Yale University Library 39002021964995 rfffE PORTFOLIO -^ '..t YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY Bought with the Income of the ANN S. FARNAM FUND THE PORTFOLIO MONOGRAPHS ON ARTISTIC SUBJECTS WITH MANY ILLUSTRATIONS PETER PAUL RUBENS By R. A. M. STEVENSON GREEK BRONZES By A. S. MURRAT THE LATER WORK OF TITIAN By CLAUDE PHILLIPS FOREIGN ARMOUR IN ENGLAND By J. STARKIE GARDNER LONDON SEELEY AND CO. LIMITED, 38 GREAT RUSSELL STREET NEW YORK . THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1898 J 10 55-iS PETER PAUL RUBENS By R. A. M. STEVENSON Author of " The Art of Velazquez" etc. LONDON SEELEY AND CO., LIMITED, GREAT RUSSELL STREET NEW YORK : THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1898 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PLATES PAGE Jacqueline de Cordes. Brussels Museum . . . Frontispiece Le Jardin d'Amour. Museo del Prado, Madrid . . . 90 ILLUSTRATIONS PRINTED IN SEPIA 16 20 26 3 s Two Studies of a Boar's Head. . British Museum Sketch for a Boar-Hunt. British Museum The Defeat of Sennacherib. Albertina, Vienna Two Girls. Albertina, Vienna Study for St. Catherine. Albertina, Vienna Sketch for the Assumption of the Virgin. Albertina, Vienna . . .44 A Maid of Honour of the Archduchess Isabella. Albertina, Vienna . . 64 The Duke of Buckingham. Albertina, Vienna .... 70 ILLUSTRATIONS IN THE TEXT Sketch for the Elevation of the Cross. Louvre. From a Photograph by Braun, Clement, & Cie. . . . . . . . .19 The Descent from the Cross. Antwerp Cathedral. From the Engraving by L. Vorsterman . . . . . . 23 Rubens and his first Wife, Isabella Brant. Pinakothek, Munich. From a Photo graph by F. Hanfstaengl . . . . .29 La Vierge au Perroquet. Antwerp Museum. From a Photograph by Braun, Clement, & Cie. . . . . -35 Four Studies of a Negro's Head. Brussels Museum. From a Photograph by G. Hermans ... .... 37 St. Martin dividing his Cloak with a Beggar. Windsor Castle. From a Photograph by F. Hanfstaengl . . . ... 39 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS The Miraculous Draught of Fishes. Church of Notre Dame, Malines. From a Photograph by G. Hermans . . . . . • 41 The Miraculous Draught of Fishes. Copy by Van Dyck, with alteration. National Gallery. From a Photograph by Morelli . . . . -43 The Adoration of the Magi. Church of St. Jean, Malines. From the Engraving by L. Vorsterman . . . . . . • -45 The Last Communion of St. Francis. Antwerp Museum. From a Photograph by Braun, Clement, & Cie. . . . . ¦ • -47 Le Coup de Lance. Antwerp Museum. From a Photograph by G. Hermans . 51 The Emperor Theodosius repulsed by St. Ambrose from the door of Milan Cathedral. Imperial Gallery, Vienna. From a Photograph by Lowy . 55 The Infant Jesus, St. John, and two Angels. Berlin Gallery. From a Photo graph by F. Hanfstaengl . . . . . . -59 The Archduke Albert. Brussels Museum. From a Photograph by F. Hanfstaengl 62 The Archduchess Isabella. Brussels Museum. From a Photograph by F. Hanf staengl ......... 63 The Education of the Virgin. Antwerp Museum. From a Photograph by Braun, r Clement, & Cie. . . . . . . . .67 Rubens, drawn by himself. Albertina, Vienna. From a Photograph by Braun, Clement, & Cie. . . ... 71 Rubens and his second Wife, Helene Fourment, in a Garden. Pinakothek, Munich. From a Photograph by F. Hanfstaengl . . . . -73 Helene Fourment. Hermitage, St. Petersburg. From a Photograph by Braun, Clement, & Cie. . .... -77 Henry IV. receiving the Portrait of Marie de Medicis. Louvre. From a Photo graph by Neurdein . . . . . . .81 The Martyrdom of St. Lievin. Brussels Museum. From the Engraving by Cau- kercken . . . . .85 The Judgment of Paris. National Gallery. From a Photograph by Morelli . 89 Rubens at the age of Sixty. Imperial Gallery, Vienna. From a Photograph by Lowy ... . . . 93 A Dance of Villagers. Museo del Prado, Madrid. From a Photograph by Braun, Clement, & Cie. . . . . . . . -95 PETER PAUL RUBENS INTRODUCTION On the Appreciation and the Study of Rubens Those persons who are disquieted about the bearing of art upon morals turn round Rubens like a salutary inspector sniffing about the apertures of a suspicious system of drainage. Immediately after the painter's death the moral character of his work was impugned, not by those princes of the church and the world who had been his patrons, but by the plump female burgess who had been his wife. Helen Fourment shuddered at the voluptuousness of his nymphs and goddesses ; she would have destroyed several pictures, and one in particular, save for the amount of money offered for it by the Duke of Richelieu. Money avails much in a question of morals, as much with this kind of lady as fashion with one of a higher or gayer position. That aspect of the morals which looks askance at the nude is too trivial and too temporary a manifestation of human activity to occupy people who keep their eye on art from Assyria and Egypt onwards. A second view of the question has been held by Ruskin and by those who get all their views of painting from the study and practice of literature. According to them, the moral tone of the painter must be considered the main cause of his work, and painting should be a method of preaching which should be ' prefaced with prayer. A third set of people when they talk of the influence of morals on the painter mean temperament, which certainly counts for much both in morals and in art. This is only to say that all human activities, artistic or 6 PETER PAUL RUBENS non-artistic, interested or disinterested, have their roots in the same life. I distinguish between the effect of temperament and the effect of moral considerations upon a man. One is aesthetic ; the other is not. Most men, I think, in no way conceive of moral judgments as feelings of aesthetic disgust or delight in actions, but rather regard them as restraints imposed by reason on these very feelings in the interests of the community. In real life, the man who has no interest in problems of conduct is stupidly dense to his surroundings. In the world of fiction, conduct affects the drama of life, affects its language, and so affects all the subjects of a poet or playwright. Even the most artificial and transient of these social regulations of conduct interest the writer : they form the bulk of the motifs of light reading. But they cannot easily supply direct motifs for the figure painter, still less for the landscape artist. On the other hand, if they offer no subjects to the painter, I cannot see that rules of self-mortification greatly influence the artistic temperament one way or the other. Restraint baulks the ; temperament that leads to direct and passionate acts in life, but it very little affects the feelings to which one gives expression in art. In fact, people should not closely consult men's lives for the reasons of their artistic performances ; the man of genius speaks of feelings that, whatever they may be, have been always suppressed by the world. But it is through his temperament that the artist works; and since temperament is an influence in moral decisions, there may be a sort of second cousinship twice removed between paint and morals. Temperament works upon the landscape painter as effectively as upon the figure man ; it can turn him to large forms, to savage colour, or to peddling minuteness of pattern, and glassy smoothness of pigment ; just as it turns a figure painter to broad fleshy types, or to sharp bony models that show their anatomical structure. Temperament directed Rubens in the choice of his types, and it is in reality colder temperaments, not stricter moralists, that have turned against his work. Patronised by princes and churchmen in his day, a favourite of fashion in our own country till the end of the first half of this century, Rubens has proved a stumbling-block to the modern Purists and iEsthetes, who can scarcely hear his name without agitation. Twenty PETER PAUL RUBENS 7 years ago, when I confessed my admiration at Rubens's Medicis pictures I was looked upon by a circle of Purists as a person who had just committed an act of public indecency. " Oh those horrible fat women," say all who confuse art and nature, who cannot separate the contemplation of beauty from the animal distaste or desire of possession. When asked to look at Rubens's pictures one is not asked to fall on the necks of his models any more than one is required to feel bloodthirsty when looking at a battle-piece. Anything strong and consistent in character may be fit for a scheme of formal art ; for the working out of a pattern. And when we deal with impressionistic art, who shall say what is an unfit motif? Light may break into delicious radiance upon corruption or ordure. In your real life you may refuse the society of people who are not thin, tall, willowy, virginal and built in clean, flat planes of bone and hard flesh ; yet in the imagined world of art you may allow Rubens to open the door upon a bevy of rich beauties that offer to the flood of warm light succulent forms, ample shapes, curved, coloured and creamy surfaces. So you may hate to wet your feet in dew and yet delight in the long grass of a Morning by Corot. Neither in his art nor in his life is there any real ground to reproach Rubens with conventional immorality ; but against the refinement of his taste and the force of his imagination it is argued that he married two baggy women and could not forget them in his painting. These critics should remember that his tastes and his art, if not his culture, were all of a piece and natural to his temperament. In this century people condemn a man because his art is indifferent to his taste as a man ; because, in a word, he loves art for art's sake ; yet with the same breath almost they condemn the man whose art was the expression of his life. How would meagre forms have suited that broad flowing brush ? To Rubens, the husband of Helen Fourment, flesh was enticing in its largeness, its soft luminosity, its creamy evenness of tint, and he painted it with more sense of joy, and, as far as colour is concerned, with more insight than any other man. In addition to fastidious niceties of morals and taste, a third impedi ment to the study and appreciation of Rubens arises from the nature, the quantity, and the distribution of his productions. He did not paint the greater part of the pictures issued from his studio that now people 8 PETER PAUL RUBENS the galleries of the world. Great men clamoured for his works, and he was content to superintend a school and to issue pictures that he had merely designed or barely retouched. It is a very different condition of production from that of the present day, from that indeed of Velazquez and of most later artists. Rubens stands between the old and the new. He was a master decorator of churches, palaces, and town halls ; when he undertook a job he found workmen trained in his own principles, started them by drawings, and at the end he gave their work a few finishing brush strokes. The system supported a good general level of work, diminished the output of bad and wholly inartistic produce, encouraged mannerism, frowned on work from nature and suppressed minor originality. The practice agreed better with mural than with easel work. Such decoration is not to be seen close, it is shown usually in a bad light where the general design rather than the quality of the execution is of supreme concern. Such work enjoys the immunities and displays the defects of a public speech compared with a carefully - written and carefully -read poem or narrative. Justify his practice how we may, yet the difficulties of studying Rubens are no whit the less great, especially as one has to count with his slow and gradual change of style. The enormous number of his works or reputed works, and the many and wide-apart places where they are kept, add much to the trouble of studying Rubens. To separate the good from the bad, the work of pupils from that of the master, to discover the real Rubens, to elucidate his various manners, to conceive a just estimate of his genius, becomes an almost impossible task when his pictures are so numerous and so widely separated. Mr. Max Rooses has done more than any one to complete the study of Rubens from the point of view of research. Eugene Delacroix and Fromentin have given the most painter-like criticisms of the artist's work. Rooses, after fifteen years of travel and study, has compiled, in the five volumes of his L'GEuvre de Rubens, his researches into the history of more than a thousand works. More over, he has arranged, in the ground-floor of the new gallery at Antwerp, a collection of photographs and engravings embracing the whole achieve ment of Rubens. Yet in this man's opinion the final work on the subject has not yet appeared, although he admits that the future historian PETER PAUL RUBENS 9 of Rubens will find facilities and advantages that none of his predecessors enjoyed. No small capacity or common qualifications are demanded of the man who would worthily follow Rooses, Fromentin, Henri Hymans, Piot, Charles Ruelens, and the men who have gone before them. He must be a painter with Fromentin's insight, feeling, and literary gift ; like Rooses, he must be a student and a linguist ; before all, he must be a man of means, independent of paying work, a man who can live for long periods in every large city of Europe, a man of energy who can revisit them in a year and gather up all the pictures in a final swoop of comparison. Rooses complains of the long intervals that elapsed between the pictures he saw when he was new to the task, and those he saw towards the end of his work. He confesses that without the money voted him by Antwerp for travelling expenses he could not have accom plished what he has done. England abounds in pictures by Rubens. The National Gallery has more than twenty ; the Dulwich and Cambridge Museums and many private collections possess examples, as those of the Queen, the Duke of Westminster, the Duke of Norfolk, Lord Ashburton, the late Sir Richard Wallace, the Duke of Devonshire, Earl Spencer, Earl of Warwick, Duke of Rutland, Duke of Marlborough, Mr. Charles Butler, Sir T. Baring, Sir Philip Miles, the Duke of Hamilton, the Duke of Bedford, Lord Northbrook, Lord Pembroke, Lord Darnley, Lord Lonsdale, Lord Carlisle, Sir Watkins Wynn, the Holford Collection, and I believe some others. The Prado (Madrid) and the Hermitage (St. Petersburg) each contains about eighty pictures, the Louvre more than sixty, the Pinakothek (Munich) ninety, Dresden forty-eight, Berlin twenty-five, Brussels thirty-seven, the galleries of Vienna seventy or eighty, the Hague eleven, and even Stockholm fifteen ; add to these more than twenty or thirty in Italy and you have not then told the tale. New York and Chicago have pictures, while the collections of drawings at Vienna, Paris, London and elsewhere run up to a great number. It will be seen that our National Gallery cannot give an adequate view of Rubens. What we have is, on the whole, very good ; but the pictures are small and mostly of one sort. Without going far, however, one can increase one's knowledge, and I should say go hand in hand with Fromentin to Flanders. His Maitres d 'Autrefois will fill you with some enthusiasm 10 PETER PAUL RUBENS for the art of Rubens. Until one cares for his pictures and knows Rubens well by the eye, the scholarship of the subject seems a meaningless repetition of subtilties encased purposely in a horny shell. To the unsophisticated lover of beautiful things, to the tired man of business on a holiday, these interminable descriptions of pictures, confirmations of dates, disjointed notes and cross references to the obscure points of history, appear as steep reading as a financial journal. With very little practical knowledge or interest, perhaps with close study of one picture by Rubens, any man can read and enjoy the eloquent Fromentin. Antwerp is now the best place to begin on. There you may see the chief pictures that mark the beginnings and the ends of Rubens's consecutive manners — The Elevation of the Cross, The Descent from the Cross, The Adoration of the Magi, The Assumption of the Virgin, and The Virgin and Saints of the Rubens Chapel in St. Jacques' Church. After the picture gallery in the Museum you can consult the collection of photographs and engravings with the aid of Max Rooses' small catalogue. If the inoculation takes, you will become an enthusiast, and you will visit, as far as you can, Brussels, Malines, Paris, Munich, Madrid, etc. You may even read the Rubens literature. Early and contemporary works that speak of Rubens are not lacking. There are the memoirs of the painter by his nephew Philippe Rubens, and by his friend Giovanni Baglione. There are also the more general works of Joachim Sandrart, de Piles, Van Mander, and others of the seventeenth century. In the eighteenth we have F. Mols, J. F. Michel, and two or three more. Near 1 84.0 many books were published about Rubens, notably that by Waagen, and also several collections of his letters. Amongst later and more or less careful and trustworthy books we may mention Emile Gachet's Unpublished Letters of Rubens, Bruxelles, 1840; W. H. Carpenter's Extracts from Original Documents in the State Paper Office, London, 1844; W. Noel Sainsbury's Unpublished Original Papers relating to Rubens, London, 1849; Armand Baschet's articles in the Gazette des Beaux Arts, Paris, 1866-68; Villaamil's Rubens diplomatico espafwl, Madrid, 1874; Gachard's Histoire politique de Rubens, Brussels, 1877; J- A- X. Michiel's Rubens et I ' Ecole d'Anvers, 4th edition, 1877 ; Charles Ruelens's Correspondance de Rubens, etc., Anvers, 1887 ; Max Rooses' L'CEuvre de Rubens, Anvers, 1886-92 ; Henri PETER PAUL RUBENS n Hymans's Histoire de la gravure dans r Ecole de Rubens, Bruxelles, 1879; ^n Rubens a retrouver, 1892; Un voyage ignore de Rubens, 1893 ; and other papers and pamphlets on Northern Art. It seems scarcely necessary to say that this monograph contains no new facts or discoveries ; indeed, nothing that may not be found with trouble in the books just mentioned. CHAPTER I Childhood and youth of Rubens — His early studies — His masters — His Italian sojourn — His work, study, and travel in Italy and Spain. The ancestors of Peter Paul Rubens were burgesses of Antwerp, tanners by their way of life. Michel, a fantastic biographer of Rubens in the last century, gives the family a more aristocratic origin ; but the fact is that John Rubens (1530-87), the father of the great painter, was the first of them to follow any other than an industrial career. In those days custom sent the learned and the artistic who desired consideration in their pro fession to Rome, the centre of all things ; and the elder Rubens, a scholar and man of letters, did his seven years in Italy, where he took a degree of Doctor of Laws. Upon his return in 1561 he married Marie Pypelinckx (1 538-1608), a woman of strong and decided character, by whom he had several children, and first among them John, who was born in 1562, and died in 1600. Not much is known with certainty of the life of the family ; but certainly it was not tranquil in such disturbed times. Michiels says that the father of Rubens reached prosperity and became a man of note and an alderman {echevin) in his native town ; he was a Protestant, however, and in 1568 the religious and political troubles of the Spanish rule drove him with his family to Cologne. John Rubens, like Peter Paul, appears to have possessed the knack of getting on with princes, and of making himself agreeable to great ladies. Hence much sorrow, for he was less lucky, as well as less prudent, than his greater son. In exile he soon became the intimate counsellor of William the Silent, Prince of Orange, and his wife Anne, daughter of the Elector of Saxony. Unhappily the father of the irresistible artist was himself prepossessing, while the princess was by nature treacherous and inflammable. PETER PAUL RUBENS 13 The elder Rubens could not resist the flattery of a royal conquest, and under the cover of business matters the doctor and the princess conducted a clandestine love affair. All went well for a while, till the absence of the prince, too much prolonged by heroic warfare, made the condition of Anne a manifest scandal in the eyes of her parents and her husband's friends. The doctor was torn from his unsuspecting wife and flung into prison, and but for her devoted efforts he might have lost his life instead of his liberty. To help his case Dr. Rubens himself could think of nothing better than to remind the outraged prince of all the great men in history that had suffered a like wrong with equanimity, and to console him with the assurance that the indignity might easily have been greater since some authorities rank a doctor of laws only just below a baron. From this story one gathers that the doctor, by his natural gifts and bearing, bred confidence in men and princes, affection in his wife, and passion in a great lady ; while by his overlay of learning he exposed himself to contempt as a fool and an insufferable prig. His education had not developed his nature, but had buried it in a foreign and artificial culture. When the prince divorced Anne and married again, John Rubens was released, though under various restrictions as to his place of residence. It is certain that he died in Cologne on the 1st of March 1587. We should say that Ruelens never even alludes to this pretty story, and, indeed, states expressly that very little reliable material exists for an account of the infancy of Rubens and the wanderings of his father's family. Between the rival claims of Antwerp, Siegen, and Cologne to be the birthplace of P. P. Rubens, Ruelens inclines to favour that of Antwerp. He thinks that when Peter Paul was a year old the Rubenses migrated from Antwerp to Cologne, and stayed there until the death of the father in 1587. He seems not even sure of the father's profession ; for in the records of Cologne during these years two painters, father and son, by name Jean Robins, are mentioned as paying taxes to the town. In 1586 the eldest brother of Peter Paul went to Italy in the usual way and disappeared for ever, at least from historical records. After the death of their father, Marie Pypelinckx brought back to Antwerp her surviving children — Philippe, born in 1574; Peter Paul, born in 1577; and their sister Blandina (1 564-1 606), who married Simeon du Parcq in 1590. The boys were sent to a good school, where they were well grounded 14 PETER PAUL RUBENS in the classics and brought up among the sons of well-to-do citizens. Balthazar Moretus, one of these early companions of the Rubens boys, was the grandson of the famous printer of Antwerp, Christopher Plantin. Moretus became a man of letters, and later on, with Philippe Rubens and John Wouverius, he joined the band of learned men who gathered round the celebrated Professor Justus Lipsius at Louvain. B. Moretus afterwards carried on the family printing business in the beautiful old house still preserved in Antwerp under the name of the Musee Plantin. It is full of relics of Rubens, his work, his friendships ; and if you wish to call up a vision of the Antwerp of his day you must visit the house of his friends, a house that still bears traces of their occupation in every room, and on its walls their portraits by the hand of Peter Paul himself. When he left school, Rubens had a short experience of etiquette as page of honour to the Princess Margaret de Ligne-Aremberg. Probably his mother referred to this service when she says in a letter written at the time of her daughter's marriage that her sons were already earning their living. Useful as the sight of Court life must have been to one destined to live among princes, it cannot have been more than a peep, since in the year 1 591 Rubens began his professional studies as a painter. Tobias Verhaeght (1561-1631), the husband of Rubens's cousin, Suzanne van Mockenborch, had just returned from Italy, and naturally enough it was to him that the young painter turned for professional teaching in his art. Verhaeght, a landscape man, had won some success in Rome with his Tower of Babel, a picture which was furnished with figures by his countryman Sebastien Franck. Collaboration in picture- making, whether between master and pupil, or between two specialists, obtained the sanction of artists and patrons long before the time of Rubens, though he himself possibly carried it to greater lengths than any of his predecessors. The practice agreed fairly well with the nature of the ecclesiastical and palatial art of the times. The successful artist became a kind of entrepreneur, who undertook the conduct of all sorts of decoration, and provided men to carry out his designs. Art was not so generally understood then as now to mean the expression of a poetic person's individual feelings. For this reason the best and most personal work of Rembrandt, a more modern man than Rubens, met during his lifetime with something like coldness and neglect. Rubens remained not PETER PAUL RUBENS 15 longer than six months under the care of his first master ; probably he felt himself drawn to figure work both by interest and by inclination, but it is worth while remembering the nature of the first studies of a man who was destined to produce the finest and most original landscape that had been hitherto executed. From Verhaeght Rubens passed to Adam van Noort, a man twenty years his elder, who nevertheless just outlived his ennobled and illustrious pupil. Van Noort did not belong to the polished, learned, perhaps somewhat affected society in which the young Rubenses were brought up, doubtless owing to their father's reputation and relations amongst men of letters. On the contrary, he was a rude Fleming, whose moroseness led him to drink, whose drunkenness made him violent or cantankerous. Rubens could support the manners of such a boor with less convenience than the coarser-fibred Jordaens, a later pupil, who became the son-in-law of Van Noort. This dainty bud that was to unfold into the full-blown Rubens, the courtly favourite of kings, the knightly ambassador and the discreet counsellor of secret conferences, must have been nipped and chilled in the rude boisterous atmosphere of a studio of young Flemings, presided over by a tipsy sot who passed rapidly from rough gin-bred joviality to savage fits of gloomy fury. However, Rubens was young, and, though externally refined, stout enough in texture to put up with four or five years of this unpleasant discipline. In 1596 the young painter became pupil of a man of his own kidney, one well fitted to forward his ambitions and to inspire him with a love of Italy and a respect for tradition. Otho van Veen (1558-1629), called Vaenius after the Latin fashion, which made Gevaerts Gevartius and Rubens Rubenius, was a scholar and a gentleman as well as a disciplined figure painter. According to the legend of his family, Van Veen had royal blood in his veins. His ancestress, Isabeau van Veen, was mistress of John III., Duke of Brabant. This third master of Rubens was a learned and accomplished person, filled with classic receipts and precepts, a student cultivated by foreign travel in Italy and Germany, a pupil of the Zuchero who painted our Queen Elizabeth, and a friend of Justus Lipsius and other scholars who formed the upper crust of Flemish literary society. After life in the studio of Van Noort, the tutelage of Vaenius must have expanded the talent of Rubens as a blossom opens in 1 6 PETER PAUL RUBENS the first genial warmth of spring. No doubt Vaenius was a dull painter, a somewhat lifeless copyist of his Italian masters, even a bit of a pedant perhaps ; but then his pupil had not yet seen Italy, and was accustomed to pedantry from his childhood. Method he would learn from Vaenius, the topography of the Italian pictures and statues, the speculations and the gossip of Italian artists, the bearing and habits of a man of the world to which he was inclined by nature ; and lastly, a further initiation into that classic literature and mythology which he had begun at school. Rubens stayed four years with Vaenius, and towards the middle of this period, just as he came of age, he was received as a franc-maitre of the gild of St. Luke. This Society was described in its charter as a reunion of honnetes bourgeois, and it included, in addition to those men we now call artists, all kinds of craftsmen, such as printers, potters, gold-beaters, type-founders, and makers of carpets, curtains, playing-cards, etc. The gild imposed strict rules on its members, which bore severely on artists, and from this tyranny they were only emancipated by appointment as painter to the sovereign. Rubens was now a full-grown man, still working with Vaenius, though enrolled amongst the artists of his native town and about to practise on his own account. In appearance he was large and fair, with that mixture of swagger and sensitive refinement that one often remarks in the heads of artists. He had bold features, with the gentle bovine eye that he liked to bestow on the personages of his pictures. His looks altogether were such as might recommend him anywhere, not least amongst the great ; since the original nobility of Northern Europe came for the most part from big-made, light-haired, and sanguine races. Nor were his manners likely to shake the confidence inspired by his looks. Probably even in youth he was not one to wear his heart on his sleeve, to babble in low company, or to miss the right measures of reserve and openness, dignity, and respect in his attitude towards those of superior rank or reputation. Moreover, he was accomplished ; he spoke and wrote Latin, Greek, French, and Italian, besides Flemish and Spanish, although it must be said that whatever tongue he used, in his letters at least, he was seldom communicative, gushing, garrulous or even enter taining. His letters lack personal interest, warm feeling, picturesque expression of any kind. Indeed, he shows as little of himself in them as he possibly can, and writes for duty or for business purposes. Most of \^M Two Studies of a Boar's Head. British Mus, PETER PAUL RUBENS 17 his very intimate correspondence, however, has perished ; for instance, all that addressed to his mother, his wives, or his children. Judging by what is left, one could not call him anything but a lifeless writer ; written words are evidently no natural outlet for his feelings. We know but little of Rubens as a painter during this period (1596- 1600). Max Rooses mentions three or four pictures that were probably painted before 1 600, but, owing to doubtful evidence and possible repaint ing, he thinks them insufficient ground for opinion, and accepts Philippe Rubens's statement that Peter Paul's early work resembled that of his master Otto Vaenius. An Annunciation in the Imperial Museum at Vienna (2.24 metres x 2 metres) seems the best example of this early period. It is very coloured, very artificial, very Italian, and in mere composition not unlike a later picture in the Dublin Gallery. Rooses considers that the Vienna picture may be one that Rubens painted before 1600 for the Jesuits' literary society in Antwerp. He mentions also as possibly of this period Pausias and Glycera, belonging to the Duke of Westminster ; Christ and Nicodemus, in the 1 collection of Madame von Parys at Brussels ; and a Crowning of the Virgin in the Hermitage, St. Petersburg. Philip II. of Spain before he died in 1598 married his daughter Isabella Clara Eugenia to Albert, son of Maximilian II., Emperor of Germany, and gave the royal couple the sovereignty of Spanish Flanders. Liberty, tolerance, and prosperity were expected from their reign ; and their entrance to Antwerp in 1599 was the cause of public rejoicing. Rubens must have lent a hand to the festal decorations which were entrusted to his master Vaenius, and must thus have gained some experience of a kind of work in which he was to excel afterwards. Without doubt he was presented as a young man of promise to his future patrons Albert and Isabella ; indeed, some think that he may have met another patron, the Duke of Mantua, who visited Antwerp in 1599. Twenty-three years old, son of a Roman Doctor of Laws, friend and brother of scholars, pupil of a learned and travelled painter, Rubens was ready to seize the first opportunity of making the classic journey to Italy. Who sent him is not known ; but on the 9th of May 1600 he set out on his travels, and if he ventured on his own account he had not long to wait for a patron. When Vincenzo I. di Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua 18 PETER PAUL RUBENS (1562-1612), the son of Guglielmo di Gonzaga, and Eleanor, daughter of the Emperor Ferdinand I., met Rubens, he seems to have been taken as much by his manners and his Latin scholarship as by his skill in painting. Vincenzo was a clever man, fond of art and letters, indeed of anything that gave style and splendour to his pleasures, his entertainments, and his profuse way of life. His taste for show, whether in war or gallantry, often led him into financial trouble ; but it is to his credit that he befriended Tasso, employed Pourbus the portrait painter, and was the first patron of Rubens. Accounts differ as to the meeting of Rubens and the Duke. Some suppose that Rubens took Paris on his way to Italy and was presented to his patron in that city. Others — and this is the more probable view — hold that he went straight to Venice, where his copies of Titian and Veronese attracted the attention of a gentleman in the Duke's service. Others again will have it that the Archduke Albert furnished the painter with letters of recommendation to the Duke of Mantua. Ruelens has collected all the correspondence of Rubens and his friends which bears upon the Italian sojourn, but the first of their letters, from Balthazar Moretus to Philippe Rubens, bears the date of 3rd November 1600. Now on the 5th October the Duke of Mantua, with Rubens in his train, was present in Florence at the marriage of Henry IV. of France (by proxy) to Marie de Medicis. Thus the correspondence begins too late to throw any light on the first meeting of the painter and his patron. Since Rubens was after wards employed to commemorate this royal marriage by his art, the learned have balanced the probabilities of his seeing or speaking to his future patron Marie de Medicis. Surely we may dismiss the idea that a young painter not noble would be allowed to chat freely with a newly married Queen of France. People long after his death cannot help assuming that a great man in his lifetime was always patent to his contemporaries. It is not so nowadays ; and, although one may meet one or two young men capable of doing works of genius, even should one recognise their latent power, one dare not prophesy how they will turn out under conflicting influences. Existing letters written by Rubens and his friends prove that the Flemish artist, although he had secured a royal patron, was not yet considered a greater man than other young painters of his time. Perhaps the habit of writing in Latin somewhat tamed the corre- PETER PAUL RUBENS i9 spondence of Rubens, his brother, and his contemporaries. They may not have been capable of such a priggish letter as the one sent by old John Rubens to William the Silent, but they wrote in a cloistered spirit remote from actuality as a man might speak whose conversation should have Sketch for the Elevation of the Cross. Louvre. From a Photograph by Braun, Clement, iff Cie. been always conducted in a serious London club. For a big and vital being Rubens wrote tame letters ; formal and mannered pages that tell little of the writer and his feelings. His brother Philippe's are literary productions still more correct and laboured. When he wrote from Flanders on the 21st May 1601 to a brother who was newly plunged into the full and exciting life that the two must have often pictured in 20 PETER PAUL RUBENS their intimate talk, Philippe elaborates a school essay on virtue, friend ship, absence, which might have been written for a Latin prize. It abounds with allusions to Cicero, Homer, and Plato, and it is adorned with appropriate quotations from Greek and Latin authors. Philippe