellow-student of the other. It is said that in the beginning of the seventeenth 10 WONDERS OF PAINTING. century a cardinal, passing through the streets of Borne in his carriage, perceived a young man, scarcely beyond childhood, who, although clothed in miserable rags, and having by his side some crusts of bread given him out of charity, was yet occupied with profound attention in drawing the frescoes on the fagade of a palace. Struck with pity at the sight of so much misery united to such application, the cardinal called the child, took him to his own house, had him clothed decently, and admitted him as a sort of dependent of the family. He learnt that his young protege was named Josef de Bibera ; that he was born at Xativa (now San Felipe), near Valencia ; that his parents had early sent him to that provincial capital to study at the university, but that his irresistible inclination had led him to prefer the studio of Francisco Bibalta to his classes ; that he had made such rapid progress that he had soon been chosen to assist his master ; but that then a passion had arisen in him to go and study art at its fountain head, and, no longer think- ing of anything but Rome and its marvels, he had abandoned family, friends, and country, and had at last arrived in that capital of the artistic as well as of the religious world. There, without any means of support, making the street his studio, and a mile- stone his easel, copying the statues, the frescoes, and the passers-by, he lived on the charity of his comrades, who called him, for want of another name. " The Little Spaniard" (Lo Spagnoletto). Eibera was then in the same position as his fel- low-countryman Cervantes forty years later, since SCHOOL OF VALENCIA. 11 the immortal author of ' Don Quixote ' had also been at Eome, a camarero of the cardinal Giulio Acquaviva. But the great painter could not, any more than the great writer, be condemned to the degrading idleness of the antechamber of a prince of the church. One day, then, throwing* off his livery and resuming his rags, Eibera tied from the car- dinal's house to recommence joyously his life of poverty, labor, and independence. He was accused of ingratitude ; he was treated as an incorrigible vagabond ; but at a later time, seeing his labors and successes, the good priest, who had taken him hi, forgave his offence, and even congratulated him on having preferred the noble labor of his art to the pleasures of an easy existence. Of all the great works that surrounded him, those that Eibera admired with the greatest enthusiasm, because they best answered the instincts of his own genius, were the works of the proud and fiery Cara- vaggio. There, in the violent effects of chiaroscuro, the young Spaniard beheld the greatest prodigies of art ; he obtained admission to the studio of th s master, but he could not have received his lessons long, as Caravaggio died in 1609, when Eibera was only twenty. He then left Eome, and went to Parnia, where he was attracted by the great renown of Cor- reggio. Before his works a fresh enthusiasm seized Eibera. He began to study them with a sort of frenzy, and, laying aside his former touch, which was strong and violent, he threw himself into the opposite extreme, endeavoring to make his style as soft, tender, and delicate as that of his new 12 WONDERS OF PAINTING. master. On his return to Rome his friends were astonished at the complete metamorphosis ; but far from congratulating him they blamed him for it. They united their efforts to bring him back to the style of Caravaggio, which must, they told him, by its power and novelty, procure him both more glory and also more money. Whether these counsels were disinterested or not, it seems to me that Kibera did well to follow them. His taste for dark, strange, and terrible subjects proves sufficiently that the fire of Caravaggio suited him better than the suavity of Correggio. And yet the intelligent study of the latter introduced a new element to the style of Kibera, and, by tempering the defects into which the too complete imitation of the latter would have thrown him, it was certainly one of the causes of the superiority he obtained over his former master. When settled at Naples, and married to the daughter of a rich picture-dealer, Eibera had only to work, finding in the profession of his father-in- law an easy means of making his name and his works known. A singular circumstance, too, helped to found his reputation suddenly. The house he occupied with his wife's family was situated in the same square as the palace of the viceroy. One day, according to the Italian custom, his father-in-law had placed on the balcony, for public exhibition, a Martyrdom of St. Bartholomeiv, which Ribera had just completed. A crowd, attracted by the sight of this magnificent work, soon covered the square, making the air re- SCHOOL OF VALENCIA. 13 sound with cries of enthusiasm. The noise became such, that at the little Spanish court it was believed that there was a popular outbreak, and that a Mas- aniello was haranguing the people. The viceroy came out armed, saw the cause of the disorder, ad- mired the picture, and ordered the artist to appear before him. His joy was great to find in him a fellow-countryman. He named him at once his titular painter, with suitable appointments, and gave him apartments in his own palace. The ragged student of the streets of Home had thenceforth attained the summit of fortune; he possessed both riches and authority. He became soon the most opulent and luxurious of artists, the equal of nobles and princes. He never went out except in his coach, and his wife was always fol- lowed by a squire. Two centuries ago this was considered the height of luxury and ostentation. It is said that one day two Spanish officers, dazzled by the pretended miracles of alchemy, came to offer him a share in their imaginary fortune, if he would advance the funds for their researches after the philosopher's stone, "I also make gold," replied Eibera, mysteriously ; " return to-morrow, and I will reveal to you my secret." Faithful to their ap- pointment, the two alchemists found Kibera the next day in his studio, giving the finishing touches to a picture. He called a servant and ordered him to take the picture to a merchant, who would give him in exchange 400 ducats ; then when the servant returned he threw the money on the table, saying : " Gentlemen, this is the gold which comes from my 14 WuNDEltS OF PAINTING. crucible. I need no other secret to procure it in abundance." Although he painted all his pictures in Italy, Ri- bera is thoroughly Spanish ; in the first place, for the same reason that Nicholas Poussin and Claude Lorraine were French painters, namely, that they were born in France, although they lived at Rome ; and Ribera forgot his birth so little, and, indeed, showed himself so proud of it, that in signing his best pictures he never failed to add to the words Giuseppe de Ribera the word Espanol ; his style also is more Spanish than Italian. And, indeed, as a body, the Italian painters are particularly idealis- tic, in that they seek the beautiful even beyond the real, and they prefer leaving the care of interpreting their thought to the mind rather than to place what might explain it before the eye of the spectator in a material form. The Spanish painters, on the con- trary, taken as a whole, are peculiarly realistic ; they seek less the beautiful than the true, and they ex- press their thought by the complete and material copy of all the objects it embraces. Ribera must be placed in the first rank of these realistic painters. He may be accused of purposely exaggerating the contrasts of light and shadow ; of choosing bald and bearded heads, decrepit and dis- torted bodies ; of seeking in his choice of subjects, in the features and attitudes of the personages, and in all the details of the scenes he depicts, whatever was most terrible, wild, and even hideous and repul- sive, in order to move the spectator to horror and tear but it must be acknowledged that these sub- SCHOOL OF VALENCIA. 15 jects and details are possible, and even probable, which is sufficient for truth in the arts ; they are also rendered with marvellous fidelity and incomparable energy, and no painter of any school has ever car- ried force, boldness, Brilliancy, and solidity in the execution of his works further than Ribera. The paintings of Ribera, like those of the Italian artists, are scattered throughout the whole of Eu- rope, But Naples, his adopted country, has re- tained some of the principal ones. It was for the Carthusian Convent, called San Martino, at the foot of Fort St. Elmo, then rich, but now converted into a hospital, that Eibera painted his great work of the Communion of the Apostles, twelve Prophets on the windows of the different chapels, and, lastly, the Descent from the Cross, which is almost unani- mously said to be his masterpiece. Here we may find, besides the qualities enumerated above, much pathos and expression, and a power of feeling which is not usually to be met with in his works ; so that this picture seems to unite to the fiery energy of Caravaggio not only the grace of Correggio, but the religious fervor of Fra Angelico. It is sad to have to associate this fine work with a base and unworthy action. In the same convent of San Martino, op- posite the Descent from the Gross, there was another by Stanzioni. This could only have heightened the merits of liibera's painting by comparison. Yet the Spaniard persuaded the monks that it needed clean- ing; and by mixing corrosive substances with the varnish he spoiled all the delicate parts of Stan- zioni's picture. That artist refused to touch it 16 WONDERS OF PAINTING. again, so as to leave au imperishable souvenir of hig rival's perfidy. In the museum Degli Studi two of Ribera's works have been placed in the room of the Capi jE Optra : Saint Jerome in the desert, listening to the trumpet of the angel, and the large picture of Stienue, in which the foster-father of Bacchus is lying on the ground, receiving drink from the satyrs who surround him. At the bottom of this picture may be read the following inscription : " Josephus a fiibera, Hispanus Valentin us et coacademicus lioma- nuSj faciebat Parthenope, 16*26." This long and arro- gant inscription is traced on a scroll, which a ser- pent seems to bite and tear. How could Eibera complain of envy, or represent himself as its victim, when he was rich, honored and powerful, and when he himself carried his jealousy even to ferocity ? It was, indeed, in his own house that the fazzioni de pittori, those coteries of painters, were formed, who deserve the name of factions, because they made war on rival schools, even with the dagger. The faction of Naples, which had Ribera as its head, numbered among its members bravi, such as Cor- renzio and Caracciolo, who maintained the superior- ity of their master at the sword's point, and permit- ted the entry of the city to no painter who did not belong to his school. Thus it was that they drove from Naples the great artists which had been sent for from all parts of Italy to assist in the decorations oi the Duomo of St. Januarius. Annibale, Carracci, Guido, and Josepin were obliged to fly in order to escape the blows of this brotherhood of a new SCHOOL OF VALENCIA. 17 order; and when Domenichino died before being able to reach Rome, the rumors of poisoning which prevailed proved that it was, at all events, possible. Such outrages cannot be too severely condemned. It is a stain on the life of a great artist, which nei- ther the greatness of his talent nor the brilliancy of his renown can redeem. In the Louvre there is only one of Ribera's works an Adoration of the Shepherds and, although it is very beautiful, it is insufficient to make him known, because it is not in his usual style, and he shows himself in it less as the continuer of Caravaggio than as the imitator of Correggio. The Museo del Key, at Madrid, is more fortunate in having a great number of his works, and in all his styles. If we wish to see him, on his return from Parma, employ- ing the calm, soft style of Correggio, we have only to look at Jacob's Ladder, an excellent specimen of the second phase of his life. Of his later style, when he returned to the natural bent of his genius, we find the Twdve Apostles & valuable series of ex- pressive heads, in which may be seen every age, from the youthful St. John, the beloved disciple, to the old St. James the Great ; a striking Mary the Egyptian ; a St. James and St. Roch, magnificent pendents brought from the Escurial ; and lastly, a Mhrtyrdom of St. Bartholomew, the most celebrated of his paintings of this terrible subject. Here he has shown as much talent in composition and power of expression, in the union of grief and beatitude, as incomparable force in the execution. The Academy of Fine Arts at Madrid possesses 18 WONDERS OF PAINTING. several other works of Eibera's, amongst which there are two very singular full-length portraits in one frame, which deserve greater attention. In the centre of this picture we see the head of an old man with a black beard, on the body of a woman who is nursing a child in swaddling clothes ; a little further back there is another old man, who seems to be the St. Joseph to this strange Madonna. This appears at first merely a fantastic popular legend, represent- ed by the painter in a caprice, but it is in reality a natural curiosity, faithfully represented. The fol- lowing explanation is written in Spanish in a corner of the picture : " Portrait of Magdalen Ventura, born in the Abruzzi ; fifty-two years old. She was thirty-seven when her long beard began to grow. She had three children by her husband, Felix de Amici. Copied from nature, for the admiration of the living, by Joseph de Bibera." This picture, curious from its subject, does not offer less interest from an artistic point of view. It is one of those forcible and solid paintings, which may be almost said to be engraved on the canvas, in which Bibera surpassed even Caravaggio himself, and the secret of which he left to no one. Although we are only able to notice the chief of the masters, and of their works, we ought still to mention in the school of Valentia the two ESPINOSAS, father and son, who continued the style of the Bi- baltas, and a certain ESTEBAN MARCH, who, a pupil of Orrente, himself an imitator of Bassano, belongs to the schools of Toledo and Venice. He distin- guished himself principaUy in painting battle scenes, ANDALUSIAN SCHOOL. 19 and it is said that he used to fence against the wall, like a second Don Quixote, with cut and thrust, in order to heat his imagination. ANDALUSIAN SCHOOL. Two local schools, as we have already said, arose about the same time as that of Seville, one at Cor- dova, the other at Granada. Let us choose the most illustrious master from each : at Cordova, it will be Cespedes ; at Granada, Alonzo Cano. PABLO DE CESPEDES (1538-1608) was not merely a painter ; his was one of those gifted minds which are capable of grasping everything science, litera- ture, and the fine arts and which only fail in attain- ing to the first rank in each from the division of their labor and intellect amongst several pursuits of equally difficult attainment, instead of bringing their whole powers to bear on one alone. On leaving the university, Pablo de Cespedes set out for Home, was charmed with the works of Michael Angelo, felt a fresh impulse, and resolved to cultivate the arts, although without abandoning the culture of letters. Provided, on his return from Italy, with a canonry in the chapter of Cordova, he did not again leave his native town, and gave up his time peacefully to the different studies to which his taste and know- ledge led him. This eminent man possessed a thorough knowledge of Italian, Latin, and Greek, and was able to converse in Hebrew and Arabic. Such a knowledge of languages, then rare, gave him great assistance in his labors of pure erudition. 20 WONDERS OF PAINTING. Amongst his works of this kind may be mentioned a dissertation on the cathedral of Cordova, tending to prove that this beautiful mosque was built in the latter half of the eighth century, by Abderrahnuin I., the founder of the Ommeyade dynasty in Spain, and of the Caliphate of Cordova. This mosque, which is the most precious religious monument left us of the Arabs, occupied precisely the place of the temple of Janus, built by the Eomans after the conquest and pacification of Iberia. But the best literary work of Cespedes is the one he wrote in 1604, the title of which is, ' Parallel between Ancient and Modern Painting and Sculpture.' Without any acquaintance with Vasari's book, which was written about the same time, he gives interesting details about the Florentine painters from Cimabue to Michael Angelo ; he also gives some descriptions, taken from Pliny, of some works of the Greeks, and then ingeniously compares these with the works of Raphael, Michael Angelo, Titian, Correggio, and the masters of his own time. Cespedes, not content with being a learned painter, became also a poet. He celebrated in beautiful verses the praises of an art whose history he had written, and in which he had himself acquired great celebrity. We must all regret that he was unable to complete his ' Poem on Painting,' some precious fragments of which have been preserved by Pacheco. It would probably have been the best poem that has been written on the fine arts, and superior in grandeur of conception, elevation of ideas, and beauty of lanp-uaere. to both the Latin poem of Du- ANDALUS1AN SCHOOL. 21 fresnoy, and fco those in French by Lemierre and Watelet. Pacheco says of Cespedes : " He was a great imitator of the beautiful style of Correggio, and one of the finest colorists in Spain." "If Cespedes," adds Antonio Ponz, " instead of being the friend of Federico Zuccheri, could have been the friend of Raphael, he would have become one of the greatest painters in the world, as he was one of the most learned." Cean-Bermudez admired " the elegance of his drawing, the force of his figures, his know- ledge of anatomy, his skill in foreshortening, the brilliancy of his coloring, and especially that power of invention which he never needed to borrow from others." We have only one picture of Cespedes to verify the justness of these eulogies. This is an enormous Last Supper placed over the altar in one of the chapels with which the Christians have dis- figured the old Arab mosque, where the great Mus- sulman dogma of the unity of God had formerly prevailed. Almost all the other works of Cespedes, the names of which are preserved, have entirely disappeared, without our even knowing where to look for them. They were nearly all in the church attached to the Jesuit College at Cordova, and it would appear that at the time of the suppression of this order by Charles III. these pictures were carried away, never to return. They were, doubt- less, not destroyed ; but as Cespedes was not known beyond his own country, it is probable that com- merce would pass them under other names than his. 22 WONDEES OF PAINTING. ALONZO CANO (1601-1667) has been termed the Spanish. Michael Angelo. This is merely because he practised the three arts which are especially called fine. He was a painter, sculptor, and archi- tect. Like Michael Angelo, he was more of a sculp- tor than painter, but his only works in architecture were those heavy church decorations called retablos (altar screens), which he not only designed, but for which he himself made all the ornaments, sculptured or painted, statues or pictures. Towards the close of his life Alonzo Cano came to live at Granada, his birthplace, and, provided with a rich benefice, passed tranquilly the last years of a life which had been much agitated by travels, passions, and adventures. He left seven of his works to the Museum of Madrid. Amongst these are a St. John writing the Apocalypse, and another of the Dead, Christ ivept over by an An- gel. As a painter, he has been not unjustly termed the Spanish Albani, for, contrary to what might have been expected from his passionate temper, the principal characteristics of his works are softness and suavity. By a skillful arrangement of draperies he makes the outline of the form they cover suf- ficiently marked. He also took so much care in the execution of hands and feet, always a great difficul- ty, that on this account alone his works might be distinguished from any other painter of his country. Less fiery and powerful than Bibera, less profound and less brilliant than Murillo, he takes a middle place between these two masters, being correct, ele- gant, and full of grace. We now come to Seville. ANDALUSIAN SCHOOL. 23 Luis DE VAHGAS (1502-1568), a pupil at Borne of Peiino del Vaga, had the distinguished honor of being the first to bring into, and teach in, his own country the true method of oil and fresco painting. It was he who substituted the Renaissance art for the Gothic. At different times he passed twenty- eight years in Italy. When settled at Seville he completed several large works there, the greater part being frescoes. Amongst others, there was the cele- brated Calle de Amargura ( Way of Bitterness) (it has since disappeared, owing to the injuries it received from time and unskillful restorations), which he painted in 1563 on the steps of the church of San Pablo. It was there that people condemned by the inquisition were permitted to stop on their way to punishment. On this account it was called by the people El Cristo de los Azotados. The licentiate JUAN DE LAS EOELAS (1558-1625) brought another gift to his fellow-countrymen from Italy. This was the Venetian coloring, which he had studied under the pupils of Titian and Tintoret- to. We might, indeed, almost believe that it was Bonifazio, or one of the Palmas, who painted the cathedral Santiago mata-Moros (kill Moors) assisting the Spaniards at the Battle of Clavijo ; at the church of the Cardinal's hospice, the Death of St. Hermen- gild ; in the church Santa Lucia, the Martyrdom of the patron saint ; and, lastly, over the high altar of San Isidor, the Death of that archbishop of Seville. This is the largest of all his works, for it covers the whole screen. It is divided into two pai'ts, heaven and earth, and this was the first example of that 24 WONDERS OF PAINTING. style of composition so often imitated by all t e school. After these two disciples of Home and Venice come the purely Andalusian painters ; and first among them the two masters of Velazquez, HERRERA el viejo (1576-1656) and PACHECO (1571-1654). Nothing could be a greater contrast than theso masters and the works they produced. Francisco de Herrera was so gloomy and violent that he passed nearly his whole life in solitude, and w r *s abandoned by all his pupils, and even by his chil- dren. He painted his pictures, as he did everything else, in a sort of frenzy. He used reeds to draw with, and large brushes to paint with. Armed in this manner, he executed important works with incredi- ble dexterity and promptitude. The tradition which Cean Bermudez heard at Seville states that, when he had many works on hand, and no pupil to assist him, he charged an old servant, the only human be- ing he could keep in his house, to put the first layer of colour on his pictures. This woman took the colors with a tow-brush, and smeared them on the canvas almost at random ; then Herrera continued the work, and drew from this chaos draperies, limbs, and faces. This harshness of temper and native coarseness threw Herrera entirely out of the timid style which the imitation of the Roman school had given to his predecessors. He adopted the more fiery style of the Bolognese, or, rather, he formed a new style for himself, quite personal, and better adapted to the undisciplined genius of his nation. The enormous Last Judgment which he painted for ANDALUSIAN SCHOOL. 