shows none of the overflowing interest in his brother's new life and new experiences that one would get from a young and intelligent Scot of our day ; none of the inquiring subtlety and confiding enthusiasm that one always expects from youth and friendship. By the light of such corre spondence one sees Rubens in the midst of a circle of superior young men who pat each other on the back (in Latin) and pride themselves on belonging to an exclusive intellectual society. The coarser, baser, more natural roots of life in Flanders do not sprout spontaneously in the pretentious efforts at refinement of this coterie of select young men. Rude Belgium should have manured this flower of culture, which, however, was grown in Rome and exported like an exotic plant. The same thing goes on in English commercial towns to-day. Their culture is not the blossom of their lives ; it is not grown, but manufactured ; not indigenous, but imported. Belgian refinement also spoke art with a somewhat provincial accent ; for in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries Brussels and Antwerp recognised Spain as a master and Italy as a finishing tutor ; although at an earlier period it may be said with truth that Bruges had led an independent existence. Perhaps, then, it was well for Rubens and other artists to travel and live in the freer air of a country whose culture was to some extent the expression of its life and the decoration of its habits of thought and feeling. Two clubs promoted culture at Antwerp. When the travelled men returned to the North, in order to keep alive the sacred traditions in barbarous parts, they formed themselves into a club called the Romanistes. To some extent we have seen in our century a like spirit animating young painters who have studied in France, the modern centre of artistic enterprise. The other club was founded by the Jesuits, who possessed rich churches, and most of the patronage of art and literature. It was for this society that Rubens painted his first Annunciation. Philippe Rubens soon followed his brother to Italy. While Peter Paul was a page of honour, his brother had entered the office of Tean Richardot, a councillor at Brussels and a man of wealth and importance. o PETER PAUL RUBENS 21 Philippe shepherded his son William Richardot throughout Italy, starting in 1 60 1 and returning in 1604. It was through the influence of the Richardot family that Peter Paul got his first Roman commission to paint pictures for the Church of the Holy Cross of Jerusalem at Rome. On the 1 8th of July 1 60 1 the Duke of Mantua, who was to pay for the pictures, sent Rubens {un Flamand mon peintre) with a letter of introduction to Cardinal Montalto. Rubens set to work upon a central piece, St. Helen finding the 'True Cross, flanked by a Crown of Thorns, and an Elevation of the Cross. The works, after much wandering, are now in the Chapel of the Hospital at Grasse, Alpes Maritimes. Whilst he was in Rome Rubens made friends with several artists, amongst others with " Velvet " Brueghel, who was to be his collaborator in many pictures, and with Giovanni Baglione, a painter who became his earliest biographer. In the spring of the following year Rubens was recalled to Mantua, soon to depart for Venice and Padua, where a man of his taste for scientific research would be sure to seek an introduction to Galileo, who was only about thirteen years his senior. Rubens took a keen pleasure in the discoveries of science, and it is probable, as we shall find later, that his profession of religion and his attendance at mass were rather outward conformities expected from a respectable church painter and a subject of the King of Spain than the outward manifestations of orthodox conviction or deep-seated Catholic bigotry. His father had professed both religions in turn, and possibly his son, the humanist painter, took religion as a matter of course without conscious dissimulation, as one takes the necessary evils of calling and polite conversation. In the summer of this same year, 1602, Rubens joined his brother's party at Verona. Here they met Wouverius, like Philippe a favourite pupil of Justus Lipsius, and Rubens took occasion to paint the interesting picture Justus Lipsius and his Pupils, now in the Pitti Palace, Florence. Lipsius faces you at the head of a table ; on his right sits Philippe, on his left Wouverius, while Rubens himself stands at a little distance draw ing back a curtain. Rubens was soon once more at the Court of Mantua working at his usual business, portrait-painting. Vincenzo I., like other great persons, sent his portrait to friends and allies, and was himself desirous of possess ing likenesses of celebrated people or beautiful ladies. In a letter to his 22 PETER PAUL RUBENS agent and ambassador Iberti, Vincenzo says of Rubens, " The above- mentioned P. P. R. succeeds perfectly with portraiture." This Iberti as the Duke's chief man had naturally very much to do with Rubens, and seems to have been one of those few whose favour the painter could not win by the prudence of his behaviour or the charm of his manner. On the other hand, he made a conquest of the Duke's secretary Annibale Chieppio, afterwards Minister and Count. It is to this Chieppio that Rubens addresses most of his letters, whether written to give an account of his proceedings or to ask for some favour, such as an extension of his leave of absence. When the Duke sent Iberti in 1603 on a mission to Spain, Rubens was given charge of the presents of horses and pictures for the king Philip III., and his minister the Duke of Lerma. With the exception of a letter to the Duke himself, it is to Chieppio that Rubens writes the description of his voyage and the account of his expenses. On the 1 8th of March he mentions that he has run short of money in Florence ; at Pisa he tells of an audience with the Grand Duke Ferdinand I., son of Cosmo de' Medici, and he explains that his heavy expenses are unavoidable : " the keep of the horses is sumptuous but necessary ; it includes bottles of wine and other costly attentions." The verse that sends rain to Spain is justified by the rhyme ; but on Rubens's journey twenty-five days of continued wet proved it to be also based on reason. The canvases in his care suffered grievously from the damp, and some of them required repainting. Rubens declined the job, as he tells Chieppio " having always followed the rule not to confound myself with another man, however great." The use he made later on of pupils and assistants shows that he had no objection to confound another man with himself : he disliked his work to pass as another's ; he did not mind that another's should be called his. Rubens, however, painted Heraclitus Crying and Democritus Laughing to replace two of the damaged pictures which had been sent to the first minister, the Duke of Lerma. Whilst at Valladolid he did other work for the Duke of Lerma, a series, Christ and the Twelve Apostles, and also a portrait of the Duke on horseback. Besides the prime minister he painted many of the Spanish nobles, but on this first visit he was not considered worthy to work directly for the king ; indeed he complains to Chieppio that Iberti had not yet presented him to His The Descent from the Cross. Antwerp Cathedral. From the Engraving by L. Forsterman. PETER PAUL RUBENS 25 Majesty. As to the Spanish painters of that date, he seems to have thought too poorly of them to wish to be associated with them in any work " connaissant I'incroyable insuffisance et la paresse de ces peintres dont la maniere d'ailleurs — et ceci est important — differe completement de la mienne ; Dieu me garde de leur ressembler en quoi que ce soit." If he did not like the local painting he admired the imported Italian work, and spoke warmly of the Titians, Raphaels, and other pictures at the Escurial and the king's palace. On his return to Italy Rubens appears to have passed a year or so (1604-6) quietly working for Vincenzo di Gonzaga at Mantua. To this period is assigned the Trinity, now in the Library of Mantua. The picture has been cut into two pieces, which are placed at the ends of the room. Each half measures 190 centimetres by 250 ; the upper contains the Trinity, and the lower four worshippers : on the left Vincenzo and his father, on the right his mother Eleanor, daughter of Ferdinand I., and his second wife Leonora de' Medici. Though damaged and repainted Rooses considers this picture, especially the lower half, one of the best specimens of Rubens's Italian work. The Baptism of Christ in the Antwerp Museum and the Transfiguration at Nancy also belong to this period. The painter revisited Rome, probably by way of Venice ; at any rate he was in the capital by 29th July 1606, a date on which he writes to Chieppio. In December of the same year he asks for extended leave of absence to finish the work he has undertaken at S. Maria in Vallicella (Chiesa Nuova). He completed and set up his Madonna, an altar-piece on canvas, and in July 1607 he accompanied his ducal patron to Genoa, passing through Milan, where he copied Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper. At Genoa Rubens made several rich friends, for the most part merchants or bankers, such as the Pallavicini, who were afterwards of service to him. For the Jesuits, his constant patrons, he painted several works, and a Circumcision, which was paid for by the Marquis Nicolas Pallavicini. Rooses thinks that the Last Judgment in the Balbi Palace, Genoa, and the Fall of the Wicked at Aix-la-Chapelle in the Suermondt Collection, may both date from this visit to Genoa. In this case they would be the first attempts on a small scale at rendering the complicated figure subjects which Rubens afterwards treated on the huge canvases 26 PETER PAUL RUBENS now at Munich. At any rate, they show his worst faults, from which indeed the larger versions are scarcely free ; bad taste, lack of unity, and a kind of tame imitation of Michael Angelo. The Assumption of the Just, Pinakothek, Munich, is another small version of a large canvas which may possibly belong to the Italian period. It looks like a rain of little nude figures, and as a pattern soon becomes extremely wearisome. In addition to these labours, Rubens, while in Genoa, occupied himself in the study of architecture, and made drawings of palaces, which were after wards engraved at Antwerp. In February 1608 we hear again of Rubens from Rome. He tells Chieppio that most people praise his altar-piece in the Chiesa Nuova, but that, in his opinion, the light from the church windows striking on the oil paint produces disadvantageous reflections. He suggests that the Duke of Mantua should buy the canvas from him, saying, as an induce ment, that it contains a number of figures, but no emblems which would prevent them from passing for other Saints. The Duke was not seduced by this offer ; perhaps he was short of money, perhaps he was enlightened enough to doubt the value of quantity in figure-painting, or perhaps he held the advanced idea that figures should not require emblems to determine their character. Rubens kept the canvas, and when his mother died he placed it over her tomb. Meanwhile he began upon the new picture, a Madonna surrounded by Angels, which still remains above the altar of the Chiesa Nuova. He painted it upon slabs of slate, that the colour might lie smooth and sink in so as to make the reflections less destructive. He says, with more practical sense than enthusiasm, " I need not trouble myself to make it very good or highly finished, because no one can ever judge of it in this bad light." Rooses calls it a work of little importance, which scarcely shows the hand of Rubens. On the right of the high altar of this church the painter put a picture of St. Gregory, accompanied by two other Saints ; on the left a canvas with Saints, Donatilla, Nerea, and Achillea. That of St. Gregory was not finished when the painter heard of his mother's last illness. He at once set out for Antwerp, taking the unfinished canvas with him but he arrived too late to see Marie Pypelinckx, who died on 19th October 1608. Rubens, who was always sensible to the family affections, took this loss very much to heart. He remained in strict seclusion for several months The Defeat of Sennacherib. Albertina, Vienna. From a fi'.otografih by Branni Clime nt &* Cte. PETER PAUL RUBENS 27 and when he reappeared in the world he would have returned to his service with the Duke of Mantua. This, however, was not to be ; his journeyings to and fro were over for many years, and he was destined to pass a long time in the quiet pursuit of his art. The stadtholders, Albert and Isabella, perceived his growing reputation, and to attach the painter to their service they offered him, with a salary of five hundred florins, the appointment of court painter, which made him independent of the restrictions of the gild of St. Luke. Rubens, however, had no wish to join the court at Brussels, so he was permitted to live and work in Antwerp. Probably he felt the need of quiet, the power to dispose of his own time, and the opportunity to digest the impressions and experiences of his late studies and travels. Moreover, he had friends in Antwerp, and especially his brother Philippe, for whose book on Rome he had made a few illustrations before he left Italy. These are supposed to be the earliest engraved work of Rubens. Philippe, who had just been made one of the secretaries of the town, was married to Maria de Moy, daughter of the chief secretary ; and it was probably at her house that Rubens saw and admired her niece Isabella Brant, daughter of John Brant, a lawyer. Rubens and Isabella were married in St. Michael's Church on the 13th of October 1609, and they went to live with John Brant until they had a house of their own. The following year the painter designed and built a kind of Italian palace in the street now called Rubens Street ; the building contained a magnificent staircase, a fine studio, and a gallery for the pictures, marbles, bronzes, etc., which the painter had collected in Italy. CHAPTER II His first marriage — His life in Antwerp — His first journey to Holland — Rubens and his pupils and collaborators — Pictures, portraits, and drawings of the second period. This is an important moment in Rubens's history. He has returned full of experience to settle in his native town ; he is just married and established in a house of his own ; he has won some reputation in Italy and Spain ; he has acquired knowledge of the world and of his art, and he is about to enter on his second manner of painting which emancipated Flemish art, founded the Antwerp school, and captivated the world. Rubens must have had his hands full, settling his life, arranging his purchases, overhauling his sketches, to say nothing of executing the numerous commissions which began to shower upon the successful painter. With his excellent sense he ordered his life upon a prudent system. In the morning he rose very early, and while he painted some one read aloud Livy, Plutarch, Cicero, Virgil or other poets. Then he would stroll in his gallery to stimulate his taste by the sight of the works of art he had brought from Italy. On other occasions he would study science, in which he always retained an active interest. Although he lived splendidly, he ate and drank moderately ; and the gout from which he suffered in later life was certainly undeserved. He painted in the afternoon till towards evening, when he mounted a horse and rode out of the town. His inclination took him often along the embankment of the Scheldt below Antwerp. Here one is a little raised above the country and the river; the first seems sad and quiet, the other alive with shipping and the Dutch barges that Cuyp and Van de Velde have often painted. Antwerp, gray and old, thrown into a close perspective, is entirely dominated by its weather-worn Cathedral tower. When I EoUfir^ ' ¦ 8 1 ^5- /" \~ **** sJfc- ' H^kC vi. . ; 'F;fd m% • ** i .^ ' 4" ^tn W9$-;.- mW^&*W^mmr f ^ap; ¦ ¦ j^'"* r ^ t /¦ r /-:¦ ,' ^ S3BT-:, ^-^JM^ i . ¦ ¦ ¦ . n 1 52 ¦ ¦ y0 §§||| i p ,f P^ ¦; <2i I 1 i 4 - 'iMii, ¦¦¦ .. ¦ ¦ ¦ A0^^/ *r ¦A ,, ''*d6fitf _'-;';i -iX.'" ;-: ' — l/s design specially made for their benefit, that the reproduction of a Rubens picture often differs greatly from the original work. See for instance the Jardin d1 Amour (Madrid) or the Assumption of the Virgin (Brussels) and their seventeenth-century engravings. That Rubens employed collaborators and set his pupils to work from his designs is not altogether a matter of guesswork. Besides the testimony of contemporary painters, such as Sandrart, we have letters to that effect from the master's own hand. One or two, as they contain allusions to well-known pictures, may be quoted. In April 161 8 Rubens was negotiating with Sir Dudley Carleton an exchange of his pictures for the ambassador's antique marbles. In a letter of the 1 8th the painter offers the following pictures : " A Prometheus Enchained on Mount Caucasus, with an eagle which devours his liver ; an original work of my own hand, the eagle done by Snyders, 500 florins. Daniel in the midst of many lions, done from nature ; original work entirely by my hand, 600 florins. Leopards painted from nature, with Satyrs and Nymphs ; original picture by my hand, except a fine landscape The Miraculous Draught of Fishes. Church of Notre Dame, Malines. From a Photograph by G. Hermans. PETER PAUL RUBENS 43 done by an artist clever at these kind of works, 600 florins. Leda, the Swan, and a Cupid; original work by my own hand, 500 florins. Christ on the Cross, life-size, considered perhaps the best thing I have ever done, 500 florins. A Last Judgment, begun by one of my pupils after an original which I made of much larger size for the Prince of Neubourg, who paid me for it 3500 florins in ready money. As the present piece is not quite finished, I will retouch it altogether by myself, so that it The Miraculous Draught of Fishes. Copy by Van Dyck, with alteration. National Gallery. From a Photograph by Morelli. can pass for an original, 1200 florins. St. Peter taking the coin out of the fish to pay the tribute, whilst other fishermen stand round him ; painted from nature, an original work of my own hand, 500 florins. A Hunting-piece with Horsemen and Lions, begun by one of my pupils after a picture which I did for the Duke of Bavaria ; it has, however, been entirely retouched by me, 600 florins. The Twelve Apostles with a Christ, executed by my pupils after originals by me, belonging to the Duke of Lerma ; but I have retouched all these copies entirely with my own work. Each fifty florins. A Piece representing Achilles disguised 44 PETER PAUL RUBENS as a Woman, painted by my best pupil and entirely retouched by me ; a very agreeable picture, and full of graceful young girls, 600 florins. St. Sebastian, a nude, my own work, 300 florins. Susanna and the Elders, the work of one of my pupils, but entirely retouched by my hand, 300 florins." Comment is unnecessary, especially as Rubens is still more explicit in a letter of 1 1 th October 1 6 1 9 to the Duke of Bavaria, mentioned in the foregoing list : " As to the St. Michael, the subject is very fine, but very difficult, so I doubt that I shall find easily amongst my pupils one capable of carrying it out satisfactorily even after my own drawing. In any case it will be necessary for me to touch it up carefully with my own hand." Perhaps the most important allusion in these letters is that which proves the Last Judgment in the Pinakothek, Munich, to have been painted before 28th April 16 18. This is one of Rubens's big canvases, 605 x 474 cm. ; it is the largest of several of the same kind painted probably in emulation of the Paradise of Tintoretto and the Last Judgment of Michael Angelo. Amongst similar work by Rubens we may mention the Fall of the Rebel Angels (Munich), which is the St. Michael of the letter just quoted ; the little Last Judgment (182 x 120 cm., Munich) ; the Fall of the Damned (286 x 224 cm., Munich). There are also Judgments at Dresden and Genoa, as well as an Assumption of the Just at Munich and a Fall of the Damned at Aix- la-Chapelle : two pictures already spoken of as dating from the Italian journey. One cannot say that Rubens has quite succeeded where his Italian forerunners made a comparative failure. But then these vast and complicated compositions of his were painted before he had mastered his latest style. Rubens was slow and steady in his growth. Many admirers have spoken of his calm mind, his deliberate thoughtfulness, and his long and reasonable restraint of manner in painting. He always liked exuberant composition, dramatic action, and robust forms ; but the appearance of fury and swiftness, in his earlier pictures especially, was not the effect of hurry or impetuousness of mind and hand. This effect was deliberately planned, and it took Rubens years to establish a full agreement between his handling and his composition ; the earlier, and even a few of the later, compositions that express exuberance are painfully, Sketch for the Assumption of the Virgin. Alberlina, Vienna. From a photograph by Biaun, Ctiment &° Cic. PETER PAUL RUBENS 45 almost timidly, handled. Rooses feels this in the large Last Judgment. Its fury looks somehow tame and frozen in spite of its dramatic gestures The Adoration of the Magi. Church of St. Jean, Malines. From the Engraving by L. Vorsterman. and violent attitudes. These involved compositions have been called irreverently bunches of grapes, sacks of potatoes, bundles of sausages, etc. Yet every painter will sympathise with them as courageous studies of difficult anatomical subjects on a large scale, possibly undertaken less to 46 PETER PAUL RUBENS satisfy an aesthetic mood than to improve, or may be to display, a knowledge of the figure. As to the Susanna referred to in the Carleton list, it can hardly be identified ; Rubens made many versions of this subject from the early one at Madrid to the late version at Munich. There exists, however, an engraving by Vorsterman of a Susanna and the Elders, now in Chicago Museum, which Rubens, in a letter to Peter van Veen (19th June 1622), calls one of the best reproductions of his work. This engraving bears the following dedication to " Lectissimae Virgini Annae Roemer Visschers illustri Bataviae sijderi, multarum Artium peritissimae, Poetices vero studio, supra sexum celebri, rarum hoc Pudicitiae exemplar, Petrus Paulus Rubenus, L.M.D.D." This lady had copied a picture by Rubens, the Madonna squirting Milk from her Breast into the Child's Mouth. Together with a laudatory poem on the picture, she sent a letter to Rubens asking him how he managed to grind up his white paint so that it never turned yellow. Achilles disguised as a Woman was amongst the pictures refused by Carleton, and it was finally taken with others to Spain in 1628. The canvas now hangs in the Prado, where it presents, says Rooses, a perfect blending of the work of Rubens and Van Dyck into an artistic harmony of style. St. Peter and the Tribute Money was probably a version of the left wing of the triptych at Notre Dame (Malines), the Marvellous Draught of Fishes. This powerful, dramatic and highly -coloured picture, one of the best works of Rubens's second period, was painted in 16 18-19, when the master was staying at the Chateau de Steen, his house in the country, not far from Malines. A small sketch of the middle panel of this triptych, made possibly by Van Dyck for Bolswert's engraving, hangs in our National Gallery. Daniel in the Lions' Den was given by Carleton to Charles I., and it finally passed into the Hamilton collection. The lions are perhaps better than Daniel, though I judge only by the engraving. The Twelve Apostles and Christ, refused by Carleton, are doubtless those now in Rome (Rospigliosi Palace). In all but the colour, these pictures resemble the Apostles which Rubens left behind him in Madrid. Probably the Roman pictures were painted by pupils from the very same drawings that Rubens had made during his first voyage to Spain in 1603-4. To make up a The Last Communion of St. Francis. Antwerp Museum. From a Photograph by Braun, Clhnent, Iff Cie. PETER PAUL RUBENS 49 hundred florins, still owing to Carleton on the exchange, Rubens threw in the Hagar of Grosvenor House, which he describes as a panel yl by 2 -J- feet in height. He says, moreover, that Hagar, though with child, quits the house with a very noble and graceful action ; he explains that he chose wood to work on, because little subjects came off better on panel than on canvas ; and he adds that he has permitted no one to touch the picture except an artist (Wildens) very talented in landscape, and that only to produce something " after your excellency's taste." These extracts are quite sufficient to show the relations between Rubens and his pupils and collaborators ; also to explain the nature of the Antwerp picture factory which endured till the master's death. Rooses makes the second manner of Rubens extend from about 1612 to 1625, a period which very nearly corresponds to that which I have called the quiet part of the painter's life (1609-22). The first or Italian manner was heroic, and huge in conception, yet generally hard in style, violent in chiaroscuro, and yet at times tamely academic in drawing. Its culmination is the triptych Erection of the Cross (1609-10), now in Antwerp Cathedral. Rooses chooses as the most prominent example of the beginning of the second manner the other triptych in Antwerp Cathedral, the Descent from the Cross (16 12). The second manner is much more original ; it started the Antwerp school, and beyond its ideal scarce any contemporary advanced. The forms are less muscular, the gestures less exaggerated, the transitions suaver, the light and shade less contrasted than in the first period, but the pigment is still solid, and the colours are treated as large, unfused blocks of decorative effect. The beauty of expressive brushwork, the parsimony of pigment, the fusion of colour which characterise the third and last manner, are not yet attained. No exact limits can be assigned to these periods, since the growth of Rubens was gradual ; but the dates given by Rooses are as right as any fixed periods could be. Amongst pictures of the second period are St. Thomas and the Last Communion of St. Francis, both in the Museum at Antwerp ; the Adoration of the Magi and the Miraculous Draught of Fishes at Malines ; the Last Judgment and the Battle of the Amazons at Munich ; the Miracles of St. Francis Xavier and the Miracles of St. Ignatius at Vienna ; while in England we have Lord Ashburton's Wolf-Hunt . Even in these pictures, especially chosen by 50 PETER PAUL RUBENS Max Rooses to illustrate the second manner, we can see prophecies as it were of the third, notably in the handling of the steps in the Last Communion of St. Francis ; but if we look at other pictures, such as the Coup de Lance, Antwerp, an approach to the third manner is still more visible. The series of Apostles, that of Decius, that of the Jesuit Church, that of Constantine, that of the Luxembourg, belong to this period. It was only the organisation of the house of Rubens and Co. that enabled the master to pour out from the studio in Antwerp a steady stream of madonnas, saints, classic subjects, historical pieces, landscapes and genre pictures, whilst he was undertaking these huge series of palatial decorations. Some of the portraits are very interesting and even very good, but the majority, as portraits must, lose by habit of collaboration and decorative freedom. The habit of decorative license operates two ways : first, directly, to make the painter care for style and flourish rather than likeness and construction ; second, indirectly and by reaction, to make him so afraid of freedom that he becomes timid, minute, and inelegant in his workmanship. Both these moods may be seen in Rubens's portraits ; the first less decidedly pronounced than in some pictures by Titian, Lely, and many more recent painters in love with decorative style or an ideal exposition of type ; the second mood, on the other hand, never seems pushed into the minute fidelity to detail of feature and costume that characterises the work of A. Moro or the school of Bruges. No painter of courage and conscience can be found but what oscillates a little between these two attractions : style and ideality of type on one hand, construction and actuality of feature on the other. We may see this indecision in Reynolds and Gainsborough, in Whistler and Sargent, even in Velazquez himself, the first and foremost of portrait painters. Rubens was no imitator, rather an extremely personal painter ; but the balance of his personality inclined him usually to enjoy the language of paint before the character of nature. Whether he found himself facing a human model or a painted picture he translated freely instead of copying accurately. The thing before his eyes hinted at something else in his own mind, and he pushed a type in the direction of his own taste. As he worked he fell in love with his own style, and sought to enhance the beauty of the Rubens feeling rather than to accentuate the character of Le Coup de Lance. Antwerp Museum. From a Photograph by G. Hermans. PETER PAUL RUBENS 53 the beauty he was supposed to express. As you may see in London, when he copied Mantegna, it was to make an essay of his own style ; or in Madrid, when he copied Titian, it was to get a suggestion for a new Rubens. It was the man's prevailing mood to distil from any object the material of his own dreams ; yet he was so gifted that, when by a rare chance the more objective mood possessed him, he could imagine a rendering of nature that was quite sympathetic with the thing painted. One or two landscapes, one or two portraits are sufficient to prove that it was taste and not incompetence that made Rubens a conventional decorator instead of an imaginative naturalist. The landscapes En Chasse (Antwerp Museum), Chateau de Steen, and the smaller Sunset (both National Gallery) may be later than the second manner ; but we can point to such admirably natural black and white drawings as the Kneeling Shepherdess in the Albertina Collection, Vienna, a Shepherdess offering an Egg and a Shepherdess offering a Lamb in the same collection. The first of these drawings was done for the Adoration of the Shepherds at Marseilles, once on the altar of St. Jean, Malines, and the drawn figure is much finer than the painted figure. But perhaps the oil portrait Jacqueline de Cordes (Brussels Museum) is more proper to our purpose. This portrait dates from 1617-18, the time of the Miraculous Draught of Fishes and the Decius series, but it is quite different in its quiet, careful execution and the sad and dignified beauty of its expression. The type, thin, slightly aquiline, and of saint-like repression, agrees little with the Rubens taste or the Rubens formula, yet the painter treats it with respect and makes no effort to force the reserved, almost ascetic, lady to become bovine and voluptuous. His swaggering brush obeys the searching, sympathetic mood of his mind, and records with honest effort his careful observation of the forms, especially those of the mouth and chin. The forehead and brows are also excellently shaped, and notably the soft and natural passage of the eyebrow on the right into its adjoining temple. This may be compared to its advantage with the corresponding part of the Chapeau de Paille in the National Gallery, a canvas of 1620, very lovely in colour, which, although Rooses seems to think otherwise, surely shows the hand of some one else in the comparatively rude folds of the dress, the trivial details of the feather, and the small treatment of the eyebrow. In Jacqueline de Cordes the hair looks timid, and the 54 PETER PAUL RUBENS dress careful but florid like an early Velazquez ; if they are by Rubens, these details give one rather a sense of his sincerity than of his cleverness. Another picture in the Brussels Gallery persuades one more than anything that Rubens need not have altered the aspect of nature to be a great man. Four Heads of a Negro, or coffee-coloured Moor, are shown from different points of view and of different sizes on one canvas ; now smiling, now serious, here three-quarter face, here in profile, against a blue, loosely rubbed -in background. When you come on it in the Brussels Gallery, you experience the shock that you frequently receive from a Velazquez in the Prado, the shock that comes from being suddenly instructed by finer and keener sensations of eyesight. Much might be said about mere studies and finished decorative pictures, but this is hardly the place to say it ; one must be content to point out that this canvas shows Rubens as exact as you could wish to the shape and lighting of the thing he saw. It cannot be denied that these heads of a negro affect one much more powerfully and sympathetically than the heads of people decoratively adjusted to the feeling of a Rubens picture. His family life, we know, greatly occupied Rubens at all times ; he had been an affectionate son and brother, he was a good husband and father. He often painted his wife and himself in his pictures, so one is not surprised that he also made direct portraits of his family. One of the earliest is the Rubens and Isabella Brant (Munich Gallery), painted in 1609 or 1 6 10, when Rubens was about thirty-two and his newly- married wife little over eighteen. The figures are shown at full length but sitting, and are carefully painted in their everyday walking costumes, Rubens wearing a kind of tall hat. Later comes the Isabella Brant of Windsor Castle and the drawing in the National Gallery, both about 16 14. As she gets older we see her in the picture at the Hague (1620), and finally in that of the Hermitage Gallery, St. Petersburg (1625). There are others at Florence and in the collections of the Duke of Norfolk and the late Sir Richard Wallace. The sons of Rubens by Isabella Brant, Albert (1614-57) and Nicholas (1618-55), appear together in a picture at the Liechtenstein Gallery, Vienna, painted about 1625 ; while of Nicholas alone at the age of two there is a portrait in the Berlin Museum. The Chapeau de Paille in the National Gallery has already been men tioned ; it depicts Susan Fourment (1 599-1 643), one of the many The Emperor Theoaosius repulsed by St. Ambrose from the door of Milan Cathedral. Imperial Gallery, Vienna. From a Photograph by Lowy. PETER PAUL RUBENS 57 daughters of Daniel Fourment and successively wife of Raymond del Monte and Arnold Lunden. She used to be called the mistress of Rubens, but apparently for no better reason than that a lady of the kind was considered a necessary encumbrance even for a painter so married as Rubens. Other paintings and drawings of her by Rubens exist, and also one picture at St. Petersburg, supposed to be done by Van Dyck. Rubens was an admirable draughtsman, and the character of his work with the point is often more realistic and natural than that of his painted decorations. It is impossible in a mere sketch like the present to speak adequately of the large collections of Rubens's drawings at Vienna, Paris, London, and elsewhere. The drawings in the Albertina collection, Vienna, which he made with his own hand for the Defeat of Sennacherib (Munich), seem in advance of the picture, a work of the year 16 14. They are very lightly touched monochromes, made either for the engravers who were to reproduce, or for the pupils who were to lay in, the picture. A wonderful sentiment of movement and agitation is expressed in the slightest of these with very little material. The angel leaning from the thunderous sky and the majestic horses rearing with fury and terror are scarcely indicated, and yet no elaboration could add to the feeling of excited motion. In portraiture, too, the drawings often appear more spirited and more individual than the pictures. Whether like the models or not, no drawings could give one a more lively sense of personality than those of the Duke of Buckingham (1625), Peter Paul Rubens (1628), a Maid of Honour of the Archduchess Isabella, Two Girls' Heads, and the Marie de Medicis (1622), all at Vienna. The pen-and- ink drawing, Assumption of the Virgin, connected with no special painted version of the subject, and the chalk drawing for the Martyrdom of St. Catherine (Lille, 1622 circa), both come from the Albertina Collection. The drawing from the Louvre, which was the first idea for the Elevation of the Cross, differs in many respects from the picture. In the drawing the cross leans to the soldiers and away from the Virgin, but Rubens reversed its inclination in the picture. Less traditional and more personal are the two beautifully expressive drawings of a Boars Head, one seen full face, the other in profile. They come from the British Museum, as does the elegant Hunting Scene. CHAPTER III The Medicis and Constantine series — Visits to Paris and Holland — The series of the triumphs of the Faith — The political missions of Rubens — Spain and England — His second marriage — Missions to Holland. The date and subject of the drawing of Marie de Medicis bring us to a time of change in the even tenor of Rubens's life. In January 1622 Rubens started for Paris, summoned by Marie de Medicis, who at last found leisure to think of the decoration of her favourite Luxem bourg Palace. The Queen-Mother of France, even if she had not remarked Rubens at her wedding in Florence, knew him now by his European reputation, by the notorious favour of his own sovereigns, by the report of her sister the Duchess of Mantua, by the recollections of her own portrait-painter, F. Pourbus, once associated with Rubens at the court of Mantua, and by the warm recommendation of the Flemish ambassador, Baron de Vicq. At Paris Rubens saw a great deal of Nicholas Peiresc, a learned man to whom he had been introduced by Gevartius. Peiresc was much pleased with Rubens, and from that time took a warm interest in his work. Many were the letters which passed between them concerning the pictures of the Luxembourg series and those of the series treating the life of the Emperor Constantine the Great. The Constantine series was a commission from Louis XIII., and the pictures were cartoons meant to be used for tapestry. Thus upon the top of the large order for the Jesuit church in Antwerp, Rubens accepted two others, one from Louis XIII. and the other from the Queen- Mother. The painter stayed a month or two in Paris, and arranged to do the decoration of the Luxembourg for 20,000 ecus ; by 4th March he was back at Antwerp with measurements and drawings of the principal personages. By the end of 1622 several of the Constantine cartoons had The Infant Jesus, St. John, and two Angels. Berlin Gallery. From a Photograph by F. Hanfstaengl. PETER PAUL RUBENS 61 reached Paris, and had been seen by Peiresc and other connoisseurs. In December 1622 Peiresc writes an interesting letter to Rubens full of praise, yet not without a little timid advice and even gentle criticism. He tells his friend that besides many enthusiastic admirers of the cartoons there were a few daring and envious critics who carped at small faults. "Every one, however, was obliged to confess that no French artist could hope to become able to create such a work as this although it was executed by the hands of your pupils ; that, in fact, they were looking at the creation of a great man and a lofty genius." Peiresc also alludes to Rubens's manner of arching legs instead of drawing them straight, selon V usage. While he remembers what Rubens had told him of the fine curvature of the legs in the Florentine Moses, in the St. Paul, and in many instances from actual nature, nevertheless he begs his friend not to go against Raphael, M. Angelo, Correggio, and the Greeks, and not to shock the weak minds of fashionable people enslaved to tradition. He criticises the drawing of the thighs of two men hanging from the bridge in the Defeat of Maxentius, and implores Rubens to correct the mistake with his own hand. When he returned to Paris, Rubens brought with him the smaller canvases of the Medicis series, completely finished. The two large chimney-piece decorations (727 x 394 cm.) he painted on the spot, and during this work he saw a great deal of the Queen-Mother. He was treated with affability, and Marie de Medicis talked freely with him, asking his opinion on the beauty of the ladies of her court. He gave the preference to the celebrated beauty, Madame de Guemenee. Rubens painted several portraits at this time ; amongst others, one of the Duke of Buckingham, one of the Baron de Vicq, and one of the Baroness, his wife. But in spite of this fine reception and notable favour, Rubens found no small difficulty and delay in getting the money for his Luxembourg decorations. In December 1625 he writes to Peiresc complaining of the expenses he had incurred in his work and in his journeys, and declares that he counts the whole business a loss, but for the generosity of the Duke of Buckingham, whom he had met in Paris. About this time, probably on his return to Antwerp from Paris, he painted Ambrogio Spinola, afterwards celebrated by Velazquez in the Surrender of Breda. Spinola had become the minister and counsellor 62 PETER PAUL RUBENS of the Archduchess, and very much favoured the employment of m&Btz&J ¦^R~ ^aOV Jic/oh i^a&%/[ «a« Rubens, draivn by himself. Albertina, Vienna. From a Photograph by Braun, Clement, l£ Cie. la rendre superieure d'artifice a celle d'Holofernes laquelle j'ay fait en ma jeunesse." Ruelens speaks of a Judith and Holophernes belonging 72 PETER PAUL RUBENS to Madame Brun at Carpentras as fin in workmanship, mats dur de ton. He is not sure whether it is a copy or an original of the early period. Rooses remarks on its agreement with the engraving, by Cornelius Galle, called La Grande Judith. This print is burdened with folds and details, which may be over-emphasised by the engraver, but certainly the main shapes of the composition are stately and Rubens-like. It was about 1624 that the superb portrait of Rubens at Windsor1 was acquired, as may be seen from these words in a letter written on the 1st of March 1623 by W. Trumbull to Sir Dudley Carleton: "My Lord Danvers desyreing nowe to have his Creation of Bassano againe because Rubens hath mended it very well, doth by a lettre commande me to treate with him, for his owne pourtrait to be placed in the Prince's gallery." Rubens, while he complied, protested that he did not think it good manners to send his own portrait to a prince of such high degree. Reproductions of this picture abound, also replicas, but the engraving by Pontius is perhaps the most known. Charles I. had intended for some time to carry out his father's wish to decorate the ceiling of the banqueting saloon at Whitehall. He now entrusted the work to Rubens, who, with the series of Henry IV. still unfinished, many smaller works on hand, and so much political travelling, must have been considerably in arrears and altogether over whelmed with commissions. But Rubens, as he was not in Antwerp directing affairs, found time to paint a few extra pictures in England. Amongst other things he did the Gerbier Family, a portrait of Old Parr, and Peace and War (National Gallery). On 21st February 1830, before Rubens left England, Charles knighted the painter and sent him to Flanders with an increased reputation, a gold chain and hopes of peace with Spain. After a short visit at the court of Philip IV. to render an account of his mission, Rubens again began work at Antwerp. He had the Henry IV. series on his hands, the Achilles series to finish, and the Whitehall decorations to begin. The Henry IV. series he never completed; Marie de Medicis was exiled in 1831, and letters in the Sainsbury papers show that when she came to Antwerp, Rubens was rather employed in raising money for her than in receiving it himself. 1 Reproduced in the Portfolio monograph on the Picture Gallery of Charles I. Rubens and his secona Wife, Helene Fourment, in a Garden. Pinakothek, Munich. From a Photograph by F. Hanfstaengl. PETER PAUL RUBENS 75 Isabella Brant had now been dead about four years ; Rubens was not the man to settle down alone in an empty house, and on the 6th December 1630 he married Helen Fourment. Her appearance pleased Rubens ; indeed, women of her type had always haunted the painter's canvases, and now from this time she herself, the incarnation of the Rubens ideal of Venus, sat for many of the personages in her husband's pictures. Helen was the youngest of the seven daughters of Daniel Fourment, and Rubens must have known her from her childhood, since Isabella Brant's sister Clara was the second wife of Daniel Four ment. Indeed he often painted her brothers and sisters long before 1830, as witness the Chapeau de Paille, a portrait of her sister Susan Fourment. Helen was born the same year, 16 14, as Rubens's eldest son Albert, so that she was a girl of sixteen when she married this old gentleman of fifty-three, who suffered from the gout, but was famous and very handsome, a noble and fairly rich. There are many portraits of Helen Fourment besides those pictures in which she is introduced under another character. One of these, at Munich, shows Helen Fourment and Rubens with a boy walking in their garden whilst an old servant feeds the fowls. The superb full-length Helene Fourment a la Pelisse at Vienna gives a portrait of Helen wrapped only in a fur-bordered cloak, which heightens the effect of her dazzling skin. There are also excellent portraits at the Louvre, the Hague, St Petersburg, and elsewhere. In the case of many portraits painted after 1624, unless there happens to be documentary evidence, it becomes extremely difficult to settle the date only by the mere appearance of the person. For instance, Rooses gives the date 1625-26 to the Albert and Nicholas of the Liechtenstein Gallery, Vienna, judging by apparent ages of the sitters ; but Mr Claude Phillips maintains, on the strength of his resemblance to Helen, that the younger boy is not Nicholas, son of the first wife, but Francis Rubens (1633- 78), son of the second wife, which, if true, would assign the picture to the last years of Rubens's life. Although Rubens very soon after his marriage fell again into the political whirlpool, still he never left off painting, and he seems to have kept up his interest in all matters concerning art and learning. On 1st August 1 63 1 he wrote a very interesting letter to Junius, the Earl of Arundel's librarian, who had written a book on The Painting of the Ancients. 76 PETER PAUL RUBENS Although he praises the book warmly he takes occasion to put forth the painter's perpetual plea that in painting the eye is more concerned than the ear ; but how gravely and mildly he states his point ! One hardly feels the full import of the words unless one is familiar with the sentiment. The tenor of the letter runs : God forbid that I should level myself with the Ancients or fail in respect to their work ; but we cannot see a picture described by Pliny or the expression of Eurydice's face in a lost composition, whereas we can still buy and still admire Italian works of art. He hints that the scholarship of art which treats at length of what neither the writer nor the reader may ever see were better devoted to matters that may be still judged with feeling and with critical inquiry. The letter bears a postscript saying that Rubens wrote it standing on one leg ; we may therefore assume that his life was not leisurely at this moment. He was soon busy over the question of the Dutch Treaty, meeting at Dunkirk the Marquis d'Aytona who had succeeded the deceased Spinola, running here and there to confer with deputies at Liege or to visit politicians in Holland, but ever spied upon by. the watchful and furtive Gerbier, who complains, in letters to Charles I. and Lord Dorchester, that it is difficult to draw the painter on the subject of his political intentions. Twice at least Rubens went to the Prince of Orange, and the second time he was ill received and even threatened with arrest. In fact his efforts led to very little result except a final humiliation at the beginning of 1633, which inclined him to dislike the business of political agent. On his return from the Hague the Duke of Aerschot, one of the popular leaders, demanded an account of his mission and insisted on seeing his papers. Rubens, strong in the orders of Isabella, absolutely refused to show them or to call on the Duke. Letters passed between them, firm on the part of the painter, haughty and peremptory on the part of the great man ; who ended up with " Je seray bien aise que vous appreniez dorenavant comme doivent escrire a des gens de ma sorte ceux de la vostre." Rubens apologised, perhaps too humbly, and the Duke went about showing the correspondence in triumph. Writers have loaded the Duke with abuse for his share in this business, but something may be said for him and the Deputies to the States-General whom he represented. They were the patriotic party, desirous ot more power in the management of affairs, and they regarded Helene Fourment. Hermitage, St. Petersburg. From a Photograph by Braun, Clement, l£ Cie. PETER PAUL RUBENS 79 Rubens as a Spanish agent, the friend of tyranny, and not as one eager to do good to his country. The death of his friend and patron the Archduchess Isabella in 1633 determined the disgusted Rubens to abandon politics, which he had better have left alone from the first. Ambition, a taste for grandeur, the force of circumstances, the importunity of others, gradually led Rubens into this worrying and treacherous life, which laid him open to the insolence of officials and superiors. In those days, doubtless, it was better either to remain very obscure or to become very powerful, since such a successful man as Rubens, at the height of his fame, could be bullied and humiliated by a Grand Seigneur. Perhaps Artus, the Dutch painter of Leyden, in the century before, chose the better part in wishing to remain entirely unknown. Michiels says that the renowned Franz Floris visited him and offered to take him to Antwerp, introduce him to the world, and enable him to live like a lord. Artus told Floris that he had no desire for luxury, that he had no envy of the great, that he limited his desires to Jiving gaily and peacefully in his broken-down old shanty of a house. CHAPTER IV Last Tears of Rubens 's Life and IVork Increasing gout caused Rubens to live so quietly in the following years that he was not even able to be present at the great event of the time — the entry into Antwerp of Ferdinand, the brother of Philip IV. Ferdinand succeeded Isabella in the viceroyalty of Flanders, and he made his triumphal entry into Antwerp in 1635 a^"ter travels, delays, and even a battle on the way. It was Rubens who had charge of the decorations and the triumphal arches, and, with some depression, he must have thought of the time when he helped Vaenius with the preparations for the entry of his own familiar sovereigns, Albert and Isabella. Two of his designs for arches and one of a triumphal car may be seen painted on panels in the Antwerp Museum. They are very slight, free and elegant, evidently quite his own work — a thin brown wash dexterously touched with solider modelling of the brighter parts. Gevartius, as secretary to the Town Council, wrote an account of these celebrations ; Van Thulden, one of Rubens's good pupils, undertook the illustrations, with the exception of two by the master himself, one a frontispiece, the drawing of which is still preserved in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge ; the other an equestrian portrait of Ferdinand. For the drawing of the triumphal car Rubens received from the town of Antwerp 84 florins worth of vin de Paris. The painter's favour at court, and his political missions in the interest of Spain, caused certain people to regard him as a time-server, one careless of true patriotism and tepid in the popular cause. Rooses thinks that his decoration, Com merce quitting Antwerp, set up during the " solemn entry," may be taken as a kind of secret protest against the mistakes of the Spanish Henry IV. receiving the Portrait of Marie de Medicis. Louvre. From u Photograph by Neurdein. PETER PAUL RUBENS 83 Government. The galleries of Vienna and Dresden possess large pictures also painted for this public festival, that of Brussels the portraits of Albert and Isabella, which are excellently reproduced in these pages. About this date, 1635, Rubens sent to England the pictures that now adorn the ceiling of Whitehall. To save the heavy duty they were embarked at Dunkirk, which was still an English port. When they arrived at London it was found that Rubens had miscalculated the English foot, and the canvases never properly fitted their places. Subsequent damp and unskilful restoration have still further damaged the paintings ; but, in spite of cutting, mildewing, and repainting, one is forced to admit that the general aspect of the decorations is very noble, and very suitable to the size and height of the hall. Both this and the Medicis series have been abused for the mixture of fable and history, mythology and real life, which enters into their composition. Still they are full of beauties, and, where it can be easily seen, as in the Medicis series, admirably true and dignified gesture. Every one must remember the stately figures in the Landing of Marie de Medicis ; the grace of the bowing courtier, the haughty air of the Queen, and the rich and splendid pomp of the surroundings ; the golden barge, the green water lashed up by exuberant creatures of the stream, Neptune and the buxom wallowing nymphs of the Rhone. Our idea of Henry IV. is tied to that splendid idealisation, that fusion of king, lover, and romantic adventurer which came so naturally from the creative brush of Rubens, and which is very well shown in the picture Henry IV. receiving the Portrait of Marie de Medicis. It was only when he sat down before a little canvas to make a common likeness of a common human being that Rubens's inspiration sometimes failed him. On the tide of con ception which bore him through a great work, Rubens was often both natural and imaginative, portrait-painter and decorator. As Mr. Henley says of Burns, to see him at his best you must see him stimulated by the romantic touch of his predecessors. In Rubens's case emulation of the great Italian decorators warmed him to his work, and a portrait tuned to the key of a decorative picture has often more seeming vitality and character than a direct likeness taken deliberately from the sitter. Rubens was not paid more quickly by Charles than by Marie de Medicis, and Gerbier wrote letters to the King complaining that people 84 PETER PAUL RUBENS talked of his royal master's poverty or penury with unbecoming freedom. Indeed Rubens may at times have felt pinched by a want of ready money ; he bought many pictures and curios, and his expenses were great in every direction. One must not build much, however, on his selling the choice of his Italian treasures to the Duke of Buckingham ; for political ends he may have wished to conciliate that nobleman. Even if he wanted money occasionally, as one might think from a letter in which he complains to Peiresc that he is out of pocket over the Medicis series, he could never be really distressed, since his picture- factory was always running at Antwerp, and year by year he was turning out easel-pictures by himself or his pupils. During this last period of his life, from 1630 to 1640, he put forth a great deal of very fine work, in spite of his growing tendency to gout. Philip IV. was a constant customer of these later years, and through his brother Ferdinand he ordered many pictures from Rubens and his pupils. Moreover, the King employed Rubens as a kind of agent or buyer of works of art, so that not all the. pictures sent to Spain by Rubens during these years were by his own hand, or even by those of his pupils. Between 1630 and 1636 Rubens sent twenty-five pictures to Philip's first Queen, Isabella de Bourbon ; but the King was so pleased with them that he put them in his supper-room next his own bedroom. In 1636 Philip, through his brother, ordered more pictures to decorate the Torre de la Parada, a hunting lodge, some miles from Madrid. At the end of 1637 they were not ready, and, according to Ferdinand's letters, Rubens would fix no precise date, but only promised that he and the other painters would not lose an hour of daylight. On the 21st of January 1638 Rubens wanted still twenty days more to allow the canvases time to dry properly ; and the Cardinal Archduke wisely agreed, remarking to Philip, " Comme il s'y entend mieux que moi, j'ai cede." Buyers of to-day might take a lesson from the modesty of this royal patron of the arts. On the nth March 1638 the pictures left for Spain, and amongst them were the Battle of the Lapiths and Centaurs, the Rape of Proserpine, Orpheus and Eurydice, the Banquet of Tereus, and one or two others, as well as much work by pupils and friends. Probably Juno creating the Milky Way, Vulcan, Mercury and Argus, Fortune, Flora, and others by Rubens or his school were amongst the The Martyrdom of St. Lievin. Brussels Museum. From the Engraving by Caukercken. PETER PAUL RUBENS 87 numbers that swelled this huge list of 1638 to the total of 112 pictures. Most of them were destined for the decoration of the Palace of Buen Retiro, to which Velazquez also contributed no small amount of work, and amongst other things his famous Surrender of Breda. No sooner was this vast cargo arrived in Spain than Philip sent a fresh order for more pictures to be despatched with all expedition. They were sent off on 27th February 1639. Ferdinand, in his letter to the King, says that Rubens, " to gain time," was obliged to do them all with his own hand. This supports the legend of his wonderful rapidity of execution ; his pictures were not finished the faster for collaboration, but by its aid he could undertake several large commissions at the same time. The Judgment of Paris, now in the Prado, the latest and finest of his three versions of this subject, belongs to this period of his life and to the same year, 1639, as the Three Graces of the Prado. They are notably characteristic of the late Rubens working on secular subjects which gave a free scope to his exuberant and joyous temperament. Age, illness, sorrow, and political distraction had enfeebled his body, but they were unable to tame the rich sensuousness of his conception. Never did Rubens show his intense appreciation of the beauty of flesh and the delights of colour more conspicuously than in the pictures of his old age. The two pictures in the Prado just mentioned contain, if I remember rightly, life-sized nudes painted with such an admirable gusto that even the votary of slender forms is almost persuaded to renounce his natural worship. The figures in the Judgment of Paris (National Gallery) are much below life-size, and, although almost entirely the work of Rubens, represent him in a more chastened mood than that which inspired the Three Graces of the Prado. His Three Graces of the Uffizi, Florence, may please some by their slenderer and more Italian stateliness, but they please certain minds simply because they are not an expression of the real Rubens. The function of imagination in painting mainly regulates the artist's relation to nature, and only to a minor extent his adaptation of older pictorial formulas and traditions. Imagination is shown in the way a painter grapples with his own view of facts, and, as it were, forces nature to assist him in expressing his emotions about the world of forms, colours, and lights. People are apt to call a painter imaginative in proportion as he copies the style of old pictures, whose aspect has become 88 PETER PAUL RUBENS for us a sign of poetical and religious feeling. To follow the things that Raphael liked in the world, or the types and methods of a still older art, is to play with other men's imaginations in a decorative or dilettante spirit instead of creating new types and new visions out of the raw material of one's own tastes and tendencies. In fact it is culture, taste at the best, and never imagination ; the studious intelligence of the man who sees through the eyes of the early Italians or the later Rossetti ; not the first-hand conception of those who make new art, as Rembrandt, Velazquez, Manet, Corot, and, in one half of his work, Rubens. Such con siderations, however, belong more properly to an essay on the art of Rubens than to a short life in which one has not space to treat them at sufficient length, or to reconcile them with former statements on portraiture. Further commissions from Philip found Rubens suffering under attacks of the gout, which obliged him to intermit his painting with periods of idleness. Some of these pictures were to be done in collabora tion with Snyders, others by Rubens alone. Four large canvases, Hercules, Andromeda, a Reconciliation of the Romans and Sabines, and a Rape of the Sabines, were to be painted entirely by the master. Before his death, in May 1640, Rubens had only finished one of these four, and had merely laid in the others. Ferdinand turned to Van Dyck, who had just left England, as the best person to finish them, but he refused the job, and offered a work of his own to supply the place of one of the four. But Van Dyck also had no more time to work ; although twenty-two years younger than Rubens, he only survived his master a few months, and died in December 1641. To Jordaens, then, the heirs of Rubens allotted the task of completing two of the pictures, which the master had left unfinished — an ungrateful and an unnecessary task, which in almost every case were better left undone. The King of Spain was not the only buyer who waited for his purchases till Rubens was dead. In 1637, Jabach, a banker, a collector, and a dealer of some renown, had ordered, through the Dutch painter Gueldorp, an altar-piece from Rubens for the Cathedral of Cologne. Rubens accepted willingly, and in writing he mentions his " affection for the town where he had been brought up till he was ten years old." The Martyrdom of St. Peter, which he painted for this commission, did not reach Cologne till after Rubens was dead and buried. The Judgment of Paris. National Gallery. From a Photograph by Morelli. 90 PETER PAUL RUBENS This Jabach was one of those into whose hands fell some of the vast collection of works of art which Rubens left behind at his death. Many of these consisted of paintings and drawings by his own hand ; many, again, were the works of other men that he had accumulated in the course of his life. By his will Rubens left family portraits and such like to his own wife and children ; to Helen Fourment, for instance, he specially bequeathed the HeTene Fourment a la Pelisse, which shows her in a somewhat undressed condition. The drawings were to be sold for the benefit of his heirs, together with the pictures, except copies and works by other artists, which were to be reserved till his youngest child should reach eighteen, in case any of them might become painters or might marry a painter. The youngest was Constance Albertina, who was born on 3rd February 1641, after her father's death, and became a nun in the Convent of La Cambre, near Brussels. Albert, the eldest, a quiet, studious person, died of grief in 1657 at the death of his son by the bite of a mad dog; Nicholas died before him in 1655; of Helen's children, the eldest, Clara, died in 1689, Francis in 1678, Isabella in 1652, Peter Paul in 1684. As to Helen Fourment, she married again, and made a good match with Jean Baptiste Broeckhoven, a chevalier, a baron, a count, and an ambassador. Ferdinand, acting for his brother Philip IV., bought thirty-two pictures, eighteen of which were by Rubens, for the sum of 27,100 florins. Several of those by Rubens still exist in Madrid, as St. George and the Dragon, the Holy Family and Saints, Nymphs and Satyrs, the Supper at Emmaus, a Dance of Villagers ; also several copies or rather free translations of Titians which Rubens had made during his second sojourn in Spain ; one of these, Adam and Eve in the Prado, may still be compared with Titian's original in the same gallery. Jabach secured a number of the drawings, which he afterwards sold to Louis XIV., and from the royal collection they have passed into the national museum of the Louvre. Vienna, as we have already said, possesses the largest and the best collection of drawings by Rubens. Most of the sketches in monochrome, and many of the drawings made for engravers, are less certainly by Rubens than the studies made from nature which afterwards served for pictures. The appearance of Rubens when old may be seen in the Virgin with Saints of the St. Jacques PETER PAUL RUBENS 91 Church, Antwerp. He personates St. George, while his two wives and other members of his family appear in the various characters of the picture. Rubens at Sixty, in the Vienna Museum, was painted about the same time as St. George, to which it bears a strong resemblance. With a few notable exceptions, the best and most interesting of his works were done by Rubens after the year 1624. This period opens with the Adoration of the Magi (1624), in the Antwerp Museum, the Resurrection of Lazarus (1624), Berlin, and the Assumption of the Virgin (1626) in the Antwerp Cathedral. It includes the Massacre of the Innocents {circa 1635), Munich; Christ carrying the Cross (1635), Brussels Museum; the Martyrdom of St. Lievin (1635), Brussels; the Venus of Vienna (1 630-1), and most of the pictures in our National Gallery. It ends with the Virgin and Saints (1639), m t^le chapel of the Rubens family, St. Jacques, Antwerp ; with the Three Graces (1639), the Jardin d 'Amour (1638), and other pictures at Madrid. It is in 1624 that this third manner of painting begins to become evident, chiefly by the use of higher keys of colour, of shadows less marked, less heavy, less black or brown ; of a thinner lay in, of pigment generally less dense ; of tints more aerial, more fused and broken ; of a touch slippery, expressive, and far more dexterous than that of the earlier periods. I think the change partly grew from the constant working over his pupils' painting which Rubens practised during the execution of the five large series of decorations which almost overlap each other from 1618 to 1623. He could not help thinking much of processes, of the economy of time and brushwork, of the use and quality of underpainting, of the value and importance of a few marked finishing touches. You may think, too, and I should agree with you, that, when he had brought the solid, heavy style of the second period to such perfection of process that it could be applied almost mechanically by his pupils to translate his sketches, Rubens would get sick of it as a method of working for himself, and that, using the experience he had acquired on the Luxembourg series, he would paint one or two large pictures entirely with his own hand as experiments in a new style. Such are the two canvases chosen by Max Rooses as marking the beginning of the third manner, namely, the Adoration of the Magi, Antwerp Museum, and the Assumption of the Virgin, Antwerp Cathedral. 92 PETER PAUL RUBENS One must not expect to perceive readily, or on any given occasion, the distinction between works painted before or after 1624. It has been said that Rubens gave indications of his later manner before 1624, and it should be added that in the. later period he now and again reverted to a small style, a solid vehicle or a quiet and careful method of handling. Besides changes in Rubens one must take account also of the tastes of the spectator, the condition of the picture, and the accidents of exhibition at the time. It is useful to note the differences of opinion among those who really like and understand painting ; so much depends on the light in which the picture is seen, on its state as to dirt and varnish, and on the mind of the spectator at the particular moment, that even the same man holds different opinions on different occasions. Such transient influences combine with his permanent tastes and modify his judgment ; and perhaps nothing biasses him more strongly or more unconsciously than the character of what has previously occupied his mind and eye. Has he travelled through varied and exciting scenes, has he lived quietly in the study of nature, has he satiated his eye with indiscriminate and sensational picture -seeing, has he relaxed his taste with vapid eighteenth-century decoration, has he stimulated his faculties in the presence of some painter like Velazquez ? Whatever he has been taking in, the taste of it prepares his palate to receive with pleasure or disgust the art he is about to contemplate. Moreover, the painter, who thinks of his own art, who looks comparatively seldom at pictures, and then only at those he likes, naturally adopts a different attitude to art from that of the student of history whose pursuits lead him to examine with eagerness work of all kinds, of every degree of merit, and not seldom perhaps that of unsympathetic epochs. Neither Delacroix nor Fromentin pretends to tell you the dates of all pictures by Rubens, to determine exactly the share that pupils took in their execution, or to assign every canvas to one of the accepted manners in which the artist painted. Painters never know so much about painting as critics and historians, or at any rate they affect to feel less confidence in their guesses. I have never heard any painter, even about his favourite artist, speak so cock-surely of " manners " and " attributions," as some writers will, even when they treat of quite obscure practitioners. It is true that painters have not hunted archives for confirmation of their PETER PAUL RUBENS 93 suppositions ; it is true, however, that now and again they give way to ; - ¦ - SttMl^- " II ' ; . • | | |p|| %u • ' ' ' r : "..._.