25 the church of San Bernardo, at Seville, proves that Herrera was not merely a painter from habit, with his hand better endowed than his head ; we see that he also possessed the true science of the art, be- sides correctness of drawing, profound and varied expression, and grandeur in strength. Francisco Pacheco, on the contrary, was rather a man of letters than a painter ; he wrote a treatise on the ( Art of Painting,' and his house soon became, as one of its visitors said, " the usual academy of the most cultivated minds of Seville and the prov- inces." Pacheco had a curious picture gallery ; he had collected as many as three hundred portraits, either in oil of a smaU size, or drawn in red and black chalks, of all the men of any distinction who had ever visited at his house. Among this number were Cervantes, Quevedo, Herrera, the poet, etc. But, notwithstanding his continual study, notwithstand- ing the care with which he prepared his pictures by a number of cartoons, Pacheco could never rise above a cold correctness, without passion or life. Between the rough fire of one of his masters and the learned weakness of .the other, Velazquez did well to draw from simple nature. FBANCISCO ZUEBAEAN (1598 about 1662), born of parents who were simple laborers in the town of Fuente 'de Cantos in Estremadura, belongs to the Andalusian school, because he studied at Seville under Las Roelas, and passed his whole life there. He only once, when very old, went to Madrid, and only once returned to his native province to paint eight large pictures, representing the History of St, 26 WONDERS OF PAINTING. Jerome, for the church in the little town of Guada- lupe, between Toledo and Caceres. This has caused it to be said, in a biographical notice published in France by a man whose official position must have made him well versed in the history of art, that Zu- baran had been to Guadeloupe to paint these pic- tures. Several of his works have been recently scattered throughout Europe, and some have been at Paris in the little Spanish museum formed by Louis Philippe, and dispersed since his death. It is, however, universally acknowledged that the best of his compositions, that in which all his good points are united and where there is the greatest display of talent, is the St. Thomas Aquinas which he painted for the church of the College placed un- der the patronage of the celebrated author of the " Summa Theologice." Christ and the Virgin are above in glory with St. Paul and St. Dominic ; in the centre is St. Thomas standing, surrounded by the four doctors of the Latin church seated on the clouds ; lower doAvn, in an attitude of devotion and admiration, on one side Charles V., clothed in the imperial mantle, with a cortege of knights ; on the other, the Archbishop Deza, the founder of the col- lege, with a suite of monks and attendants. Zurbaran has been called the Spanish Caravaggio. But if he deserved this name, it was not by the fire of his pencil, or by an exaggerated seeking after effect ; for he is colder and more reserved, though, at the same time, nobler and more correct, than Ca- ravaggio. If Zurbaran resemble Caravaggio, it is ANDALUSIAN SCHOOL. 27 through his frequent use of bluish tints, which some- times predominate so much in his pictures as to make them appear as if seen through a veil slightly tinged with blue ; and also from his deep knowledge of his art, and happy use of light and shade. This is the real point of resemblance between the two masters. As for the nature of the subjects except a small number of large compositions which were ordered of him Zuvburan preferred simple subjects, easy of comprehension, and requiring only a small number of personages, whom he always placed in perfectly natural attitudes. Yet he never painted comic or popular scenes, as Velazquez and Murillo sometimes did ; nor strange and grotesque ones like Rib era. He has painted some female saints, and has given them attractions and grace ; but severe religious feeling always predominates with him. No one, indeed, has expressed better than Zurburan the rigors of an ascetic life, and the austerity of the cloister ; no one has shown better than he, under the girdle of rope and the thick hood, the attenu- ated forms and pale heads of the cenobites, de- voted to macerations and prayer, who in the words of Buffon, when their last hour arrives, " Nefinissent pas de vivre, mais achevent de mourir." Leaving Velazquez to be spoken of with the Cas- tilian school, we now come to Murillo. Born in Seville, though in a very humble condition of life, BARTOLOHE ESTEBAN MUEILLO (1618 1682) passed a melancholy youth in ignorance and neglect. A certain Juan del Castillo, a distant relation, gave him, out of charity, his first lessons in an art iu 28 WONDEKS OF PAINTING. which he was to find fortune and renown. But Murillo soon lost this teacher, who went to live in Cadiz, and for a long time he had no master but himself. Deprived of an intelligent guide and of all regular study, obliged to live by his pencil before he had learned to use it, never having had an op- portunity of learning his own powers, and only knowing art as a trade, Murillo was at first merely a sort of wholesale painter. He daubed on small squares of canvas or wood those Madonnas crushing the serpent's head, which were called the Madonnas of Guadalupe ; he sold them by the dozen for one or two piastres each, according to their size, to the captains of American ships, who carried this mer- chandise, along with indulgences, to the recently- converted populations of Mexico and Peru. This sort of work, however, by teaching him how to handle his brush, softened his coloring, which became soft and artificial, instead of being hard. Murillo was already twenty-four years old when the painter Pedro de Moya passed through Seville on his return from London to Granada, bringing copies and imitations of Van Dyck, of whom he had received lessons. At the sight of the works of Moya, Murillo was in ecstasies, and felt his true vocation. It was the spark required to light the fire of genius. But what was he to do ? Moya was leaving for Granada, and was but a pupil himself ; it was useless to go to London, Van Dyck had just died ; it was impossible to go to Italy without money or a protector. Murillo, at last, made up his mind in despair ; he bought, perhaps on credit, a ANDALUSIAN SCHOOL. 29 roll of canvas, cut it in pieces, which he prepared himself, then, taking neither rest nor sleep, he covered all these squares with Virgins, Infant Christs, and bouquets of flowers. His goods dis- posed of, and some reals in his pocket, without asking advice or taking leave of any one, he set out for Madrid. On his arrival at the capital, he went at once to present himself to his fellow-countryman Velazquez, twenty years older than himself, and then in the height of his glory. The king's painter received the young traveller with kindness ; he en- couraged him, brought him forward, procured him useful work, an entrance to the royal palaces, and the Escurial, besides admitting him. to his own studio, and giving him advice and lessons. Murillo spent two years in studying diligently the pictures the style of which he most admired, those of the great colorists, Titian, Eubens, Van Dyck, Eibera, and Velazquez ; then less tormented with dreams of ambition than with the necessity of attaining an independence, he left Madrid and returned to Seville. His absence had not been noticed, so the general surprise was great when, the following year, there appeared in the little cloister of the convent of San Francisco three pictures which he had just painted ; a Monk in Ecstasy, the Alms of San Diego, and that Death of St. Clara which has been seen in Paris, in the Aguado and Sala- manca collection^. Every one asked where Murillo had learned this new style, so attractive and forcible, which united the manners of Eibera and of Van Dyck, and in the union seemed almost to surpass CO WONDERS OF PAINTING. both. Notwithstanding the envy always inspired by success, notwithstanding the bitter hatred of the painters whom he had dethroned from the first rank, Murillo soon emerged from indigence and obscurity. He had returned to Seville in 1645, and, until his death in 1682, in consequence of a fall from a scaf- fold, he did not again leave his native town, I might almost say his studio, for it was during these thirty- seven years that his numerous paintings were exe- cuted. Chapters, convents, and great nobles over- whelmed him, to his heart's content, with orders. There are few high altars of cathedrals, or sacris- ties, or endowed monasteries, which do not possess some picture of their patron saint by his hand ; few noble houses which have not some family portrait by him to be handed down as an heirloom to the eldest son. In fertility, Murillo can only be com- pared to his fellow-countryman, Lope de Vega. As a painter he equalled in the number of his works the poet whom Cervantes called a monster of nature. This wonderful facility of production, joined to the independence which he preserved all his life, ex- plains the reason why Murillo, different to Velazquez, whose works were all engaged for the king his mas- ter, was able to make his name and works known through the whole of Europe. But this is not the sole point of dissimilarity between the two great artists. Although Velazquez, the king's painter, pensioned, rich, and working only at his leisure, has left fewer pictures ; yet, on the other hand/ he w as able to give equal care to them all. and to make them as perfect as possible. Mu- ANDALUSIAN SCHOOL. 31 rillo, on the contrary, painter to the public, and measuring his income by his work, has produced much more, but he had not always time fully to work out all his ideas and lovingly to finish all the details. There is then a greater difference to be found amongst his works, and the evident haste in which some are done betrays the humble employ- ment of his earlier days ; we might almost think that these were destined for exportation to the "West Indies. Velazquez feared to attempt sacred sub- jects ; he only felt at home in the more ordinary scenes of life, where truth is the greatest merit. Murillo, on the contrary, endowed with a rich and brilliant imagination, and animated with delicate sensibility, delighted especially in religious subjects, in which art may cross the bounds of nature and enter the world of imagination. Velazquez, in short, had but one style, one aim. Whether he sought perfection in boldness and simplicity, or in great care and finish, what he wished to attain was always exactness, precision, and an illusion of truth. Mu- rillo, loving the real less than the ideal, and address- ing himself principally to the imagination and the mind, varied his style with his subject. He had not, like most painters, a succession of styles or phases in his career as an artist ; but he had at the same time three manners, which he employed alternately and according to the subject. These three styles are termed by the Spaniards, cold, ivarm, and aerial (frio, ccllido y vaporoso). These words describe them, and it may be easily conceived how they are employed. Thus, the peasant boys and beggars 32 WONDEKS OF PAINTING. would be painted in the cold style ; the ecstasies of saints in the warm ; the annunciations and assump- tions in the aerial. Seville at first was filled to overflowing with Murillo's works ; and it has retained a large number of the best. In one of the chapels of its cathedral may be seen the largest painting by Murillo, the ecstasy of St. Antony of Padua. When I. saw it I was very young, and a taste for the arts was not yet fully developed in me, yet I remained, like the mys- tic cenobite, in an ecstasy before the open heavens. As legends will always be invented for anything very celebrated, a canon, who had undertaken to be my cicerone, told me that after the retreat of the French in 1813, the Duke of Wellington had offered to buy this picture by covering it with gold pieces. This would have made an enormous sum, to judge from the size of the picture, but the chapter was too rich and too proud to accept such an exchange ; England retained her gold and Seville the chef-d'oeuvre of her painter. The fellow citizens of Murillo, collecting all the pictures of his they could obtain from the churches and monasteries, have succeeded in forming a whole museum of his works which had remained in Andalusia. It is in an old convent in the A B G street at Seville. Here we may find collected the Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes, which picture re- ceived the popular name of pan y peces (bread and fishes) ; Moses striking the Sock, recently engraved ; St. Felix Cantalicio, which the Italians say is painted with milk and blood (con leche y sangre) ; the Ma- donna de la Servilleta ; St. Thomas of ViUanueva dis- ANDALUSIAN SCHOOL. 33 tributing alms to the poor (the painting Murillo himself preferred of all his works), etc. ; lastly, the one of his too numerous conceptions which is called the Perla de los Ooncepciones. This is a symbolical representation of the favorite doctrine of the Spaniards, which has become the dogma of the Immaculate Conception.. It is, in reality, an apo- theosis of the Virgin. Forty-five pictures by Murillo are collected in the Museo del Bey at Madrid. From this number we must choose a few for special mention. Of the cold style we prefer a Holy Family, usually termed ivith the little dog. But this deserves a serious reproach ; the want of a suitable style for the subject. In it we see neither the Child God, nor the Virgin Mother, nor the foster father ; they are simply a carpenter laying down his plane, his wife, who has stopped her wheel to watch their young son at play, a little boy making a spaniel bark at a bird which he conceals in his hands. But it is a well-conceived, familiar scene, adapted to excite interest, and full of grace in the attitudes, candor in the expression, and energy in the touch ; the name of the picture merely requires to be changed. Perhaps in the same style we ought to place the Adoration of the Shepherds higher. In the representation of these rustics, the skins in which they are clothed, and the dogs which accompany them, the artist displays unequalled vigor and truth, and it is by a real tour deforce that he has thrown on the centre of the scene the bril- liant reflection of the light from above, which grad- 34 WONDERS OF PAINTING. ually fades into the night, shadowing the extremities of the picture. The Martyrdom of St. Andreiv, painted in small proportions, is one of the best of the aerial style. A silver tint, which seems showered down from heaven by the angels, who hold out the palm of immortality to the old man who is being crucified, pervades every object, softens the outlines, harmo- nizes the tints, and gives the whole scene a cloudy and fantastic appearance which is full of charm. The same phenomenon, if I may so call it, is also to be found in the smallest of Murillo's Annunciations. It is in the midst of this celestial atmosphere that the beautiful archangel Gabriel appears to the youthful Mary. She is on her knees praying ; the messenger from above kneels in his turn before her who is to be the mother of the Saviour. A brilliant band of angels, from among which these two figures seem to stand out in relief, fill the whole space ; and above this bright background there appears, as a still more luminous object, the Holy Spirit, who is descending in the form of a white dove. If I had not seen it, I could never have imagined that with the colors of a palette the brilliancy of the miracu- lous light could have been imitated to such a degree as to make the rays of light flood the whole canvas with their glory. The warm style was that which Murillo seems to have preferred himself. All his Ecstasies of Saints. and the number of these is great, were treated in this manner. The museum of Madrid alone pos- sesses four St. Bernard, St. Augustine, St. Francis AND \LUSIAN SCHOOL. 35 of Assifsi, and St. Ildephonso. Although in these four paintings the subject is the same, Murillo has succeeded very skillfully in varying them, either in the character of the vision, or by the details given in the legend. To St. Ildephonso the Virgin appears and presents him with a chasuble for his new dig- nity of archbishop ; before St. Augustine the heavens open and reveal to him Jesus crucified, and his immaculate mother ; St. Francis of Assisi, visited by the Madonna and Child, is offering them the miraculous roses, which in the spring had grown on the thorn rods with which he had flagellated himself all the winter : lastly, St. Bernard, exalted by medi- tation and fasting, sees in his humble ceH the child Jesus appear, borne by his mother on a throne of clouds in the midst of the heavenly hosts. To be able really to appreciate Murillo we must realize the prodigious difficulties of such subjects. The general effect results principally from the con- trast between the daylight with which the objects below and around are rendered visible, and the light of the apparition which illumines the upper part and centre of the scene. To this effect must be added the ecstatic character of the saint and the divine nature of the vision. Murillo comes up, in every respect, to what our imagination could hope or con- ceive ; his earthly daylight is perfectly natural and true, his heavenly day is like that radiant light I endeavored just now to depict. We find in the attitudes of the saints and the expression of their features, all that the most ardent piety, all that the most passionate exaltation can feel or express in 36 WONDEKS OF PAINTING. extreme surprise, delight, and adoration. As for the visions, they appear with all the pomp of a celestia] train, in which are marvellously grouped the differ- ent spirits of the immortal hierarchy, from the arch- angel with outspread wings, to the bodiless heads of the cherubim. It is in these scenes of super- natural poetry that the pencil of Murillo, like the wand of an enchanter, produces marvels. If in scenes taken from human life he equals the greatest colorists, he is alone in the imaginary scenes of eternal life. It might be said of the two great Spanish masters that Velazquez is the painter of the earth and Murillo of heaven. Although the Academy of San Fernando at Madrid can only show three pictures, instead of forty-five, by Murillo, yet these are real master- pieces. I cannot place in this high rank a Resur- rection which, notwithstanding the resplendent beauty of our Lord, ascending as God from the tomb where He had been laid as man, is only an ordinary pic- ture for Murillo ; but both the St. Elizabeth of Hun- gary, and the two vast pendents usually called los medios puntos (the half-circles) must be considered as masterpieces. The subject of the first of these works is this ; in a vestibule of sumptuous architecture the good queen is engaged in labors of true charity. The kings of France cured scrofula ; it appears, how- ever, that the kings of Hungary had another speci- ality in medicine. St. Elizabeth is tending those suffering from diseased heads. Thus the two most opposite extremes of Murillo are united ; the sordid, ANDALUSIAN SCHOOL. 39 disgusting misery of his little beggars, and the noble grandeur of his demi-gods. From this arises the perpetual contrast and high moral tone of the pic- ture. The palace turned into a hospital ; on one hand, the ladies of the court, beautiful, full of health, and richly adorned ! on the other, suffering and diseased children, a paralytic leaning on his crutches, an old man who is uncovering the sores on his legs, an old woman crouching on the floor, whose haggard profile stands out clearly against the black velvet behind ; on one side, all the grace s of luxury arid health ; on the other, the hideous train of misery and sickness ; then, in the centre, the divine charity which brings these extremes of hu- manity together. A young and beautiful woman, wearing over the nun's veil the crown of the queen, is delicately .sponging the impure head which a child covered with leprosy is holding over a golden ewer. Her white hands seem to refuse the work which her heart commands ; her mouth trembles with horror and her eyes fill with tears, but pity conquers even disgust, and religion triumphs that religion which commands us to love our neighbor. The unanimous voice of the admirers of Murillo pro- claims Si. Elizabeth to be the greatest and most perfect of his works. I do, indeed, believe that this is the best of his compositions in elevation of style, in the arrangement of the parts, and the meaning of the whole ; and I must add, in order to make my- self understood, that it appears to me the most Ilcd- ian, the most suitable to be represented by engrav- ing. But (why should I not dare to say it?) when 40 WONDEHS OF PAINTING. I remember that tliis magnificent work is by Mu- rillo I do not find that the manual work is equal to the thought. Although Murillo never composed better than in this picture, he has painted better. I can fortunately furnish a proof of this opinion. In the same Academy, by the side of St. Elizabeth) are two other pictures where, as a colorist, Murillo has displayed all his powers. These, according to Cean Bermudez, were ordered of him by a canon named Don Justino Neve, for the church of Santa Maria la Blanca, at Seville, which accounts for their semicircular form ; they were probably to be placed in an arch. When they were brought to Paris with the St. Elizabeth, in order to make them square, gilded angles were added in which were traced inscriptions. The subject of the two celebrated pendents is the Foundation of the Church of Santa Maria Maggiore, at Rome, or rather the miraculous event to which its foundation is ascribed. The first picture represents the dream of the Roman patrician and his wife, whom Murillo, notwithstanding the date of the inscription (A. D. 852), dresses in the costume of his own time. Overcome by slumber, as if Morpheus had strewn poppies over their heads, they have gone to sleep seated and dressed in their apartment. A little lap-dog is also sleeping on the bottom of the lady's dress. White clouds become visible in the darkness, and the vision suddenly ap- pears to the closed eyes of the patrician and his wife, who both behold the same dream the Virgin standing with the Child in her arms, pointing with her finger to the place where the church dedicated ANDALUSIAN SCHOOL. 