¦ feJi • - '? H ^ ^ ,. ? \?1:;'n • flflga ¦^'¦fi,::< "' ' B i Jffefe 1 i ji jr ' rag - ¦*JS ¦' BHBHS8HF "' ' N^^^H :: jfl V Rubens at the age of Sixty. Imperial Gallery, Vienna. From a Photograph by Lowy. an explosion of contemptuous certainty, as when Fromentin says of the Incredulity of St. Thomas (Antwerp Museum), " Cela un Rubens ? quelle 94 PETER PAUL RUBENS erreur ! " This only means, what every person will allow, that one finds nothing there of the qualities usually admired in a Rubens. Fromentin liked the Adoration of the Magi (St. Jean, Malines) better than any of the numerous versions. At any rate, he considered it the most serious ; he called the celebrated canvas in the Antwerp Museum less carefully studied than that of Brussels, less accomplished than that of Malines. He speaks, however, with admiration of the audacity, certainty, and rapidity of the style of the Antwerp picture. It is, according to him, a " tour de force " ; and he adds, " Pas un trou ; pas une violence ; une vaste demi-teinte claire et des lumieres sans exces enveloppent toutes les figures appuyees Tune sur l'autre." With admiring zeal he also praises the sure, rapid, and surprising execution of other pictures, as the Miraculous Draught of Fishes (Notre Dame, Malines), the Coup de Lance (Antwerp Museum), the Descent from the Cross, and the Elevation of the Cross (Antwerp Cathedral). But the Magi at Malines he considers the final expression of its subject, and one of the finest efforts of Rubens in the spectacular kind of art. He prefers it to the Miraculous Draught of Fishes, although his interest in that astonishing canvas caused him to write much more fully upon it, and in his most witty and intelligent vein. The Trinity, the Christ a la Paille, the St. Catharine, and some others at Antwerp, Fromentin liked little better than he did the Incredulity of St. Thomas. The Trinity which Rooses dates 1620, Fromentin would assign to the pre-Italian period in spite of the foreshortening of Christ's body. The Vierge au Perroquet, " beau tableau presque imper- sonnel," smacks in his opinion of Italy and recalls Venice. Fromentin wonders why Van Dyck turned to it for inspiration. Although he admires the Coup de Lance, yet it is " un tableau decousu avec de grands vides, des aigreurs, de vastes taches un peu arbitraires, belles en soi, mais de rapports douteux." The Education of the Virgin is a charming decoration, but he would keep only the Virgin and the two winged figures. It is the Communion of St. Francis that he always comes back to in the Antwerp Museum. " Quand on a longuement examine cette ceuvre sans pareille, ou Rubens se transfigure, on ne peut plus regarder rien, ni personne, ni les autres, ni Rubens lui-meme ; il faut pour aujourd'hui quitter le musee." Only in a special study of the art of Rubens could I contrast with r PETER PAUL RUBENS 97 those of Fromentin, the opinions of other men (not to speak of my own), which I have gathered together and compared in the course of reading or conversation. I will, however, touch upon the views of Eugene Delacroix, a painter who, in the late French revival of art, especially chose Rubens as an example, and a subject for study. Delacroix says : " At Antwerp, the Communion of St. Francis, which I did not like, has become my favourite ; and I also liked Christ on the Knees of the Eternal Father {i.e. the Trinity), which must be of the same time " (which is indeed of the following year). He agreed with Fromentin as to the splendid mastery of Christ carrying the Cross (1637), and the Martyrdom of St. Lievin (1635), at Brussels. Concerning the Adorations of the Magi, at first he liked best that of Brussels, but finally, he found it too dry and preferred the Antwerp picture. Unlike Fromentin, he could not tear himself away from the Vierge au Perroquet and the Trinity any more than from the Communion of St. Francis. Delacroix states that Rubens begins by modelling his figures in a thin half-tint, upon which he afterwards plants the strongest darks and highest lights, much after the manner in which Corot usually treated trees. He thinks that Rubens, unlike Veronese, often painted details in afterwards, such as the eyes, eyebrows, corners of the mouth, and worked them into the wet paint. In this account he describes the good works only, for the harder and inferior pictures, in his opinion, were painted bit by bit, separately. It may be well to say that Rooses considers the Trinity, the Educa tion of the Virgin, the Vierge au Perroquet at Antwerp, and the Jesus, St. John, two Angels and a Lamb at Berlin, in a large measure the work of pupils, and merely retouched by Rubens. He admits the tameness of the Incredulity of St. Thomas, but considers it entirely by the hand of the master. Neither Delacroix nor Fromentin ever saw, at least never spoke of, Helen Fourment with a Fan (1630-31, Hermitage), Helen and Rubens in their Garden (1630-31, Munich), the Jardin d' 'Amour (1638, Madrid), Rubens at Sixty (Vienna), or the Dance of Peasants (1639, Madrid). These Rooses praises as wholly by Rubens, and very precious examples of his different kinds of work. All but the last contain family portraits of great beauty and historical value. For my own part I admire without reserve the two Madrid canvases with their exquisite workmanship, their o 98 PETER PAUL RUBENS wonderful movement and gesture, and their tender and delicious colour ing. Yet I confess that from no picture by Rubens do I get such a strong conviction of truth, such a sensation of natural life, and such an illusion of the ugly or unfamiliar made beautiful as I do from the Four Heads of a Negro (Brussels). I think that even the black and white illustration to this monograph suffices to convey an impression of its dignified truth. INDEX " Achilles disguised as a Woman," 43. 46 Achilles Series, The, 72 " Adam and Eve," 90 "Adoration of the Magi," 10, 49, 66, 91, 94, 97 "Adoration of the Shepherds," 53 Aerschot, Duke of, 76, 79 Aix-la-Chapelle, Picture by Rubens at, 44 Albert, The Archduke, 17, 18, 27, 64 "Ambrose and Theodosius," 40 "Andromeda," 88 "Annunciation, The," 17, 20 Antwerp, 12-14, 27, 28, 31 Antwerp, Pictures by Rubens at, 8, 10, 25, 49, 50, 53, 80, 90- 94> 97 Antwerp, Social life in, 20 Antwerp, Rubens's workshop at, 33> 49* 5° Apostles Series, The, 46, 50 Arundel, Earl of, 38, 75 Ash burton, Lord (his pictures by Rubens), 9, 49 "Assumption of the Just,'' 26 "Assumption of the Virgin," 10, 38,40,91 Aytona, Marquis d', 76 Baglione, Giovanni, 10, 21 Balen, H. van, 31, 32, 38 "Banquet of Tereus," 84 "Baptism of Christ," 25 Baring, Sir Thomas (his pictures by Rubens), 9 Baschet, Armand, 10 " Battle of the Amazons," 49 " Battle of the Lapiths and Cen taurs," 84 Bavaria, Duke of, 44 Bedford, Duke of (his pictures by Rubens), 9 Berlin, Pictures by Rubens at, 9, 54. 91* 97 Bie, J. de, 33 Biographers of Rubens, 10, 31, 32 Boeyermans, T., 37 Bolswert, 40, 46 Boulard, 40 Brant, Henry, 70 Brant, Isabella, 27, 54, 63, 7^ Brant, John, 27 Brauwer, Adrian, 32 "Brazen Serpent, The," 39 Broeckhoven, J. B., 90 Brueghel, 'Velvet,' 21, 31, 32, 37 Brussels, Pictures by Rubens at, 9, 1°, 4°, 53: 91* 97 Brussels, Social life in, 20 Buckingham, Duke of, 61, 65, 66, 84 Butler, Mr. Charles (his pictures by Rubens), 9 Cambridge (Fitzwilliam Museum), 9, 64, 80 Cambridge, Rubens at, 70 Carleton, Sir Dudley, 32, 38, 40, 46, 49, 72 Carlisle, Lord (his pictures by Rubens), 9 Cartoons for tapestry, 38, 64 "Chapeau de Paille, Le,'' 53, 54, 75 Charles I., 46, 64, 65, 70, 72, 76, %h "Chateau de Steen, Le," 53 Chicago, Picture by Rubens at, 46 Chieppio, Annibale, 22, 26 " Christ a la Paille," 94 " Christ and Nicodemus," 17 "Christ bearing the Cross," 91, 97. "Christ on the Cross," 43 "Circumcision, The," 25 Cologne, 12, 13, 88 Constantine Series, The, 50, 58, 61 Cordes, Jacqueline de, 53 " Coronation of the Virgin," 17 Cossiers, J., 37 "Coup de Lance, Le," 38, 50, 94 Crayer, Caspar de, 37 " Dance of Villagers," 90, 97 " Daniel," 40 Danvers, Lord, 70, 72 Darnley, Lord (his pictures by Rubens), 9 Decius Series, The, 50 Decorations for Buen Retiro, 87 Decorations for entry of Ferdinand, 80 Decorations for the Luxembourg. Sec Medici Series Decorations for the Torre de la Pamela, 84 Decorations for Whitehall, 72, 83, Delacroix, Eugene, 8, 9, 92, 97 " Democritus Laughing," 22 INDEX 99 " Descent from the Cross,'' 10, 49, 94 Devonshire, Duke of (his pictures by Rubens), 9 Diepenbeck, A. van, 37 Drawings by Rubens, 53, 57, 90 Dresden, Pictures by Rubens at, 9, 44,, 83 Dulwich Gallery, Pictures by Rubens in the, 9 Dyck, A. van, 37-40, 46, 88, 94 " Education of the Virgin, The," 94, 97 Egmont, Justus van, 33, 37 " Elevation of the Cross, The," 10, 49, 94 "En Chasse," 53 England, Rubens in, 70-72 "Fall of the Damned, The," 25, 44 " Fall of the Rebel Angels, The," 44 Ferdinand, The Archduke, 80, 84, 87, 88, 90 "Flora," 84 Florence, Pictures by Rubens at, 21, 54, 87 " Fortune," 84 "Four Heads of a Negro," 54, 97 Fourment, Daniel, 57, 75 Fourment, Helen, 5, 7, 75, 90 Fourment, Susan, 54, 75 Fromentin, Eugene, 8, 9, 92-94, 97 Fyt, Jan, 37 Gachard, 10, 32 Gachet, Emile, ro Galle, Cornelius, 72 "'" Genoa, Pictures by Rubens at, 25, 44 Genoa, Rubens at, 25, 26 Gerbier, Balthazar, 32, 65, 66, 70, 76, 83 "Gerbier Family, The,'' 72 Gevartius, 31, 70, 80 Goltzius, H., 32 Grasse, Pictures by Rubens at, 21 Gueldorp, 88 Guemenee, Madame de, 61 Guiffrey, Jules, 38-40 " Hagar," 49 Hague, Pictures by Rubens at the, 9, 54, 75 Hamilton Collection, Pictures by Rubens in the, 9, 46 " Helen and Rubens in their Garden," 97 Henry IV. of France, 18, 83 " Heraclitus Crying," 22 "Hercules," 88 Hoecke, J. van der, 37 Holford Collection, Pictures by Rubens in the, 9 Holland, Rubens in, 32, 64, 65 " Holy Family," 90 " Hunting-piece," 43 Hymans, Henri, 9, 11, 32 Iberti, 22 " Incredulity of St. Thomas," 93, 94, 97 Isabella, The Archduchess, 17, 27, 63, 64, 66, 76, 79, 80 Isabella de Bourbon, 84 Italy, Rubens in, 17, 18, 20, 21, 22,25, 27 Jabach, 88, 90 James I., 64 " Jardin d'Amour, Le," 40, 91, 97 "Jesus, St. John, two Disciples, and a Lamb," 97 Jordaens, Jacob, 15, 31, 37, 88 "Judgment of Paris, The," 87 "Judith and Holophernes," 70, 72 Junius, 75 "Juno creating tlie Milky Way,'' s4 " Last Communion of St. Francis," 49, 5°, 94, 97 "Last Judgment," 43-45, 49 " Leopards," 40 Lerma, Duke of, 22, 43 "Leda," 43 Ligne-Aremberg, Marguerite de, 14, 32 Lint, P. van, 38 Lipsius, Justus, 14, 15, 21, 31 Lonsdale, Lord (his pictures by Rubens), 9 Louvre, Pictures by Rubens in the, 9,75 Luxembourg, Decorations for the. See Medici Series "Madonna and Angels," 26 " Madonna squirting Milk into the Child's Mouth," 46 Madrid, Pictures by Rubens at, 9, 39, 4°, 46, 84, 87, 90, 91, 97 Malines, Pictures by Rubens at, 10, 33, 46, 49, 94 Mander, C. van, 10 Mantegna, 53 Mantua, Duchess of, 58 Mantua, Duke of, 17, 18, 21, 25- 27 Mantua, Pictures by Rubens at, 25 Marlborough Collection, Pictures by Rubens in, 9 Marseilles, Pictures by Rubens at, " Martyrdom of St. Lievin," 91, 97 " Martyrdom of St. Peter," 88 "Massacre of the Innocents," 91 Medici, Marie de', 18, 58, 61, 72, Medici Series, The, 72, 83 "Mercury and Argus," 84 Michel, J. F., 10, 12 Michiels, J. A. X., 10, 70 Miles Collection, Pictures by Rubens in the, 9 " Miracles of St. Francis Xavier," 38, 49 "Miracles of St. Ignatius," 38, 49 "Miraculous Draught of Fishes," 46, 49, 94 Mockenborch, Suzanne van, 14 Mols, F., 10 Montalto, Cardinal, 21 Monte, Deodato del, 37 Moretus, Balthazar, 14, 18, 31 Moy, Maria de, 27 Munich, Pictures by Rubens at, 9, 26, 44, 46, 49, 91, 97 National Gallery, Pictures by Rubens in the, 9, 39, 40, 53, 54, 72, 87, 91 Neubourg, Prince de, 43 New York, Picture by Rubens at, 9 Noort, Adam van, 15, 31, 32 Norfolk, Duke of (his pictures by Rubens), 9 Northbrook, Lord (his pictures by Rubens), 9 " Nymph and Satyrs," 90 Olivarez, 65 Orange, Prince of, 12, 13, 76 Orange, Princess Anne of, 12, 13 "Orpheus and Eurydice," 84 Pacheco, 66 Pallavicini, The, 25 Paris, Rubens in, 58 "Parr, Portrait of Old," 72 " Pausias and Glycera," 17 " Peace and War," 72 Peiresc, Nicholas, 31, 61, 84 Pembroke, Lord (his pictures by Rubens), 9 Philip II., 17 Philip III., 22 Philip IV., 66, 69, 70, 72, 84, 88 Phillips, Mr. Claude, 75 Piles, De, 10 Piot, 9 Pontius, Paul, 40, 72 Pourbus, Frans, 58 "Prometheus on Caucasus," 40 Punt, Jacob, 38 Pupils of Rubens, 37, 38 Pypelinckx, Marie, 12, 13, 14, 26 Quellin, Erasmus, 37 "Rape of Proserpine," 84 "Rape of the Sabines," 88 "Reconciliation of Romans and Sabines," 88 "Resurrection of Lazarus," 91 Richardot, Jean, 20, 21 Richelieu, Due de, 5, 64-66 Rockox, Nicolas, 31 Rome, Pictures by Rubens at 25, 26, 46 Rome, Rubens in, 25, 26 Rooses, Max, 8-10, 17, 25, 26, 39, 45,46,5°, 72,75,80,91,94,97 Rubens, Albert, 54, 75, 90 IOO PETER PAUL RUBENS Rubens, Blandina, 13 Rubens, Clara, 90 Rubens, Constance, 90 Rubens, Francis, 75 Rubens, Isabella, 90 Rubens, John, 12, 13 Rubens, Nicholas, 54, 75, 90 Rubens, Peter Paul, his birth and parentage, 12, 13 j childhood at Cologne and Antwerp, 13, 14; appointed page to the Princesse de Ligne, 14 j his pupilage with Verhaeght, Van Noort, and Van Veen, 14, 15, 16 j visits Italy, 17 j accompanies Iberti to Spain, 22 j marries Isabella Brant, 27 - establishes a work shop at Antwerp, 33 ; employed by Marie de' Medici in Paris, 58 ¦ his political career, 64 ; sent on a mission to the Spanish Court, 66 j becomes Philip IV. 's envoy to England, 70 • marries his second wife, Helen Four ment, 75; last years, 80-88; his death, 88 Rubens, Peter Paul, the younger, 9° Rubens, Philip, 13, 14, 17-21, 27, 31, 40 Rubens, Philip, the younger, 10, 3 1 "Rubens at Sixty," 91 "Rubens and Isabella Brant," 54 Ruelens, Charles, 9, 10, 13, 18,71 Rutland, Duke of (his pictures by Rubens), 9 Sainsbury, W. Noel, 10, 31 "St. Catherine," 94 "St. George and the Dragon," 90 " St. Gregory," 26 "St. Helen finding the Cross," 21 " St. Jerome," 40 " St. Michael," 44 " St. Peter," 43 " St. Peter and the Tribute Money," 46 St. Petersburg, Pictures by Rubens at, 9, !7,_ 54, 75 97 " St. Sebastian," 44 " St. Thomas," 49 Saints Donatilla, Nerea, and Achillea, 26 Sallaert, A., 37 Sandrart, Joachim, 10, 32, 37, 40, 63, 64 Saventhem, 40 Schut, Cornelius, 37 Seghers, Z., 37 Siegen, 13 Snyders, F., 37, 40, 88 Spain, Rubens in, 22, 25, 46, 53, 66, 69 Spencer, Earl (his pictures by Rubens), 9 Spinola, Ambrogio, 61, 62, 66, 76 Stockholm, Pictures by Rubens at, 9 Suermondt Collection, Pictures by Rubens in the, 25 " Sunset," 53 " Supper at Emmaus, The," 90 "Susanna and the Elders," 44, 46 Sweert, F., 31 Tenters, D., 37 Tirinus, Father, 38 Titian, 53 "Three Graces, The," 87, 91 Thulden, Th. van, 37, 80 Thys, P., 38 "Transfiguration, The," 25 "Trinity, The," 25, 94, 97 Trumbull, William, 70, 72 " Twelve Apostles with Christ, "43 Uden, Lucas van, 37 Veen, Otho van, 15-17, 31 Veen, Peter van, 46 Velazquez, 66, 69, 87 " Venus," 91 Verhaeght, Tobias, 14, 15 Vicq, Baron de, 58, 61 Vienna, Pictures by Rubens at, 9, 7, 38,40,49, 54, 75,83, 91, 97 " Vierge au Perroquet, La," 94, 97 Villaamil, 10, 69 "Virgin with Saints," 10, 90, 91 Visschers, Anna, 46 Vorsterman, 40 Vos, Cornelius de, 37 Vos, Paul de, 37 " Vulcan," 84 Waagen, Dr., io Wallace Collection, Pictures by Rubens in the, 9, 54 Warwick, Earl of (his pictures by Rubens), 9 Westminster, Duke of (his pictures by Rubens), 9, 17, 49 Wildens, Jan, 37, 49 Windsor Castle, Pictures by Rubens at, 9, 40, 54, 72 Wit, Jacob de, 39 "Wolf Hunt, A," 49 Wouverius, John, 14, 21 Wynn, Sir W. Williams (his pictures by Rubens), 9 THE END Printed by R. 8c R. Clark. Limited, Edinburgh ,,/„), ''//„„„„, l/r/i/i/r - /ri//trr , < 'A.r// {,//////•//. . /) ( . GREEK BRONZES By A. S. MURRAY, LL.D., F.S.A Keeper of Greek and Roman Antiquities in the British Museum LONDON SEELEY AND CO., LIMITED, GREAT RUSSELL STREET NEW YORK . THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1898 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS COPPERPLATES PAGE I. Archaic Figure. Sixth Century B.C. British Museum . . Frontispiece II. Hypnos, God of Sleep. Early Fourth Century b.c. British Museum . 72 III. Zeus. From Dodona. British Museum . . . . .80 IV. Heroic Figure. British Museum . . . . . .82 FIG. I. 2. 3- +¦ 5- 6. 7- 8. 9- 10. 1 1. 12.13- 14. i5-16. i7- ILLUSTRATIONS IN THE TEXT Gaulish Female Prisoner. British Museum . Bronze Mirror-case. Greek work, about 400 b.c British Museum Bronze Statuette. Apollo of Miletus. British Museum Archaic Bronze Victory. British Museum Marble Victory by Archermos. Athens Archaic Greek Bronze. British Museum Archaic Greek Bronze. British Museum Archaic Etruscan Statuette. Man carrying a Calf. British Museum Etruscan Heracles. British Museum Archaic Etruscan Bronze. British Museum Archaic Etruscan Statuette. British Museum Etruscan Mirror. British Museum Archaic Etruscan Mirror. British Museum Bronze Etruscan Mirror with Relief. Heracles carrying off a Woman. Archaic — Sixth Century B.C. British Museum Marble Statue. Diadumenos of Vaison. British Museum Marble Statue. Diadumenos Farnese. British Museum Marble Head of Amazon. British Museum . Bronze Statuette. Hermes. British Museum 5 7 1 1 17 !9 23 24 26 27 293i33 3 + 37 434345 47 4 FIG. 19. 20.21.22.2.3" 2+. 25.26. 27-28.29. 30.31- 32- 3 3- 34-35- 36.37- 38. 39- 40. 41. LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Greek Bronze. British Museum . ... Bronze Marsyas. British Museum Marble Athene Parthenos. Athens . Athene Parthenos. Bronze Statuette. British Museum Athene Promachos. Greek Bronze. British Museum Coin of Elis, representing the Zeus of Pheidias. From an Enlarged Drawing Zeus. Bronze found in Hungary. British Museum Hermes by Praxiteles. Olympia . . . . Marble Statue. Apollo Sauroctonos. Louvre Apollo. From Thessaly. British Museum .... Bronze Statuette. Aphrodite Pourtales. British Museum Marble Statue of an Apoxyomenos. Vatican Museum Limestone Figure of Heracles. British Museum Bronze Statuette from Dodona (Paramythia). Poseidon. Ancient base. British Museum ....... Bronze Statuette from Dodona (Paramythia). Youth pouring Libation British Museum ....... Bronze Relief. Greek striking down an Amazon. Fourth Century b.c British Museum ....... Alexander the Great. Large Bronze Statuette. Naples Museum Bronze found at Barking Hall, Suffolk. British Museum Gaulish Statuette of Bacchus. British Museum Heracles. Found in Cumberland. British Museum . Gaulish Statuette of Mars. British Museum . Gaulish Heracles. Bronze Statuette found at Vienne in France Gaulish Chief. Bronze Statuette. British Museum . PAGE 5° 515555 57 59 6166676869 737477 79 §3 8 5 87 89 9'9597 99 Most of the Bronzes in the British Museum are reproduced from Photographs taken for this Monograph by Mr. Alexander Mackie, F.R.P.S. GREEK BRONZES Archaic Statuettes — General Remarks In a large collection of ancient bronze statuettes, such as that of the British Museum, there are necessarily many which have no particular merit as works of art, yet even the most insignificant of them may here and there be of service to an artist. Let me give an instance. We have a very small bronze of a Gaulish woman — apparently a prisoner of war — which hardly any one would think of stopping to look at (Fig. i). It happens, however, that a distinguished French sculptor, M. Chapu, caught sight of this figure, and made a sketch of it many years ago when on a visit here. Time passed, and he produced his celebrated statue of Joan of Arc, where she is represented seated on the ground with both hands clasped vigorously round one knee. Our statuette is also seated on the ground, and there is no doubt that this posture was characteristic of Gaulish women in circumstances of despair. Thereupon a candid archasologist wrote to the sculptor Fig. — Gaulish Female Prisoner. British Museum. 6 GREEK BRONZES calling his attention to the resemblance between his statue and the small bronze in the British Museum. M. Chapu searched his note books, found the sketch he had made, and forwarded it along with a draw ing of his own statue. The resemblance extends only to the posture of the two figures ; and the most that can be said is, that the sight of our small bronze may have helped the sculptor unconsciously to select, from among other conceptions then floating in his mind, the one which he finally worked out. The moral of the story seems to be that the most insignifi cant of our statuettes may, on a propitious occasion, render a true service to an artist. And the reason no doubt is this, that many of them repro duce the conceptions of men more gifted than the actual makers of the statuettes. At present we know almost nothing of who the men were who made our bronze statuettes, whether they had been attached to the workshops of sculptors, or whether they were a class by themselves, standing in much the same relation to the sculptors as the painters of Greek vases stood to the great painters of their day. Most probably they were a class of minor artists created by the constant demand for statuettes to be dedicated in the temples. The excavations on the Acropolis of Athens and at Olympia have shown how vast must have been the number of the statuettes deposited by devotees in these places. On the other hand, it does not follow that the whole of our bronze statuettes had been made by this special class of craftsmen. We are told of one sculptor whose small models fetched extravagant prices, and we can believe that even greater men than he had occasionally produced statuettes finished with every accuracy of detail, and had allowed them to be cast in bronze. There may have been some etiquette limiting the production of such figures. That we do not know ; but certainly not a few of our statuettes are of such excellence that we can hardly believe them to be the work of minor craftsmen, notwithstanding the extraordinary skill we see occasionally displayed by those other craftsmen, the vase-painters. We have almost no direct information as to how far bronze statuettes had been employed by the Greeks for the adornment of their dwelling- houses. We know that Alexander the Great carried about on his cam paigns a small bronze Heracles, the work of his favourite sculptor Lysippos. In Roman times Sulla carried in his bosom when in battle a GREEK BRONZES 7 small figure of Apollo, and much the same is told of Nero and of Hadrian. We may fairly conjecture that the desire to be surrounded in their homes by beautiful bronzes had been customary among the well- to-do people of antiquity. Pompeii and Herculaneum were essentially Fig. 2. — Bronze Mirror-case. Greek work, about 400 B.C. British Museum. Greek towns. Possibly enough the luxury of private life may have been greater there than in the older cities of Greece proper. But even making a liberal allowance of that kind, we should still be struck by the number of beautiful bronzes in the museum of Naples, collected from the ruins of private houses at Pompeii and Herculaneum. In many instances these 8 GREEK BRONZES bronzes were attached to pieces of furniture, or were kept in show-cases, as nowadays. Larger specimens stood on pillars. These bronzes are exclusively of Greek workmanship, and we may fairly suppose that in Greece itself there had prevailed a more or less similar degree of house hold taste. At present we have at all events this testimony, that in Greek tombs of the best age there are frequently discovered bronze mirrors supported on statuettes of great beauty, as also circular mirror-cases grandly enriched with reliefs, as in Fig. 2, with its splendid steadfast face set in the midst of wavering curls. It cannot be supposed that these objects had not previously served for daily use or household adornment. When we find large numbers of statuettes presented to the temples of the gods we are almost bound to conclude that these objects had been precious in the eyes of the donors. Many of them no doubt were images of a favourite deity, as of Athene on the Acropolis of Athens. We can understand these having been purchased and taken direct to the temple without in any way being associated with the home life of the devotee. But there remains a vast number of bronzes found on the Acropolis and at Olympia which do not come into this category. It may be that the donors of these had usually no feeling beyond that of making a gift to the god. Still one would like to think that a large proportion of the bronzes found on the sites of temples had at one time been valued in the daily life of the people. To surrender what was most prized for the sake of future happiness was an idea familiar to the Greeks. The reader will remember the incident of Polycrates. He had been told to throw into the sea what he valued highest, and chose a ring from his finger. But apparently he had not been sufficiently sincere in his choice, because the ring was found subsequently inside a fish and brought back to him. It is interesting and almost necessary to compare for a moment the bronze with the terra-cotta statuettes which also exist in great numbers in our museums. One would suppose that the terra-cottas must have similarly served the purpose of household adornment before being committed to the tombs, and that the same models which had been made for the bronzes would have been utilised again for the cheaper production of terra-cottas. As a matter of fact the later terrra-cottas, from Tanagra and elsewhere, have little in common with the bronzes. GREEK BRONZES 9 They reproduce only a limited number of types, such as that of a beautifully dressed woman. They ring the changes on this type indefinitely. It would almost seem as if they had been made for the women's quarters in Greek houses. At all events, in singular contrast to this limitation of the terra-cottas is the boundless variety of subject in the contemporary bronzes. It is only when we go back to older periods that we find a closer alliance between the bronzes and terra-cottas not only in the subjects they represent but even more remarkably in the style of workmanship. So much is this the case that one is tempted to believe that in the older times the same class of craftsmen who made the bronzes made also the terra-cottas. It was a simple matter to make a clay mould from a bronze statuette and then to take a cast from it in terra-cotta. The only difficulty was this, that the bronze original being in most cases highly finished down to the minutest detail, it was necessary to employ the finest possible clay in making the mould and the cast. A consequence was that this extremely fine clay became easily cracked under the process of firing. That is obvious in a number of specimens in the British Museum. It was natural that the bronze-workers who in the first instance had modelled their figures in clay, would combine with their more proper occupation the production of copies in a cheaper material. The only exact information we possess as to the composition of ancient bronzes is derived from the analyses that have been made in modern times. No doubt Pliny gives certain statements (xxxiv. 6, 9), but they are useless when he mentions details, and only amusing where he reports that the alloy which made the Corinthian bronze so famous had been discovered at the sack of Corinth by the Romans under Mummius, when vessels of gold, silver, and bronze melted together in the conflagration and produced a golden bronze. That was in 146 b.c, whereas the charms of the gold-like Corinthian bronze had been known long before. Nevertheless, the story, though of late origin, may have been based on a tradition as to the use of gold as an alloy of bronze, because from several specimens of ancient bronzes that have been analysed it has been seen that gold and silver were actually employed. An archaic fibula yielded 7 per cent of gold, over 20 per cent of silver, and 73 per cent of copper. Another belief was that the Corinthian io GREEK BRONZES bronze derived its beauty from being cooled in the water of the fountain of Peirene. Having given this brief introductory sketch, I may now state that my purpose in this monograph is to select only such of our statuettes as may reasonably be brought into connection with certain epochs of ancient sculpture, not altogether for the sake of the bronzes themselves, but in a greater measure because of the opportunities they afford of associating them with sculptors of renown, and of tracing the influence of Greek sculpture outside of Greece itself, as among the Etruscans or among the peoples of Gaul and Britain. In the history of Greek art much is already known of its main epochs, yet hardly a year passes without something being brought to light from Greek soil which shows how much there is still to be done in the way of a more minute analysis of artistic motives and style in the sculptures with which we have been long acquainted. In this and the next chapter I propose to consider a certain number of bronzes of the archaic period, not because of any particular artistic importance in themselves from a modern point of view, but because they help to show how the artistic mind of those early times was working its way towards a new solution of the problem of what sculpture should be. It was a critical moment for the Greeks. Their poets had already shown how the Greek language could be modulated into new forms of song, undreamt of by the older nations of antiquity, and never since surpassed. The sculptors had to take up the same parable ; and if less successful in many instances than the poets, we must remember that the methods and appliances of sculptors are not so easily changed as those of poets. We begin with a figure which has been longer and more widely known than any other ; and the reason is this, that up to now it is the best copy in existence of a particularly famous statue. We are told that Darius, King of Persia, when he sacked the town of Miletus in 494 b.c, carried off from a neighbouring temple, long famous for its oracle, a bronze statue of Apollo, the work of a Greek sculptor, Canachos. After a lapse of nearly two centuries, when Persia had been forced to yield to the Macedonian conquest, the statue was returned to Miletus, and thereafter appears on the coinage of that town, where it is represented as an archaic statue of Apollo holding out a fawn in his right hand. Many instances are known GREEK BRONZES 1 1 of statues which had become famous in one way or another, being copied on local coins ; and when it was remembered that Pliny had described the Apollo of Canachos as holding out a deer in one hand, hardly a doubt \^mKt>-, Fig. 3. — Bronze Statuette. Apollo of Miletus. British Museum. could remain that the figure on the coins of Miletus was that same Apollo. But the workmanship of the coins is too rude to be of any artistic use. At this point the statuette comes to our aid. We see at 12 GREEK BRONZES once that it has been copied from the same original as the coin. And though much may be wanting in the spirit, as undoubtedly there is in the details, yet we may be thankful for being thus able to realise at least the pose, the proportions, and the general structure of the original. There is, however, one difficulty that ought to be mentioned here, though it is more curious than serious. Pliny says (I quote the transla tion of Miss Jex-Blake, xxxiv. 75): "Kanachos made the nude Apollo which is named the Lover, and is in the temple at Didyma, of iEginetan bronze, and with it a stag so poised upon its feet that a thread can be drawn beneath them while the heel and toe alternately catch the ground, both parts working with a jointed mechanism in such a way that the impact suffices to make them spring backwards and forwards." At first sight this description seems to answer to a different type of Apollo, either the one in which the god holds a deer by the fore feet while the hind feet touch the ground, or another in which he holds out on the palm of his hand a deer standing on its feet. In both these instances some such mechanism could have been employed as that described by Pliny, and it might perhaps further be argued that the maker of the statuette, finding it difficult or unsuitable to reproduce the deer standing on its feet, had modified it as we see in the bronze. On the other hand, no such modi fication was necessary on the coins. It would there have been as easy to render the fawn standing on the palm of the god as lying on it, which is the case on the coins. So far as I remember, no one has succeeded in reconciling Pliny's description with the deer lying on the palm as seen on the statuette and on the coins ; and till that is done we must, I think, conclude that Pliny has mixed up two different statues of Apollo by Canachos. Now we know from another ancient writer (Pausanias, ix. 10, 2) "that Canachos had made two separate statues of Apollo, that the difference between them consisted in this, that the one was of bronze while the other was of cedar-wood, that they were identical in size and appearance, and that any person who had seen the one would not require much knowledge to recognise the other as the work of Canachos." It seems odd that Pausanias, after insisting so expressly on the identity of the two statues in all but the material of which they were made, should have added the remark, "that any person who had seen the one would not require much GREEK BRONZES 13 knowledge to recognise the other as the work of Canachos." In the circumstances it seems to me possible that these words may contain the admission of some difference of detail, the one statue having the deer lying on the palm of the hand, the other having the deer standing on its feet on the palm of the hand, or perhaps even holding it by the fore feet while the hind feet reached the ground. The cedar statue was to be seen in a temple close to Thebes, and was known as the Apollo Ismenios, from the river that flowed close by. The bronze statue of Miletus was called the Apollo Philesios, an epithet which Miss Jex-Blake has translated "the Lover" as others had done before. The translation may be right, but it is curious to find the one statue known by a strictly local designation, and the other, its duplicate, by so vague a title as " the Lover." One would rather expect to find under the epithet Philesios a corresponding local name. But what was the symbolism of holding out a deer on the hand ? We often see the goddess Aphrodite holding out similarly a dove, Athene an owl, Zeus an eagle, Poseidon a dolphin or the head of a horse. In these instances the creatures held out in the hand are the symbols of the deities, just as the deer no doubt is the symbol of Apollo. It is the meaning of this action of holding out on the hand a symbolic animal that one would like to have explained. Had the sculptor merely intended to indicate Apollo, as distinguished say from Hermes, a deer at his feet would have done equally well. I suppose the holding out of it in the hand implies a greater demonstrativeness, as much as to say, " That is my favourite animal ; when you see it, respect it as you do me." With the same significance Athene and Zeus hold out with the right hand a Victory, the greatest of divine symbols. The bow which had been held in the left hand of our figure was also a symbol of Apollo. Among other functions he was a god of the chase, to whose arrows many a stag may have fallen. We must be careful, however, not to imagine that the fawn in his right hand has been intro duced by the sculptor to indicate the trophies of Apollo. The creature is too small and insignificant for that. Something different must have been intended. The tiny form would indicate the class of creatures which Apollo protected till such times as they were fit to look after themselves against the far-reaching bow. Yet even with this explanation, 14 GREEK BRONZES one feels that there is something not altogether as could be wished in the juxtaposition of the fawn and the deadly bow. Cicero, with an air of deprecation for those who, like himself, valued such minor things as works of art, says, " Who of us does not know that the statues of Canachos are too rigid to be true to nature ? " The remark applies perfectly to our statuette, which is plainly too rigid to be true to nature. Yet we may wish that Cicero had gone more into particulars, and left us a detailed criticism which we could have understood. But his remark is at least the testimony of one of the greatest men in the world's history to the effect that Canachos, whatever his faults, was one of the sculptors of Greece whose works were worthy of study. It was easy for Cicero as for us to point to the rigidity of such figures as the Apollo. But we have to bear in mind that every age has its limitations, whether conscious of them or not, and that in the age of Canachos these limitations prescribed that a statue, even when meant to be in repose, could not be rendered except as strained throughout every limb. Public taste would have revolted against anything else. If one could imagine —what of course is an impossibility — a sculptor of those days producing a statue with all the freedom of movement of the Apollo Belvedere, I suppose it would have been received with shouts of derision, as befitting the work of an artist two centuries in advance of his time. The taste of the age abhorred everything that was not precise, more or less formal, and always gracious to look upon according to its own standard. So much so, that one wonders how a great sculptor could express himself within such limitations, but that is because we exaggerate what seems to us artistic fetters and hindrances, forgetting that to those early sculptors, unconscious of such hindrances, every new step in advance must have appeared an inspiration of infinitely greater moment than we can now realise — looking back as we do, while they looked forward. From these considerations we turn again to the Museum statuette, remarking that if it be compared with others of about the same date it will be seen that it has a distinction of its own which alone would mark it off as a copy from a celebrated statue. The elaborate way in which the hair is arranged in two rows of curls over the brow is not what one would expect in a statuette. It will be observed that they project in a very prominent manner, so much so that if this projection GREEK BRONZES 15 were proportionately increased in a life-sized statue the effect would be ridiculous. The inference seems to be that in the original statue this manner of wearing the hair had been a conspicuous feature which the copyist had determined to preserve at all costs. The shortness and slightness of the thighs in comparison with