41 to her was to be built. The second pendent contains a double subject. On the left the patrician and his wife, of the size of life, are relating their common dream to the pope Liberius, seated on the ancient sella gestatoria ; and on the right a long procession in the distance is on its way to recognize and mark the place designated by Mary for the erection of the new church. These two marvellous pictures, or, at all events, the whole of the first, and the dis- tant procession in the second that is to say, the parts treated in the warm and aerial style are in Murillo's finest style, and show to what a height he could rise as a colorist. They are usually called either los Medios puntos of Murillo, or the Miracle of the Roman Gentleman. As in the chef-d'oeuvre of Tintoretto at Venice, I propose that these two ap- pellations should be made into one by calling it The Miracle of Murillo. Murillo, having been far more fertile than Velaz- quez, and much sooner known out of Spain, has his works scattered nearly all over Europe, even in the northern countries. The Hermitage of St. Peters- burg has eighteen works by Murillo on its catalogue. Without accepting all of these, we may, at least, mention a Conception beautiful even among so many others, a Nativity which, in its arrangement, reminds us of Correggio's Notte, and a Martyrdom of St. Peter of Verona worthy, in point of beauty, to be compared with the great works of Titian at Venice, and of Domenichino at Bologna on the same subject. At Berlin there is an Ecstasy of St. Anthony of Pa- dua, which, without equalling the brilliant chef* 42 WONDERS OF PAINTING. d'ceuvre that Murillo left as a last gift to the cathe- dral of his native city, yet, at all events, recalls the highest qualities of the painter of Seville. It is in his tender passionate style. Munich is still richer in possessing excellent works in different styles. In the first place, St. Francis curing a Paralytic at the Door of a Church. Murillo, although the most poetical, the most idealistic, of the Spanish masters, has seldom risen to such a height of expression ; his magic pencil has rarely produced such wonders. The action takes place in the uncertain limits be- tween the gloom inside and the daylight outside an excellent contrast, but bold and, perhaps, impossi- ble for any one but Murillo. Four other pictures, in two series of pendents, belong to beggar life, to the vida picaresca, also poetical in Spain, as is proved sufficiently by the Lazarille de Tor mis , the Guzman d* Alfarache, the Marcos de Obregon, and all the romances of the same family, which are merged into one in Gil -Bias. These picturesque paintings present a mixture of his warm and cold styles, and it might be said that they belong to the cold style treated warmly. But, under whatever class they may be ranged, they will always be masterpieces of simple, lively truth. Before these wonderful scenes of comedy in real life we might both laugh and weep. A large picture, formerly an heirloom of the mar- quises of Pedroso, at Cadiz, has been lately brought to the National Gallery in London. It is a Holy Family. I believe that its true name is rather a Trinity. In this picture, between his mother and ANDALUSIAN SCHOOL. 43 Joseph, who are worshipping on their knees, the Child Jesus stands on the broken shaft of a column, gazing toward heaven as if wishing to leave earth, and united in thought to the two other persons of the Trinity the Holy Spirit, who, in the form of a dove, is hovering over his head, and the Father, who is above, amidst a choir of seraphim. I had seen this picture before it belonged to the National Gallery, and in my first enthusiasm I had written that it was a divine work, the finest by this master that had ever left Spain. Without retracting the first praise, I confess that the second might be con- tested. For example, in the Duke of Sutherland's gallery the places of honor are justly occupied by two other large pictures by Murillo, brought from Seville to London through the collection of Mar- shal Soult Abraham receiving the Three Angels, and the Be'lurn of the Prodigal Son. They have been provided with magnificent frames, in which are the verses of Scripture which explain the subject, and surmounted by gilded busts of the painter whose life was so simple and devoid of pomp. The Prodi- gal Son is, however, far superior to the Abraham. The group of the wretched and repentant son kneel- ing at the feet of his noble and affectionate father ; the group of the servants hastening to bring food and clothes ; even to the little dog of the family, who has come to recognize and caress the fugitive, and the fat calf which is to be killed for the rejoicings ; all is great and wonderfiil in composition, expression, and incomparable coloring. This Prodigal Son deserves, 44 WONDERS OF PAINTING. perhaps, to be called the greatest work of Murillo out of Spain. Without having anything equal to this in im- portance, the Museum of the Louvre would be still pretty well off if they had not in reality diminished the riches already acquired whilst they pretended to have increased them. The Petit Pouilleux and a Holy Family, which, like the one at the National Gallery, should rather have been termed a Trinity, have long been in the Louvre. It was wished to add fresh works of Murillo's to these ; but if the inten- tion was good, it is the intention alone which de- serves praise. We will not speak of those enor- mous pictures filled with ignoble restorations which are called the Naissance de Marie and the Cuisine des Anges. They are no less unworthy of the master than of the Louvre. But what need was there of another Conception, also bought with a great com- motion and at vast expense from the heirs of Mar- shal Soult? Why have given a more exorbitant price for it than it would ever have fetched at a sale by auction ? The fact of there being so many on this subject should have been a sufficient safeguard against such unreflecting infatuation, which would be incredible anywhere but in France. There was already one Conception ; and although the last comer is certainly superior to it in some points, it is yet far from deserving the title of the one at Seville, the Perla de las Concepciones. There is, however, one of the most perfect speci- mens of Murillo's cold style in the Louvre that can be found anywhere. This is the Beggar Soy, who ANDALUSIAN SCHOOL. 45 is crouching on the stone floor of a prison or of a garret, between a pitcher and a basket of fruit, em- ploying his leisure time in having a chase under his rags, or, as an old inventory says more explicitly, " a detruire ce qui I' incommoded It is sublime in its triviality. In Murillo's warm manner and higher style there is the large picture which, in my opinion, should be rather named a Trinity than a Holy Family. The latter name, indeed, as it has been employed since the time of Raphael, implies neither the sight of the opened heavens, nor the intervention of the Father and of the Holy Spirit in the actions of the Son. Similar in subject, in general disposi- tion, and even in the details and accessories to the great picture of the National Gallery, that of the Louvre also equals it in the breadth of imagination, which unites the scenes of mortal and eternal life in the majesty of the symbol announcing the redeem- ing mission of the Saviour, and also in the extreme beauty of all the parts. But what has become of this marvellous Trinity ? It has disappeared from the Louvre, and it is in vain to regret it. It has been placed as an ornament in a sleeping apartment of the palace of St. Cloud, and is there fitted into the woodwork. Has the national museum of France become once more the cabinet of its kings ? Murillo left some pupils, such as MIGUEL DE TOBAR, NUNEZ DE VILLAVICENCIO, MENESES Osomo, who followed him from afar off with servile imita- tion. Not long before his death, remembering the obscurity of his youth and the first occupations of his pencil, he wished to smooth for his successors 46 WONDEBS OF PAINTING. the difficulties at the outset of their career which he had found so difficult to overcome. He established at Seville a free academy for drawing and painting, of which he was the first director and professor ; but this academy came to an end twenty years later for want of masters and pupils. Murillo had no more followers after his death than he had rivals during his life. CASTILIAN SCHOOL. This cannot be called the school of Madrid, for during the lifetime of the painters who founded it Madrid did not as yet exist, at least, not as the capital of the Spanish monarchy. But after the caprice of Philip II., who fixed there his hitherto wandering and nomad court la corte had raised Madrid to the rank of a metropolis, all the dispersed elements of the Gastilian school soon assembled there. It was at Valladolid that Alonzo Berruguete lived ; at Badajoz, Luis de Morales ; at Logroiio, in the Rioja, Juan Fernandez Navarrete, el Mudo ; at Toledo, Domenico Theotocopuli, el Greco. We must not pass these earlier masters by without, at least, a short mention. If ALONZO BERRUGUETE (14801561), who culti- vated painting, sculpture, and architecture, had dis- played in the first of these arts the eminent qualities which he manifested in the second, if he had been as great a painter as he was in general a great artist, he would have had the honor of being the first to spread through his country the high notions of art he had acquired in Italy. He had, at first, studied CASTILIAN SCHOOL. 47 directly under Michael Angelo, at Florence, where he copied the famous cartoon of the Pisan War ; then at Home, where he assisted his master in the great works at the Vatican, ordered by Julius II. On his return to Spain, he scarcely painted anything but altar-screens for churches, which require a union of the three arts. His painting is cold and dry, but determined and expressive. His architecture has the defects and good qualities of that of Spain at this period smallness and confusion in the whole, grace and delicacy in the details. In sculpture alone does he show himself a worthy disciple of bis illustrious master, whose lessons he transmitted to Gaspar Becerra, who, although painter to Philip II. and author of a great number of works, was only great in statuary. His Madonna of Solitude is probably the masterpiece of Spanish sculpture. There is one painter whom universal admiration has saluted by the title divine. This is Raphael. In Spain, one painter also has received this magnificent surname. But with him, it was not a universal cry of admiration which thus proclaimed his merit and superiority : it was, simply, his too great fastidious- ness in the choice of his subjects, which always bore the imprint of an ardent piety. This name has been, I confess, in some respects, a misfortune to him ; all the pictures of his time which have the slightest analogy with his style are attributed to him. When any one meets with an Ecce Homo, dry, lean, and livid ; a Mater dolorosa with hollow cheeks, pale lips, red eyelids ; even if it be a horrible cari- cature, he exclaims at once : " There is a divine 48 WONDERS OF PAINTING. Morales !" Those who have examined his fine works attentively are not so prodigal of their author's name. His pictures, frequently painted on copper or wood, are generally very small and simple ; the most complicated are those of a Madonna support- ing a Dead Christ. There are some works, however, of Morales in which there are whole personages, such as the six large paintings of the Passion, which decorate the church of a small town in Estre- madura, Higuera de Eregenal. Madrid has only succeeded in collecting five works by his hand, which proves that they are rare, when authentic. The Circumcision is the largest, and seems to me to be the best of the five. If Morales has the defects common to his period ; if he is minute in the exe- cution of the beard and hair ; if he may be accused of too much hardness in the outlines and too little relief in the model ; we must, at all events, acknow- ledge that he drew with care and correctness, that he understood the anatomy of his nudes, and ren- dered faithfully the fine gradations of demitints. He excelled also in the expression of religious grief, and no one has succeeded better than he in paint- ing the agonies of our Lord when crowned with thorns, or of a Virgin pierced with the seven swords of grief. EL MUDO (JUAN FERNANDEZ NAVARRETE, about 1526 1579), is one of the most striking proofs of the power of natural taste, and of its constant superiority to what can be produced by education. If the Eoman rhetorician was right in asserting that a poet must be born a poet, El Mudo has shown CASTILIAN SCHOOL. 49 that a painter must be one from his birth. Deprived of the usual means of communicating with other men, and kept back by the circumstances surround- ing him, he yet succeeded in accomplishing his destiny, merely by following the natural bent of his nature. When about three years old, a severe illness deprived him of his hearing, and, like those who are deaf from their birth, he was unable to learn to speak. At this time, the Spanish monk, Frey Pedro de Ponce, who preceded by such a long time the Abbe de 1'Epee,* had not yet essayed the education of deaf-mutes. Nothing was taught to Juan during his infancy ; but soon he revealed his true vocation, for he was constantly occupied in drawing on the walls with charcoal every object that he saw around him. His natural talent was shown so clearly in these rough sketches, that his father took him to the convent of La Estrella, at a short distance from Logrono, where one of the monks understood paint- ing. This monk became much attached to the young mute; he taught him the first elements of art, and, soon finding his pupil make such progress that he could no longer follow him, he persuaded his parents to send him to Italy. El Mudo, whose family was very well off, soon started for the land of the arts. He visited Borne, Naples, Florence, Venice, and settled down near * It was about the year 1570 that Frey Pedro de Ponce, a Bene- dictine monk of the convent of Ona, found means to instruct the two brothers and the sister of the Constable of Castile, all three born deaf. 50 WONDERS OF PAINTING. Titian, whose disciple lie became. His residence in Italy was long twenty years at the least. When his reputation, already great, and doubtless in- creased by the fact of his infirmity, reached Spain, Philip II., who was beginning the decorations of the Escurial, sent for him to come to Spain. It was at the Escurial that El Mudo completed his princi- pal work, a series of eight large pictures, some of which have since perished in a fire. Amongst those which were preserved may be mentioned, a Nativity, in which El Mudo undertook to vanquish a formid- able difficulty : he introduced three different lights into his picture ; one which proceeds from the Holy Child, another which descends from the glory and extends over the whole picture, and a third from a torch held by St. Joseph. The group of shepherds is the best part of the composition. It is said that the Florentine painter, Perigrino Tibaldi, never wearied of admiring them, and was continually calling out in his enthusiasm : Oh! gli belli pastori ! This exclamation has become the title of the picture, which is called the Beautiful Shepherds. The works of El Mudo are scarcely known at all, for those which still exist are buried in the royal solitude of the-Escurial, and are now almost inaccessible. We must, then, be satisfied with hearing that he was unanimously called the Spanish Titian, not only because he was one of the favorite pupils of that master, but also because his works were worthy of being compared with those of the greatest Venetian master. Another pupil, or fellow disciple, of Titian, was CASTILIAN SCHOOL. 51 the founder of the school of Toledo. His name was DOMENICO THEOTOCOFULI ; he was born in Greece, it is not known when or where ; he studied at Venice, where he was surnamed El Greco (the Spaniards would have called him El Griego), and, through singular circumstances, came to settle at Toledo, about 1577. He became known there by a large picture of the Stripping of Christ, quite Vene- tian in its character ; soon after, changing his style, he adopted a pale greyish coloring, which makes all the personages appear as so many ghosts and shadows ; in short, he adopted an unwholesome sin- gularity of style, which extended even to the shape of his pictures, which were made far too long. However, instead of good paintings, he left pupils better than himself for example, Luis TRISTAN, whom Velazquez studied with advantage after his two masters at Seville, and the monk FRAY JUAN BAUTISTA MAYNO, who taught drawing to Philip IV., and succeeded in making his pupil a passionate lover of the arts. As soon as Philip II. had fixed his court at Madrid there appeared also in that town the painter ALONZO SANCHEZ COELLO ( ? -1590), who was not only the pintor de camera to the son of Charles V., but also one of his intimate courtiers [d privado del rey). Pacheco says, that " the king gave him for his lodging an immense house near the palace, and as he had a key to it . . . he often entered at inop- portune moments into the painter's apartments; sometimes he came in when he was at dinner with his family . . . ; at others, he surprised him when 52 WONDERS OF PAINTING. painting, and approaching him from behind laid his hand upon his shoulder. . . Sanchez Coello several times painted the king's portrait, armed, on foot, on horseback, in travelling garments, in a cloak and with a cap. He also painted seventeen royal persons, queens, princes, and infantas, who honored him so much as to enter his house familiarly to play with his wife and children. . . His house was fre- quented by the greatest persons of the time, Cardi- nal Granvelle, the archbishop of Toledo, the arch- bishop of Seville, arid, what was a still greater honor, Don John of Austria, Don Carlos, and such numbers of nobles and ambassadors that, many times, horses, litters, coaches, and chairs, filled the ^two large courts of his house." Sanchez Coello also painted several pictures on sacred history for different altars in the Escurial, and also the portrait of the celebrated founder of the order of the Jesuits, Ignatius Loyola. This portrait, which is said to have been much like him, was painted after his death from a cast of the face taken in wax. Coello was also aided by the advice of one of the pupils of Loyola. PANTOJA DE LA Cnuz, the pupil of Coello, held the same position under Philip III. that his master had done under Philip II. He also has left a gal- lery of portraits, even in his historical pictures. Thus the Birth of the Virgin and the Birth of Christ, which are in the Museo del Bey, contain the por- traits of Philip III., his wife Margaret of Austria, their nearest relations, and some gentlemen and ladies of the court. It was at this period that three CASTILIAN SCHOOL. 53 families of artists, all natives of Tuscany, came to settle at Madrid. These were the Eicci, the Cajesi, and the Carducci, which names were, by the Span- iards, turned into Rizi, Caxes, and Carducho. We must grant a separate mention to one member of the latter family. VICENCIO CARDUCHO was brought to Spain, whilst still a child, by his elder brother, whose pupil he was, and died at Alcala de Henares when painting a St. Jerome, which bears this inscription, " Vincensius Car- duclio hie vitam non opus finiit, 1638." He has left Dialogues on Painting, much esteemed by competent judges, and such numerous works of his pencil as prove that his imagination was as fertile as his hand was industrious. In the Museo Nacional, opened at Madrid in 1842, to complete the Museo del Key with the spoils of the suppressed convents, are the greater number of the works which Carducho executed for one of the largest orders recorded in the history of art. The Carthusian convent of the Paular had intrusted him with the entire decoration of the large cloister. He was to represent the Life of St. Bruno, the founder of the order, and the Martyrdoms and Mirades of the Carthusians. By a contract of August 26th, 1626, between the prior and the painter, it was agreed that the latter should deliver fifty-five pictures in the space of four years, fourteen every year, all of them to be painted entirely by himself, and the price to be fixed by competent judges. This singular contract was punctually executed. Four years later, the convent of the Paular possessed the fifty-five paintings ordered of Carducho. On one side twen- 54 WONDERS OF PAINTING. ty-seven pictures describing the different events in the life of St. Bruno, from his conversion to his funeral, and on the opposite side twenty-seven other pictures of the martyrdoms and miracles of the monks belonging to the order ; in the centre is a sort of trophy uniting the arms of the king and that of the Carthusians. Cean Bermudez speaks of hav- ing passed a fortnight at Paular in order to examine at his leisure these works of Carducho, and he affirms that in this long series of paintings of uni- form size, where monotony would appear to be in- evitable, we have, on the contrary, to admire a great fertility of invention, and a skillful arrangement of the various groups and scenes. We accept this eulogy, which is not exaggerated, but must at the same time declare our opinion that this Life of St. Bruno more important than that by Eustache Lesueur in the size and number of the pictures is, however, not equal to that in true grandeur of style and execution. At last Velazquez appeared. It was at the time when Philip IV. ascended the throne. This great painter the greatest of all the Spanish masters who is usually called DIEGO VELAZQUEZ DE SILVA, should, according to the custom of his country, have been named Don Diego Rodriguez de Silva y Ve- lazquez, for his father's name was Juan Rodriguez de Silva, and his mother Geronima Velazquez. It is his mother's name which he has retained. He was born at Seville, and was baptized there June 6th, 1599. We have already seen that, when his classical studies were completed, he had two masters CASTILIAN SCHOOL. 55 so opposite in style as were Herrera el Viejo and Francisco Pacheco. We also know already that he soon chose a third master, and studied incessantly from nature. The course and character of his studies are no less curious to notice than good to follow. He set himself to copy with scrupulous fidelity all the objects that could be offered by nature for the imitation of art, from inanimate objects to man, taking in his course plants, fishes, birds, and animals. It was thus that he obtained the wonderful truthful- ness which is the principal characteristic of his style. Having through these natural stages at last come to painting men, Velazquez also studied sep- arately the different parts of the human body, and the passions which actuate it. Pacheco, in his Arie de la Pintura, says, " He kept in his pay a peasant boy as an apprentice, who served him for a model in all sorts of action, and in various attitudes sometimes laughing, sometimes crying. From him he executed many heads in charcoal, heightened with white on blue paper, and many others com- pletely colored, by which means he acquired his cer- tainty in portraits." Velazquez must have seen, even at Seville, several paintings from Italy and Flanders ; he also saw there the works of Luis Tristan, of Toledo, whose taste he admired. It was then that he felt the necessity of going to Madrid to study the works of the masters of his art. Pacheco had then just given him the hand of his daughter Dona Juana, " moved:,'' as Pacheco himself says, " by his virtue, his purity, and his good parts, as well as by the hopes derived 56 WONDERS OF PAINTING. from his great genius." Velazquez started for Mad- rid in the spring of 1622, when twenty- three years of age, and there studied hard in the rich collections of the palaces of Madrid and the Escurial. The next year he returned to that city, being summoned this time by the Count-Duke of Olivarez. Pacheco accompanied his son-in-law in this second journey, feeling sure that glory and fortune awaited him at court. And, indeed, his first pictures showed what he could do. Philip IV. ordered a portrait of him- self, with which he was so delighted, that he imme- diately collected and caused to be destroyed all the portraits that had yet been taken of him, and he named Velazquez his private painter (pintor de cdmara). To this title was added later those of usher of the chamber (ugier de cdmara), and of aposentador mayor. His salary, fixed at first at twenty ducats a month, was raised by degrees to a thousand ducats a year, without counting the price of his works. Besides this, Velazquez was admitted to intimacy with the king, and was counted all the remainder of his life among those courtiers who were called privados del rey. It was amongst these friends, and in the cultivation of arts and letters, that Philip IV. consoled himself for his political disgrace after having lost Koussillon, Flanders, Portugal, and Catalonia. When he first ascended the throne he had allowed himself to be surnamed the Great, but soon it was said that his emblem was a ditch with this motto, " The more is taken from it the greater it becomes." The royal favor changed neither the benevolent CASTILIAN SCHOOL. 67 character of Velazquez, his austere morality, nor his ardent love of work. When Eubens came to Mad- rid in 1628, he visited the young portrait painter, and recognizing the whole power of a genius which had not yet learned to know itself, he encouraged him to treat larger subjects, though he, at the same time, advised him to go to Italy first, in order to study the great masters. This advice of the learned foreigner quite decided Velazquez. The following year he set out for Venice, where he studied Titian, Tintoretto, and Paul Veronese ; then he went to Home, where he copied a large part of the Last Judgment, by Michael Angelo, the School of Athens, by Raphael, and other works of these two great rivals in fame. After more than a year occupied with these labors done in retirement, and after having visited Naples and his fellow countryman Eibera, he returned to Madrid, in 1631, with his talent ripened and matured. Of this he brought with him a striking proof in the pictures named Jacob with the Garment of Joseph, and Apollo at the Forge of Vulcan. The artist's works received a splendid welcome at the court, and Velazquez from that time occupied without dispute the first rank among the painters of his country. He remained seventeen years in his studio, where Philip IV. used to visit him familiarly nearly every day. A com- mission given him by this prince for the purchase of some works of art caused Velazquez to return to Italy in 1648. He could then visit Florence, Bolog- na, and Parma, where he was attracted by the works of Correggio. On his return to Madrid, Velazquez 58 WONDERS OF PAINTING. continued his labors peacefully until 1660. But in the month of March of that year he had to go to Irun in his office of aposentador mayor, when Philip IV. conducted his daughter Maria Theresa to Louis XIV., who came to the frontier to receive his royal bride. It was Velazquez who prepared the pavilion in the Isle of Pheasants, where the two kings were to meet. The fatigues of this journey injured his already declining health. He returned to Madrid ill, and died there on the 7th of August, 1660, when sixty-one years of age. His widow survived him only seven days. After this rapid sketch of his life, we pass to the works of Velazquez. Sixty-four paintings by him are now collected in the Museo del Key, and in this number are included all the principal ones ; that is to say, except a very few carried out of Spain either as royal gifts or as the spoils of war, the whole works of Velazquez are in this museum. This kind of condensation is easy to understand. We have only to remember the way in which Philip IV., his friend, who had only just ascended the throne when Velazquez came to Mad- rid, and who survived him by several years, acquired successively all the pictures that came from a stu- dio forming a part of the palace, and painted by an artist employed by the royal family. The whole of the works of Velazquez, then, have remained the property of the crown of Spain. This circumstance, by showing why so few of this master's works have left Spain, also explains how it was that he remained so long completely unknown beyond his own country, ANDALUSIAN SCHOOL. 59 Until the Museo del Key was opened the name of Velazquez had scarcely crossed the Pyrenees, and when I endeavored, in 1834, to make this rich museum known in France, I had the honor of being the first foreigner who fully appreciated and ren- dered justice to the great Spaniard. Velazquez has tried every style, and succeeded in all. He has painted with equal success history (profane, at least), portraits, both on foot and on horsebaok, men and women, children and old men, historical landscapes, and copies from others, animals, interiors, flowers and fruits. We will nei- ther notice his small dining-room pictures (bodegones), nor his little domestic scenes in the Flemish style. Whatever may be the merit of these works, they can only be looked on either as the studies of a conscientious student, who does not wish to neglect any of the objects that art borrows from nature, or as the productions of various design of a universal genius who feels his strength and wishes to prove it. The most celebrated landscapes of Velazques, at all events at Madrid, are a View of Aranjuez and a View of Par do. But inanimate nature is not suffi- cient for him. He animates it in such a manner that it is no longer merely a theatre for the scenes placed in it. In painting the wild woods of the Pardo, he introduces a boar hunt, where dogs, horses, and men are all in motion. When painting the gravelled gardens of Aranjuez he chooses the Queens Walk, which from that time down to our own has retained the distinction of being the fashion- able promenade, and the picture thus becomes a 60 WONDERS OF PAINTING. kind of memoir which records the habits of society at that time in the thousand occurrences of a court promenade. Amongst his historical landscapes I shall mention the Visit of St. Antony to St. Paul the Hermit. In a dreary solitude of the Thebaide these scenes are re- presented : that on the right represents the stranger knocking at the door of the cell which the hermit has hollowed out of the rock ; in the centre, the two old men, engaged in holy conference, are receiving the double allowance of bread brought by the raven ; on the left St. Antony is seen praying over the corpse of Paul, whilst two lions are digging with their claws the grave of the deceased hermit. Ex- cepting for the fact of there being several scenes in the same picture, which is no longer allowed, this painting might be considered a real masterpiece, nothing could be finer than the beautiful horror of the desert, unless, indeed, it is the expression of those two venerable faces, and the actions of the miraculous servants. For the rest this landscape, like all those of Velazquez, is painted on a system totally opposite to that of other great painters from nature, Claude or Euysdael for example, whose works must be looked at closely almost with a magnifying glass. Velazquez, more like Kubens or Rembrandt in works of a similar character, threw on the coloring with bold strokes of his brush : the canvas is scarcely covered ; the outlines of objects are undefined ; earth, trees, and sky, all are in gene- ralities, and without details. If we approach too curiously, the eye only sees something like the CASTILIAN SCHOOL. 61 decorations of a theatre uncertainty, confusion and chaos. But if we draw back a few steps, the darkness is dissipated, the beings take life, the world is created anew, and we behold nature in her true colors. In portrait painting Velazquez shares the glory of Titian, Van Dyck, and Rembrandt. He has sur- passed all his fellow countrymen, and is scarcely equalled by his great rivals in other schools. No- thing can surpass his skill in depicting the human form, or his boldness in seizing it under its most difficult aspects : for example, the equestrian por- trait of his royal friend Philip IV. He has placed him in the midst of an open country, standing out against a boundless horizon, lighted by a Spanish sun, without a single shadow, half-light, or contrast of any description. Yet, notwithstanding this bold neglect of all the artificial assistance of art, he has attained the greatest possible degree of illusion. He has imprinted on his canvas all the character- istics of life. The position and harmony of the limbs, as well as the whole attitude of the body, is perfect. The hair seems almost to be moved by the wind, the blood to circulate under the trans- parent skin, the eyes to look out from the picture, and the mouth to be about to speak. Indeed, the illusion, when we have studied the picture for some time, seems to be almost alarming. It is before such pictures that the imagination can call up the men of another time, and renew the miracle of Pygmalion. What I have said of the portrait of Philip IV. 62 WONDERS OF PAINTING. might be repeated of all those by Velazquez. The same admiration is excited by the other portraits of Philip IV. either in full-length, or merely heads, and also by those of the queens Elizabeth of France and Marianne of Austria, the young Infanta Mar- garet and the Infante Don Baltazar, sometimes proudly handling an arquebus of his own height, or else galloping on a spirited Andalusian pony. The count-duke of Olivarez, another protector of the artist, is represented on horseback and clothed in armor ; but in this portrait, besides an equal amount of .resemblance and life, there is also an energy and commanding grandeur which the painter could not give to the indolent monarch. Almost all the por- traits by Velazquez that have been preserved in the museum at Madrid are of historical personages. Amongst them are the Marquis of Pescara, the Al- calde Eonquillo, and the pirate Barbarossa.* At last he reached caricature when he painted some dwarfs the male very thin and the female enor- mously stout a sort of domestic animal, which gave great delight to the royal children. Before leaving the subject I must be allowed one remark somewhat beyond the proper limits of my subject. One cannot fail to be struck, when looking at the portraits of a series of these kings of the Austrian dynasty in Spain, from the Charles V., by Titian, to the Charles II., of Carreno, with the singular degradation of the physical forms, agreeing * These are called portraits, but they are in reality simple studies. Pescara and Ronquillo died before the time of Velazquez, and certainly Barbarossa could never have sat to him. CASTILIAN SCHOOL. 63 so well with the degradation of intellect. In this dynasty of five kings there are the same features, but descending by degrees from the expression of genius to that of stupid vacancy, as in the ingenious scale where the face of the Pythian Apollo is gradu- ally changed into that of a frog. Charles V. has a high full forehead, a penetrating eye, a firmly-cut nose, a wide and short chin, and a proud and dis- dainful under lip. In Charles II. all these features, although still the same, are lengthened, drawn back, and dulled. The forehead is low and narrow, the eye dull, the nose hangs down like a swollen gland from the forehead to the mouth, the lip hangs over the jaw, and the jaw over the stomach. Clearer proofs could not be found of the degradation of a race. We see in Charles V. a great amount of pene- tration, calm strength, obstinate activity ; in Philip II. jealous suspicion, a will still strong and obstinate, but cunning, tortuous, and vindictive ; in Philip III. a desire for a will, but uncertain, insufficient, and without the power ; in Philip IV. careless weakness ; in Charles II. imbecility. It is thus that painting assists history. To return to Velazquez. Unlike the Italians and all his fellow-countrymen, he did not like to treat sacred subjects. They require less an exact imita- tion of nature in which he excelled than a depth of thought, a warmth of sentiment, and an ideality of expression. Velazquez did not feel at his ease amongst angels or saints, he required men. He has consequently left scarcely any picture on sacred history. There are two in the museum at Madrid, 64 WONDERS OF PAINTING. the only ones, I believe, in his whole works the Martyrdom of St. Stephen and a Crucifixion. The former of these pictures, inferior in its style to that by Joanes, is only redeemed by its details. In it we feel, however, the true vocation of Velazquez, for, among the numerous personages in the terrible drama, it is not the hero who concentrates our at- tention, but a child " that age has no pity " who comes after the executioners to throw his stone at the prostrate martyr. The Crucifixion is far superior. Christ is the only figure in the whole picture. No other object distracts the attention, the falling night conceals the rest of nature from sight. The pale form of the dead Christ stands out from the dark background. We should admire the form, which is extremely beautiful, if our mind could preserve a terrestrial thought before such a sight, but we are filled by higher emotions. The blood is flowing from the hands and feet of Jesus, who is fastened by nails to the cross of shame. His head is leaning forward, and from the crown of thorns which still encircles it the hair falls in bloody locks, which veil the closed eyes, and cover the whole countenance with a mournful shadow. No painter, perhaps, has ever imparted a more profound melancholy, or a more solemn majesty, to the death of the Saviour. As for the profane pictures, genre paintings in their subjects, but historical ones by their dimen- sions and style, they are sufficiently numerous to satisfy the eager curiosity of the admirers of Velaz- quez. There are five principal ones in the museum at Madrid. I shall endeavor to analyze these in a CASTILIAN SCHOOL. 65 few words. That which is called Las Hilanderas (The Spinners) shows the interior of a manufactory. In an immense room, only dimly lighted in the hottest time of the day, workwomen, half-naked, are occupied with the different employments of their trade, whilst some ladies are being shown some of the completed work. Velazquez, who usually placed his model in the open air and sunshine, has here braved the contrary difficulty. His whole picture is in a half light, and playing with such a difficulty, he has succeeded in producing the most wonderful effects of light and perspective. The exclusive lovers of color place Las Hilanderas the first of his works. When we come to the Forge of Vulcan (la Fraga de Vulcano) we are surprised at the title it bears. Were it not for the glory which surrounds the head of Apollo we should scarcely imagine that we were looking at a mythological subject or at superhuman beings. Apollo, who has come to inform the hus- band of Venus that Mars is occupying his place in the nuptial bed, is no less ignoble, we must confess, than the part he is acting of domestic spy. Be- sides, the scene is not in the burning caverns of Etna, nor is it the black troop of the Cyclops forg- ing the thunders of Jupiter or the arms of Achilles. We here see merely a blacksmith's workshop, with the blacksmith and his apprentices. But if we take away the mythology, and, removing the unsuit- able glory from the head of Apollo, make of him merely one of those good neighbors who, according to the Spanish proverb, see who goes in but not who goes out, then what a complete metamorphosis do we 66 WONDERS OF PAINTING. behold. We may now admire the space, the truth, and effect in the conflict between the light from the forge where the iron is becoming red hot, and the sunlight which streams in at the half-opened door ; the gestures of the outraged husband, who is thun- derstruck with surprise and anger, and the work- men, who have suddenly ceased their labors and the harmonious cadence of their hammers. The Surrender of Breda, which is usually called in Spain El Cuadro de las Lanzas (The Picture of the Lances), is a still better work. The Subject of it is very simple. The Dutch governor is presenting Spinola, the general of the Spanish forces, with the keys of the surrendered town. But Velazquez has made of this a great composition. On the left there is a part of the escort of the governor ; his soldiers still retain their arms, arquebuses, and halberds. On the right, before a troop, whose raised lances have given the picture the name it bears, is the staff of the Spanish general. Spinola's horse, which is in the foreground and seen from behind, breaks the uniformity of this group, where all the heads are portraits. Velazquez has concealed his own noble and earnest face under the plumed hat of the officer who occupies the furthest corner of the pic- ture. Between these two groups the space is empty ; the painter has been so bold as to separate them by a broad space of air and light, which shows a wide landscape. But the two parts of the general com- position are united where Spinola and the Dutch general are meeting. Every point in this immense picture is worthy of praise. As a whole it is grand, OASTILIAN SCHOOL. 69 and the details are thoroughly artistic and full of truth. The sky, although painted in Spain, is pale and misty, and the earth is moist and cold. The people of the Low Countries, with their broad shoul- ders, fair hair, and fresh complexions, form a good contrast to the pale and serious countenances of the Spaniards, with their carefully-trimmed beards, spare forms, and rich clothing. There is an im- mense amount of nature and variety in the attitudes of all, and yet the hero of the day attracts one's whole interest to himself. Although clothed in complete armor, he has dismounted in order to re- ceive his vanquished enemy, whom he greets with a smile, and. compliments on the courageous defence. The painter must have understood true greatness, or he could not have so well expressed the benevo- lence and nobility which make even a defeat en- durable. To pass from the Surrender of Breda to the Drinkers (Los Beledores, or JBorrachos) is to pass from an epic poem to a drinking song, and yet, in- stead of being inferior to the other, it is perhaps even greater. The king of a Bacchanalian society, crowned with ivy leaves, but almost naked, is seated on a barrel which serves him for a throne. Five or six jolly companions dressed in rags form his court, and at his feet there kneels a soldier of some kind, who is receiving with respect and gravity the acco- lade of knighthood. The monarch wreathes a vine branch around the head of the new knight, whilst the rest prepare libations to complete the ceremony and proclaim his welcome. It is merely a comic 70 WONDERS OF PAINTING. scene, and yet it is one of those pictures the beauty of which no description can give an idea of. It is almost in vain to call attention to its special merits the puffy face of the king, his fat body, which speaks so strongly of the careless gluttony of those called bon vivants in all countries ; the shaggy beards, red eyes, and ragged cloaks of the brotherhood ; the old man at the back who is uncovering his grey head to salute a cup of wine, and the other who is laughing in your face with that contagious laughter which you cannot see without joining. All this can- not be described in words ; such a picture must be thoroughly known and studied to be understood. I have heard that Sir David Wilkie, the painter of Blind Man's Buff and the Village Beadle, went to Madrid expressly to study Velazquez, and that, still further simplifying the object of his journey, he only studied this one picture. Every day, whatever the weather might be, he would go to the museum, sit down before his favorite picture, and after three hours of silent rapture, exhausted by fatigue and admiration, would utter a sigh of relief, take his hat and depart. I only know one other picture which, as an imita- tion of nature, equals, or perhaps even surpasses, that of the Drinkers; and this other is also by Velazquez. While engaged in painting the portrait of the Infanta Margaret he conceived the idea of taking the whole scene as a picture with himself for an actor. The scene takes place in a long gallery in the palace. Velazquez is on the left, standing at his easel with a palette in his hand ; opposite him is CASTILIAN SCHOOL. 71 the little infanta, whom attendants are endeavoring to amuse during her wearisome sitting. One of her ladies, on her knees, is presenting her with drink in an Indian vase, and the. two dwarfs, Nicholas Pertusano and Maria Barbola, are teasing a large dog, who submits patiently to their impertinence. Two faces reflected in a mirror show that Philip IV. and his wife are present on a sofa at the side. At the extreme end of the gallery a gentleman has half opened a door leading into the gardens. This picture is one of the few which contain secrets for no one, which strike the most ignorant as well as the learned. If we could separate ourselves from the other objects which surround us, and perceive nothing beyond the limits of the picture, it would be impossible not to believe in the reality of the things. All the objects are palpable, and the beings alive ; the air seems to move amongst them and to surround and penetrate them. The perspective, showing the space and depth of the gallery, is admirable, as well as the light nnd its phenomena. We might almost count the paces in the gallery ; and we cannot help being dazzled a<; the resplendent light coming in at the half-opened door. We may almost see these per- sonages and hear them speak. Charles II. having taken Luca Giordano, then recently arrived from Spain, to see the picture, the enthusiastic artist exclaJned, " Your majesty, it is the theology of paintfjy;." " The moderns," adds M. Beule, "might say more simply, it is the photography of painting." To this picture, which is usually called Las Meni- nas (Iryj meninas were the maids of honor), belongs 72 WONDERS OF PAINTING. an interesting circumstance in the painter's life. When he had put the last touches to it, he presented it, like all his works, to Philip IV., whom he asked whether he thought it still wanted anything. " One thing only," replied the prince. And taking the palette from the hand of Velazquez, he himself painted on the* breast of the artist represented in the picture the cross of the order of Santiago. This cross is still there as it was traced by the royal hand. Certainly there is more gracefulness and nobility in this method of ennobling than in the sending of a parchment. The Belvedere Gallery of Vienna is the only other museum in Europe which possesses a second family picture by the hand of Velazquez. This one, which is almost equal to Las Meninas, represents this time, not the family of the king, but that of the painter, his wife, his children, his servants, and himself, whom he has placed in the back-ground before his easel, near the portrait of Philip IV. Some time ago I saw this picture placed near the ceiling of a room, and almost out of sight ; since then I have found it brought down and resting on the edge of the woodwork. This is the contrary extreme ; the painting of Velazquez is not intended to be looked at like that of Gerard Dow ; and Eembrandt might say of the works of Velazquez as he did of his own, " Painting is not to be smelt." This picture should rather be placed in the centre of the panel, then it might be seen to perfection and appreciated as it deserves. Another work of Velazquez is in the National ANDALUSIAN SCHOOL. 