the lower part of the legs give the statuette a singularly ungainly appearance. We cannot charge so glaring a fault to Canachos, with all his rigidity of pose ; but we can imagine a copyist of later date missing by just a little a system of proportions which he no longer understood. To what date, then, are we to assign the bronze statuette ? Was it copied from the statue before it was carried off to Persia by Darius, or was it made after the statue was restored to Miletus in the third century b.c? I am inclined to the latter alternative not only for the reasons already given, but also because in the rendering of the bodily forms there is a remarkable softening down and rounding off where in true archaic work we see the forms of bones and muscles sharply and strongly defined. The return of the statue in the third century was, as we have seen, the occasion of introducing representations of it on the coins of Miletus, and we may reasonably conclude that the public rejoicing had led also to the production of statuettes of the famous Apollo, copied as exactly as was possible in a later age. It may be asked, " If all these allowances have to be made for the copyist, what remains of the original of Canachos ? " There remains this, that however much the copyist may have varied from the original to its detriment, yet the bronze statuette stands out con spicuously among its contemporaries as a copy of a great statue, and that up to now it is the only thing we can turn to with any confidence when we read in ancient writers of the fame of Canachos. The statuette of Victory (Fig. 4) to which I next call attention is by itself an interesting example of archaic sculpture in the sixth century b.c Though worked in the round, the figure is practically a relief. The wide- spreading wings with their close-lying pinions, the fine flat folds of the drapery, and the sideward movement of the goddess, have all been thought out on the archaic principles of relief such as prevailed in the sixth century. The swiftness of her movement is clearly and decisively expressed in the upper folds of the dress and in the long tresses of hair which are dashed backward in her speed, but still it is all in the manner of a relief, and that 1 6 GREEK BRONZES is not surprising when we remember to what extent the energies of early Greek sculptors had been devoted to relief in bronze. What the object may be which she holds in the fingers of her right hand has not been ex plained. Nothing of the kind occurs in the Victories of subsequent art. But we must be prepared to expect small difficulties of that sort when we recollect that at the time with which we are at present concerned, both art and poetry abounded in winged female figures, which served to the Greek mind as personifications of many different powers, such as fate, strife, and so on ; the one seldom distinguished from the other except by some slight emblem. In time these numerous personifications became consolidated, so to speak, in the figure of Nike or Victory ; and we can hardly be far wrong, though as yet we cannot explain the object in the right hand, in identifying our bronze as a Nike. In the art of the great age it was usual to give Victory a pose as if flying with her wings raised almost upright from the shoulders, and in many of these instances we see how magnificently the wings of a great bird may be combined with the human form. The splendid curve of the wing, just where it springs from the body of the bird, is, I suppose, un rivalled in nature as an indication of physical power. In that great age the wings of Nike had become accepted as facts, and sculptors were free to use them in accordance with their own knowledge or observation of the actual wings or flight of a great bird. But in the archaic age of the sixth century b.c. the wings of Victory were mainly accepted as mere auxiliaries to her speed. She might even have wings to her heels as well as to her shoulders. The one thing to attain was swiftness. Her movement is generally in a horizontal direction, and may be described as running with the imaginary help of wings. Apparently the artists had no intention of trying to reconcile the action of these figures with the natural movement of a bird beyond that of spreading the wings sidewards. Truth of that kind was of less import ance to them than the beauty of the wings themselves, with their long sweeping lines enclosing narrow, flat surfaces which lie contiguously, and appealed irresistibly in an early stage of art, when artists did not care for more truth to Nature than what was necessary for the moment. Another delight of those early sculptors was in the contrasts which they found, or established, between the more or less horizontal lines of GREEK BRONZES J7 the wings and the vertical lines of the drapery as seen in the bronze. The effect was one of balance and stability as against the rapid movement of the figure. There was the contrast also between the feathers of the wings, rigid and flat by nature, and the folds of the dress where they are thrown into irregularity by the accident of movement. There was the contrast also of nude forms as against drapery and wings. I have pointed to these contrasts, not because it is necessary to emphasise the value Fig. 4. — Archaic Bronze Victory. British Museum. and importance of them at all times, but specially because in the older arts of Egypt and Assyria nothing of the kind had been recognised to any extent ; because the Greeks were the first to indicate the supreme importance of such things, and because in our statuette the separate values of wings, drapery, and nude forms have obviously been the subject of anxious consideration. In archaic sculpture of the sixth century b.c. we have often occasion to notice the habit of lifting the skirt a little. It was the fashion then 18 GREEK BRONZES for women to wear long dresses falling to the ground in many fine folds, especially on public occasions when they went to attend ceremonies in the temples. Ordinary prudence would suggest lifting the skirt from the ground. But we see this action frequently also in figures which are standing placidly. It is almost always only a slight movement, just enough to throw the otherwise vertical and straight folds into becoming disorder. Most probably the effect was fully appreciated by the women themselves. It was certainly seized on eagerly by the artists of the time. Even in our bronze statuette it is retained as we see by the action of the left hand, although this action was hardly necessary in her case when the agitated movement of the figure was of itself sufficient to furnish any amount of disorder in the folds of the dress. But force of habit was strong. Force of habit was also answerable for the manner in which the drapery is made to descend to the pedestal in a large broad mass. In a marble figure we can readily understand how that would have been necessary or advisable for strength and security. But in a bronze that hardly needed to be thought of, and cannot well be accounted for except from the influence of sculpture in marble. But apart from this we know, from a number of winged bronze figures found some years ago on the Acropolis of Athens, how firmly established in archaic art had been this custom of making the drapery descend to the pedestal in a broad mass. The upper folds of drapery which, like her tresses, are being driven backward by the force of her movement are, of course, thinner and lighter than the heavy mass of the skirt, and therefore much more susceptible to movement. That the artist has observed this very well must stand to his credit, considering how seldom observations of this kind occur in the art of his time. In Greek legend we read that the first sculptor Daidalos had fashioned a pair of wings for his son Icaros, who, having soared aloft gaily for a space, at last reached a point where the artificial wings gave way, where upon he fell headlong into the sea. If we may judge from ancient repre sentations, the wings of Icaros are supposed to have been attached to his arms at the shoulders and wrists, much in the manner of the right arm and wing of our bronze, and in accordance with the general rule of figures of this class. The exceptions are few where the wings start in the front of the body as if springing from the chest bones, though it must be GREEK BRONZES J9 allowed that the effect so produced conveys a much more obvious resemblance to a bird, and therefore a more appropriate application of wings to the human form than in the other case, where the wings spring from the shoulder-blades and appear like auxiliaries fitted to the arms. Another curious exception is that of Hypnos, the god of sleep, of m^fftafitiiiNHKHca OrxiOl^^o^T\>o\aNA$ Fig. 5. — Marble Victory by Archer mos. Athens. whom there are several ancient representations in existence, in particular a beautiful bronze head in the British Museum, all alike going back to some famous original apparently of the time of Praxiteles if not actually by him (Plate II.). The wings start from the temples, and we know that in this instance the wings are those of a night-bird, such as an owl, which travels without noise or sound. We know further that Hypnos on one occasion was ordered to take the form of some such night-bird 20 GREEK BRONZES and to pipe from a tree till he put to sleep Zeus, the father of gods and men. But we have no explanation as to why the wings of Hypnos should start from his temples. When we see a pair of wings springing from the hair of Hermes, the messenger of the gods, we accept them as representing the winged cap or petasus which he usually wore, and as indicating either the speed or the silence with which he travelled. Hypnos had no occasion for speed. It was silence that was his gift, and silence after all is the best inducement to sleep. Among mankind it is, as has been remarked, a general habit, in lying down to sleep, to rest the temples on the hollow of the hand. There is probably some good physiological reason for so universal a practice. But it is enough for our purpose that ancient artists had observed this habit. The next step would be to assign the temples as specially the seat of sleep, and to attach to them the silently moving wings of a night-bird. So far we have said nothing of what is perhaps the most interesting feature of our statuette of Victory, its relation to a marble statue found some years ago in the island of Delos, and now in the museum at Athens, along with its pedestal, on which is inscribed the name and genealogy of its sculptor, Archermos of Chios (Fig. 5). Had the Delos statue been found without its inscribed pedestal, we should probably have thought little more of it than of other archaic statues of the same general character, and certainly no one would have attempted to associate it with the famous name of Archermos, so little do we comprehend, as I have already said, the importance which attached in early times to every new advance in art, however slight it may seem to us now. We should have recognised that the Delos statue belonged to an age of transition from working in bronze to working in marble. The rendering of the hair over the fore head in formal wavy lines would have told us of the surviving influence of bronze, while in the rest of the figure the simplicity of the forms and their structural character would have made it clear that a new era of sculpture had dawned with the introduction of marble. The inscription on the pedestal, stripped of its poetic form, says that the statue was the work of Archermos, son of Mikkiades of the island of Chios. Its importance lies in its obvious connection with a passage of Pliny, where that writer gives with unusual detail and with much circum stance an account of the early school of sculptors in marble in Chios, GREEK BRONZES 21 formed by successive generations of one and the same family, of whom the best known were Mikkiades, Archermos, and the two sons of Archermos, Bupalos and Athenis, whose sculptures, it was said, had brought more celebrity to Chios than all its vines. Among the places where their works were to be seen, outside of their native island, was Delos, where the marble Nike was found. Pliny was too much occupied with the romantic element in the lives of these sculptors to furnish a list of their works. But we learn from another ancient writer not only that Archermos did make a figure of Nike, but also that he was the first to give her wings. The finding of another pedestal inscribed with the name of Archermos, on the Acropolis at Athens, does not necessarily prove anything more than that a statue by him had found its way to that most critical of cities, but it has suggested — the suggestion is now generally accepted — that those beautiful archaic marble statues of women still to be seen on the Acropolis were the work of his immediate descendants. If that is ever shown to be true, it will then be possible to appreciate the extraordinary attraction which this new phase of sculpture in marble had created, and how much was due to the Chian school. II Archaic Etruscan Statuettes It is not many years ago yet since all archaic bronze statuettes were regarded as Etruscan. Most of them that were to be seen in museums had been found in Etruria, or at all events in Italy, while as to the few which had unquestionably come from Greece, the answer might have been heard, that they must have been imported into Greece from Etruria. An ancient authority l told that the Etruscan sculptors' work (signa Tuscanica) had found its way everywhere. In Greek literature the references were many that testified to the admiration in which Etruscan metal work, such as candelabra, vases, and armour, were held by the Greeks.2 There the question stood. Nothing more was to be said till the time came for active exploration in Greece itself. One excavation after another brought to light numbers of archaic bronze statuettes, till at last it began to be asked whether, in fact, not a few of the archaic bronzes found in Etruria itself had not been imported there from Greece. That was turning the tables with a vengeance. A lively division of opinion ensued : either the Etruscans had no artistic originality, and were mere imitators of the Greeks ; or they had distinct artistic gifts of their own, while subject to the influence of the contemporary Greeks. In these cir cumstances, the first thing we have to do is, to learn to discriminate such 1 Pliny, xxxiv. 34, " Signa . . . Tuscanica per terras dispersa quae in Etruria factitata non est dubium." 2 As regards candelabra, see Athenaios, xv. 700, tis nor Av^vetW 1; kpyacria : TvppijVLKij, and compare ibid. i. 28'', where a Greek poet, assigning to various nationalities the particular thing for which each was most famous, as, for instance, the Phcenicians for the invention of letters, the Carians for their ships, and the Athenians for their pottery, awards to the Etruscans supremacy in all kinds of bronze work useful and ornamental in a house. GREEK BRONZES 23 differences of style and execution as distinguish the archaic Etruscan from the contemporary archaic Greek statuettes. We begin with two specimens which will serve to illustrate the archaic Greek manner of rendering nude male figures, and at the same time show us what sort of progress was made within the archaic period itself. In each of these figures it will be observed that the principal aim of the artist was to secure accuracy in the bodily forms from the point of view of an observer, by whom each detail was regarded as almost a separate entity. As a consequence the particularising of bodily forms, which ought to be of secondary effect, such as the structure of the bones, inevitably led to a formal, almost con ventional, manner of rendering them, which had a certain beauty of its own, such as will be seen in the first figure (Fig. 6). In the second figure (Fig. 7) there is a marked change. The anatomical forms are strongly ex pressed, even more strongly, in fact, than they ought to be, but formality and conventionalism had largely given way under a new impulse to express, if possible, something of the inner force of organic human life. It must have been just about this time that the Greek sculptor Antenor appeared upon the scene — he who made for the Athenians a bronze group of the Tyrannicides, Harmodios and Aristogeiton, in the act of slaying the tyrant Hipparchos in the streets of Athens. We are told that during the brief period when the Persian king, Xerxes, held possession of Athens, he carried off that group, that subsequently a copy of it was made by two sculptors working conjointly, and that finally, after the conquest of Asia by Alexander the Great, the original group was restored to Athens. After its restoration this group was copied in works of minor art, as on coins and painted vases, apparently from mere joy at the fact of its restoration. By themselves these copies have little worth, but they have enabled archaeologists to identify two marble statues in the museum of Naples as more or less faithful copies of the original group. Fig. 6. Archaic Greek Bronze. British Museum. 24 GREEK BRONZES These statues are known from ancient copies, and as regards one of them we may very confidently say that no better comparison for it could be found than our bronze statuette. The type of head is different to some degree, and the action of the figure is not quite the same. Fig. 7. — Archaic Greek Bronze. British Museum. Yet in both figures we have a striking similarity even in conception, still more in the rendering of the bodily forms. There can be no doubt for a moment that our bronze belongs to exactly the period at which Antenor made his famous group of the two Tyrannicides. It tells precisely the same story of the first efforts of Athenian sculptors to break GREEK BRONZES 25 away from the conventionalisms of older times and to seek gradually a new sphere in the rendering of an inner organic vitality. No one can say that Antenor was the first to strike out on this new path. Others of his contemporaries may equally have been searching in the same direction. That is quite possible. But we have to remember also that the task assigned him in making a group of the two Tyrannicides was one which could not but have stirred in him a deep and strong emotion. The children in the streets of Athens were then singing a rude ballad of how Harmodios and Aristogeiton, concealing their daggers in branches of myrtle as they marched ^n public procession, found an opportunity of stabbing to the heart the man who had not only wronged them personally, but was an evil to the state. How deeply the people were moved by the event may be gathered from the song of the children, which has survived till now. In such circumstances, the sculptor, who accepted a public com mission to celebrate that first great step towards freedom, would naturally be in full sympathy with the popular movement, and likely to strain every fibre of his being towards infusing into his group something of the new life of freedom which had just dawned on Athens. In the last stage of archaic art, the conventionalisms and vigour, both of them very assertive in the first and second stages, give place to an idealising of the bodily forms which in the next generation was to lead to the school of Pheidias. Simplicity and largeness of manner are diffused through the several principal divisions of the figure, but not through the figure as a whole. That last touch was still wanting, as in Pygmalion's statue, before the goddess had breathed life into it. It is curious how the Greeks delighted to fable the breathing of life into statues. Another instance was that of Pandora, a statue turned alive by the breath of Athene. Again it was Athene, the goddess of handicraft and imelligence, who gave life to the figure of a man made by Prometheus. And we perceive something of the same turn of thought when we read of statues by Daidalos having to be fastened lest they should run away. These stories were the invention of a primitive legend-making age. Yet somehow they impress us as if the art instincts of the Greeks had from the beginning observed that a statue, however accurate externally, must have part of the sculptor's own life within it. Let us now take three Etruscan statuettes of a corresponding date, 26 GREEK BRONZES and more or Jess akin in subject. The first (Fig. 8), which is also the most archaic of them, represents a nude male figure carrying a calf on his shoulder. It is a type with which we are familiar in archaic Greek sculpture from a marble statue on the Acropolis of Athens. A more common variant shows us a ram instead of a calf. Sometimes the figure is expressly indicated as the god Hermes, in which case we recognise him as Hermes Criophoros or ram -bearer, a character in which he is said to have once appeared mysteriously in the town of Tanagra at a time of pestilence, with the result that the plague ceased, to commemorate which happy issue the sculptor Calamis was employed to make a statue of the god as a Criophoros. There is no doubt, however, that the artistic type of a man carrying a calf or ram on his shoulders had been familiar long before in Greek sculpture, and there is equally, I think, no doubt that the Etruscan who made our statuette had derived his idea from the Greeks. But he had not derived more than the general idea. He has no sense of proportion such as the Greek of that time possessed. He exaggerates not only the size of the calf but the effect of its weight in pressing downwards the head of the figure. Neither of these things is to be seen in the con temporary Greek statue on the Acropolis of Athens. In the face of the bronze much atten tion is given to minute details, as if it were there —in the face — principally that the key to the action was to be found. Consistently with this view everything is eliminated from the bodily forms which was not absolutely necessary to convey the general impression. We may now take a more advanced specimen (Fig. 9) — a figure of Heracles which was found in the Lake of Falterona in Etruria along with a number of highly interesting bronzes now in the Museum. It will be seen that it is almost a direct challenge to the second of our Greek statuettes, each in its way being an exhibition of how robust the human figure may be. But a moment's comparison will show that the robustness of the Etruscan Fig. 8. Archaic Etruscan Statuette. Man carrying a Calf. British Museum. GREEK BRONZES 27 statuette has been attained to a large extent by the sacrifice of exactness and precision in the details of the bodily forms and by an extraordinary degree of exaggeration. The sculptor was not ignorant of the archaic rules and conventions of his time in regard to proportions and the defining of the separate parts of the human form. We can see that all over the figure. But he could not resist the impulse towards forcible and exaggerated ex pression, such as is seen per haps most plainly in the gigantic knot into which the lion's skin is fastened on the breast of Heracles. The body is thrust forward as if swelling with life. The head is turned violently to the side, the features much ex aggerated. The whole figure is an instance of breaking away from traditional canons of art without being able as yet to substitute another but equally inflexible set of rules. A more agreeable effect is produced by our third figure (Fig. 10) — a young man holding in his hand a sword, the blade of which has been broken off. In his limbs and bodily forms there is a youth ful sensitiveness which recalls the Greeks of the best days. But having got over this first impression, we cannot disguise the fact that his arms are in size out of all proportion, that the chlamys is fastened round his neck with a studied effect quite foreign to the Greek spirit, and that the face is animated to an exceptional extent. In the face, the hair, and the drapery, which last presents an agreeable contrast to the nude forms, there Fig. 9. — Etruscan Heracles. British Museum. 28 GREEK BRONZES is much to be admired over and above the general attractions of the bronze. Yet after all there remains something essentially Etruscan in the figure, and that something is exaggeration. We have not yet considered what an ordinary draped female figure looked like in the archaic age of Greece. Let us take as an example a bronze statuette in the British Museum which stands on its ancient pedestal and wants nothing but the right hand (Plate I.). Most probably that hand had held a flower. There was much of exquisiteness among the Greek women of those days. Satisfied with their own beauty and the perfection of their dress, they liked to dally with a flower in the hand as if a flower were obviously the one thing best suited for them. Our statuette ranges admirably with the series of archaic marble statues on the Acropolis of Athens — the same dress with its multitude of fine folds relieved by richly ornamented borders, and above all the same modest satisfaction as regards dress and demeanour. If our bronze differs from them, the difference lies chiefly in its more advanced type of face. The expression of self- consciousness in the marble statues has given way to a larger and more ideal conception in the bronze. Our next step is to find an Etruscan statuette of about the same period, and presenting much the same opportunities for the treatment of drapery and for the general expression. In the example before us (Fig. 1 1 ) it will be observed that the drapery, as in the Greek statuette, consists of two garments, an under chiton which shows on the breast and right shoulder, as also at the feet, and an upper himation which envelops the figure, passing over the left shoulder. But the folds of this upper himation are indicated with much greater freedom and greater attention to natural effect than in the Greek bronze, which very probably is due to the influence of a somewhat later stage of art. The massive fold which runs diagonally from the left shoulder across the body is quite different in form from anything in Greek sculpture. For one thing it is much ruder, and for another the pattern of circles incised upon it appears on the outside of the fold at one part and on the inside at another. Similarly, where the inner edge of the himation is turned outwards beside the right arm the same pattern again appears as if the himation had been enriched with an identical border both inside and out. That is what the Greeks never did ; and certainly GREEK BRONZES 29 no Greek would ever have destroyed the massive diagonal fold across the body with an ornamental pattern, for the very simple reason that it is a large fold and not a border. Fig. 10. — Archaic Etruscan Bronze. British Museum. On the archaic marble statues of the Acropolis we frequently see a crown on the head richly decorated with painted floral patterns. It is a crown identical in shape with that of the Etruscan statuette, but instead of standing out conspicuously, not to say boastfully, as in the Etruscan 30 GREEK BRONZES bronze, it is invariably kept down to the most modest and unobtrusive dimensions. That was not to the Etruscan taste. Their love of conspicuousness is seen also in the massive necklace of the bronze and particularly in the intensified features of the face. Yet we are bound to acknowledge that in this figure the workmanship is often excellent. But for an innate habit of exaggeration, the sculptor might perhaps have stood side by side with the Greeks of his day. The problem which we stated at the beginning, and have thus far endeavoured to illustrate by contemporary examples from Greece and from Etruria, is one that cannot be solved from the statuettes alone. We must look farther afield. We must allow, for instance, that there were some things that the Etruscans could do almost as well as the Greeks in the archaic age ; one was the engraving of gems, and another the production of gold jewellery. On the other hand, there were things where they failed badly, and there is one branch of the minor arts in which their failure is very easily demonstrated — the painting of vases. Every one knows that most of the Greek vases in our museums have been found in Etruscan tombs. They had been imported from Greece by wealthy Etruscans, and it is a testimony to the good taste of these Etruscans that they chose the very finest specimens they could get hold of. Their own workmen were by no means ignorant of the technical processes in use in the making of vases. Yet somehow their attempts to imitate the Greeks are melancholy failures. That is surely a reproach to a people renowned for their skill in terra-cotta work. One speculates in vain as to the cause. It is not enough to remember how the love of beautiful painted vases had distinguished the Greeks from the highly civilised nations of the East, and to assume that this same distinguishing quality was likely to hold good also as against the nations of the West such as the Etruscans, because we know how the Etruscans admired and coveted these products of Greek genius, and how direct and intimate were their relations with the Greeks. There must have been some radical difference in the artistic instincts of the two peoples. One would suppose that the faculty of incising designs on bronze was practically the same as drawing with a fine brush on a terra-cotta vase. In each case success depends entirely on beauty of line. Is it not, therefore, strange that the Etruscans, who had shrunk from the attempt GREEK BRONZES 31 at vase-painting, should have devoted themselves to an extraordinary extent to the production of incised drawings on bronze ? The explana tion may lie partly in this, that it is one thing to execute a drawing on a flat even surface, such as the bronze mirrors and cistse of the Etruscans, Fig. ii. — Archaic Etruscan Statuette. British Museum. and a much more difficult thing to accommodate a drawing to a surface which curves both vertically and horizontally, as is the case with many of the Greek vases. Very probably it was to escape this difficulty that the Etruscans abandoned the painting of vases and threw their energies into drawing on flat bronze surfaces instead, leaving us a vast series of such 32 GREEK BRONZES drawings out of all comparison with the few specimens which have survived from the Greeks. We must remember that the Etruscans were never successful in working with the brush on a small scale. In archaic times they could paint very well on a large scale, as the frescoes testify which still survive on the walls of their tombs. Then again it may be argued that having acquired, by means of their skill in bronze-work, a success which had extended even to Greece, they would naturally not care to profit by the example of the Greek vases further than was suitable for their own special craft. For example, on the Greek vases the finest drawing occurs on the circular kylikes, where the curving surfaces of the exterior present the greatest possible difficulties for the draughtsman. The best of the Greek vase-painters revelled in covering these surfaces with drawings of singular beauty. Whether an Etruscan would have ever succeeded in translating drawing of that kind to a bronze vase of the same shape is a question we need not discuss. On the other hand, these Greek kylikes have in the interior a circular space which contains a drawing of one or more figures. This was exactly what the Etruscan required for his circular bronze mirrors, and it is here that a comparison ought to be made between him and the Greek vase-painter, each on his own ground. I do not say that the result would indicate a very extensive indebtedness of the Etruscans to the Greeks, but it would confirm the view just set forth that they had in their own way profited by the vase-painting of the Greeks.Here are two of their archaic mirrors with incised designs ; the one (Fig. 12) is a youth, with widespread wings to his shoulders and wings to his shoes, moving with great strides, and carrying a lyre in one hand. One might say, here is instance of pure Greek drawing, so finely conceived is this youthful figure, so essentially Greek his action of holding up a flower. His body outlined against the background of the spreading wings, and these wings elaborately delineated as a foil to the simple lines of the body, the face of a large, full type — these are characteristics singularly Greek. Yet the drawing is Etruscan. For instance, one cannot imagine a Greek leaving out the lines which should have indicated the bones of the chest, and indeed almost the whole of the inner markings proper to a figure in this movement. Yet these lines have been purposely omitted for the sake GREEK BRONZES 33 of a particular effect of contrast with the wings. Again, one cannot believe that a Greek would ever have reconciled himself to so specially decorative a treatment of the wings, whereas that is just one of those things that fit in with the tendency towards exaggeration which we saw in the Etruscan statuettes. The movement of the figure, the spreading of the wings, and the winged shoes would be suitable for the Greek hero Perseus, such as Fig. -Etruscan Mirror. British Museum. we see him on archaic Greek vases, and it is possible that so far the figure has been based on Perseus. But apart from the identification of the figure on the mirror, I think we have already seen enough to recognise in it a striking combination of the influence of Greek drawing and Etruscan individuality. On the other mirror (Fig. 13), the central figure is again one of those much-winged beings of archaic art — Greek as well as Etruscan. The peculiarity in this instance is that the wings spring from her waist and not 34 GREEK BRONZES from the shoulders, which is perhaps just as natural, and may be regarded as a variant on those archaic Greek figures where the wings spring from the chest. The wings on her shoes are much exaggerated in size. Equally exaggerated is the action of holding out the skirt with the right hand, and Fk.. i t,. -Archaic Etruscan Mirror. British Museum. yet the series of long narrow folds formed thereby is quite attractive in its way. It is a curious action, that of the left hand raised over the shoulder to take hold of, or receive, something which the boy behind her appears to hold up. It is curious, because of its representing an action still going on, in contrast to the completed action shown in the holding of the skirt, the position of the wings, and the general attitude of the figure. I have GREEK BRONZES 35 spoken of a boy standing behind her. It is, however, possible that this and the other figure in front are not boys, but men represented on a diminutive scale, as was usual, among the Greeks at least, when they wished to indicate mortals in presence of a deity. Of that there is an abundance of examples on the Greek reliefs, and this is the more likely to be the true interpretation because the raising of the arms of the two diminutive figures is peculiarly the action of adorantes or suppliants. The myrtle branch which one of them holds is also appropriate to a suppliant. The central figure would then be a goddess, and as such a being of com manding stature. The conception is quite in accord with the religious feelings of the Greeks, and no doubt it was from them that the Etruscan artist got his inspiration. Figures bearing a strong general resemblance both to the goddess and to the suppliants are to be found on contemporary Greek vases. But on the vases there is always an entire absence of that element of exaggeration which we associate with the individuality of the Etruscans, and find in the mirror before us. The Etruscans took a special pride in their shoes. If they wore nothing else they had always their shoes on, in contrast to the bare-footedness which the Greeks loved. The two suppliants wear the usual pointed shoes and nothing else. I suppose we may take it as a mere slip of the engraver that there is no sign of drapery on the body of the goddess. We cannot suppose that her dress begins only at the waist, nor that the upper part of it had been omitted for the sake of some effect of contrast between nude and draped forms. Or if that was the case, then the idea was certainly not borrowed from the Greeks. It is very exceptional to find a bronze mirror with a relief sculptured in the back, as in Fig. 14, instead of the usual incised design. Possibly the idea had been to combine on the mirror itself the relief which more properly belonged to the case. A Greek would hardly have thought of such a thing. Again, the subject in this instance is clearly derived from the well-known Greek conception of Peleus carrying off Thetis. But the Etruscan artist has changed Peleus into Heracles and inscribed the name of Heracles beside him. But apart from this licence, we must allow that he runs the archaic Greek sculptors very close in his treatment of bas-relief as suitable to a small bronze mirror, with its flatness of surfaces and rich flow of lines. 