73 Gallery of London ; this is a Boar Hunt at Aranjuez. At the foot of wooded hills a circus is formed by network hung around. Instead of bulls, wild boars have been let loose, which are pursued by dogs and attacked with the lance by nobles mounted on An- dalusian horses. Ladies are watching the warlike game from their large cumbersome coaches, which look like a sort of movable caravan, and are even painted the same light blue color as the caravans at a fair. But the upper and lower parts of the picture are far superior, even in interest. The depth of the background, the sandy hills, the trees standing out against a burning sky, and varying with their dark shadows the bright ground illuminated by a Spanish sun, show the special merit of this master, his truth and correctness. The foreground, no less true and just, shows also an infinite variety of com- binations and effects. This is simply a line of spectators watching over the fence how the king and courtiers are amusing themselves. There is great diversity in the groups and attitudes, in the expression of the different countenances, a happy contrast of colors between the brillant slashed coats of the gentlemen and the picturesque rags of the beggars, a no less happy mixture of horses, mules, and dogs amongst men of all ages and conditions, nothing, in short, is wanting in this portrait of a crowd, not even the sentiment of equality, so deeply- rooted in Spain, where every one says, proudly, " We are all the children of God." Everywhere else, at St. Petersburg, Munich, and Dresden, we merely find simple portraits as speci- 74 WONDERS OF PAINTING. meus of Velazquez, and some of these are rather by his copyists than by himself. In all Italy there is only the portrait of Innocent X., Panfili, which was taken in Rome in 1648, and which received, like the great works of Eaphael and Titian, the honors of a procession and coronation. In the Louvre the only really authentic and beautiful work of Velazquez is fche half-length portrait of the young Infanta Mar- garet, who was married to the Emperor Leopold six years after her eldest sister Maria Theresa had been married to Louis XIV. To describe Velazquez in one word, I should bor- row the expression Rousseau employed for himself, " the man of nature and truth." In subjects which require neither grandeur of thought, elevation of style, nor sublimity of expression, where the true is sufficient, Velazquez seems to me unrivalled. Al- though he painted without hesitation or touching up, although he delighted in difficulties, such as those of light, his drawing is always irreproachably pure. His coloring is firm, sure, and perfectly natural: there is nothing affected in it, nothing brilliant, or any search for effect ; but there is also nothing sad, pale, or, dark, and no dominant tint to injure the effect. He colored as he drew ; he was everywhere and in everything true. In the distribu- tion of light and shade, in the diffusion of ambient air in other words, in linear and aerial perspective Velazquez especially excels. It was in this that he discovered the secret of perfect illusion. " He knew how to paint the air," says Moratin. Cer- tainly, if the art of painting were merely the art of OASTILIAN SCHOOL. 75 imitating nature, Velazquez would be the first painter in the world. Perhaps, indeed, he is the first mas- ter. Let us explain our meaning more clearly : feeling, depth, force of conception, physical move- ment, moral expression, all the qualities of genius, cannot be acquired ; these are the gifts of heaven, which nothing else can impart. What, then, can be taught in schools ? At the utmost, the way to em- ploy these gifts, and apply them to art. We may obtain a knowledge of outlines and colors, of the laws of perspective, the handling of the pencil and the use of the palette, of all the resources of the trade, the material means of expressing on canvas, what the eye sees or the imagination conceives in a word, the intelligence is not created there, but the eye and hand are formed. Now, all schools have their defects, owing either to the age that is to say, to the prevailing tastes and fashions or else to the master himself ; that is to say, to the particular faults of his taste and method. These defects can only be corrected by the study of nature, that inva- riable model, which is never altered by the caprices of fashion or the mistakes of men. But the sight merely of objects does not teach the way of render- ing them ; there must also be a sight of the way in which they are rendered. The best school, then, is that where the imitation approaches nearest to reality : where the most simple and skillful processes produce the truest result ; where art is concealed by nature. This is why I said that Valazquez might be considered the first master. In the Museum of Madrid there in an interesting 76 WONDERS OF PAINTING. proof of this opinion. Near the finest works of Velazquez there is a large picture named The Call- ing of St. Matthew (Jesus saying to the publican, " Follow me "). This picture presents one peculiar- ity, which was begun by the Venetians. The disci- ples of Christ are clothed in the Jewish dress , the collectors of custom wear the boots and doublet of the Spanish alguazils. However, the many good qualities might have caused this picture to be mis- taken for one of Velazquez. But in a dark corner tnere is a humble servant, with crisp hair, thick lips, and dark complexion ; this is the artist himself. Velazquez had a mulatto slave, named JUAN PAREJA, as a valet. His business was to pound the colors, clean the brushes, and put the colors on the palette. Pareja, who had been a long time in the studio, every day learning some secret of the art which was carried on before him, had at last felt his true voca- tion. But what could the poor mulatto hope to do ? His master, like the ancient Greeks, considered the fine" arts too noble for the hands of a slave, and he had forbidden Pareja any work which would make him more than a servant of painting. But the laws of nature are stronger than those of society. Car- ried away by his passion, which was only strength- ened by the obstacles it encountered, Pareja began to study with as much ardor as he was forced to use mystery. During the day he watched his master paint, and listened to the lessons he gave to his pupils ; then, during the night, he practised the lesson with pencil and brush. Studies such as these could not lead to rapid progress ; it required much CASTILIAN SCHOOL. 77 time and the most obstinate perseverance on the part of Pare] a before he could attain to a know- ledge of his art. At last, when he was forty-five years old, he thought himself sufficiently skillful to reveal the secret so long kept. To do this, and ob- tain his pardon at the same time, he employed the following artifice : Philip IV., who visited familiarly his painter de camera, used to amuse himself with looking over the sketches which were scattered about the room. Haying completed a picture of small dimensions, Pareja slipped it amongst other paintings with their backs turned to the wall. At his first visit the king did not fail to ask for all the sketches in the studio. When Pareja presented him with his own picture, Philip, much surprised, asked who had painted that fine work which he had not seen commenced. The mulatto then, throwing him- self at his feet, confessed that he was the author, and entreated the king to intercede for him with his master. Still more astonished at this strange revelation, Philip turned to Velazquez, saying : " You have nothing to reply ; only remember that the man who possesses such talent cannot remain a slave." Velazquez hastened to raise Pareja, and, promising him his liberty, which he afterwards gave him in an authentic act, he admitted him from that day into his school and society. Certainly this is a singular and touching history of a slave earning his liberty by the power of labor and talent, and ob- taining it through the intercession of a king. Pareja, however, showed himself worthy of it, less by his merit than by his humble and grateful con- 78 WONDERS OF PAINTING. duct. He continued to serve Velazquez freely and even after the death of the great painter he served his daughter, who was married to Mazo Martinez, until his own death, which took place in 1670. He is usually called " Pareja, the Slave of Velazquez" as Sebastian Gomez is called the Mulatto of Murillo. This JUAN BAUTISTA DEL MAZO MARTINEZ was not merely the son-in-law of Velazquez, but also his most skillful imitator. The art of copying has never, perhaps, been carried further. Palomino relates that copies of Titian, Tintoretto, and Paul Veronese, which he had made in his youth, were sent into Italy, where they were, doubtless, admitted for originals. Mazo Martinez succeeded especially in copying the works of his master. The most expert were mistaken in them, and even now mistakes of the same kind are no less common. Like Murillo at Seville, Velazquez did not leave a single rival at Madrid, but only imitators. Juan Carreiio was the most successful. At the close of the century the only Spanish painter left was CLAU- DIO COELLO, who was in the Castilian school what Carlo Maratti had been in the Roman, the last of the old masters. He has left the Escurial a large and celebrated composition called El Cuadro de la Forma, and, having become pintor de cdmara to Charles II., he died of grief and jealousy, as is said, when Luca Giordano was summoned from Italy. After the death of Coello the kings of Spain had none but foreign painters. Charles II. sent for the Fa presto, Philip V. to France for Eanc and Houasse, and Charles III. sent to Italy for the CASTILIAN SCHOOL. 79 German Baphael Mengs. To come down to the present time, we have only to mention FRANCISCO GOYA Y LUCIENTES (1.746-1825). He was his own master, and took lessons only of the dead. From this singular ediication his talent took a peculiar bent inaccurate, wild, and without method or style, but full of nerve, boldness, and originality. Goya is the last heir, in a very distant degree, of the great Velazquez. It is the same manner, but looser and more fiery. Being under no delusion as to the extent of his own talent, Goya did not lose himself in too high-flown ideas ; he confined himself to vil- lage processions, choristers, and scenes of bull-races in short, to all sorts of painted caricatures. In this genre he is full of wit, and his execution is always superior to the subjects. But, like Velazquez, Goya founds his best title to celebrity on his por- traits. His equestrian portraits of Charles IV. and Maria Louisa have been placed in the vestibule of Museo del Bey. These works are, doubtless, very imperfect, being full of glaring faults, especially in the forms of the horses. But the heads and busts have singular beauty ; and on the whole, though very defective when analzyed, there is so much effect, such truth in the coloring-, and boldness in the touch, that one cannot fail to admire these high qualities, although regretting the essential defects which they cannot entirely redeem. Goya is best known for his etchings, which are very good. Eighty of these have been collected into a volume, which is called the ' Works of Goya.' These are witty alle- gories on the persons and things of his own time, 80 WONDERS OF PAINTING. and remind us of Callot in their invention, of Ho- garth in their humor, and of Rembrandt in their vigor and pointedness. After Goya there is a complete gap in Spanish art, and it was with surprise, and still more with pleasure, that we found it to be reviving at the time of the Universal Exhibition. Thanks to Messrs. Bosales, Palmaroli, and Gisbert, Spain maintained her position there honorably amongst the assembled nations. OHAPTEE II. GERMAN SCHOOL. IN our former volume on Italian Art, in the chap- ter of the Renaissance,* we saw that the German art of the fourteenth century had, like the Italian, been learned from the Byzantines, and that it also had soon emancipated itself from all servile imita- tion. We also saw that the first German school appeared in Bohemia, with THEODORIC OF PRAGUE. NICHOLAS WURMSER, and THOMAS OF MUTINA; the second, on the banks of the Ehine, at Cologne, un- der MEISTER WILHELM and MEISTER STEPHAN. The former master, who, as contemporary chroniclers said, "painted men of every form as if they were alive," flourished about 1380 ; the second, who is said to have been a pupil of the Meister Wilhelm, about 1410. The paintings in the dome of the cathedral of Co- logne and its celebrated triptych are generally attrib- uted to one of these schools. This triptych, which is an object of ancient and of general admiration, represents on the outside an Annunciation, and within an Adoration of the Magi, not in the humble stable of Bethlehem, but before a glorified Virgin, with St. Gereon and his knights on one of the * 'Wonders of Italian Art,' p. 41. Charles Scribner and Company. 82 WONDERS OF PAINTINa. wings, and St. Ursula and her virgins on the other.* From the parent stem of the Cologne school sprung the two great branches which, extending to the east and west on both banks of the Rhine, formed the schools of Germany and of Flanders. The latter, which was rendered famous by the brothers Van Eyck, was, in the time of Meister Stephan, the teacher of the other, both in style and in the pro- cesses employed. An interesting proof of this teach- ing is found in the time of the other great master of Bruges, Hans Hemling (Memling). These are the pictures of those old artists whose names are un- known, and who are therefore only remembered as the MASTER OF LIESBORN (about 1465) and the MAS- TER OF WERDEN (about 1480), because their works were found in these two abbeys in the south of West- phalia. Several of these are in the National Gal- lery of London. They might even be thought to be the work of the master of Bruges. Following the German branch in the development of its history, we meet, still on the Rhine, with a numerous family of painters, at the head of which is the old MARTIN SCHONGAUER, who was born, and died, at Colrnar, * The Adoration of the Magi now belongs to the cathedral of Co- logne, that gigantic memorial of German faith, which, after so many centuries, is only now approaching completion. This famous triptych belonged to the town, and at the time of the French con- quests the people of Cologne, in order to spare the picture the journey to Paris, sent it to the cathedral for safety. They have since wished to reclaim it, in order to place it in the provincial museum they have begun to form ; but the church refused to give it up, and after a trial which passed through all the courts of law the cathedral remained in possession of the picture a good pre- cedent to hold up to municipal authorities ! GERMAN SCHOOL. 83 and who in Germany is called Martin Sckon, and in France Le Beau Martin. He, like the Florentine Maso Finiguerra, was an engraver as well as a gold- smith, and, like the Bolognese goldsmith, Francesco Francia, became also a painter. In the paintings of Martin Schon the brilliant coloring of the Van Eycks is united to the fine and hard delicacy of the engraver. Three other schools were formed at the same time from this school of the Khine, those of Augs- burg, Dresden, and of Nuremberg, the last of which produced the greatest number of masters, and lasted the longest time. The Augsburg school attained, under the elder HANS HOLBEIN (born 1450), to great brilliancy and renown. Unhappily, this eminent master only left a single pupil in his own country CHRISTOPHER AMBERGER, who had no successor. The younger HANS HOLBEIN (1498^1543), who became greater and more celebrated than his father, and who is always intended when Holbein is spoken of, after having lived for some time at Basle, went to Eng- land, where he was retained by the munificence of Henry VIII. and the friendship of Sir Thomas More. Being thus lost to Germany, he terminates abruptly the short list of masters of the school be- gun by his father. We must go, then, to the old Palace of Hampton Court, where Eaphael's car- toons were long kept, for the largest collection of his works. Holbein left many, both there and else- where, for, although his days were cut short by the plague, he possessed an ardent love of work, and 84 WONDERS OF PAINTING. also the rare and singular advantage of working equally well with both hands. At Hampton Court there are twenty-seven pic- tures said to be by Holbein. The most remarkable of these seem to me to be, among the portraits, that of Henry VIII. and his Family, frauds L, two of Erasmus, the Earl of Surrey, a full-length portrait the size of life, the Jester of Henry VIIL (laughing behind a small-paned window), the Father and MotJier of Holbein, his wife, and himself (both when young and old) ; amongst the larger pictures we should notice the Interview between Henry VIIL and Francis I. at Hie Field of the Glolh of Gold, that be- tween Henry VIIL and the Emperor Maximilian, the Battle of Pavia, the Battle of the Spurs, and Mary Magdalene at the Tomb of Christ (Noli me tangere.) There is no need to tell the admirers of Holbein the value and interest of such a collection as this. The whole artist's life may be seen here, in his ear- lier pictures, during the changes in his style, show- ing indeed such progress, that on seeing the first and later works we might well doubt their being the work of one hand. He is always exact and correct, always the willing slave of nature ; but in his early works he is cold, hard, and accurate, sacrificing everything to the line. "When painting on wood or canvas he would seem to be engraving on copper ; his style in this stage was like that of his father. By degrees his manner became softer and more ele- gant ; the coloring also, which had been dry and sad, assumed consistency, transparency, heat, and brilliancy. He showed himself at once a great GEIIMAN SCHOOL. 85 colorist and a great drawer ; in fact he became himself.* His greatest perfection is seen principally in the works of his maturer age, the dates on which show when they were done ; for instance, the Magdalen, among the pictures, which in vigor of expression might have been thought to be the work of a Florentine master of the sixteenth century ; among the portraits, his own, forming a pendent to that of his wife, when both were old, or that of the Earl of Surrey, dressed entirely in red from head to foot, a portrait in which Holbein conquered the same diffi- culty in coloring as Velazquez did a century later in the portrait of Innocent X. Holbein cannot be known to perfection in Paris ; the Louvre only pos- sesses second-rate works by his hand. We must go to Basle for the finest of his drawings and cartoons, and to Dresden for his greatest work in painting. This is the rival to the Madonna di San Sisto, and is called the Meyer Madonna. In a large picture con- taining eight personages, we see the family of Meyer, a burgomaster of Basle, kneeling before a glorified Madonna. And yet it seems to me that it is not the Child-God whom Mary holds in her arms, but rather the youngest child of the municipal mag- istrate, while the infant Jesus, who is easily recog- nized, has taken amongst the Swiss family the place of the child whom Mary is holding. Doubtless * We must remember that the date of Holbein's death having been by authenic documents fixed as having occurred in 1543, in- stead of 1554, the works dated after 1543 cannot be by Holbein ; they must merely be an imitation of his style. 86 WONDERS OF PAINTING. from a doctrinal point of view there is something very bold in this exchange ; but certainly, looking at it entirely in an artistic light, it is a happy and touching idea, which depicts simply the frankness and cordiality of the Germans. But we must not expect to find in Holbein's Madonna the Catholic sentiment ; this is not to be found in it any more than the Italian type. In this young mother, with golden hair encircled with a crown instead of with a glory, there is nothing to remind us of Fra An- gelico or of Eaphael ; this is the Virgin of the North, the Protestant Virgin ; and the great merit of Holbein is precisely this, to have succeeded in creating a new type that of his country and of his belief. Add to this high quality, the great beauty of the portraits, the truth, the strength, and the great finish, even in the smallest details. Even re- membering the Holbeins at Hampton Court, I do hesitate to pronounce the Meyer Madonna at Dres- den, the chef-d'oeuvre of the Augsburg painter.* Near this wonderful painting there are also eight excellent portraits, amongst others, that of a Knight of the Golden Fleece, who is believed to be the Em- peror Maximilian I , but who, from a kind of thick mane, might be taken for one of the long-haired kings of the Franks. Another portrait which had long been disputed has recently been restored to Holbein, and this is the most beautiful of his por- * The sketch for this picture, which was long called the Family of Sir Thomas More, is in the Museum of Basle, and every one agrees that the first original painting which was made from it by Holbein is at Darmstadt, in the collection of the Princess of Solms. GERMAN SCHOOL. 87 traits at Dresden, and perhaps in the world. This portrait was thought to have been taken, by Leon- ardo da Vinci, of the Duke of Milan, Lodovico Sforza, who died a prisoner in France. It appears to be of a goldsmith or treasurer of Henry VIII., named Thomas Morrett. Thomas Morrett was changed in the first place to Thomas Morus or More, the name of the celebrated Chancellor be- headed by Henry VIII. Then in Italy, Morus became Moro, and as this name could only belong to the Duke Ludovico Sforza, the work was naturally attributed to Leonardo, who was both his painter and his friend. The great perfection of the work would also justify this confusion, and there is no need to dwell on the glory due to Holbein for having been mistaken for the author of La Joconde y at the same time that he was challenging comparison with, and rivalling, the author of the Madonna di San Sisto. Still more limited than that of Augsburg, the school of Dresden can only boast of one master, faithfully but feebly followed by his son. This master is LUCAS SUNDER, generally called Lucas CRANACH, from the name of his birth-place (1475- 1553). Cranach, who almost equalled his rival and contemporary, Albert Durer, in talent, fertility, and renown, created a style of his own in which he substituted an exact imitation of nature for the tra- ditional forms of dogma. Cranach, who was painter to the three electors of Saxony, Frederick the Wise, John the Constant, and John Frederick the Mag- nanimous, the most zealous champions of the Re- 88 WONDERS OF PAINTING. formation, was also the friend of Luther, and one of the first converts to the reformed faith. Conse- quently, his paintings felt the influence of the doc- trines which, by condemning the idolatries of the Catholic Church, cut off its chief nourishment and chief subjects from religious art. Cranach's painting was essentially Protestant, as was Rembrandt's afterwards. Cranach is nowhere to be found out of Germany, except indeed at Madrid, where he is honorably represented by two hunting pieces, well composed and painted. In the Louvre there are only a few insignificant specimens of his work. But in Germany he may be found everywhere, even in the little museum at Carlsruhe, and in that which is being formed at Leipzig. Dresden itself, however, does not possess the finest works of its painter ; inasmuch, as among twenty or thirty fine paintings, a Herodias, a Bathskeba, a Samson on DalilahVknees, a Hercules attacked by the Pigmies, etc.; there is not one of such superior merit that it can be at once pointed out as being the highest expression of Cranach's talent. From this collection one would suppose that the painter of Saxony had never known any of those bursts o.f genius in which artists can sometimes even surpass themselves. To me, he seems greater at Munich. If this word is to be applied to the size of the picture, we must mention one of the Woman taken in Adultery ; but this simply represents a pretty and lively German girl, who seems by no means overwhelmed with shame and terror, like the woman in Poussin's pic- ture of the same subject ; and amongst the surround- GERMAN SCHOOL. 89 ing faces many are extremely grotesque. Here as elsewhere, Cranach is happiest in his small pictures, Adam and Eve in Paradise, Lot and his Daughters in a grotto, the Madonna, who is offering some grapes to the Bambino, are fine and charming works. He rises again in a vast triptych, the central panel of which represents a Crucifixion, surrounded by scenes from the Passion. Here the highest expres- sion of Cranach's talent may be found, unless, indeed, it be sought in the excellent portraits of the two great reformers, the learned and gentle Philip Me- lancthon (in German Schwarz-Erdt, or Black Earth;) the other, the terrible Martin Luther, admirably re- presented with his bull head, which attacked the Vatican in so formidable a manner, and which we see again in our own time in another destroyer of the past Mirabeau. These twin portraits, which bear the monogram of the painter, a small winged dragon, are dated 1532, two years after Melancthon had. drawn up the famous Augsburg Confession, and when Luther was beholding the triumph of his cause, assured by the peace of Nuremberg. Vienna also, the Catholic Vienna, has in its Bel- vedere gallery several good pictures by the Protest- ant painter, among others a Stag Hunt, similar to the hunting pieces in the Madrid Collection, into which several historical persons are introduced, Charles V., John Frederic the Magnanimous, etc. But the best collection of Cranach's works is to be found at Berlin. There is such a uniformity in point of merit in his works, he so seldom either rises or falls below his usual style, that one has to 90 WONDEKS OF PAINTING. choose out the most important and curious among them, rather than the best. Under this title we may mention, first a Hercules before Ompliale. The son of Jupiter not only holds the spindle, but wears a woman's cap, while the imperious Queen of Lydia is a pretty little German woman, of the almost invariable type of Cranach's women, fair hair, very small blue eyes, retrousse nose, and a transparent veil falling over her eyebrows. For the same reason we ought also to notice the Fountain of Youth. This represents a large fountain or basin, into which, at one end, a procession of old women horrible old hags is entering, while another procession is leav- ing it, at the other end, of young beauties, thus metamorphosed by the wonderful water. Ah 1 these nudities, ugly and beautiful, seem to have delighted the great Frederick, who has been lavish of them in his palaces. We must lastly mention three Venu?es and an Eve, all four as thoroughly German as if there had been no other race but the Teutonic either in Greece or in Paradise. The sole clothing of one of the Venuses, i'f my memory does not mis- lead me, is a cardinal's red hat; the malice of a Protestant painter ! Among the portraits may be noticed Luther and Melancthon, always inseparable, then Luther again with his wife, Catherine von Bora, then Albert of Brandenburg, as cardinal, and also as St, Jerome in the desert, surrounded by lions, stags and hares, a subject in which the artist shows his love for hunting scenes, and his singular talent for representing animals. At Nuremberg the first artist who left a name and GERMAN SCHOOL. 91 founded a school was MICHAEL WOHLGEMUTH, born in 1434, who, when he began to paint, was ac- quainted with the processes of the Van Eycks, which made him follow the School of Bruges. Al- though his works have always enjoyed a well-merited reputation, his greatest title to glory is the fact of his having been the master of ALBERT DURER (1471-1528), who continued his style, although he far surpassed his master both in thought and in execution. Wohlgemuth is the Perugino of German art ; and Albert Diirer the Raphael. His best works may be compared with the early efforts of his illus- trious pupil, just as the Sposalizio, for example, which Raphael painted at twenty years of age, is like the Saint Peter receiving the Keys which Peru- gino has left in the Sistine Chapel. A new and very striking proof, that the greatest geniuses and most renowned painters, far from appearing sud- denly in the world, without any precursors, are merely the complete resume of their predecessors, the highest expression of the art of their age. Such were Raphael at Rome, Titian at Venice, Rubens at Antwerp, Murillo at Seville, and Albert Diirer at Nuremberg. There are several reasons for calling Albert Diirer the Raphael of Germany, that is to say, the highest and the most complete personification of German ait. Brought up, like Martin Schon, in a gold- smith's workshop, he not only became a painter and engraver, but also, like Michael Angelo, studied sculpture, architecture, and even literature. The friend of Erasmus, whom indifference rather than 92 WONDERS OF PAINTING. faith retained in the Catholic ranks, and of Melanc- thon, who defended with gentleness the doctrines of the fiery Luther, he remained, in common with his native town, a stranger to the quarrels and the pas- sions of his age, finding himself as it were on a neutral ground between the two religious camps into which Germany was divided. His genius seems to sum up the character of his country ; it is grave, slow, and profound, but at the same time, strong, and sometimes terrible, more powerful than graceful, and impressed with a peculiar mysticism which unites the wildest caprices of the imagination to objects of the most exact reality. " Strange genius !" says M. Charles Blanc, " with figures prosaically exact in detail, he expresses ideas of poetical uncertainty, and often of impenetrable mystery." Lastly, by journeying alternately from Bruges to Venice, being at once the friend of Lucas of Leyden and of Kaphael, Albert Durer made for himself a sort of composite art, which unite the nobler and more thoughtful style of Italian idealism to the brilliant delicacy of the Flemish naturalism. This mixture, though very successful for the time, and for the master himself, was, perhaps, one of the causes which brought on the rapid decay and the almost immediate extinction of German art. The only faithful disciples of Albert Durer were those who lived under his eyes and, as it were, under his rule, Hans Burgkmair, his friend ; Albrecht Alt- dorfer, who came from Switzerland ; Hans Schauf- folein, from Swabia ; Hans Wagner, born at Kuhn- bach, which name he retained, etc. As soon as GERMAN SCHOOL. 93 Albert Diirer was in the tomb, all the German artists, even those who had frequented his studio, and followed his style, divided themselves between the two schools whose processes and styles he had united ; all became either Italian or Flemish. The foremost among them, whose example w r as the most decisive, HANS SCHOOREL, or Schoreel (born 1495), having studied under Mabuse, inclined, like his new master, towards the Italian School, and GEORGE PENZ (born 1500), still more resolute, settled at Borne, even during the lifetime of Albert Durer, in order to study under the pupils of Raphael It is certain that after the death of the great Nuremberg master, all the artists born in Germany enrolled themselves in the schools either of Italv or of Flanders, and that national art became extinct. Whilst Mazing copied the Smith of Antwerp, HANS VON CALCAR went to study under Titian, HANS KOTHENHAMMER under Tintoretto ; JOACHIM VAN SANDRART, rather later, imitated the Venetians, and .Adam Elzheirner completed his studies at Home under Honthorst, and afterwards formed Cornelius Poelemburg on the same model. Following the history of German art to the end of the last century, we see on one side the two Ostades and the three Netschers take a distinguished place among the Dutch painters ; on the other we see PHILIP Roos (Rosa de Tivoli), who settled in Italy like Claude, and Raphael Mengs, taken by his father from Bohemia to Rome, to endeavor to find traces of Raphael, Sanzio, and Correggio, in an age which was degenerating so rapidly from its noble models. 94 WONDEBS OF PAINTING. It was only when the revival of art was commencing in France that national art reawaking in Germany attempted a revival which we shall be able to speak of later.* To return to the works o.f Albert Durer. Like those of his rival, Lucas Cranach, they must not be sought out of Germany. Very few have left its boundaries so few, indeed, that in the Louvre there are only three or four drawings. It is once again the Museum of Madrid which forms an ex- ception, and alone, thanks to the double crown of Charles V., owns some paintings by the Nuremberg master : a Crucifixion, dated 1513, in which he dis- plays all the strength and maturity of his talent ; two Allegories, philosophical and Christian, which, as Death is the principal figure, must have related to the famous Dance of Death, then such a favorite subject, and which furnished Holbein with a long series of wood engravings ; lastly, his portrait of himself, with the date 1496. He was then twenty- five years old. In this portrait Durer has a fresh- looking countenance, though thin and long, large blue eyes, a very fair beard, and long curls flowing down over his shoulders from a kind of pointed cap. His black and white striped costume is very peculiar, * The complete vacuum which German art in all its branches pre- sents between the dispersion of the pupils of Holbein, Cranach, and Albert Durer, and the revival accomplished in our own days, may be partly accounted for by the horrible Thirty Years' Wai (from 1618 to 1648), by its atrocious excesses and unheard-of de- vastations, which arrested in this unhappy country all progress, civilization, culture, and intelligence. GERMAN SCHOOL. 95 and in every sense of the word this may be called a valuable curiosity. At Munich his whole history may be read in seventeen pictures, which contain examples of his earliest attempts, his successive changes, and his latest style. The earliest of his works here must be the portrait of his father, dated 1497. The follow- ing inscription may be read on it : " Das inalt ich. nach. meines Vatters gestalt, Da er war sibenzich Jar alt." [This I painted from my Father when he was seventy years old."] This excellent picture, painted con amore, bears the monogram, now so well known a little D in a great A. His own portrait comes next,, dated 1500, four years after the one at Madrid ; it is the same coun- tenance, with the large blue eyes, light beard, and curled hair, but the face is fuller and the expression more manly. His robe, trimmed with fur, is more serious than the striped coat and pointed cap he wore in 1496. This portrait at Munich, on which he traced the following inscription, Albertus Durerus, Noricus, ipsum me propriis sic effingebam coloribus cetatis XXVIII., is one of his most astonishing works, and of those which placed him, before thirty years of age, at the head of all the other artists of his native land. Another historical portrait, no less precious, is that of his venerable master, which has a greenish background, and to which he added, a few years later, the following inscription : " This portrait Albrecht Diirer has painted after his master, 96 WONDEBS OF PAINTING. Michael Wohlgemuth, in the year 1516, when he was eighty-two years old ; and he lived until the year 1519, when he died on St. Andrew's day early, before the sun had risen." Two vast historical pictures show us of what Albert Diirer was capable. One is a Descent from the Cross, in which Joseph of Arimathea appears to me the finest figure in the group ; the Christ, much older than tradition represents him, has no other beauty than the exact and hideous reproduction of death. The other is a Nativity in the manger, where the Infant God is worshipped by a group of cherubim, whilst other angels flying away are going to announce the good news to the shepherds. This fine Nativity formed the central panel of a large triptych, the wings of which have been taken off. These contain the portraits of the brothers Baumgartner, knights who are in armor. In presenting these portraits to the Emperor Maximilian I., the town of Nuremberg added a gift no less rare and more precious two large pictures in pendents, in one of which are St. Peter and St. John, and in the other St. Paul and St. Mark. These four apostles, known under the name of the Four Temperaments, are of life size ; and, certainly, Albert Diirer has never imparted either greater material or moral grandeur to his figures. Although these two magnificent pictures bear no date, it may easily be seen that they belong to the latter part of the artist's life, when, after his travels in Flanders and Italy, he had acquired the full degree of execu- tion and vigorous coloring which he was to attain. ALBEP.T DUREB. p.' THE FOUR EVANGELISTS BY ALBRECHT DURER. GERMAN SCHOOL. 99 Albert Diirer survived Raphael eight, and the Frate (Bartoloinmeo della Porta) eleven years. I believe that his travels in Italy were not confined to Venice, and that he did not neglect to visit the town of the Medicis, then the centre of the fine arts. At all events, the four Apostles of Munich, in nobility and imposing grandeur, seem inspired by the St. Mark of Fra Bartoloinmeo, which is, perhaps, in painting, the highest expression of strength and power, as the Moses of Michael Angelo is in statuary. It is Vienna, however, and not Munich, which pos- sesses the finest productions of the Nuremberg mas- ter. Passing by three portraits, amongst which are those of the Emperor Maximilian /., dated 1519, the year of his death, and that of a certain Johann Kleeberger, which Albert Diirer painted two years before his own death, in 1526 ; passing over also two Madonnas, one of 1503, quite German in type and execution, the other of 1512, which is purely Italian in sentiment, especially in the naked figure of the child, we will come at once to two pictures of the greatest importance among his works. If he has painted pictures of greater size, I have never seen any of greater merit. These are indeed real masterpieces, an honor at once to the master, who is seen to perfection in them, and also to the Belve- dere Gallery, which fears no rivalry on this point. The first in date contains in the narrow space of one panel, about one square yard in size, the legend of the Ten Thousand Martyrs, Christians massacred by the Persian King Sapor, or rather Shahpour II. Without bringing in the whole number of martyrs. 100 WONDERS OF PAINTING. a number of incidents seein to have exhausted every mode of death related in the legends. In the midst of these melancholy sights, Albert Diirer has painted himself and his friend Willibald Pirkheimer.* Both are in mourning, and the painter holds in his hand a small flag, on which is inscribed, Iste fadebat anno Domini 1508, ATbertus Uurer Alemanus. The prin- cipal defect in such a composition is its want of unity. The incidents placed in juxtaposition, which touch each other, but without seeming to have any connection, appear like the effect of a bad dream unfolding scenes of blood. But this defective ar- rangement is soon forgotten in the superior qualities of the execution, the exquisite finish, the brilliant though sombre coloring, suited to the subject of the picture, and the powerful expression, as well in the moral beauty of some of the martyred saints, as in the physical repulsiveness of the executioners. It is before such a picture that we can say, with M. Charles Blanc : " The real unity of a picture consists in the sentiment. The actions are diverse, but the emotion is one." The second picture, which is still more important, is known under the name of the Adoration of the Trinity; but it would explain the subject better if it were called by a vaster name, the Christian Religion. In the upper part of the picture the Holy Spirit is seen hovering, like a luminous star, in the midst of * It was Pirkheimer who, in pronouncing the funeral oration of Albert Diirer, could say with justice of his friend, " that he united every virtue in his soul : genius, uprightness, purity, energy and prudence, gentleness and piety." GERMAN SCHOOL. 101 a band of little cherubim ; then, rather lower, the leather, between two choirs of archangels with out- spread wings, holding before His breast His crucified Son. But this is a small part of the composition. Below the Divine Trinity and the celestial train there extend two large groups of saints ; to the left the holy woman, where some who sacrificed their lives to their faith may be recognized by their at- tributes-; to the right the saints, patriarchs, pro- phets, apostles, and martyrs. Still lower are two other groups no less considerable : under the female saints, the Pope and the Church that is to say, a procession of bishops, priests, monks, and nuns ; under the male saints, the emperor and the state that is to say, a noble train of armed knights and ladies in court costume. We see thus how, only a few years before Martin Luther shook both the tiara and the crown by his doctrines, Albert Diirer, re- membering the double nature of the God-Man, on which the institutions of the Middle Ages were modelled, made peace between the Guelphs and Ghibelines. All these symbolical circles, all these long groups, one over another, float in space, and stand out from the azure of the sky like an apoca- lyptic vision. But below them, to the horizon, ex- tends a real earthly scene. A peaceful bay, ter- minated in the distance by the open sea, on the right by rocks, on the left by a large town, and in the foreground by verdant plains. In one corner of the picture may be seen the St. John of this Patrnos, Albert Diirer himself, whose long curling hair falls from a red cap on to the collar of a fur robe. He 102 BONDERS OF PAINTING. is standing, and places his hand proudly on a tablet, on which the following inscription may be read : " Albertvs. Dvrer. noricvs. faciebai. anno. a. Virginis. partv. 1511." This great work, which is no longer wanting in unity is, as may be seen, a complete poem. Albert Durer displays in it all his high qualities. All that may be found in his other works of imagination force, truth, and intimate union between realism in form and idealism in thought are united here. The only regret we can possibly feel is, that he was not able to preserve himself by severity of taste from the usual defects of his time and school. The grotesque appears too often in a subject which should be wholly sublime ; for instance, he places amongst the ranks of the glorified popes and em- perors an old peasant still holding his flail in his hand. This is a noble idea ; labor is glorified. But to this peasant, the equal of princes and saints, is given a low, ignoble countenance. This is un- doubtedly a fault. The artist, it is true, endeavors to redeem it by the perfection of the work, and it is scarcely visible, besides, in the grandeur of the whole, which is heightened by the most brilliant coloring required by the miraculous vision. Albert Durer usually places merely his well-known mono- gram to his ordinary works, which his copyists have never forgotten, and which was no more difficult to imitate than the letters of a name. But by signing these two works with his whole portrait he has given them a special stamp of authenticity, an infallible ne varietur, and, still more, a striking mark GERMAN SCHOOL. 103 of his own preference. It is Albert Diirer himself, then, who calls them his masterpieces. After the last-mentioned picture he painted fewer pictures than he made engravings on copper, wood, or with aquafortis, either because his taste led him naturally towards these other works, or because he was urged to it by the avarice of a scolding wife, Agnes Frey, who tormented his life, and certainly was the means of shortening it.* Amongst the works of his immediate disciples there is a very singular one which vre must not pass in silence. It may be called a polyptych. It rep- resents on the principal panel a Calvary, in which the figures are half the size of life, surrounded by twelve small frames, in which are depicted the scenes of the life and passion of our Lord ; this panel is covered by three pairs of shutters on both sides, each face of which contains at least twelve pictures in as many compartments. The whole forms a collection of fifty-six pictures around the central Calvary. The artist has drawn from the Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, and the Legends of the Saints. He has even introduced the devil, who plays a part in several malicious compositions, * It is not here that we must speak of the engravings of Albert Diirer, but I cannot refrain from repeating, to show the profound genius he displayed in them, a short judgment pronounced on his figure of Melencolia (engraved in 1514). This figure seems to say with Solomon : "In much wisdom is grief ; and he that increas- eth knowledge increaseth sorrow." And indeed, one of the most striking characteristics of the German character is to pursue science with an agony of eagerness. 104 WONDERS OF PAINTING. where the pope and the emperor are not spared. In one of these scenes, for instance, Satan is seen sowing his seed freely in the ground, whilst the pope is sleeping on a luxurious bed, and the eni- peror presides at a rich feast. The author of this curious monument (for it is more than a painting, and the manners of the period may be better studied in it than the arts) has not allowed his name to be known ; either from modesty or fear, he has nowhere left his signature or his monogram. Between Albert Diirer and our own period I only find three names worth quoting in German art Denner, Dietrich, and Mengs. BALTHAZAR DENNER, of Hamburgh (1685-1747), is assuredly the greatest finisher who ever laid color on canvas. In com- parison with him the most patient Dutch painters Gerard Dow, Schalken, Mieris, Van der Werff are mere hasty, unconscientious daubers. It may almost be thought that he worked with a magnifying glass, like a stone engraver. At any rate, his works must be examined with a glass. Denner copies with scrupulous fidelity every undulation, every tint, even the slightest down on the skin ; he makes a hair seem round, and gives the perspective of the slight- est wrinkle. He attains by this means a frightful accuracy. His portraits are a kind of apparition, spectres set in frames. But being obliged to re- duce such wonderful labor to the smallest possible limits, he did not even paint busts, but confined himself to simple masks, faces cut off below the chin. If, then, he counted the hairs of his models, he took from them a far more important part of GERMAN SCHOOL. 105 fche likeness their general bearing, attitude, and grace. Denner only painted faces wrinkled with age, with white hair, and with missing teeth ; the smooth- ness of a fresh and rosy complexion never tempted him, he did not seek after the beautiful, nor even the pretty ; what he wanted was merely feats of skill. However, if, in these portraits as patiently brought to perfection with the pencil as La Bruy- ere's with the pen, we see nothing but old people, I think it must not be referred either to the accident of his orders or to his own choice. He must neces- sarily have been so long in completing a work, he must have required so many sittings and employed so many years, that doubtless between the com- mencement and completion of his portraits his models must have become aged both in years and from weariness. How few of such works would be accomplished in a lifetime ! And, besides, by em- ploying so much art, this kind of painting ends by no longer being art ; it becomes merely an effort to deceive the eye. It is statuary in wax. How much higher is the method employed by the masters of portrait painting Titian, Holbein, Velazquez, Van Dyck, and Rembrandt. They understood that it is better to reveal the soul in the countenance than trivial physical accidents which the eye scarcely notices more than the mind. And yet, the sight of these curious works of Denner is doubly useful, showing at once to what extreme perfection patience may attain, and also the abuse of this precious quality, and, to a certain degree, its vanity, when 106 WONDERS OF PAINTING. no other superior quality accompanies and directs it ; they show that in the arts other and higher conditions are required for genius, or even for simple talent. WILHELM ERNEST DIETRICH, of Weimar (1712- 1774;, will furnish another and very striking proof of this truth. Dietrich is the Luca fa presto of Germany. A universal imitator and fruitful copyist, he has performed in the north precisely what Luca Giordano did in the south. We will confine our- selves to his works in the Dresden gallery. It con- tains fifty-one works by his hand, and not one of these can be called original. All are imitations of the most different, the most opposite styles. A Young Woman and her Children at a window appears to be copied from Gerard Dow, some Bathers from Poelemberg, and two pendents representing the Golden Age in the style of Van der Werff ; some Cuirassiers on March strongly recall Salvator Rosa, and even a Holy Family, in an Italian landscape, which might be attributed to some pupil of Raphael himself. We may also find Elzheimer, Adrian Ostade, Karel Dujardin, Berghem, Jan Both, Van der Meulen, Jacques Courtois, and Watteau. But yet it is Rembrandt whom Dietrich imitates most frequently and with the greatest success. There is, for example, a Saint Simeon, a Christ curing the Sick, and portraits of old men in oriental costumes, which might be taken for works of Ferdinand Bol, Victors, Fabricius, or any other direct pupil of the great Dutch painter. So much diversity in the works of the same artis trenders him,d oubtless, curious as a GERMAN SCHOOL. 