36 GREEK BRONZES As early as the seventh century b.c the Etruscans were celebrated for their work in terra-cotta.1 Even in Rome the old temples were full of such works by them, and when in the course of time the Romans lost taste for these simple archaic terra-cotta statues, they did not escape the rebuke of Cato," who told them that they might well be content with what had pleased their ancestors. On the outsides of the temples were cornices richly decorated with antefixae modelled in terra-cotta, such as may be seen among the remains of an archaic Tuscan temple in the Museum. The pediments were surmounted by figures or groups, as was the temple of Jupiter on the Capitol with its chariot of four horses raised on the highest point. That was the famous terra-cotta quadriga which the Romans had captured at Veii at the close of their ten years' siege. In Greece there was in early times a similar centre of terra-cotta sculpture in the town of Corinth. The Corinthians were an enterprising as well as an artistic people. Their enterprise called their ships westward along the Gulf of Corinth. They planted a colony in Corfu, and they were concerned in the early settlements of Greeks as far west as Sicily and Magna Grascia. It is easy to imagine that their intercourse had extended also to Etruria. But there is no need to imagine this if we accept as a fact the ancient tradition that in the seventh century b.c certain artist modellers in terra-cotta from Corinth had settled among the Etruscans, and had there introduced their art (Pliny, xxxv. 152). There is no reason to doubt the authenticity of this tradition, or to assume that it had been invented by the Greeks as a sort of claim of superiority or precedence on their part over the Etruscans, because the story is not told primarily in connection with these artists. They only come in incidentally as having accompanied in his exile from Corinth Damaratos from whom descended Tarquin, the King of Rome. Artists do not usually expatriate themselves among barbarians. When they leave their home they look forward to some favourable opportunity of cultivating their art and prospering in it, and on that principle we may fairly suppose that these Corinthian workers in terra-cotta had been aware before they started that in Etruria they would find their particular branch of art already being practised and received with favour. 1 Pliny, xxxv. 157, " Elaboratam hanc artem Italiae et maxime Etruriae." ¦ Livy, xxxiv. 4, 4. Fig. 1 4. — Bronze Etruscan Mirror with relief: Heracles carrying off a Woman. Archaic — Sixth Century B.C. British Museum. GREEK BRONZES 39 In relating this tradition of the Corinthian artists, Pliny adds that in the opinion of some the art of modelling had been practised long before that time in the island of Samos, which lies close to the western coast of Asia Minor. At present there is every reason to accept this ancient belief as well founded. Every year brings fresh evidence in its favour. We cannot any longer overlook a belief prevalent among the Etruscans themselves that their ancestors had originally come from Asia Minor. In support of that belief we may adduce this strong bent of theirs towards sculpture in terra-cotta. But the most we can be quite confident about is that in early historical times Corinth had stood in close relationship with Samos and Asia Minor in the East and with Etruria in the West, that Corinth had learned much of the art of working in terra-cotta from Asia Minor, and had passed this knowledge on to the Etruscans. For the present it must remain only a possibility that the artistic instincts of the Etruscans had come to them from an original community of race with the Greeks of Asia Minor, and that the aptness with which in later times they helped themselves to all they wanted from the art of Greece proper, was due also to that same community of origin. I think this is the view which will more and more assert itself in regard to the Etruscans as an artistic people. Towards the end of the seventh century B.C. the history of Asia Minor is fascinating in the highest degree. New forms of verse and song burst into being. The arts of painting, sculpture, and architecture were never richer or more varied. How intense had been the artistic activity of these times may be gathered from the splendid poetic remains of Archilochus, Sappho, Alcasus, to take only the best names. The dis coveries of recent years are beginning to enable us to realise what we had only heard of in tradition, that the first great home of Greek painting had been in Asia Minor. In sculpture of the archaic period we are fortunately rich, and in architecture we can already judge — for example, from the remains of the archaic temple at Ephesus — how beautifully varied and luxuriant had been the details of the old Ionic temples in their original home. How different those columns with their sculptured bases, their capitals varying as if no two ought to be strictly alike, their elaborately carved neckings, and in short the apparently interminable variety of details under a general similarity of aspect — how different all 4-o GREEK BRONZES this opulence of forms from the Ionic temples of Greece proper with their precision of details and their passionate search after an established rule as to what was the most beautiful. In vase-painting, where so much of the charm depended on refinements of drawing and so little com paratively on grandeur of conception or splendour of effect, it is remark able that in Asia Minor as yet hardly a trace of that art has been discovered. Compare with this the fact that most of the great painters from Polygnotos to Apelles were natives of Asia Minor, and largely practised their art there. On comparing the oratory of the Athenians with that of Asia Minor, Ouintilian, one of the most observant of Roman writers in matters of Art, contrasts the simplicity and politeness of the Athenians with the extravagance of the Asian orators, as he calls them. Some were of opinion, he says, that the inflated redundant style of speaking common among these latter was due to the non-Greek element in the population. In their inscriptions the Etruscans employed the Greek alphabet, and apparently had never used any other. They must have known much more of the Greek language than its alphabet, because in the very large series of bronze mirrors and engraved gems which they have left us, we constantly come upon scenes from Greek mythology which could hardly have been intelligible to them without a fair knowledge of Greek literature. We cannot well suppose that they knew these myths solely from Greek works of art, say from the painted vases, because in that case one would expect them to merely copy what they saw. But this is not the case. On the mirrors they constantly inscribe the names of the figures, and it is noticeable that these names, though written in Greek characters, do not present a pure Greek form. They more nearly resemble the Latin, as for instance, Menerfa, which is equal to Minerva, instead of Athene the Greek name of the goddess. The Greek Bellero- phon becomes Melerpanta, and so on in almost innumerable examples. Surely this debasing of Greek names, if we may call it so, is itself proof that the Etruscans had been acquainted with Greek myths and legends long before these myths and legends had reached them under artistic forms. One might be justified in going so far as to say that the absence of Etruscan writing, except in the inscriptions, which is so remarkable a phenomenon in a people renowned for their art and their civilisation GREEK BRONZES 41 generally, could be accounted for by assuming that the literature ordinarily current among them had been Greek. I have only attempted to illustrate in a general way the differences between the Etruscans and the Greeks from an artistic point of view. But it will be found that the descendants of those old Etruscans displayed much the same artistic spirit when many centuries later they formed the famous Tuscan schools of painting and sculpture. Ill Statuettes of the Age of Polycleitos and Myron There was a saying among the ancient Greeks that certain of their artists had represented men as they ought to be, others as they were, and some worse than they were. The saying was applied to sculptors, painters, and poets alike. It was not a mere passing observation which from its epigrammatic form had caught the public ear, for we find no less a writer than Aristotle employing it on several occasions. But what concerns us for the moment is that the Roman writer Quintilian seems to have had this formula in his mind when speaking of the sculptor Poly cleitos. He says : " Polycleitos surpassed the other sculptors in careful study and in gracefulness, but although in general he bears off the palm, yet it is thought that he had one defect, that of not being able to give gravity or importance to his figures. For just as he added grace and charm to the human form, so also in his figures of deities he seems to have failed in attaining the full measure of their grandeur. He is even said to have avoided figures of mature age and dignity, not daring to go beyond beardless youth. It is said that Lysippos and Praxiteles approached most nearly to the truth of nature." From other ancient sources we know that one of the services of Poly cleitos was that he had worked out for the use of sculptors a set of rules, which the Greeks called a canon, for the construction of the human figure. But a set of rules or system of proportions can only be of use to artists if it is based on a wide generalisation and on a multitude of observations and measurements of men as they are. If that was the method employed by Polycleitos, we can understand how critics came to speak of him as having made men better than they were, or as having gone beyond the exact truth of nature. GREEK BRONZES 43 A characteristic of almost every one of his statues was, we read in an ancient writer, that it stood resting its weight on one leg, as in the Diadumenos for example {uno crure insistere). At first sight this does not seem any great innovation, because among bronze statuettes older Fig. 15. — Marble Statue. Diadumenos of Vaison. British Museum. Fig. 16. — Marble Statue. Diadumenos Farnese. British Museum. than his time we occasionally find a close approach to this attitude. I think that the true significance of his innovation can only be fully realised when, taking as an illustration of it the Diadumenos, we observe how, by means of the raised arms, the whole figure is thrown into a momentary poise which at once arrests the attention. Of the Diadumenos, or youth binding round his hair a diadem won 44 GREEK BRONZES in athletic games, several ancient copies exist in marble. But the one which is generally accepted as most true to the original of Polycleitos — which was of bronze — is a marble statue in the British Museum found at Vaison in France, and not pretending to be other than a copy made in Roman times (Fig. 15). Lately another marble statue has been obtained in excavations in Delos which, from its close resemblance to our Vaison figure, has gone some way in confirming the opinion that this type of a young athlete really represents the original Diadumenos. But why should a youth who has just gained one of the greatest prizes of life, and had been cheered like Ladas on an English racecourse — why should he be of so sad a mien? Was it this expression of countenance which Pliny had in his mind when he described the Diadu menos as a gentle youth, in contrast to the Doryphoros as a manly boy ? It may have been so. We have in the Museum another marble statue of a Diadumenos which differs from the rest in some important respects (Fig. 16). The action of raising both arms to fasten the diadem, the inclination of the head and the throwing of the weight of the body on the right leg are the same as in the others. But the type of face is quite different. The expression is that of pride or self-satisfaction, as became the winner of a great prize. The corners of the mouth, instead of being turned down as in melancholy, are turned up in joy. The left leg, instead of being thrown back like the others, as in a deferential attitude, is put forward proudly. Altogether, he answers to what we expect in a young athlete who has won one of the great prizes of life. It is impossible to reconcile this statue with the others ; both types cannot be traced to Polycleitos. And as the one just described, the Farnese Diadumenos, as it is called, stands alone, while the other type, that of the Vaison statue, exists in a number of ancient replicas, it has been argued that the Vaison statue, with its kindred, should be taken as representing the original of Polycleitos, and the Farnese statue referred to some other sculptor. We know, for instance, that Pheidias had made a statue of a Diadumenos, but it is not pretended that his hand is dis coverable in the Farnese figure, though we cannot altogether deny that under its very poor execution there may lie a blundered survival of his statue. Nor does the Farnese figure answer in any way to what we know GREEK BRONZES 45 of Praxiteles, who, on doubtful authority, is stated to have made a Diadumenos, or of Lysippos of whom it is known that he had taken the canon of Polycleitos as the basis of a new system of proportions. The number of replicas of the Vaison type counts for much in favour of tracing it to a famous original. Meantime, I will call attention to the statue of an Amazon by Polycleitos. The story goes (Pliny, xxxiv. 53) Fig. 17. — Marble Head of Amazon. British Museum. that in a competition among sculptors for a statue of an Amazon to be placed in the temple of Diana at Ephesus, it was arranged that the decision should be left to the competing artists on the principle that each was to select the statue next best to his own. The result was that Poly cleitos came out first, Pheidias next, Cresilas third. In some of the existing Amazon statues the expression of melancholy is explained by a wound visible in her side, but others, which have no wound, 46 GREEK BRONZES are similarly sad of countenance (Fig. 17). We are told that Cresilas, one of the competing sculptors, had made his Amazon wounded, and possibly those of the statues which exhibit a wound should be assigned to him. But, so far as Polycleitos is concerned, the question is, Was this pathetic expression to be explained apart from any sense of pain ? The heads of the Diadumenos, especially one recently acquired by the Museum, seem to say yes. It will, I think, be allowed that the period of life between boy hood and manhood has no more marked characteristic than seriousness and grave demeanour ; and that the observation of this had not escaped artists of the time of Polycleitos may be seen in the frieze of the Parthenon with its lines of young horsemen serious of face, grave and respectful of bearing. It was this period of youth that Polycleitos chose as his special field of sculpture ; and we should not, therefore, find it strange that the faces of his statues are usually charged with an expression approaching to sadness. The other type of " a manly boy," as represented in the Doryphoros, may be judged from the marble copies of that statue which have survived, especially the one in Naples. The features and the shape of the head do not differ much from those of the statues we have just been considering, but the expression of the face is not in any particular degree sad. The head is planted firmly on the neck instead of being bent bashfully to the side, and the glance is nearly straight forward. It will be allowed that these characteristics were rightly described by ancient writers as manly. It seems to me probable that the ancient copyist, in reproducing the heads of Polycleitos, had been more faithful than in the bodily forms, just because of the peculiar expression by which they were recognisable. But I do not feel the same confidence as to their fidelity in reproducing the bodily forms and proportions. It is no doubt true that the measure ments of the Diadumenos and the Doryphoros, with their replicas, work out in a fairly satisfactory manner, whether we take the foot, the palm, or the digit as the unit of measurement, and, as Polycleitos is said by a not very authoritative writer to have employed the digit as his unit, this result has sometimes been cited as tending to prove that the proportions of these statues are true to his original, and embody his canon. It is unfortunate that the system of proportions handed down by Vitruvius, and worked out by Leonardo da Vinci, is stated to have been in use by Fig. i 8.— Bronze Statuette. Hermes. British Museum. GREEK BRONZES 49 Lysippos and other sculptors, as well as by Polycleitos, which, of course, would be a flat contradiction of the statement that Lysippos had funda mentally changed the canon of Polycleitos. So far as I have seen, however, the Vitruvian system yields a type of figure which seems to correspond better with the sculptures of the frieze of the Parthenon — which were contemporary with Polycleitos — than with the Grasco-Roman copies of the Doryphoros. I have endeavoured to make the discussion of the style of Polycleitos as brief as possible, in view of the fact that we have at best only a very limited number of bronze statuettes that can be associated with him. We begin with one which in its proportions and attitude obviously ranges with the copies of the Diadumenos and Doryphoros. It is a figure of Hermes, found in France, and now in the British Museum (Fig. 18). Round its neck is a loose golden tore, which apparently had been added by a Gaulish owner. In the right hand is a purse, one of the symbols of Hermes as god of merchandise. From the left shoulder hangs a chlamys, which, though it is modern, has been correctly restored from other specimens. It is not claimed that Polycleitos had ever made a statue of Hermes of this or any other type. But it has been argued that this statuette is more or less true to his canon ; and certainly if the marble statues we have been discussing reproduce that canon, there can be no hesitation in including our bronze in the same category. There is the same short body and long legs of the Lysippos pattern, while the head, both in its pose and shape, has retained much of Polycleitos, as also the attitude of standing with the weight of the body resting on the right leg, and the left foot thrown back. Let us now notice a bronze statuette in the British Museum (Fig. 19), which seems to me nearer the ideal of Polycleitos than any of these figures we have been considering. The figure rests on the left leg instead of the right, while the right foot, thrown back a little, is planted with the sole full on the ground, not merely with the toes touching the ground as in the Diadumeni and the Doryphori. Correspondingly, the head is inclined to wards the spectator's right. This bronze is no late copy like the last, but a true Greek work of the date to which we are assigning it, and in any case is one of the finest Greek bronzes we possess. I am endeavouring to give prominence to this figure, because among the vast number of statuettes 5Q GREEK BRONZES Fig. 19. — Greek Bronze. British Museum. in our Museum it is almost unique in the closeness with which it approaches the youths of the Parthenon frieze in its proportions, in the inclination of the head and the rendering of bodily forms, and because I am inclined to look rather to the Par thenon than to Grasco-Roman copies for the truest analogies to Polycleitos. It is possible that among our bronzes there are some which may yet be traced back to the great sculptor Myron, the fellow-pupil of Polycleitos. For the present, however, we have to be content with the little we do know of him. We are told that in his statues he gave more attention than any one of his time to a truthful re presentation of external details, caring little for the expression of character. In his statues of athletes his first aim was a telling and effective composi tion, with greater variety of action than Polycleitos allowed himself, but apparently with less refinement. It was Myron who first concentrated upon single statues the variety of movement which in older art was spread over many figures. His philo sophy of life was to see the greatest possible display of action in one figure, and directed to one purpose. We must remember that great as was the exactitude of Greek sculptors in their observation of nature, they yet at times allowed themselves a free dom which strikes us as peculiar. For instance, they would on occasion give a lioness the mane of a lion, or a hind the antlers of a stag. Their principle was that to represent a thing which seems probable, though it may be impossible in fact, is a lesser error than to represent a thing which GREEK BRONZES 51 seems improbable, however true it may be to fact. That is a principle of art laid down by Aristotle, and one of his instances is that of the hind with stag's antlers, which seems likely enough but is not true. Fig. 20. — Bronze Marsyas. British Museum. We are more fortunate in possessing a bronze figure of the Satyr Marsyas (Fig. 20), which, to some extent, may fairly be traced back to Myron. The style is doubtless much later. It cannot in fact be earlier than the 52 GREEK BRONZES third or at most the fourth century b.c There was therefore between our bronze and Myron an interval of two centuries or more, during which interval the representation of Satyrs in sculpture and every other form of Greek art was multitudinous. Nevertheless it is more than probable that the artistic motive of our bronze was originally Myron's. In the ancient list of his works mention is made of a group of the Satyr Marsyas and the goddess Athene. Marsyas was there in the act of starting back in amazement when Athene threw to the ground the flutes on which she had been trying to play. One or two ancient sketches of this group exist, and, though poor enough, they are sufficient to identify the attitude of Marsyas. Precisely the same attitude occurs in a fine marble statue of Marsyas in the Lateran Museum at Rome, which is accepted as a copy from Myron, and here we have it again in a slightly modified form in our bronze. It is an attitude which seems to me to be almost a challenge to Polycleitos and his Diadumenos, as much as to say, " If you wish the arms of a statue to be raised, raise them under some strong impulse like this, and not merely to fasten a diadem." In our bronze the left hand is spread open with the fingers ex tended, as is usual in the expression of alarm. One would have expected the same in the right hand, but this is not the case. The right hand is merely thrown up to the head as if more in surprise than alarm. The strongly marked treatment of the beard and hair must be taken as illustrative of a particular period of art. In the sculptures of Pergamon, which belong to the second century b.c, we find the same rendering of the hair in rough unkempt masses. But we can trace much farther back the desire of Greek sculptors to obtain by means of a rough treatment of the hair an effective contrast to the smoothness of the face. We see it in the Hermes of Praxiteles. I do not suggest that something of the same kind may be traced even farther back, to Myron himself. Yet it is recorded of him by an ancient writer that with all his innovations in sculpture he had left the rendering of the hair just as it had been in " rude antiquity." I do not believe that this expression of " rude antiquity " can apply to our bronze. Still this expression of Pliny's requires some explanation. In the myth of Marsyas and Athene which Myron chose for his group the issue was of a milder description. Marsyas suffered nothing more GREEK BRONZES 53 than alarm at the rage of the goddess when she threw the flutes to the ground. In this action of alarm Myron found a congenial motive. It provided him with an opportunity of displaying powerful action extending over the whole of the figure, yet concentrated upon one instantaneous impulse. This is very strikingly rendered in the Lateran statue, where the whole figure is strained violently backward by the sight of something on the ground. In our bronze the action is rather as if Marsyas had come running forward to pick up the flutes and had been suddenly arrested by a movement of Athene. The sculptor was perfectly entitled to take that view, but it is unlikely that Myron had done so ; from which we may conclude that our figure is not a direct copy but a later variant of his Marsyas, and only so far interesting to us on the present occasion. IV Statuettes of the Age of Pheidias When we come to the great age of Greek sculpture, it is true that as regards Pheidias himself we are so far fortunate as to possess the sculptures of the Parthenon. But incomparable as they are in illustrating the splendour of his genius in a series of compositions which have had no equal even in point of extent in the history of sculpture, there are times when one turns with longing and regret to the records of his isolated statues. We read and re-read the ancient descriptions of the chryselephantine statues of Zeus in the temple at Olympia and of Athene in the Parthenon. We rejoice when, in digging foundations for a house in Athens or Patras, a marble copy of the Athene Parthenos comes to light (Fig. 21). We rejoice, because, with all the nudeness and imperfections of these copies, they still preserve something of the general effect of the original. Among our bronze statuettes there is one that deserves attention from its relationship to the Athene Parthenos (Fig. 22). Let me first notice certain differences of detail. The pose of the figure has been changed from the right to the left foot. The left hand may have rested on the edge of a shield as in the Parthenos. We cannot be certain. The right arm has been raised, and undoubtedly the hand has rested on a spear held upright. That is a distinct divergence from the Parthenos, where, as we have seen, the right hand holds out a Victory. In the dress the only difference is that the asgis is worn obliquely on the breast and not square across. But in the fragment which we possess of the Athene from the west pediment of the Parthenon, the asgis is worn in the same oblique fashion. So that the idea was familiar to Pheidias, though he did not choose to employ it on his chryselephantine statue. The helmet GREEK BRONZES 55 is correct in having three crests, and in showing the middle one supported on a sphinx. But the side crests have no Pegasi or gryphons connected with them. In trying to account for these differences of detail we must hot forget Fig. 2 1 . — Marble Athene Parthenos. Athens. Fig. 22. Athene Parthenos. Bronze Statuette. British Museum. that they are each and all perfectly consistent with the time and manner of Pheidias. They are not to be classed with those capricious changes in the aspect of Athene which occur in late Greek art. In my judgment the whole statuette is as true to the style of Pheidias as could be expected of so minute a figure. 56 GREEK BRONZES We are accustomed to think of Pheidias as a sculptor of colossal statues of gold and ivory, or of great compositions in marble brightened by colour and by accessories of metal. We seldom associate him with sculpture in bronze, though, in point of fact, a bronze statue in the atmosphere of Greece would have been resplendent enough to range even with figures of gold. As regards his famous Athene Promachos on the Acropolis of Athens, we are told by an ancient writer, Pausanias (i. 28, 2), that this statue had been erected as a monument of the victory over the Persians at Marathon, that the point of her spear and the crest of her helmet could be seen from ships approaching Athens from Cape Sunium, and that the reliefs on her shield, representing a battle between Centaurs and Lapiths, were a subsequent addition by a metal-chaser named Mys in the next century after Pheidias. On ancient coins representing the Acropolis of Athens {B.M. Catalogue, Attica, pi. 19, fig. 7) we see a colossal statue of Athene standing on a spot where there is still visible on the rock of the Acropolis a cutting which had been made for the base of just such a statue. From the coins, it appears that the figure had stood with one foot advanced and the right arm raised in the act of hurling a spear. In this attitude the figure recalls the ancient and sacred image of Athene known as the Palladion, and probably the intention of Pheidias was to retain this familiar attitude while changing the artistic treatment of the whole figure in accordance with the spirit of his own age. The title of Athene Promachos, which had been associated with the archaic image, would naturally be used also of the new statue. One of our bronze statuettes (Fig. 23) answers admirably to the conception of a Promachos or fighter in the vanguard. This statuette comes from Athens, and seems to be plainly a production of the best period of art and undoubtedly derived from the statue by Pheidias, as it seems to me. Let us now examine the statuette more closely. The helmet has only one crest ; there is no ornament except the sphinx which supports the crest, and a sphinx in that position was apparently inseparable from the helmet of Athene in the age of Pheidias, if, indeed, it was not invented by him. The Parthenos had three crests, but she was a stately show figure. The Promachos had to be warlike. As regards the aegis on her breast with the face of the Gorgon in the centre, GREEK BRONZES SI that is all in accordance with the age of Pheidias. It is only when we come to the drapery that we are struck with a peculiarity of treat ment. The flat close-lying folds which are observed on the body and down the left side of the figure ex hibit a distinct element of archaism, at variance with the perfect free dom of the Parthenon sculptures or of the copies of the Athene Parthenos. On the other hand, the girdle of serpents is quite free in its treatment, and equally so is the face of the goddess. The question is how to reconcile this slight archaism with Pheidias. Before we say that this is impos sible, there are several things to be taken into consideration. In the first place, we have as yet no authentic copy of any statue in bronze by him, and cannot say how he may have chosen to render his draperies while working in that material. But what is more to the point is that the bronze Promachos may have been a work of his early period when Greek sculpture was still in a measure under the influ ence of the archaic school in which he himself had been trained. The express statement of Pausanias (x. 10, i) is, that the statue had been Fig. 23. erected to commemorate the battle of Marathon, which was fought in 490 b.c At that date Pheidias could only have been a boy, and as regards the sculpture of the time, we know how archaic it then was from a series of marble reliefs at Delphi, which have survived from a building erected there by the Athenians to celebrate the -Athene Promachos. Greek Bronze. British Museum. 