107 study ; but whatever talent he may lavish on uni- versal imitation, as he always remains a disciple he cannot pretend to the name of master. It might be said of him what Michael Angelo said to Baccio Bandinelli, " Who walks behind another, will never pass him by." If wo were to form our opinion of RAPHAEL MENGS beforehand, from the description of Winckelmann, we should be nmch surprised when we came to see his works for ourselves. This is what the author of the f History of Art among the Ancients ' says in his chapter on Beauty : "All the beauties which ancient, artists gave to their figures are to be found in the immortal works of M. Anton Raphael Mengs, first painter at the courts of Spain and Poland, the great- est artist of his time, and, perhaps, of future ages. We might almost say that he is Raphael himself, risen like the phoenix from his ashes to teach to the universe the perfection of art, and attain himself as much perfection as is possible for human forces. The German nation justly prides itself on having produced a philosopher who, in the times of our fathers, enlightened sages and strewed the seeds of knowledge among all nations (Leibnitz, I suppose). It now only remained for her to give the world a restorer of art, and to see the German Raphael re- cognized and admired as such at Rome, the very seat of the arts." To understand the hyperbole of this language, we must remember that the son of the poor cobbler of St. Stendal, when he at last suc- ceeded in coming to Rome, when already thirty- eight years of age, was received and lodged in the 108 WONDERS OF PAINTING. house of Raphael Mengs. "We must also remember that he wrote some time afterwards to his friend Uden : " I am grieved at being obliged through po- liteness to recognize some advantages to certain modern artists. The moderns are asses compared to the ancients." We will seek a medium between the " ass " and the " first artist of future ages." Mengs discovered in a period of decay and abandonment some vestiges of the art of the greater periods ; he sought for severity of drawing, nobility of style, ideal beauty, and deserved from the Italian qualities to be called by Cean Bermudcz the greatest painter of his age. The somewhat two great delicacy of his pencil, how- ever, recall the first lessons he received for miniature painting. He was born in 1728, in Aussig, a small town of Bohemia ; and his father, Ishmael Mengs, a painter on^ enamel, wishing to devote him to paint- ing from his earliest days, named him after Correg- gio and Sanzio, Anton Raphael. With this aim, which he pursued constantly and severely with a sort of monomania, the elder Mengs never put into his son's hands any other plaything than a pencil, so that the child could draw before he learned to read ; and when at twelve years of age he accompa- nied his father to Rome, he was shut up in the Vati- can every day, from morning to evening, like a pris- oner, with some bread and a pitcher of water, his father only coming for him at the approach of night, Having become painter to the Elector King, Augus- tus III., Mengs was obliged to fly from Dresden when the great Frederick seized that capital. He GERMAN SCHOOL. 109 returned to Italy, went to Naples, to Charles III., who took him with him to Spain, and he resided at Madrid until his last illness, in 1779. Unlike his predecessor at the court of Spain, the Neapolitan, Luca Giordano, Mengs worked like the Germans, with much deliberation and reflection. He was not, like the generality of painters, satisfied with merely a sketch or roughly-painted design to assist him in his compositions ; making use both of antique models and of nature, and forming an elabo- rate synthesis, he first drew each separate limb, then the figure, afterwards each group, and lastly the whole composition. Through this method the num- ber of his studies was immense, and that of his pic- tures very limited, for he passed months and even years in completing his preparations. The works of Mengs are very rare in France ; he has left some in Saxony, in Italy, and many more in Spam. The Museo del Key possesses, amongst others, an Adoration of the Shepherds, which is considered his masterpiece. The last figure in the left hand group in this painting is a portrait of the painter himself. Mengs, who was also a learned man, has left ' Thoughts on Painting and Reflections on Painters,' which would form, in the opinion of his biographer, Cean Berinudez, the best elementary treatise on the subject. He had no follower but his charming pupil ANGELICA KAUFFMANN, no less celebrated for her wit, her grace, her amiability, and her romantic story in connection with the pretended Count of Horn, than for her remarkable talent in portrait 110 WONDERS OF PAINTING. painting, wliich she carried on at Rome towards the end of the last century. Angelica Kauffrnann brings us to the efforts at renovation in the commencement of the present century. The Germans, who joined in the European work of a fresh revival in art twenty years later than the French under Louis David, undertook their mission in an entirely different spirit. Instead of carrying art forward, they turned back, and rather than go on resolutely to the discovery of an un- known future, they thought it more prudent to re- turn to the past, and to take refuge in archaism. At the death of Albert Diirer, artistic Germany fell asleep as if in the cavern of Epimenides. Aroused at last by the rumor of the revival of the arts in France, she resumed her task where it had been left at the close of the fifteenth century. It was to Rome that she once more turned in order to rekin- dle the extinguished flame. The history of the little German colony is well known which, in 1810, crossed the mountains under the direction of M. Frederic Owerbeck, and established at Rome a con- vent of artists, where all the subsequent heads of schools were formed, Peter Cornelis, "Wilhelm Scha- dow, Philip Veit, Jules Schnorr, Karl Vogel, Hein- rich Hess, etc. They followed to the letter the paradoxical advice of Lanzi, " that modern artists should study the artists of the times preceding Raphael ; for Raphael, springing from these paint- ers, is superior to them, whilst those who followed him have not equalled him." Their enthusiasm for GERMAN SCHOOL. Ill wnat they called the " Christian ideal," for art an- terior to the religious reformation, led them even to renounce the religion of their fathers. The Pro- testants became Catholics, and M. Owerbeck, who set the example of the abjuration as well as of the exile, was not satisfied with returning to the age of Leo X. ; he endeavored to adapt the types of Ra- phael, where Grecian beauty is visible, to the mystic style of Fra Angelico. The illiberal and bigoted reaction which followed the success of the coalitions against France, and the natural taste of the Germans for the science of the past, led astray both princes and people. It was under this influence that the renovation was accomplished. It imprinted on German painting a capital, irremediable defect ; to avoid the fault with which they reproached the Dutch that of not knowing how to idealize the real the Germans have fallen into the opposite extreme, of being unable to realize the ideal. " Whilst science," says M. Vacherot, " explains reality by ideas, art expresses ideas by re- ality. The harmony of these two terms ideal and real is the law of esthetic works. The realist, who limits art to the imitation of the real, and the ideal- ist who wanders into the pure ideal, never violate it with impunity. The one remains incomplete, the other powerless. The latter cannot succeed in giv- ing a body to the idea, nor the former in giving an idea to reality. Ideas without forms to realize them, forms and colors without thoughts to idealize them, expression without life, life without expression, such is the alternative to which the artist is condemned 112 WONDERS OF PAINTING. who listens to either of the exclusive schools. Syn- thesis is the safety of art, which is nothing unless it be a symbol and a language." The Germans of Rome could not speak this lan- guage, and it was because they could not express the ideal by the real, that they remained so power- less. Goethe knew the productions of this school, and yet it is said that the illustrious author of * Faust,' when taken in his old age to see the Gothic collection of the brothers Boisseree, and pressed to give his opinion on these curiosities of German art, said with a sigh : " I see, indeed, the bud, but where is the blossom ?" This word of Goethe is just and profound, German art has had no flower, or, at all events, if it have blossomed, it was in the Netherlands. There Rubens and Rembrandt have been the highest expression of northern art. Instead of entering here into an analysis* of the works of this school, I prefer in the following re- marks to reason in generalities without any particu- lar application, in order to show how modern Ger- man art seems to me stained with two vices, equally serious, equally irremediable ; it is taken from an- other time and from another country. To borrow of another time appears to me equally fatal, both to matter and to form. As regards mat- ter, art and society must be contemporaneous, in order that the one may be but a form of the other, * This analysis of the works of the German Renaissance ma^ be found in the chapter * Salle des Fetes,' in the Glyptothek of Mm nich (Musees d'Allemagne, Third Edition, pp. 145-163), and in tb* chapter * Musee de Francfort-sur-Mein' (pp. 398, and following.) GERMAN SCHOOL. 113 so that it would be necessary to resuscitate with the art the beliefs and manners also of that time. We should have to require in the present instance that the Divina Commedia, the Christian trilogy of hell, purgatory, and paradise, should be once more the popular poem ; we should have to revive, with the simple, blind credulity of the Middle Ages, a gen- eral taste for subjects which then, far from being exhausted, were still in their freshness and novel fcy. I do not pretend that Raphael or Giotto, who, the one at the commencement, the other at the close of the long task, emancipated art from dogma, were either of them very devout ; and I willingly agree that M. Owerbeck, a new convert to the Catholic faith, was more devout than Perugino, who is said to have been an atheist. I speak of society in general, of its manners and tastes, and affirm that everything has changed in the last two centuries, even in Germany, since the time of Luther and the Reformation ; since the times of Leibnitz, Spinoza, Kant, Lessing, and Goethe. No one can go back- wards in the stream of time. We now come to form. For this we ought to find once more a natural, unstudied and simple ingenuity, the merit, in short, of native originality. How can one be an imitator without falling into the defects inherent to imitation ? The style becomes stiff and artificial which should remain simple and unaffected ; it becomes exaggerated when nobility and force are sought for. Instead of the simple and childlike ignorance like a new-born child which art ex- hibits when it is marching on to perfection, it is 114 WONDERS OF PAINTING. erudite, like an old man, and bears the infallible signs of approaching decrepitude. It is the time of commentaries in literature ; it is the time when there is much reasoning on art, though with- out its being much practised, when we know why, and how, there were great masters, after having lost the secret to make them. And then, when we ad- mire an ancient painting, our admiration becomes mingled with a sentiment of respect and love quite personal to the artist ; we love the traces of the hands of Giotto, Fra Angelico, Leonardo da Vinci, and Raphael. They become holy relics as well as fine works. If a modern artist painted like them, even if it were as well as they, his works would still be wanting in that powerful attraction which com- pletes the superiority of the originals over imitations. By recurring to the fifteenth in the nineteenth cen- tury the Germans could only make copies. If to transplant painting from one period to another be a serious injury to the success of the foundation of a school, to transplant painting from one country to another is no less grave an error. The Italian masters are really only thoroughly known and appreciated in, Italy, the Spaniards in Spain, the Flemings in Flanders. In order thor- oughly to appreciate any master, w r e must have be- fore our eyes the scenes in which they lived, the living types which served them as models, the man- ners and customs which they shared with their fellow-countrymen ; in order to explain their choice of subjects, we must have the style, manner, form, color ; in fact, all the accessories of their works. GEEMAN SCHOOL. 115 An example will make this clearer : Claude Lor- raine and Jacob Kuysdael are, in my opinion, the two great portraitists of nature, the two greatest landscape painters. Whence comes, then, the great distance that separates them ? From the countries in which they lived. The one saw the sun rise and set in Italy, in a warm, luminous atmosphere, over the seas which surround the peninsula, or behind the mountains which crown it ; the other the flat, cloudy and verdant pastures of the Netherlands, under a pale, misty sky ; the one shared all the idealism of the Italians, the other all the realism of the Dutch ; the difference between Claude and Euysdael is thus explained. Change their coun- tries ; from being truthful they both become false. In a word, painting is a medium for ideas, modified by the place and the period in which the painter lives. It is understood, like literature, by its period, and, still more than literature, by its country, since it reproduces visible aspects objectively. To bring, then, Italian art into Germany was a second mis- take equal to that of trying to revive the art of the Middle Ages in the nineteenth century. The Italians had, doubtless, already been much imitated ; in Spain, in Flanders, and even in Ger- many and these happy importations had refreshed or completed the other schools. But in this case the imitations were almost simultaneous with the originals. Thus, to take a single example, Juan Joanes learned in the studio of Eaphael, and El Mudo studied under Titian. M. Owerbeck and his companions, however, took lessons of no living mas- 116 WONDERS OF TAINTING. ter in Italy. Nor is this all ; when Italian art was carried into other countries, it was immediately modified, transformed according to the nature, the types, manners, ideas, and objects to be found in those countries. Eubens and Murillo both obtained their art from Italy, through their masters and predecessors ; but they belong none the less to the Flemish and Spanish schools respectively. The mis- take of the Germano-Koman school is, certainly, not the having studied art, or even primitive art, so worthy of study and respect in Italy ; but rather the having transplanted into Germany Italian art of the fifteenth century. They have committed in painting the mistake of the English architects, when they introduced into their cold damp climate the archi- tectural forms of the East, of those hot countries where people pass their lives in the open air. By abandoning the architecture of the North for that of the South, the English have spoiled everything, even to the column. I am glad to be able to support my arguments on this subject by the opinion of a German, and of that German who was, perhaps, the primary cause of the faults of this school. Winckelmann, disgusted with the insufficiency of the Coypels, the Vanloos, the Bouchers, turned to antique statuary. And he thus led art from one fault to another, de vicio in vicium ftecti. His retrospective fanaticism brought in that of Owerbeck and Corneliiis. Winckelmann explains with much sense how it was that the attempts of regeneration made under the Antonines remained vain and fruitless. This was because the artists of GERMAN SCHOOL. 117 that time, although "well intentioned," endeavored to revive art by imitation, by going back to the origin, even so far as to the sacerdotal style of the Etruscans and Egyptians. Devoted to science even to pedantry, they sacrificed essentials to minute ac- cessories, not considered worth notice in times of genius. Petronius arbiter elegantarium, as Nero said had already pitied the fate of art, spoiled by a meagre and restricted style ; and Quintilian made as just a criticism on the artists who were his con- temporaries, by saying that they would have made the ornaments of the Jupiter of Phidias better than Phidias himself. " The gods and heroes," says Winckelmann, " had been represented in every pos- sible attitude ; the forms seemed, so to speak, ex- hausted ; a circumstance which opened 'the career of imitation. ... As it seemed impossible to sur- pass a Praxiteles or an Apelles, they endeavored to equal them by remaining under the yoke of imita- tion. Art had the same fate as philosophy. In the former, as in the latter, there was an eclectic school, who, wanting strength and genius to invent, con- fined themselves to collecting separate beauties and forming one beautiful whole. As the eclectic phi- losophers having produced nothing original, can only be esteemed copyists, so those who follow the same method in art are only servile imitators, who produce nothing original and perfect. . ." Is there not an evident resemblance between these Roman artists, in the time of Adrian, going to ancient Egypt to seek a fresh youth for exhausted statuary, and the German artists of the present time | 118 WONDEES OF PAINTING. also well intentioned, seeking in the Home of the fifteenth century a new school of painting for their country ? They possessed a high and even proud ideal, a logical conception making consequences flow from principle, and an extensive and accurate know- ledge. Where should the science of archaeology be found, if not in the country of Niebuhr and Muller ? Monstrous anachronisms must be left to Titian, Veronese, Rubens, and Kernbrandt, and errors of geography to Shakespeare and Cervantes. And yet, has the modern eclectic school of art been more happy in its attempt than the ancients were in the time of the Antonines ? It seems to me that it must be confessed that the faith of this school was greater than its works. Happily, German art has not persisted in this blind alley where progress was impossible. The school of Diisseldorf, from MM. Kaulbach and Lessiug to M. Knaus, and the school of Munich, with MM. Piloty, Adam, Horschelt, Lier, etc., by returning to picturesque truth have returned to their own times and to their own country. CHAPTER III. SCHOOLS OF THE LOW COUNTRIES. WHEN writing a work on the Musees $ Europe, in which it was necessary to have as much clearness and diversity as possible, and to make use of every divi- sion at all allowable, I could never make up my mind to separate absolutely the Flemish from the Dutch school. Their formal division could be of no interest and no utility, besides being impossible. These schools are so strictly bound together in the history of art, bo.th by the lessons of common masters and by the employment of the same style and processes, that we could only make a purely geographical divi- sion. The masters would have to be separated merely as chance had placed their birth to the right or left of that imaginary line which was made the frontier between the two ancient halves of the Low Countries. This would be puerile, and, in fact, ab- surd ; for a strict application of this rule would restore Rubens to Germany, because he happened to be born at Cologne, or rather at Siegen, in the duchy of Nassau. Now, I would ask, what connection is there between Rubens and the German school? And where would Flemish art be without Eubens ? It would be Italy without Eaphael, a building without a roof, a 120 WONDERS OF PAINTING. kingdom without a king ; it would be like our planet- ary system with its sun taken away and thrown into the midst of another system. For the same reason we should have to separate Lucas of Leyden from Van Eyck ; Quintin Matsys from Lucas of Leyden ; Eubens from his master, Otto Venius ; Diepenbeck and Van Thulden from their master, Rubens ; and David Teniers from Adrain Brauwer (who, though born in Holland, died at Antwerp), and from the Ostades, who was born at Lubeck, though they passed the greater part of their life in Holland. Or else, seeking a more rational basis for this division of the schools than merely the accident of birth on one or other side of a stream, must we consult biographical notices or parish registers to discover, if possible, what faith each master pro- fessed ? It would be a better ground to go on, although new to art, to make a division between Catholic and Protestant painters. This would be, however, very difficult ; for, if we frequently cannot succeed in discovering, even with artists of reputa- tion, their native place and the date of their birth or death, how could we find the registry of their baptism ? Besides, we should sometimes meet with another difficulty, as in the case of Jordaens, who was born a Catholic and became a Protestant in middle life. On the other hand, if a difference of belief in the Christian religion explains certain dif- ferences in the choice of subjects and manner of treating them, as we showed when speaking of Lucas Cranach, the distinctions are not sufficiently defi- nite, nor the characteristics sufficiently plain, to SCHOOLS OF THE LOW COUNTRIES. 121 form a real line of demarcation between the schools, showing their diversity at first sight. M. Charles Blanc has endeavored to justify this division of the two schools by the following observations : " Whilst the Flemings, following the example of Eubens, paint large pictures with much breadth and fire, the Dutch labor patiently at small pictures in a careful, precise, and finished style." But if Kubens and his pupils in Flanders have treated large compositions, it appears to me that Kembrandt and his pupils in Holland have in general done the same ; and if the Dutch have usually painted with patience and deli- cacy, Teniers and his large train of disciples and imitators have followed the same road with similar success in Flanders. Should we, then, call Rem- brandt a Fleming, and Teniers a Dutchman ? Surely it would be better to unite the sister schools of Flanders and Holland, and call it by the general name of the Low Countries, since the two countries were frequently united under this common name. But, as in the general Italian school the Venetian is separated from the Florentine, and as in the Spanish the Castilian is separated from the Andalusian, it will be as well in the general school of the Low Countries to separate the Dutch from the Flemish. They will thus form, as in the classifications of natural history, two genera of an order. This rea- sonable distinction should satisfy all. I think, be- sides, that it may be established without too much arbitrariness, by seeking the assistance of geography and history, and by studying the differences that might arise from religion, style, and processes. 122 WONDERS OF PAINTING. FLEMISH SCHOOL. The town of Bruges may claim, in painting, the priority even over Antwerp, which usurped from her at the same time the supremacy in commerce, po- litics, and art. It was at Bruges that the brothers HUBERT (13661426) and JAN (before 13901441) VAN EYCK lived and died. We have already seen that Hubert was the real teacher of his younger brother, and that Jan (who was called Jan oi Bruges), if he did not exactly invent the process of painting in oil, at all events carried it to perfection and brought it into common use, so that it is to him that is owing the great revolution in the art of painting. We must now examine their works. Those of Hubert at least, those which in our opinion are authentic are extremely rare. Bruges, Antwerp, Berlin, and Carlsruhe are the only towns that can, with any appearance of reason, boast of possessing any in their galleries. We shall do well to study both brothers at once in a vast work, which they certainly commenced, if they did not complete it together. The almost architectural symmetry of this work would cause it to be classed in an ear- lier style of art, whilst its exquisite perfection opens a fresh career in the art of painting. In the first place, we must say a word as to the history of this vast composition. The families Vydts and Burlut had ordered of the brothers Van Eyck a grand altar-piece for their mortuary chapel in the church of St. Bavon, of FLEMISH SCHOOL. 123 Ghent. Instead of a single picture, the Van Eycks, taking as their subject the Ecce Agnus Dei qui tollit peccata mundi, made a polyptych formed of twelve panels, with their shutters, forming altogether twenty-four pictures divided into two rows, having five panels in the one, and seven in the other. The first has remained at Ghent, as well as the central panel for the second, which contains the Worship of the Lamb. The rest of the lower panels are to be found in the Berlin Museum, where the whole com- position is completed by the excellent copies made in the sixteenth century by Michael Coxis. The following is the description of the six panels at Berlin : 1. The Righteous Judges (Justi Judices). Ten figures on horseback in a Flemish landscape ; the judge mounted on a grey horse in the foreground is Hubert Van Eyck ; the one in black, a little far- ther back, is thought to be Jan Van Eyck ; and what confirms this traditional belief is, that the face is turned round in a singular manner, as if he had painted himself from a mirror. 2. The Holy Warriors (Milites Christi). Nine figures also on horseback, with a landscape background, and all in warlike costumes. In the foreground may be recognized St. George, Charlemagne, Godfrey de Bouillon, Baldwin of Constantinople, and St. Louis. 3 and 4. Concerts of Angels, some singing, others playing on instruments the organ, harp, violoncello, etc. Be- tween these two concerts there should be placed the Worship of the Lamb. 5. The Hermits. Ten figures assembled in a wild place, a sort of ravine. It is easy to recognize the hermits St. Paul and St. An- 124 WONDEKS OF PAINTING. tony. St. Magdalen and St. Mary the Egpytian. 6. The Pilgrims. The giant Christopher is leading seventeen pilgrims of different ages and countries.* On the old frames of the shutters, which are still preserved, may be read the following inscription, although some parts, having been effaced by time, have been found in later copies : " Pictor Hubertus e Eyck, major quo nemo repertus Incepit : pondusque Johannes arte secundus Frater perfecit, Judoci Vyd prece fretus. VersV seXta Mai Vos CoLLoCat aCta tVerl." This inscription signifies that the work of the painters of Bruges was terminated May 6th, 1432. It also signifies that Hubert Van Eyck commenced the work, and that his brother Jan finished it ; but, as Hubert was dead by 1426, it is quite presumable that Jan did the greater part of the whole work, and especially the lower row, which I have just described. Although he is only arte secundus in age, he is as- suredly first in the use of their joint discoveries, and in the great perfection to which he carried the pro- cesses. These fragments, even those by his hand, are, however, very unequal in style and in propor- tions. In the groups of the celestial musicians, * In the landscapes of the two latter panels, Van Eyck has in- troduced the orange tree, the stone pine, the cypress, and the palm southern trees which he had seen in Portugal, when, in 1428, he accompanied the Sire de Bourbon, who was charged by the Duke of Burgundy, Philip the Good, to ask of the King Juan I. the hand of his daughter Isabella. Van Eyck was commissioned to bring to the duke a portrait of his bride. FLEMISH SCHOOL. 125 where the painter seems to have desired to distin- guish two sexes, making men and worn n angels, the figures are almost of life-size, whilst in the other more complicated subjects the numerous figures are only about a foot high. There is, if I am not mis- taken, as great a difference in merit as in form be- kween these two styles of composition. I place, however, the small figures above the larger ones. In life-sized figures Van Eyck seems to me singu- larly cramped. He is embarrassed in the drawing, which becomes stiff, and in the coloring, which be- comes dry and too minute, and, in order to give expression to the faces, the eyes and mouth are almost made to grimace. But in the smaller figures he shows his usiial simplicity and skill. In these we find truth, brilliancy, power, and solidity. Amongst the numerous works of the younger Van Eyck, after the death of his brother, there are none more curious than the two Heads of Christ which are at Bruges and Berlin. They both represent the traditional head brought from Byzantium, and which is still seen on the banners of the Greek communion. They are surrounded by a golden glory in the form of a cross, and on the green background there may be seen, in the upper part, the A and fi, (alpha and omega) of the Greeks, and, in the lower part, the I and F (initium et finis) of the Latins. But that of Bruges bears this inscription : " Jo de Eyck, inventor, anno 1420, 30 January /" and that of Berlin : " Johes de Eyck, me fecit et appleviit, anno 1438, 31 January. 1 ' This means, if I am not mistaken, that the Head of Christ at Bruges is one of the first trials, perhaps 126 WONDERS OF the first, of the processes with which the Van Eycks endowed the art of painting. This circumstance, by putting back a few years the invention of oil painting, which is by general consent placed about 1410, would also explain the singular slowness of the spreading of this invention, since no Italian made use of it before the year 1445, whilst the Head at Berlin, elated eighteen years later, is a work done when its author had attained to the maturity of his talent and the full use of his processes. The former, indeed, has hard outlines, and a reddish and mono- tonous coloring, while the latter, on the contrary, shows the manner of Van Eyck when it had reached the highest stage of perfection. For history, the Head at Bruges is the most valuable ; for art, that of Berlin. At Bruges, also, we shall find one of the chefs- d'oeuvre of the painter who has rendered the name of this town so famous. This is a glorified Madonna, dated 1436, and treated in the style of Francia, Pe- rugino, and the masters of that period. At the left of the Madonna, who is seated on a throne, is St. Donatian, in the dress of an archbishop ; on the right St. George, clothed in rich and complete armor. A little behind him is the kneeling donor of the pic- ture, the Canon George de Pala, from whom the popular name for the picture is taken. This work, in which the personages are half the size of life, is wonderful for its extreme vigor, and for the minute finish of all its details, as well as by its singular pre- servation. Before seeing it, I had admired in Van Eyck rather the inventor than the painter but be- FLEMISH SCHOOL. 127 fore this wonderful work I was obliged to confess that, even if Van Eyck had, like his successors, merely profited by the discoveries of another, he would still, by his works as an artist, deserve an eminent place amongst the masters. Besides, did he not in modern times take the same place as Parrhasius with the ancient Greeks ? " It is only just to recognize," says M. Paul Mantz, " that the brothers Van Eyck took the foremost part in the principal event of the history of art in the fifteenth century the substitution of the picture to mural painting and illumination. Monumental art may have lost something by it, but it is not an unimpor- tant even 1 , this mobilization of painting, which thenceforth, like the printed book a little later, w r as to pass from hand to hand, to cross seas, to pene- trate into dwellings until then inaccessible, and to carry everywhere instruction, consolation, and light. The Museum of Antwerp possesses a repetition of this Canon de Pala, as well as three portraits by the hand of Van Eyck a magistrate, a monk at prayer, and another, a dignitary of the church ; be- sides these, there is also a small drawing in chiaro- scuro, which is very precious, and carefully pre- served under glass. It represents the building of a Gothic church by a number of laborers, who are so small that they look almost like the busy workers in an ant-hill. In the foreground is seated a female gaint, the patron,* doubtless, of the building in * This picture is usually supposed to represent St. Barbara- - the Gothic tower being her attribute. TEANS. 128 WONDEKS OF PAINTING course Ox construction, who appears to be presiding over the works as the architect of the monument. It would be impossible to carry patient labor, fine- ness and precision of touch, and powerful effects to a greater degree. This legend may be read on the old frame in red marble : " Jokes de Eyck, me fecit, 1435." The English have, also covered with glass, a wonderful work of the master of Bruges, which means in reality that visitors are only allowed to see it very imperfectly. Under a glass all paintings become pastel, even those of Van Eyck, which are BO firm and so brilliant. This is a picture entitled, Portraits of Jean Arnolfini and Jeanne de Chenany, his Wife." A lady, dressed with the heavy elegance of the fashion of that day, is holding out her open hand to a gentleman dressed in black. In the centre of the picture, and as if written on the walls of the room, is the signature, Joannes de Eyck. The National Gallery also possesses the admirable half- length portrait of a middle-aged man, with a red handkerchief round his head, which is believed to be the portrait of Van Eyck himself. On seeing the date of 1433, it may well be said that in the last four centuries no one can boast of having repre- sented human nature with more truth, strength, and nature. Munich, in its rich Pinacothek, has no less than six pictures by the great Van Eyck. Of this num- ber, three are of the Adoration of the Magi, a sub- ject he seems to have been particularly fond of, since it was an Adoration of the Magi that he sent to the King of Naples, Alphonso, the sight of which FLEMISH SCHOOL. 129 picture made Antonello da Messina wish to discover the secret of oil painting. The largest of the three is an important work, in which there are eleven per- sonages besides the traditional ox and ass. The second, although of smaller proportions, is more valuable, from the perfection of the work, and from its historical interest. One of the Eastern kings, who is on his knees, kissing the hand of the Child- God, is the Duke of Burgundy, Philip the Good, and the negro king, with his swarthy complexion, presents a faithful portrait of Charles the Bold, both wearing the rich costumes of the Burgundian Court. We must not omit also to mention the St. Luke painting the Virgin. Van Eyck has placed the scene in an open gallery, where the view extends over one of those calm, smiling landscapes with which Ra- phael at a later time surrounded his divine Madon- nas ; and under the features of the holy Evangelist, whom tradition calls the first Christian painter, he has, from a sentiment of almost filial respect, repre- sented his brother Hubert, clothed in ample red robes. We must regret, however, that he has not given to the Madonna the features of his noble sis- ter Margaret, who remained unmarried, not in order to retire to a convent, but to devote herself to art, and to assist her brothers in their labors. Margaret was, besides, an eminent painter, as is proved by the charming Flight into Egypt, that is to say, a family resting from a journey in a fresh and smiling Flemish landscape, which is in the Antwerp Mu- seum. At Paris it is useless too seek Van Eyck any 130 WONDERS OF PAINTING. more than Holbein, Cranach and Diirer. It is true that a Vierge au Donateur, thus named because Jesus, cairied by his mother, who is being crowned by an angel, is blessing an old man on his knees before him, who had doubtless ordered his portrait to be taken in this posture of ex voto. But being rather pale in its general tint, without much relief or depth, this picture does not show anything of the brilliant color which is called the purple of Van Eyck, just as we speak of the gold of Titian, or the silver of Ve- ronese. In any case it is not one of those which deserve his short and modest motto, ALS IXH XAN (as well as lean), for he could do better. I con- sider it a real misfortune that there is no great work in the Louvre by Van Eyck ; and, indeed, there is no place where a sight of this great master would be of more use. It is not merely the secret of the high artistic qualities that may be learned from his pictures, but a lesson also of another kind. At the present time when trade seeks to usurp the place of art, when painters endeavor to make the greatest possible gain out of their pictures, when cheap oils are used, and every means seem allowed to work quickly and produce much, although it is known that the result of this system is, that in ten years' time a pic- ture peels off, cracks, and crumbles into dust, and in twenty years all that is left of it is the canvas and the frame ; perhaps, on seeing pictures so bright so fresh, I might almost say so immortal, which are more than four hundred years old, the French ar- tists would understand that there is one merit they FLEMISH SCHOOL. 131 should add to those they already possess that of simple honesty. To return to Bruges. As soon as a traveller has passed through some of the streets and squares, and found to his delighted astonishment a complete town of the Middle Ages, the first visit of a lover of art will be to the old Hospital of St. John. He need not expect, however, to find in this collection of formless brick buildings any architectural beauties. The building is only a deceitful exterior. But when the visitor has bent his head under a low door, trav- ersed tortuous courts paved with pointed stones, and knocked at the door of an old chapel, he will find, under the inoffensive c^re of a phlegmatic pension- er, a treasure as worthy of renown and envy as that of the ancient Hesperides protected by the dragon, or that of wealthy Venice defended by a Sclavonic guard. These are the works of HANS HEMLING, or rather, MEMLING, for it is probable that in his signa- ture the Gothic letter M has been mistaken for an H. The visitor will be told that in 1477 a wounded soldier (probably from the battle of Nancy, where Charles the Bold lost his life) was brought into the Hospital of St. John. He was a middle-aged man, thrown into a warlike career after an agitated youth ; before becoming a soldier, however, he had been a painter ; the love of art returned to him during the leisure hours of a long convalescence, and being grateful for the care bestowed on him, and satisfied with the peaceful quiet of the house, where he was also retained by his love for a young sister, he passed several years, paying for his board by his work. 132 WONDEKS OF PAINTING. This is how the fact of his finest works belonging to the Hospital of St. John is accounted for. There they were painted, and there they have always re- mained in spite of wars, conquests, and pillage, which explains their wonderful state of preservation after nearly four centuries ; and they will doubtless remain there yet for ages, if the poor hospital con- tinue still to defend its treasure proudly from wealthy amateurs and royal museums, whose brilliant offers would, however, have enabled them to convert their brick walls into a marble palace. The legend of Memling has now disappeared with so many other traditions. Authentic documents have proved that he was simply a citizen of Bruges, where he died in 1495. So we shall leave the ro- mance and come to his works. The most celebrated in the Hospital of St. John is the Reliquary of St. Ursula, a piece of gold carving ornamented with en- gravings and paintings, and intended to contain relics. The reader must imagine a small oblong Gothic chapel, only two feet in height from its base to the top of its pointed roof ; the two facades, if we may venture to use architectural words, the side walls, and the roofing, form, by their golden borders, frames for Memling's paintings, which are the fres- coes for this miniature temple. On one of the gable ends is painted the Madonna, scarcely a foot in height; on the other, St. Ursula, holding in her hand the arrow, which was to be the instrument of her death, and covering under her ample robes a number of young girls, which makes her resemble somewhat the pictures of the " Old Woman who FLEMISH SCHOOL. 133 lived in a Shoe," so famous in nursery rhymes. Ten young girls may be counted under her mantle, and as the saint herself makes the eleventh, the paintei has doubtless intended them to represent sym- bolically the eleven thousand virgins.* The two sloping parts of the roof each contain three medal- lions, on the two centre ones St. Ursula is painted, in one of them among her companions, whom she seems to be leading on to the glory of martyrdom ; in the other, kneeling between the Father and the Son, who are crowning her, whilst the Holy Spirit hovers over her head. The medallions on each side contain angels, who form a celestial concert. On the two sides of the reliquary, which .are divided into six compartments in the form of Gothic arcades, the whole legend of the Virgins of Cologne is repre- sented. On one side, their departure from that city, their arrival at Basle in large round boats, then their entrance into Rome, and reception by the Pope at the gates of a temple ; on the other, their departure from Eome, taking the Pope with them, their return to Cologne, and, lastly, their martyr- dom by arrows, lances, and swords, at the hands of the Hun soldiers. In the six painted chapters of this legend there are certainly two hundred figures introduced, of which the largest, in the foreground, * It is as well to remark that the legend of the eleven thousand virgins rests on an error of a chronicler of the Middle Ages. The tomb of St. Ursula and her companions at Cologne bore this inscription: "Sancta Ursula, xi M. V." Instead of reading " Sancta Ursula, xi Martyres Virgines," Sigebert read and report- ed "xi millia virginum." 134 WONDERS OF PAINTING. are not more than four inches in length ; and I do not count the microscopical personages in the back- ground. It is needless to say that the painter has transported the history of St. Ursula from the fourth century to the fifteenth ; the buildings, landscapes, costumes, and armor all belong to his own time. We may easily recognize a number of portraits. Ursula and her band are beautiful Flemish girls, fair, graceful, and elegantly dressed ; and MenJling certainly could not have had much difficulty in find- ing so many charming models in a town at that time richly and thickly populated, and which counted the beauty of its women amongst its chief titles to glory : formosis Bruga puellis. In reading this short description, one might well believe that the painting of Memling on this re- liquary of St. Ursula is nothing but a chef-d'oeuvre of patience and minute perfection in the details ; but this is far from being the case. As a whole, it is a great and noble work, full of grandeur, vigor, and religious sentiment. To form an idea of this wonderful work, the reader should imagine pictures of sacred history conceived in the highest style of Fra Angelico, and painted in the finest execution of Gerard Dow. But Memling has not merely left miniature paintings, and this reliquary is not the only treasure of the Hospital of St John. The date of the reliquary is 1480. The preceding year, Mem- ling completed a work which is no less celebrated, and is in the largest proportions then used, half-life size. This is a triptych closed by shutters. On the central panel is represented theMystical Marriage of FLEMISH SCHOOL. 13S St. Catherine. As in the glorified Virgins of Francia or Perugino, the Madonna is seated under a magni- ficent dais, with her feet resting on a rich Flemish carpet, which produces a wonderful effect through its coloring and perspective. Two angels are at her side to wait on her ; one holds a book, of which she is turning over the leaves, whilst the other is play- ing on a small organ. The Virgin of Sienna, richly dressed, is receiving on her knees the nuptial ring from the Bambino. The history of the two St. Johns form the subject of the paintings on the wings ; that on the left is the Beheading of John the Baptist before Herodias ; and that on the right is St. John the Evangelist at Patmos, beholding the visions of the Apocalypse. Lastly, on the outside of the wings, there are excellent portraits of two brothers of the hospital, with the symbolical por- traits of their patron saints, James and Andrew, and of two sisters of the order, with their patron saints, Agnes and Clara. This large composition is unanimously pronounced to be the masterpiece of its author. Here, indeed, may be found all his greatest qualities, from a calm majesty in the arrangement to a wonderful delicacy of touch. However, I must give it one rival, if not in importance, at all events in perfection. In the same year, 1479, Memling painted the different com- partments of a triptych, much smaller than the last, as the figures are only from eight to nine inches in height ; on the left is the Nativity ; on the right the Presentation in the Temple ; in the centre, the Adora- tion of the Magi ; below is the following inscriptioD 136 WONDERS OF PAINTING. written in Flemish : " This work was done for bro- ther Jan Floreins, alias Van der Kust, brother of St. John's Hospital, at Bruges. Anno 1479. Opus Johannis Meinling." In the left part of the central panel, at a window, is seen the kneeling figure of Jan Floreins, dressed in black. It is a charming head of a man in the prime of life ; the figures 36, written above him on the wall, indicating his age. Opposite, the face of a peasant, looking in at a win- dow, is supposed to be a portrait of Memling ; he has a short beard, thick hair, and his face, though rather weary-looking, is full of gentleness and intel- lect. It is before this Adoration