58 GREEK BRONZES glorious victory of Marathon, apparently soon after the event. We have, somehow, to account for the considerable interval of time which must have elapsed between the battle of 490 b.c and the erection of the colossal bronze statue on the Acropolis. We know that ten years after the battle the Acropolis had been entirely destroyed by the Persians, so that what ever monument the Athenians may have set up there for their victory, if any, must have gone the way of all the rest in the general conflagration. During these ten years Pheidias was approaching towards manhood, and it is quite conceivable that amid the new adornment of the Acropolis, which commenced when the Persians had been finally discomfited, his rising genius had been recognised by his townsmen of Athens, and that the task had then been set him of producing the colossal Athene Pro machos in bronze. I am only suggesting what may well have happened. It was a number of years after that when the sculptures of the Parthenon were entrusted to him. But some such suggestion is necessary if our bronze statuette is, as I think, a copy of the colossal Promachos. As a young sculptor Pheidias may, like Raphael in his relations toward Perugino, have thrown into his work something of the archaic manner in which he had been trained. Or, at all events, his early training, still fresh in his mind, may have influenced him in retaining certain archaic elements which had been characteristic of the ancient type of Athene which his statue was intended to supersede. We cannot ignore the express statement of Pausanias that his statue had been erected to com memorate the battle of Marathon. The best we can do in the circum stances is to ascertain the earliest possible date thereafter at which it could have been erected on the Acropolis. As we have seen, that date coincides with the early manhood of Pheidias. The most famous in antiquity of all the works of Pheidias was his chryselephantine statue of Zeus at Olympia. Unfortunately we have no copies of it, except on certain very rare coins of Elis, on one of which an attempt is made to give a view of the statue in profile (Fig. 24), in another, the head alone, also in profile. It is not, perhaps, surprising that no other copies of the great statue exist. We must remember that though Olympia was a great show-place where sculptures by the greatest artists of Greece were to be seen in profusion, yet it was not an art centre. No sculptors were established GREEK BRONZES 59 there, nor any of the minor artistic industries, such as the making of bronze statuettes. Sculptors came there to do only what had to be done on the spot. Bronze statues — and they were the most frequent — were brought ready to be set up. The only exception we hear of was the workshop which Pheidias had erected for the making of his chrys elephantine statue, and it is to the honour of those who managed the Fig. 24. — Coin of Elis, representing the Zeus of Pheidias. From an Enlarged Drawing. town that this workshop was retained as a memorial of him for centuries. People went to Olympia to see the sights, to be present at the national games, to hear distinguished literary men read passages of their works, and perhaps to see Zeuxis, the successful painter, living up to his reputation. So that once every four years the little town was crowded. For the rest it was known chiefly to tourists or occasional worshippers. Certainly there was no school of art at Olympia in the whole course of its existence. Years ago the site was carefully excavated. Innumerable 60 GREEK BRONZES bronze statuettes were found, but none of them had any relation to the celebrated sculptures of the place. They had all been brought by devotees from other towns or districts. Let us now take the description of the statue as we know it from ancient literary sources in connection with the coin (Fig. 24), premising that on a small coin the size of a florin many details would necessarily be left out. The attitude of the Zeus was that of a god seated on his throne as you see him in the coin. Literally, his presence filled the temple. It was said he could not stand up without carrying the roof with him. The height of the temple was 6 8 feet to the top of the pediments, so that the figure itself may well have been nearly 40 feet. The face, hands, and wherever flesh appeared, were of ivory, the rest was of gold — the dress, in particular, being richly enamelled with figures and flowers in various colours. The beard and hair we suppose to have been of gold. The ivory would be tinted to soften its whiteness, except perhaps in the eyes, where the natural whiteness of the material may have been taken advantage of. The pupils were either of precious stones or of ebony. On the head was an olive wreath. The right hand held out a Victory, which, as we see on the coin (Fig. 24), holds a taenia or ribbon, extending from one hand to the other, as in the Victory on the hand of the Athene Parthenos. On the coin the Victory appears with raised wings as if about to fly across the front of the god, that is, from right to left, which we know was the direction always associated with a good omen in the minds of the Greeks. In the left hand of the god was a sceptre, glittering with various metals and surmounted by an eagle. The coin omits the eagle, and of course can give no equivalent for the metal inlays. The sandals were of gold. As regards the himation worn by the god, ancient writers tell us that it was richly enamelled, but say nothing of how it was disposed on the figure. For that we must rely principally on the coin. There we see that the himation is disposed in the manner usual with Pheidias — as in the east frieze of the Parthenon and on a Madrid relief. That is to say, it is wrapped closely round the lower limbs, then passes over the left shoulder, leaving the whole of the right arm and breast bare. It will be seen that the end of the himation appears between the fore leg of the throne and the legs of the god. That is an artistic touch which occurs on some of the best Athenian reliefs, immediately Fig. 25. — Zeus. Bronze found in Hungary. British Museum. GREEK BRONZES 63 after the time of Pheidias — most probably it had been introduced by him. The throne was enriched with gold, precious stones, ebony, and ivory, while, as regards the multitude of figures sculptured on it — on the top rail, on the sides, on the legs, the footstool, and the base of the statue, — to read of them almost paralyses the imagination. On the top of each of the two front legs of the throne, connecting them with the side rail above, was a group of a sphinx tearing the body of a Theban youth. On the coin this has been simplified into a sphinx alone, much as on the throne of Zeus on the Parthenon frieze. At a lower level apparently along the sides of the seat were Apollo and Artemis slaying the children of Niobe. I suppose Apollo on one side slaying the sons, Artemis on the other slay ing the daughters, each deity using bow and arrows. The footstool rested on golden lions, and on it was sculptured a battle of Greeks and Amazons. Here the name of Pheidias, son of Charmides, was inscribed. On the base of the statue were sculptured, in a long com paratively narrow band, the deities of Olympos present at the birth of Aphrodite. In the centre of this assembly she (Aphrodite) was seen rising from the sea. At each side of the central group the deities were disposed in the order of their importance, so that the greatest of them were nearest the ends. I do not attach any particular importance to a bronze statuette which we possess in the Museum (Fig. 25). It is far too hard and formal to convey any idea of the style of Pheidias as we know it in the Parthenon sculptures. The head is not like what we expect. It is much too conspicuous, with its staring wreath and profuse hair. We regret it the more readily because the head on one of the coins, to which I have referred, not only retains in its way the placidity of Pheidias, but also renders the wreath and the hair much as we think they had been. Our bronze is wrong also in having a thunderbolt in the left hand. In short, it cannot be a direct copy from the work of Pheidias. On the other hand, no one can deny that the model on which our statuette has been constructed was the Zeus of Olympia. In later Greek art there arose a tendency towards greater intensity of expression. As regards Zeus, people wanted a statue which should realise the passage of Homer : " When my head bows, all heads bow with it still." The curious thing is that a number of late 64 GREEK BRONZES Greek writers associated this passage with the Zeus of Pheidias, whereas it only applied to the sculpture of their own day, such as our bronze statuette. But notwithstanding these modifications, there remained always in the later figures of Zeus much of the original of Pheidias, and of this our bronze is an illustration, because both in the posture of the god and in the disposition of the drapery it is correct in a general way. V Statuettes of the Age of Praxiteles and Lysippos After the death of Pheidias some time elapsed before a new name of surpassing importance appeared among Greek sculptors. During this interval the art of Greece, unable to sustain the high idea of Pheidias, was preparing for a change. It was turning towards a greater perfection of technical skill with less imaginative power. The same tendency had arisen alike in poetry, painting, and sculpture. This state of the artistic mind had been ripening some time in Greece when the sculptor Praxiteles came on the scene. An Athenian by birth and the son of a sculptor not unknown to fame, he seems to have readily divined that the best way to express in sculpture the ideas of his time was by means of isolated statues in which, with only very slight action or movement, he would be able to display his extraordinary skill in rendering the finest and subtlest forms of the body. His object was, at the same time, to represent the finer emotions such as only very slightly affect the bodily forms. Let us take as an example the marble statue of Hermes holding on his arm the infant god Dionysos, which was found a number of years ago at Olympia, on the spot where an ancient writer had seen it (Fig. 26). At various times since its discovery this statue has been thought to be not quite equal to the great name of Praxiteles, or that perhaps it had been a work of his earlier period when still under the influence of his father. Several things point in this latter direction. The massiveness of the torso of Hermes is not what we shall find in others of his statues such as the Sauroctonos, but in this respect reminds us more of his father's statue of Eirene carrying the infant Plutos on her arm, which infant, again, is almost identical with the infant Dionysos on 66 GREEK BRONZES the arm of Hermes. But these things notwithstanding, the statue is full of the subtlest observation of bodily forms which cannot, one would Fig. 26. — Hermes by Praxiteles. Olympia. think, be traced to any other than Praxiteles himself. Similarly, the motive or action of the Hermes is exactly of that very slight kind which we expect from that sculptor more than any other. Hermes, as we now GREEK BRONZES 67 know, had held up in his right hand a bunch of grapes, and is watching its effect on the infant god of the vine. The drapery hanging on a tree stem, however beautifully executed, is only an accessory, serving as a Fig. 27. — Marble Statue. Apollo Sauroctonos. Louvre. foil to the delicate modelling of the bodily forms. And when we think of it, that was a great change from the treatment of drapery in the Parthenon sculptures, where the presence of drapery is never accidental, but always shares in the dignity and solemnity of the figure. Even in 68 GREEK BRONZES the draped figures of Praxiteles as in the Muses of Mantinea, we see that he had created a new type which differs from that of the Parthenon inas- Fig. 28. — Apollo. From Thcssaly. British Museum. much as it is a special study of a draped figure. Another point is the easy attitude of the Hermes, suggestive almost of indolence, or at all events of a happy nature. In others of the statues by Praxiteles, known Fig. 29. — Bronze Statuette. Aphrodite Pourtales. British Museum. GREEK BRONZES 71 to us from ancient copies, this ease of attitude is more strongly marked. But from this point of view the most interesting of his works is the statue of Apollo Sauroctonos (Fig. 27), known to us from several copies in marble, and from one, a large statuette in bronze in the Villa Albani, which is the more important because the original statue was in bronze. The god stands leaning idly, one hand stretched out to a tree, his attention being attracted slightly to a lizard running up the tree -stem. He may be intending to kill the lizard, as his name Sauroctonos implies, but the attitude hardly conveys any feeling on his part beyond that of curiosity. The motive merely gives occasion for a youthful figure standing in an attitude admirably conceived to display the beauties of bodily form under a passing, almost trivial, emotion. It is interesting to compare this Apollo with a marble statue in Madrid which it is now agreed is to be traced back to Praxiteles. The Madrid statue represents Hypnos, the god of sleep, moving silently on his task of hushing mankind to rest. It is not only that the type of face is almost identical with that of the Apollo, though this counts for much because it is a very peculiar type, but in both statues we recognise at once that the aim of the sculptor had been to represent an action which must not be more than just perceptible. In the Greek Anthology (Appendix 277) there occurs a few lines of verse headed an ALnigma on Sleep to this effect : " Being neither a mortal nor an immortal, but having some semblance of both, I live neither the part of a man nor of a god, but am always coming new into life and again vanishing from the present, unseen to the eye, yet known of all men." We have there in words the evanescent character of Hypnos. The Greeks thought sleep a twin brother of death, and perhaps this relation of twinship was meant to suggest that same idea of a being differentiated from some one else only by the slightest touches. Effects of this kind, whether in art or nature, are usually called fascination, and probably no better word could be found to serve as a general characterisa tion of the work of Praxiteles than its fascination. We have already spoken of the god of sleep and his silent seductive mission, in connection with the bronze head of Hypnos which is one of our treasures in the Museum (Plate II.). We need only now consider the head again for the sake of its striking likeness to the heads of the Apollo and of the statue in Madrid. The singular breadth of the face is a thing to ?2 GREEK BRONZES be noticed. It does not occur in the Hermes, where it would have been unsuitable, but from the other instances where it does occur we may fairly conclude that Praxiteles had created it for a special order of beings in whose nature, as he conceived, there existed a happy imperturbability. He was probably well aware of the fact that under sensations of pleasure the muscles of the face work sidewards, and had sought to express this observa tion under a permanent type. The indolent attitude of leaning sidewards with the feet crossed or nearly so, as in the statues of Apollo, is carried farther in a bronze statuette of the same god from Thessaly which we possess (Fig. 28). But the type of face in our bronze is too formal and too little sensitive for Praxiteles. The rendering of the hair is too hard and the bodily forms too vague. It may be that these faults are due to the maker of the statuette and not to the original from which he was copying. We cannot believe that Praxiteles had ever himself carried this attitude of indolence so far. Praxiteles owed his greatest fame to his works in marble, but an ancient writer (Pliny, xxxiv. 69), while admitting this, says that he nevertheless produced statues of the greatest beauty in bronze. We have in the Museum a bronze statuette of Aphrodite obviously Praxi- telian in style (Fig. 29). So far as the attitude and accessories are concerned, there is a difference of opinion. In the list of bronze statues by Praxiteles, Pliny mentions a figure which he calls a Pseliumene, that is to say, a woman or goddess wearing or putting on an armlet. It has been argued that this Greek epithet may mean also the putting on of a necklace, and that this is the action of our bronze. I doubt if this can be right. The action is more like a reminiscence of the Diadumenos of Polycleitos, both hands being raised as if just having finished the fastening of a diadem or ribbon round the head. In our bronze the movement of the arms is practically the same as in that statue, and we know from tradition that Praxiteles did modify the older type of a Diadumenos by Polycleitos. At all events it seems to me beyond question that our bronze is a Praxitelian variant of that statue adapted to a female figure. It will be noticed how strong is the re semblance between the head of the statuette and the head of Hypnos (Plate II.), especially in the very beautiful treatment of the hair with :"^N t- > GREEK BRONZES 73 its soft tresses carried back from the brow and bound in the simplest possible manner with a narrow fillet. Fig. 30. — Marble Statue of an Apoxyomenos. Vatican Museu?n. After Praxiteles a number of years elapsed before the next great sculptor, Lysippos, appeared on the scene. He had been exclusively a sculptor in bronze, and one would expect to find among the many bronzes of our 74 GREEK BRONZES museums not a few specimens directly traceable to his influence, the more so as he had been productive to an extraordinary degree, and because his works were in demand far and wide. But there are difficulties. Take for instance the statue of a young athlete scraping his arm with a strigil, usually called an Apoxyomenos (Fig. 30). The original bronze statue had been carried off from Greece to Rome, and is said to have so captivated Fig. 31. — Limestone Figure of Heracles. British Museum. the young Tiberius that he had it removed to his palace, and only restored it to its public position because of the clamour of the populace. A beautiful marble copy of that statue is well known in the Vatican Museum. We are told expressly by Pliny that the bronze original was the work of Lysippos. Then take a small limestone figure in the British Museum (Fig. 31), which, for all its roughness, is certainly a copy of the bronze statuette made GREEK BRONZES 75 by Lysippos as a present, it is said, to his patron, Alexander the Great, who carried it about in his campaigns to decorate his table. In later Roman poets there is much romance as to the famous generals through whose hands that bronze had passed after the death of Alexander, and I need hardly add to the romance by stating that our rough copy of it comes from Babylonia, where the great Macedonian died. The subject of the statuette by Lysippos was a seated figure of Heracles, called, from its constant appearance on the table of Alexander, Epitrapezios. The sculptor of our limestone copy has inscribed his name on the plinth. His name is Diogenes. But I do not suggest that he was any relation of the Cynic philosopher whose interview with Alexander is more than ever familiar to us from Landseer's parody of the two dogs. The question is, does our statuette with all its roughness convey any fair impression of the original of Lysippos, and, if so, how is that impression to be reconciled with the very different style of the Apoxyomenos in the Vatican ? It is conceivable that in the course of a long life Lysippos had begun his career under the dominating influence of Praxiteles, had gradually added more and more of action and animation to his statues, and had finally gone over to a preference for figures of the Heracles type in which muscular power was the ruling feature, the Apoxyomenos representing his earlier, the Heracles his later stage. To the later stage would belong his numerous statues of athletes, his portraits, and probably also the tendency towards statues of colossal size which appears in his Heracles at Tarentum, and was carried to an extreme in the Colossus of Rhodes by his pupil Chares. In the Apoxyomenos we have the small head, the apparent increase of height, and a new system of proportions superseding the older system of greater massiveness in the torso, which Pliny tells us was characteristic of Lysippos. You have only to compare it with the Hermes of Praxiteles to see the difference, and yet I am convinced that in the general conception, and in the rendering of the details in the Apoxyomenos, Lysippos was largely indebted to Praxiteles. It must have been also in the spirit of Praxiteles that he chose as a subject for a statue Kairos or Opportunity— a statue which is described by ancient writers as having represented a boy or youth hasting along on tiptoe with wings to his heels, his hair rich and full over the brow, but shorn at the back to show that Opportunity, once 76 GREEK BRONZES let slip, cannot be caught up again, in his right hand a razor, in allusion to a Greek proverb, as old as Homer, to the effect that the turn of things is often balanced on as fine an edge as that of a razor (eVt %vpov a,Kfirj// .////./. 't/, Fig. 34. — Bronze Relief. Greek striking down an Amazon. Fourth Century B C. British Museum. GREEK BRONZES 85 make a commemorative group of Alexander and those who were nearest him in the fight, in all, twenty -five figures, each a portrait. That Fig. 35. — Alexander the Great. Large Bronze Statuette. Naples Museum. group was erected in Macedonia, but subsequently was carried off by Metellus to Rome, and possibly the Naples bronze represents the central figure of that composition. VI Gaulish Bronzes Certain ancient writers attribute to the Gauls the invention of enamelling and niello on bronze and silver (Philostratus, Imag. i. 28, and Pliny, xxxiv. 162), and it is a fact that many specimens of bronze vases, fibulae, and other objects have been found richly if sometimes rudely enamelled. The process was to groove out the patterns on the surface of the bronze. Into these grooves, forming generally floral patterns, a paste of various bright colours was inlaid, such as red, white, blue, and green. But it does not appear that this paste had been fused in the true sense of an enamel, that is to say until it took the form of glass, though the Greek writer who mentions this Gaulish invention expressly speaks of fusing the inlaid substance. Let us begin with a bronze statuette in the British Museum found at Barking Hall, Suffolk (Fig. 36). It is about 2 feet high, and must have been a work of considerable difficulty, if we think of the elaborate extent with which the cuirass is decorated with patterns, inlaid partly in silver and partly in a sort of enamel, the leaves of the rosettes being alternately of enamel and silver. I take this figure first, because it seems to stand on the border between pure classic workmanship and native art. It has been described as a portrait of a Roman Emperor or an imperial personage of some sort ; but an insuperable obstacle to its being an imperial Roman is that the hair is bound by a simple ribbon or diadem, whereas the Roman emperors wore wreaths, usually of laurel, until a very late period, when they preferred rich gold diadems. Clearly the statuette cannot represent a Roman. On the other hand, nothing was more distinctive of a Greek king, from the time of Alexander the Great onwards, than a flat fillet or GREEK BRONZES 87 ribbon worn exactly as on our statuette. That alone is conclusive evidence that the figure is either Alexander or one of his successors. The portraits Fig. 36. — Bronze found at Barking Hall, Suffolk. British Museum. of his successors are known from their coins, and we may fairly exclude them from the running. There remains, therefore, only Alexander himself. We have already spoken of certain portraits of Alexander by Lysippos. 88 GREEK BRONZES One of the attitudes in which he was represented was, as we know, that of standing with one foot raised on a rock or such like, the head appearing to be turned a little sidewards so as to conceal his natural defect of a crooked neck. In particular there was one in which he appeared with his face looking towards the heavens, as he was wont to look, says Plutarch, and turning his neck gently, so that some one on seeing a statue of him in this attitude wrote an epigram to this effect, that the bronze seemed to be looking towards the heavens and saying, " The earth is under my rule. You, Zeus, hold Olympos." Several other Greek epigrams exist to much the same purpose. It is known also that in that instance Alexander held a spear, necessarily in his right hand. In our statuette the raised right hand has obviously rested on a spear. These are facts enough to justify us in regarding it as a figure of Alexander derived from a famous original of Lysippos. The face of our bronze is that of an ideal youth, yet the hair springs from the forehead somewhat in the manner characteristic of the portraits of Alexander. No objection can be taken to the cuirass and sandals. They are such as he might have worn, except for the rich enamel on the cuirass, and particularly the promiscuous way in which the patterns of rosettes are scattered all over it. We must acquit classical sculptors of any share in that. The treatment of the hair seems at first sight purely classical, all the more so when we remember how frequently the existing Gaulish bronzes are characterised by rough shaggy hair, in keeping with the habits of the people. Yet when we examine the hair closely, in particular the loose way in which the diadem lies among it instead of being tightly strained round the head, we detect a want of intelligence which cannot be ascribed to a classical artist. It is best explained by assuming the sculptor to have been a Gaul or Briton making a careful copy from a Greek original as well as he could. In the flaps of the cuirass, as they fall over the raised thigh, there are one or two fine touches of movement which could only have been derived from a Greek original. The proportions of the figure are abnormally heavy, the torso being much too massive and the legs too short. It would be hard to find any parallel for that in classical art. Yet, for all these shortcomings, we have in the Museum bronze GREEK BRONZES 89 the finest existing specimen of Gaulish sculpture inspired by a Greek original. We may take next a bronze in the British Museum, found in France in the department of the Rhone (Fig. 37). It is a figure of the youthful Fig. 37. — Gaulish Statuette of Bacchus. British Museum. Bacchus holding in his right hand a wine-cup. But the wine-cup or can- tharus which he holds is not of the shape proper to Bacchus. It is, in fact, a small amphora. No classical artist could have ever made that mistake. The figure itself has obviously been studied from a Greek original. Yet it is throughout pervaded by a difference of artistic feeling, which it is easier to recognise than to define — a difference such as we perceive often in 90 GREEK BRONZES literature between an excellent translation and the original. The face and disposition of the hair, together with the pose of the head, remind us of Praxiteles as we know him in the statue of Apollo Sauroctonos. The attitude might pass for Praxitelian. But the extreme softness of the bodily forms goes beyond anything with which we are acquainted from his hand, though it must be allowed that at present we know nothing of how he had rendered such figures as the youthful Bacchus. There must have been more effeminacy in them than in Hermes and Apollo. Let us now take an example of a different kind (Fig. 38). The British Museum possesses a large bronze statuette, which was found near the Roman wall in Cumberland or Northumberland, it is uncertain which. The bronze is gilt and still looks almost like gold. It is a figure of Heracles, and since an altar inscribed to the Tyrian Heracles has been discovered in that neighbourhood, we may fairly assume that our bronze may have been made for some devotee of that particular deity. Now we know that some of the oldest coins struck in Gaul and Britain are obviously imitations of the more ancient coinage of the Greek island of Thasos, on which there occurs a figure of the Tyrian Heracles, not exactly identical with our bronze, but sufficiently like for identification. The sculptor of our bronze was under no obligation to keep close to the type of Heracles on the coins of his day. He may easily have had access to more archaic types like the two vases by Calamis mentioned in Pliny (xxxiv. 47). In any case it is an archaic Greek element which predominates in our statuette. The girdle round the waist, with its three clasps fastened in front, corresponds perfectly to archaic bronze girdles in the British Museum. The short chiton, drawn tightly across the body and gathered in folds at the sides, was not worn by Heracles except in archaic Greek art of about the sixth century b.c The short body of the figure, in striking contrast to the long massive legs, is obviously archaic. Equally so is the manner of standing with both feet flat on the ground. The way in which the lion's skin is worn, the head of the lion fitting like a cap on the head of Heracles, is archaic, but not exclusively so. It lasted on to later times, yet we may fairly rank it also with the other archaic elements of the figure. The lion's skin is twisted round the left arm like a piece of drapery instead of skin. That we must set down as a mistake. As regards the forcible action of the left hand with the fingers tightly com- Fig. 38. — Heracles. Found in Cumberland. British Museum. GREEK BRONZES 93 pressed, the only explanation I can find is from an archaic Etruscan bronze in the British Museum where Heracles grips with his left hand the tail of the lion's skin exactly in this manner. The right hand, which is raised, has held a club. The only non-archaic feature in our statuette is the face, which is strikingly of the type that came into Greek art at the time of Alexander the Great, and, as such, might have been familiar to Gaulish sculptors, on coins or otherwise. For these reasons our statuette is peculiarly interesting. It shows how a phase of Greek art, which had been abandoned for centuries in Greece itself, had survived in specimens brought to Gaul or Britain, and had there appeared to native sculptors as a new light on their path, much as the archaic pre-Raphaelite painting of Italy appealed to our country men not so long ago. The statuette is cast solid, and in this respect may perhaps serve as a confirmation of what Pliny says, that the true art of casting in bronze had been lost before his time. We have also in the British Museum a statuette of Mars from the Rhine- land which may fairly come within the scope of our present enquiry (Fig. 39). It represents the god in full panoply with nothing Celtic in his armour or costume. The model has been purely classical. But let us examine the figure. The face and hair are not Celtic in type, but equally they are non-classical in the roughness with which they are represented, reminding us in this respect of what is constantly found among Gaulish bronzes. The proportions are ungainly and inaccurate to a high degree, and yet there are not a few details which recall Greek art of a good period. For instance, the form and decoration of the helmet have been derived from the Athene Parthenos of Pheidias in the main. The sphinx which has supported the crest was an invention of Pheidias. The two gryphons here attached to the sides of the helmet were placed by Pheidias on the upturned cheek-pieces of Athene's helmet, and were there rendered in relief, not, as here, partly in the round. The visor, which in the Athene retained its pure Greek form, is here converted into a mask, as if of a dead person, reminding us of a bronze helmet in the British Museum, found at Ribchester in Lancashire, which has a visor entirely in the form of a sepulchral mask. On the lower part of the visor of our statuette is a ram's head in relief on each side, which also is a not uncommon form of decoration on classical helmets. The two gryphons confronted on the 94 GREEK BRONZES cuirass are obviously Greek in origin, as is also the small head of Medusa in silver on the breast. On the greaves, in front of each knee, is again a small head of Medusa in silver, the one completely defaced, the other still showing the features of the Gorgon. Among the Greeks these masks of Medusa were worn as charms against danger. We find them repeatedly on their bronze greaves, especially on those of the good period, as on the splendid bronze leg we possess in the British Museum. The greaves are laced down the back, and the laces inlaid with a reddish Celtic enamel. The flaps of the cuirass are inlaid with silver, as are also the eyes of the figure. We must notice the way in which the chiton is rendered, where it is visible, hanging below the flaps of the cuirass. The chiton is made to open at each side, and to fall on each side in a double set of zigzag folds such as we call pteryges or wings when speaking of the chiton of Athene. But the Greek chiton can only have these double zigzag folds on one side of the figure because the chiton is only open on one side. It is incredible that the sculptor of our bronze could ever have seen a Greek figure with a chiton thus open on both sides. More probably he had been struck by the singular charm which Greek artists constantly obtained from those zigzag folds in their draped figures, and had not recognised the fact that they were confined to the left side, still more that in a man's chiton they do not exist at all. That, of course, is ignorance, but it is ignorance coupled with artistic perception. Heracles came nearest in the minds of the Gauls and Britons to what they conceived their Supreme Deity to be like. But in most cases they did not keep too close to the classical model, rather introducing variations suitable to their own ideas and circumstances. They called Heracles Ogmios, and we have in the Greek writer Lucian {Heracles) a description of a picture of that deity which may be taken as perhaps an extreme instance of the freedom the Celtic artists allowed themselves in adding to the Greek type. The Heracles or Ogmios which Lucian describes wore the usual lion's skin, held a club in his right hand, a bow in his left, with a quiver at his side. So far he is quite Greek. But he had the appear ance of a man in extreme old age, wrinkled and worn. All round him in the picture was a crowd of human beings, each having fastened to his ear a fine gold chain, the other end of which was attached to the tongue pIG. 3q. — Gaulish Statuette of Mars. British Museum. GREEK BRONZES 97 of Ogmios. Astonished at so singular a conception, Lucian in quired of an educated Gaul what might be the meaning of the picture, Fig. 40. — Gaulish Heracles. Bronze Statuette found at Vienne in France. and was told it was a representation of the power of eloquence to draw men. But Lucian's picture of Ogmios is hardly more curious than a bronze G 98 GREEK BRONZES statuette found some years ago at Vienne in France (Fig. 40) . It is a figure of Heracles of a good classical type, though with the usual differences of style, which, as I said before, are like the differences between a good translation and an original. What is startling is the ring of barrel-shaped objects which appears like a nimbus above the head of the figure. These curious objects are supported on a thin rod which rises behind the statuette. The meaning of them is still far from clear, notwithstanding the amount of attention bestowed on them by scholars versed in Celtic literature. It is much to be regretted that this is so, because these objects are certainly symbols of some kind which must have conveyed a definite meaning to the ancient Gauls. They cannot be merely capricious ornaments. In many cases we find among Gaulish sculptures a god having the symbol of a hammer or mallet, and it is not difficult to explain that deity in con nection with the northern god Thor or the Greek Hephaistos. Applying this to the bronze statuette of Vienne, we could accept as hammers the five smaller things which radiate from the large cylinder. But the large cylinder itself must surely be something different. It is more like a barrel, and possibly that is what it was meant to be. Heracles as a wine-god would not have appeared particularly strange even to the Greeks. They were familiar with his habits. To the Gauls, in the wine-growing districts of France, he might easily have assumed the additional functions of a wine-god. There is one thing yet which must not be overlooked. Among the Gaulish bronzes are many figures wearing the national costume, which consists of a thick buff coat wrapped closely round the body, overlapping down the front, and kept together by a girdle round the waist, to which we may add occasionally trousers of a chequered pattern. The question we have to consider is whether the Gaulish artists had themselves been the originators of this idea of representing their kinsmen in the garb in which they lived. That a people just emerging from barbarism could have had the faculty of creating an artistic type such as this of their own nationality is more than we are prepared to believe. The skill with which the costume is rendered in not a few instances has clearly been learned from classical sculpture, and, above all, we have to remember that one of the most striking features of later Greek art was the promi nence given to figures of Gauls, carefully represented both in character Fig. 41. — Gaulish Chief. Bronze Statuette. British Museum. GREEK BRONZES 101 and costume. The old Celtic peoples had been a terror to the Greeks almost from the time of Homer. They swooped down on the rich cities of Asia Minor like Children of the Mist as they were. In Greece itself they got as far as Delphi under their leader Brennus early in the third century b.c For nearly a century before then Rome had been trembling at the name of the Gauls. But from that time onward great battles became frequent. In the second century b.c. the King of Pergamos in Asia Minor defeated the Gauls in a decisive victory. He must needs erect on the Acropolis of Athens a monument of his success, and this, so far as we know, was the first occasion on which the nation ality of the Gauls was represented on any great scale in Greek sculpture. The Emperors of Rome followed in a similar spirit, covering their triumphal arches and columns with endless expeditions against the Celts, battles, sieges, and all the horrors of war. So that among what survives of the sculpture of those days we find innumerable studies of the personal appearance of the Gauls, the feelings of despair with which they accepted defeat, and their sufferings when wounded. Probably the examples best known to you are the so-called " Dying Gladiator " in Rome, which is, in fact, a wounded Gaul, and the group of a Gaul slaying his wife rather than see her become a Roman captive. I mean the group known as Arria and Paetus in the Villa Ludovisi in Rome. Fig. 41 will serve as an example in bronze. In the mirror of works such as these the Gauls saw themselves for the first time in an artistic sense. It was not necessary for them to create new types of themselves, even if in those days they had possessed enough imaginative power to do so. It is reported of an ancient Teuton who had gone to Rome on an embassy that, being shown a statue of an old shepherd leaning on his staff, and being asked what he would value it at, replied that he would not take him as a present even if he were alive. But a remark like this is not enough to condemn a whole nationality. You may overhear much the same any day. What we do know on the strength of the Carlisle bronze and not a few other works in sculpture is, that the peoples in Gaul and Britain were being familiarised, slowly perhaps, with Greek art even long before the Roman conquest. In the sixth century b.c a Greek colony had been established at Marseilles, whence it could command the trade of the Rhone valley. At 102 GREEK BRONZES that time, and even before then, Greek merchants were finding their way by sea to the copper mines of Spain, and obtaining, directly or indirectly, tin from Cornwall. Greek colonists were gathered round the silver mines of Thrace and along the north shore of the Black Sea, especially in the neighbourhood of the Crimea, where the inhabitants, though known as Scythians, were a branch of the widely-spread Celtic race. From the tombs of Kertch we know to what extent the Greek settlers had imported beautiful works of Athenian art for exchange with the products of the rude Scythians, and from ancient literature we know how eagerly some of the chiefs of that race had applied themselves to Hellenic civilisation. In Central Europe there have been found from time to time valuable objects of archaic Greek art, such as the gold treasure of Vettersfelde, or the lovely helmet of Berru, with its ornamentation of the Mycenaean Age. I can only mention these things briefly, because all I wish to suggest is that centuries before the Roman conquest there had been going on among the Gauls and Britons a slow leavening of artistic taste by means of works of art imported from Greece. INDEX i, 26, 28, i5, 86, 93 14, 15, 63, 71, 90 Acropolis of Athens, 6, 8, 18 29, 56, 5S, 101 Alexander the Great, 6, 23, '¦ Alexander on horseback, S2 Alexander, Statuette of, 8S "Amazon," 45, 46 Antenor, 23, 24, 25 Apellcs, 40 "Aphrodite," 13, 63, 72 "Apollo," 7, 10, 11, 12, "Apollo Ismenios," 13 "Apollo Philesios," 13 "Apollo Sauroctonos," 65, 71, 90 "Apoxyomenos," 74, 75 Archaic fibula, 9 Archermos (of Chios), 20, 2 I Archermos, Sons of (Athenis and Bupalos) 21 Aristotle, 42 " Arria and Pstus," Group of, 10 1 Artemis, 63 Assyria, Arts of, I 7 "Athene," S, 13, 25, 94 " Athene Parthenos, ' " Athene Promachos,' Athens, 2 3, 23 2, 53, 54, ,6, 57, 60, 93 ;6, 38 56, 93, " Bacchus," 89, 90 Barking Hall, Suffolk, S6 Berru, Helmet of, 102 Bronze, ^Eginetan, 12 Bronze, Composition of, 9 Bronze mirrors, S, 31 Bronze of Siris, S2 Calamis, 26, 90 Canachos, 10, 11, 12, 14, 15 Cato, 36 Centaurs and Lapiths, Battle between, 56 Chapu, M., 5, 6 Chares, 75 Chios, 20, 21 Chryselephantine statue, 59 Cicero, 14 Coinage of Miletus, 10 Coins of Elis, 58 "Colossus of Rhodes," 75 Corinth, 9, 36, 39 Corinthian artists, 36, 39 Corinthian bronze, 9 Cresilas, 45, 46 " Criophoros," 26 Daidalos, 18, 25 Darius, King of Persia, 10, 15 Delos, 20, 21, 44 Delphi, 57 "Diadumenos," 43, 44, 43, 46, 49, J2 Didyma, 12 " Dionysos," 65 " Doryphoros," 44, 46, 49 "Dying Gladiator" in Rome, 101 Egypt, Arts of, 1 7 "Eirene," 65 Ephesus, Temple at, 39, 45 Etruria, 22, 36 Etruscans, 10, 22, 25 Falterona, Lake of, 26 "Fleeting Opportunity," 76 Gaulish bronzes, 86, 93, 98 "Gaulish Woman," 5 Greek vases, 30, 32, 33, 33 Hadrian, 7 Heracles, 6, 26, 27, 33, 76, 94, 98 Heracles, Tyrian, 90 Herculaneum, 7 104 INDEX "Hermes," 20, 26, 49, 52, 65, 66, 68, 72, 75. 9° Homer, 63, 76, 101 "Hypnos," 19, 20, 71, 72, 76 Ionic temples, 39, 40 "Joan of Arc," 5 Jupiter, Temple of, on the Capitol, Rome, 36 "Kairos," 75, 76 Lateran Museum, 52 Leonardo da Vinci, 46 " Lover, The," 12, 13 Lucian, 94 Lysippos, 6, 42, 45, 49, 73, 74, 75, 76, 81, 82, 87, 88 Marathon, Battle of, 58 "Mars," Statuette of, 93 "Marsyas, the Satyr," 51, 52, 53 Medusa, Masks of, 93 Metellus, 85 Mikkiades, 21 Miletus, 10, 11, 13, 13 Mirror-cases, 7 " Muses of Mantinea," 68 Mycensan Age, 102 Myron, 50, 51 Mys, 56 Naples, Museum of, 7, 82 Nero, 7 Nike, 16, 21 "Niobc, Children of," 63 Ogmios (Gaulish Heracles), 94 Olympia, 6, 8, 54, 58, 59, 65 "Palladion," 56 " Pandora," 25 Parthenon, Frieze of, 50, 54, 63, 67, 68 Pausanias, 12, 56, 57, 58 Peirene, Fountain of, 10 " Peleus," 35 Pergamos, King of, 101 " Perseus," 33 Persia, I 5 Perugino, 58 Pheidias, 25, 44, 45, 54, 55, 57, 58, 59, 63, 64. 65, 93 "Phryne," 76 Pliny, 9, 11, 12, 20, 21, 22, 36, 39, 44, 45, 52, 72, 74, 75, 76, 86, 90, 93 Plutarch, SS Polycleitos, 42, 44, 45, 46, 49, 50, 52, 72 Polygnotos, 40 ! Pompeii, 7 I " Poseidon," 76 1 Praxiteles, 19, 42, 45, 52, 65, 66, 68, 72, I 73»75-.76 " Pygmalion," 25 Pyrrhus, Defeat of, 82 Ouintilian, 40, 42, 76 Raphael, 58, 93 Roman conquest of Gaul, 101, 102 Sleep, ^Enigma on, 71 Sleep, God of, see Hypnos Sulla, 6 Tanagra, 8, 26 Tarentum, Colossus at, 81 Tarquin, King of Rome, 36 Terra-cottas, 8, 9, 30, 36, 39 Terra-cotta quadriga, 36 "Thetis," 35 Tiberius, 74 Tuscan schools, 41 Tuscan temple, 36 "Tyrannicides, The Two," 23, 24, 25 Vaison, 44 Vatican Museum, 74 Veii, 36 "Victory," 13, 15, 16, 20, 54, 60 Vitruvius, 46, 49 Xerxes, King of Persia, 23 "Zeus," 13, 20, 54, 58, 60,63, 64, Si, 88 Zeuxis, 39 THE END Printed by R. Sc R. Clark, Limited, Edinburgh '/'/(I/// THE LATER WORK OF TITIAN By CLAUDE PHILLIPS Keeper of the Wallace Collection LONDON SEELEY AND CO., LIMITED, GREAT RUSSELL STREET NEW YORK . THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1898 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS COPPER PLATES Portrait of Titian, by himself. Uffizi Gallery, Florence . La Bella di Tiziano. Pitti Palace, Florence Titian's daughter Lavinia. Berlin Gallery The Cornaro Family. Collection of the Duke of Northumberland PAGE Frontispiece 32S288 ILLUSTRATIONS PRINTED IN SEPIA Drawing of St. Jerome. British Museum Landscape with Stag. Collection of Professor Legros '4 7* ILLUSTRATIONS IN THE TEXT Madonna and Child with St. Catherine and St. John the Baptist. In the National Gallery . . .....11 Cardinal Ippolito de' Medici. Pitti Palace, Florence . . . 19 Francis the First. Louvre . . . . 20 Portrait of a Nobleman. Pitti Palace, Florence . 21 S. Giovanni Elemosinario giving Alms. In the Church of that name at Venice . 23 The Girl in the Fur Cloak. Imperial Gallery, Vienna . 27 Francesco Maria della Rovere, Duke of Urbino. Uffizi Gallery, Florence 35 The Battle of Cadore (from a reduced copy of part only). Uffizi Gallery, Florence ...... . . 39 The Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple. Accademia delle Belle Arti, Venice ... .... 43 The Magdalen. Pitti Palace, Florence .... 47 The Infant Daughter of Roberto Strozzi. Royal Gallery, Berlin . . 49 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Ecce Homo. Imperial Gallery, Vienna . . . -55 Aretino. Pitti Palace, Florence . . .... 56 Pope Paul III. with Cardinal Farnese and Ottavio Farnese. Naples Gallery . 61 Danae and the Golden Rain. Naples Gallery . . . . -63 Charles V. at the Battle of Miihlberg. Gallery of the Prado, Madrid . 69 Venus with the Mirror. Gallery of the Hermitage, St. Petersburg . 77 Christ crowned with Thorns. Louvre . . . . . .85 The Rape of Europa . .... .91 Portrait of Titian, by himself. Gallery of the Prado, Madrid . . .93 St. Jerome in the Desert. Gallery of the Brera, Milan . . . 97 The Education of Cupid. Gallery of the Villa Borghese, Rome . 99 Religion succoured by Spain. Gallery of the Prado, Madrid . 101 Portrait of the Antiquary Jacopo da Strada. Imperial Gallery, Vienna . 102 Madonna and Child. Collection of Mr. Ludwig Mond . . . 103 Christ crowned with Thorns. Alte Pinakothek, Munich . . 105 Pieta. By Titian and Palma Giovine. Accademia delle Belle Arti, Venice 107 THE LATER WORK OF TITIAN CHAPTER I Friendship with Aretino — Its effect on Titian's art — Characteristics of the middle period — " Madonna with St. Catherine " of National Gallery — Portraits not painted from life — " Magdalen " of the Pitti — First Portrait of Charles V. — Titian the painter, par excellence, of aristocratic traits — The iLd'Avalos Allegory " — Portrait of Cardinal Ippolito de' Medici — S. Giovanni Elemosinario altar-piece. , Having followed Titian as far as the year 1530, rendered memorable by that sensational, and, of its kind, triumphant achievement, The Martyrdom of St. Peter the Dominican, we must retrace our steps some three years in order to dwell a little upon an incident which must appear of vital im portance to those who seek to understand Titian's life, and, above all, to follow the development of his art during the middle period of splendid maturity reaching to the confines of old age. This incident is the meet ing with Pietro Aretino at Venice in 1527, and the gradual strengthening by mutual service and mutual inclination of the bonds of a friendship which is to endure without break until the life of the Aretine comes, many years later, to a sudden and violent end. Titian was at that time fifty years of age, and he might thus be deemed to have over passed the age of sensuous delights. Yet it must be remembered that he was in the fullest vigour of manhood, and had only then arrived at the middle point of a career which, in its untroubled serenity, was to endure for a full half-century more, less a single year. Three years later on, that 6 THE LATER WORK OF TITIAN is to say in the middle of August 1530, the death of his wife Cecilia, who had borne to him Pomponio, Orazio, and Lavinia, left him all discon solate, and so embarrassed with the cares of his young family that he was compelled to appeal to his sister Orsa, who thereupon came from Cadore to preside over his household. The highest point of celebrity, of favour with princes and magnates, having been attained, and a certain royalty in Venetian art being already conceded to him, there was no longer any obstacle to the organising of a life in which all the refinements of culture and all the delights of sense were to form the most agreeable relief to days of continuous and magnificently fruitful labour. It is just because Titian's art of this great period of some twenty years so entirely accords with what we know, and may legitimately infer, to have been his life at this time, that it becomes important to consider the friendship with Aretino and the rise of the so-called Triumvirate, which was a kind of Council of Three, having as its raison d'etre the mutual furtherance of material interests, and the pursuit of art, love, and pleasure. The third member of the Triumvirate was Jacopo Tatti or del Sansovino, the Florentine sculptor, whose fame and fortune were so far above his deserts as an artist. Coming to Venice after the sack of Rome, which so entirely for the moment disorganised art and artists in the pontifical city, he elected to remain there notwithstanding the pressing invitations sent to him by Francis the First to take service with him. In 1529 he was appointed architect of San Marco, and he then by his adhesion completed the Triumvirate which was to endure for more than a quarter of a century. It has always excited a certain sense of distrust in Titian, and caused the world to form a lower estimate of his character than it would other wise have done, that he should have been capable of thus living in the closest and most fraternal intimacy with a man so spotted and in many ways so infamous as Aretino. Without precisely calling Titian to account in set terms, his biographers Crowe and Cavalcaselle, and above all M. Georges Lafenestre in La Vie et L'CEuvre du Titien, have relent lessly raked up Aretino's past before he came together with the Cadorine, and as pitilessly laid bare that organised system of professional sycophancy, adulation, scurrilous libel, and blackmail, which was the foundation and the backbone of his life of outward pomp and luxurious ease at Venice. THE LATER WORK OF TITIAN 7 By them, as by his other biographers, he has been judged, not indeed unjustly, yet perhaps too much from the standard of our own time, too little from that of his own. With all his infamies, Aretino was a man whom sovereigns and princes, nay even pontiffs, delighted to honour, or rather to distinguish by honours. The Marquess Federigo Gonzaga of Mantua, the Duke Guidobaldo II. of Urbino, among many others, showed themselves ready to propitiate him ; and such a man as Titian the worldly-wise, the lover of splendid living to whom ample means and the fruitful favour of the great were a necessity ; who was grasping yet not avaricious, who loved wealth chiefly because it secured material consideration and a life of serene enjoyment ; such a man could not be expected to rise superior to the temptations presented by a friendship with Aretino, or to despise the immense advantages which it included. As he is revealed by his biographers, and above all by himself, Aretino was essentially " good company." He could pass off his most flagrant misdeeds, his worst sallies, with a certain large and Rabelaisian gaiety ; if he made money his chief god, it was to spend it in magnificent clothes and high living, but also at times with an intelligent and even a bene ficent liberality. He was a fine though not an unerring connoisseur of art, he had a passionate love of music, and an unusually exquisite perception of the beauties of Nature. To hint that the lower nature of the man corrupted that of Titian, and exercised a disintegrating influence over his art, would be to go far beyond the requirements of the case. The great Venetian, though he might at this stage be much nearer to earth than in those early days when he was enveloped in the golden glow of Giorgione's overmastering influence, could never have lowered himself to the level of those too famous Sonetti Lussuriosi which brought down the vengeance of even a Medici Pope (Clement VII.) upon Aretino the writer, Giulio Romano the illustrator, and Marcantonio Raimondi the engraver. Gracious and dignified in sensuousness he always remained even when, as at this middle stage of his career, the vivifying shafts of poetry no longer pierced through, and transmuted with their vibration of true passion, the fair realities of life. He could never have been guilty of the frigid and calculated indecency of a Giulio Romano ; he could not have cast aside all conventional restraints, of taste as well as of propriety, as Rubens and 8 THE LATER WORK OF TITIAN even Rembrandt did on occasion ; but as Van Dyck, the child of Titian almost as much as he was the child of Rubens, ever shrank from doing. Still the ease and splendour of the life at Biri Grande — that pleasant abode with its fair gardens overlooking Murano, the Lagoons, and the Friulan Alps, to which Titian migrated in 1 53 1 — the Epicureanism which saturated the atmosphere, the necessity for keeping constantly in view the material side of life, all these things operated to colour the creations which mark this period of Titian's practice, at which he has reached the apex of pictorial achievement, but shows himself too serene in sensuousness, too unruffled in the masterly practice of his profession to give to the heart the absolute satisfaction that he affords to the eyes. This is the greatest test of genius of the first order — to preserve undimmed in mature manhood and old age the gift of imaginative interpretation which youth and love give, or lend, to so many who, buoyed up by momentary inspira tion, are yet not to remain permanently in the first rank. With Titian at this time supreme ability is not invariably illumined from within by the lamp of genius ; the light flashes forth nevertheless, now and again, and most often in those portraits of men of which the sublime Charles V. at Muhlherg is the greatest. Towards the end the flame will rise once more and steadily burn, with something on occasion of the old heat, but with a hue paler and more mysterious, such as may naturally be the outward symbol of genius on the confines of eternity. The second period, following upon the completion of the St. Peter Martyr, is one less of great altar-pieces and poesie such as the miscalled Sacred and Profane Love (Medea and Venus), the Bacchanals, and the Bacchus and Ariadne, than it is of splendid nudities and great portraits. In the former, however mythological be the subject, it is generally chosen but to afford a decent pretext for the generous display of beauty unveiled. The portraits are at this stage less often intimate and soul-searching in their summing up of a human personality than they are official present ments of great personages and noble dames ; showing them, no doubt, without false adulation or cheap idealisation, yet much as they desire to appear to their allies, their friends, and their subjects, sovereign in natural dignity and aristocratic grace, yet essentially in a moment of representation. Farther on the great altar-pieces reappear more sombre, more agitated in passion, as befits the period of the sixteenth century in THE LATER WORK OF TITIAN 9 which Titian's latest years are passed, and the patrons for whom he paints. Of the poesie there is then a new upspringing, a new efflorescence, and we get by the side of the Venus and Adonis, the Diana and Actceon, the Diana and Calisto, the Rape of Europa, such pieces of a more exquisite and penetrating poetry as the Venere del Pardo of Paris, and the Nymph and Shepherd of Vienna. This appears to be the right place to say a word about the magnificent engraving by Van Dalen of a portrait, no longer known to exist, but which has, upon the evidence apparently of the print, been put down as that of Titian by himself. It represents a bearded man of some thirty- five years, dressed in a rich but sombre habit, and holding a book. The portrait is evidently not that of a painter by himself, nor does it represent Titian at any age ; but it finely suggests, even in black and white, a noble original by the master. Now, a comparison with the best authenticated portrait of Aretino, the superb three-quarter length painted in 1545, and actually at the Pitti Palace, reveals certain marked similarities of feature and type, notwithstanding the very considerable difference of age between the personages represented. Very striking is the agreement of eye and nose in either case, while in the younger as in the older man we note an idiosyncrasy in which vigorous intellect as well as strong sensuality has full play. Van Dalen's engraving very probably reproduces one of the lost portraits of Aretino by Titian. In Crowe and Cavalcaselle's Biography (vol. i. pp. 317-319) we learn from correspondence inter changed in the summer of 1527 between Federigo Gonzaga, Titian, and Aretino, that the painter, in order to propitiate the Mantuan ruler, sent to him with a letter, the exaggerated flattery of which savours of Aretino's precept and example, portraits of the latter and of Signor Hieronimo Adorno, another " faithful servant " of the Marquess. Now Aretino was born in 1492, so that in 1527 he would be thirty-five, which appears to be just about the age of the vigorous and splendid personage in Van Dalen's print. Some reasons were given in the former section of this monograph x for the assertion that the Madonna with St. Catherine, mentioned in a letter from Giacomo Malatesta to the Marchese Federigo Gonzaga, dated February 1530, was not, as is assumed by Crowe and Cavalcaselle, the 1 "The Earlier Work of Titian," Portfolio, October 1897. io THE LATER WORK OF TITIAN Madonna del Coniglio of the Louvre, but the Madonna and Child with St. John the Baptist and St. Catherine, which is No. 635 at the National Gallery.1 Few pictures of the master have been more frequently copied and adapted than this radiantly beautiful piece, in which the dominant chord of the scheme of colour is composed by the cerulean blues of the heavens and the Virgin's entire dress, the deep luscious greens of the landscape, and the peculiar, pale, citron hue, relieved with a crimson girdle, of the robe worn by the St. Catherine, a splendid Venetian beauty of no very refined type or emotional intensity. Perfect repose and serenity are the keynote of the conception, which in its luxuriant beauty has little of the power to touch that must be conceded to the more naive and equally splendid Madonna del Coniglio? It is above all in the wonderful Venetian landscape — a mountain-bordered vale, along which flocks and herds are being driven, under a sky of the most intense blue — that the master shows himself supreme. Nature is therein not so much detailed as synthesised with a sweeping breadth which makes of the scene not the reflection of one beautiful spot in the Venetian territory, but without loss of essential truth or character a very type of Venetian landscape of the sixteenth century. These herdsmen and their flocks, and also the note of warning in the sky of supernatural splendour, recall the beautiful Venetian storm-landscape in the royal collection at Buckingham Palace. This has been very generally actributed to Titian himself,3 and described as the only canvas still extant in which he has made landscape his one and only theme. It has, indeed, a rare and mysterious power to move, a true 1 According to the catalogue of 1892, this picture was formerly in the sacristy of the Escorial in Spain. It can only be by an oversight that it is therein described as " possibly painted there," since Titian never was in Spain. '- It is especially to be noted that there is not a trace of red in the picture, save for the modest crimson waistband of the St. Catherine. Contrary to almost universal usage, it might almost be said to orthodoxy, the entire draperies of the Virgin are of one intense blue. Her veil-like head-gear is of a brownish gray, while the St. Catherine wears a golden-brown scarf, continuing the glories of her elaborately dressed hair. The audacity of the colour-scheme is only equalled by its success ; no calculated effort at anything unusual being apparent. The beautiful, naked putto who appears in the sky, arresting the progress of the shepherds, is too trivial in conception for the occasion. A similar incident is depicted in the background of the much earlier Holy Family, No. 4 at the National Gallery, but there the messenger angel is more appropriately and more reverently depicted as full-grown and in flowing garments. 1 Crowe and Cavalcaselle, vol. i. pp. 396, 397 ; Tizian, von H. Knackfuss, p. 55. THE LATER WORK OF TITIAN 1 1 poetry of interpretation. A fleeting moment, full of portent as well as of beauty, has been seized ; the smile traversed by a frown of the stormy sky, half overshadowing half revealing the wooded slopes, the rich plain, and the distant mountains, is rendered with a rare felicity. The beauty is, all the same, in the conception and in the thing actually seen — much less in the actual painting. It is hardly possible to convince oneself, comparing the work with such landscape backgrounds as those in this picture at the Madonna and Child with St. Catherine and St. John the Baptist. National Gallery. From a Photograph by Morelli. National Gallery in the somewhat earlier Madonna del Coniglio, and the gigantic St. Peter Martyr, or, indeed, in a score of other genuine productions, that the depth, the vigour, the authority of Titian himself are here to be recognised. The weak treatment of the great Titianesque tree in the foreground, with its too summarily indicated foliage — to select only one detail that comes naturally to hand — would in itself suffice to bring such an attribution into question. Vasari states, speaking confessedly from hearsay, that in 1530, the Emperor Charles V. being at Bologna, Titian was summoned thither by 12 THE LATER WORK OF TITIAN Cardinal Ippolito de' Medici, using Aretino as an intermediary, and that he on that occasion executed a most admirable portrait of His Majesty, all in arms, which had so much success that the artist received as a present a thousand scudi. Crowe and Cavalcaselle, however, adduce strong evidence to prove that Titian was busy in Venice for Federigo Gonzaga at the time of the Emperor's first visit, and that he only proceeded to Bologna in July to paint for the Marquess of Mantua the portrait of a Bolognese beauty, La Cornelia, the lady-in-waiting of the Countess Pepoli, whom Covas, the all-powerful political secretary of Charles the Fifth, had seen and admired at the splendid entertainments given by the Pepoli to the Emperor. Vasari has in all probability confounded this journey of Charles in 1530 with that subsequent one undertaken in 1532 when Titian not only portrayed the Emperor, but also painted an admirable likeness of Ippolito de' Medici presently to be described. He had the bad luck on this occasion to miss the lady Cornelia, who had retired to Nuvolara, indisposed and not in good face. The letter written by our painter to the Marquess in connection with this incident 1 is chiefly remarkable as affording evidence of his too great anxiety to portray the lady without approaching her, relying merely on the portrait, " che fece quel altro pittore della detta Cornelia" ; of his unwillingness to proceed to Nuvolara, unless the picture thus done at second hand should require alteration. In truth we have lighted here upon one of Titian's most besetting sins, this willingness, this eager ness, when occasion offers, to paint portraits without direct reference to the model. In this connection we are reminded that he never saw Francis the First, whose likeness he notwithstanding painted with so showy and superficial a magnificence as to make up to the casual observer for the absence of true vitality ; 2 that the Empress Isabella, Charles V.'s consort, when at the behest of the monarch he produced her sumptuous but lifeless and empty portrait, now in the great gallery of the Prado, was long since dead. He consented, basing his picture upon a likeness of much earlier date, to paint Isabella d'Este Gonzaga as a young woman when she was already an old one, thereby flattering an amiable and natural weakness in this great princess and unrivalled 1 Crowe and Cavalcaselle, Appendix to vol. i. p. 448. - No. 1288 in the Long Gallery of the Louvre. THE LATER WORK OF TITIAN 13 dilettante, but impairing his own position as an artist of supreme rank.1 It is not necessary to include in this category the popular Caterina Cornaro of the Uffizi, since it is confessedly nothing but a fancy portrait, making no reference to the true aspect at any period of the long-since deceased queen of Cyprus, and, what is more, no original Titian, but at the utmost an atelier piece from his entourage. Take, however, as an instance the Francis the First, which was painted some few years later than the time at which we have now arrived, and at about the same period as the Isabella d'Este. Though as a portrait d'apparat it makes its effect, and reveals the sovereign accomplishment of the master, does it not shrink into the merest insignificance when compared with such renderings from life as the successive portraits of Charles the Fifth, the Ippolito de' Medici, the Francesco Maria della Rovere ? This is as it must and should be, and Titian is not the less great, but the greater, because he cannot convincingly evolve at second hand the true human individuality, physical and mental, of man or woman. It was in the earlier part of 153 1 that Titian painted for Federigo Gonzaga a St. Jerome and a St. Mary Magdalene, destined for the famous Vittoria Colonna, Marchioness of Pescara, who had expressed to the ruler of Mantua the desire to possess such a picture. Gonzaga writes to the Marchioness on March 11, 1 83 1 2 : — " Ho subito mandate a Venezia e scritto a Titiano, quale e forse il piu eccellente in quell' arte che a nostri tempi si ritrovi, ed e tutto mio, ricercandolo con grande instantia a volerne fare una bella lagrimosa piu che si so puo, e farmela haver presto." The passage is worth quoting as showing the estimation in which Titian was held at a court which had known and still knew the greatest Italian masters of the art. It is not possible at present to identify with any extant painting the St. Jerome, of which we know that it hung in the private apartments 1 See the canvas No. 163 in the Imperial Gallery of Vienna. The want of life and of a definite personal character makes it almost repellent, notwithstanding the breadth and easy mastery of the technique. Rubens's copy of a lost or unidentified Titian, No. 845 in the same gallery, shows that he painted Isabella from life in mature middle age, and with a truthfulness omitting no sign of over-ripeness. This portrait may very possibly have been done in 1522, when Titian appeared at the court of the Gonzagas. Its realism, even allowing for Rubens's unconscious exaggeration, might well have deterred the Gonzaga princess from being limned from life some twelve years later still. 2 Crowe and Cavalcaselle, vol. i., Appendix, p. 451. 14 THE LATER WORK OF TITIAN of the Marchioness Isabella at Mantua. The writer is unable to accept Crowe and Cavalcaselle's suggestion that it may be the fine moonlight landscape with St. Jerome in prayer which is now in the Long Gallery of the Louvre. This piece, if indeed it be by Titian, which is by no means certain, must belong to his late time. The landscape, which is marked by a beautiful and wholly unconventional treatment of moonlight, for which it would not be easy to find a parallel in the painting of the time, is worthy of the Cadorine, and agrees well, especially in the broad treatment of foliage, with, for instance, the background in the late Venus and Cupid of the Tribuna.1 The figure of St. Jerome, on the other hand, does not in the peculiar tightness of the modelling, or in the flesh-tints, recall Titian's masterly synthetic way of going to work in works of this late period. The noble St. Jerome of the Brera, which indubitably belongs to a well-advanced stage in the late time, will be dealt with in its right place. Though it does not appear probable that we have, in the much-admired Magdalen of the Pitti, the picture here referred to — this last having belonged to Francesco Maria della Rovere, Duke of Urbino, and representing, to judge by style, a somewhat more advanced period in the painter's career — it may be convenient to mention it here. As an example of accomplished brush-work, of handling careful and yet splendid in breadth, it is indeed worthy of all admiration. The colours of the fair human body, the marvellous wealth of golden blond hair, the youthful flesh glowing semi-transparent, and suggesting the rush of the blood beneath ; these are also the colours of the picture, aided only by the indefinite land scape and the deep blue sky of the background. If this were to be accepted as the Magdalen painted for Federigo Gonzaga, we must hold, nevertheless, that Titian with his masterpiece of painting only half satisfied the requirements of his patron. Bellissima this Magdalen undoubtedly is, but hardly lagrimosa piu che si puo. She is a belle pecheresse whose repentance sits all too lightly upon her, whose conscious ness of a physical charm not easily to be withstood is hardly disguised. 1 The idea of painting St. Jerome by moonlight was not a new one. In the house at Venice of Andrea Odoni, the dilettante whose famous portrait by Lotto is at Hampton Court, the Anonimo (Marcantonio Michiel) saw, in I 532, " St. Jerome seated naked in a desert landscape by moonlight, by [sic), copied from a canvas by Zorzi da Castelfranco (Giorgionc)." rmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm 11 1 St. Jerome. Pen Drawing by Titian (? British Museum. THE LATER WORK OF TITIAN 15 Somehow, although the picture in no way oversteps the bounds of decency, and cannot be objected to even by the most over-scrupulous, there is latent in it a jarring note of unrefinement in the presentment of exuberant youth and beauty which we do not find in the more avowedly sensuous Venus of the Tribuna. This last is an avowed act of worship by the artist of the naked human body, and as such, in its noble frankness, free from all offence, except to those whose scruples in matters of art we are not here called upon to consider. From this Magdalen to that much later one of the Hermitage, which will be described farther on, is a great step upwards, and it is a step which, in passing from the middle to the last period, we shall more than once find ourselves taking. It is impossible to give even in outline here an account of Titian's correspondence and business relations with his noble and royal patrons, instructive as it is to follow these out, and to see how, under the influence of Aretino, his natural eagerness to grasp in every direction at material advantages is sharpened ; how he becomes at once more humble and more pressing, covering with the manner and the tone appropriate to courts the reiterated demands of the keen and indefatigable man of business. It is the less necessary to attempt any such account in these pages — dealing as we are chiefly with the work and not primarily with the life of Titian — seeing that in Crowe and Cavalcaselle's admirable biography this side of the subject, among many others, is most patiently and exhaustively dealt with. In 1 53 1 we read of a Boy Baptist by Titian sent by Aretino to Maximian Stampa, an imperialist partisan in command of the castle of Milan. The donor particularly dwells upon " the beautiful curl of the Baptist's hair, the fairness of his skin, etc.," a description which recalls to us, in striking fashion, the little St. John in the Virgin and Child with St. Catherine of the National Gallery, which belongs, as has been shown, to the same time. It was on the occasion of the second visit of the Emperor and his court to Bologna at the close of 1532 that Titian first came in personal contact with Charles V., and obtained from that monarch his first sitting. In the course of an inspection, with Federigo Gonzaga himself as cicerone, of the art treasures preserved in the palace at Mantua, the Emperor saw the portrait by Titian of Federigo, and was so much struck 1 6 THE LATER WORK OF TITIAN with it, so intent upon obtaining a portrait of himself from the same brush, that the Marquess wrote off at once pressing our master to join him without delay in his capital. Titian preferred, however, to go direct to Bologna in the train of his earlier patron Alfonso d'Este. It was on this occasion that Charles's all-powerful secretary, the greedy, overbearing Covos, exacted as a gift from the agents of the Duke of Ferrara, among other things, a portrait of Alfonso himself by Titian ; and in all probability obtained also a portrait from the same hand of Ercole d'Este, the heir-apparent. There is evidence to show that the portrait of Alfonso was at once handed over to, or appropriated by, the Emperor. Whether this was the picture described by Vasari as representing the prince with his arm resting on a great piece of artillery, does not appear. Of this last a copy exists in the Pitti Gallery which Crowe and Cavalcaselle have ascribed to Dosso Dossi, but the original is nowhere to be traced. The Ferrarese ruler is, in this last canvas, depicted as a man of forty or upwards, of resolute and somewhat careworn aspect. It has already been demonstrated, on evidence furnished by Herr Carl Justi, that the supposed portrait of Alfonso, in the gallery of the Prado at Madrid, cannot possibly represent Titian's patron at any stage of his career, but in all probability, like the so-called Giorgio Cornaro of Castle Howard, is a likeness of his son and successor, Ercole II. Titian's first portrait of the Emperor, a full-length in which he appeared in armour with a generalissimo's baton of command, was taken in 1556 from Brussels to Madrid, after the formal ceremony of abdication, and perished, it would appear, in one of the too numerous fires which have devastated from time to time the royal palaces of the Spanish capital and its neighbourhood. To the same period belongs, no doubt, the noble full- length of Charles in gala court costume which now hangs in the Sala de la Reina Isabel in the Prado Gallery, as a pendant to Titian's portrait of Philip II. in youth. Crowe and Cavalcaselle assume that not this picture, but a replica, was the one which found its way into Charles I.'s collection, and was there catalogued by Van der Doort as " the Emperor Charles the Fifth, brought by the king from Spain, being done at length with a big white Irish dog" — going afterwards, at the dispersal of the king's effects, to Sir Balthasar Gerbier for ^1 50. There is, however, no valid reason for doubting that this is the very picture owned for a time by Charles I., and THE LATER WORK OF TITIAN 17 which busy intriguing Gerbier afterwards bought, only to part with it to Cardenas the Spanish ambassador.1 Other famous originals by Titian were among the choicest gifts made by Philip IV. to Prince Charles at the time of his runaway expedition to Madrid with the Duke of Buckingham, and this was no doubt among them. Confirmation is supplied by the fact that the references to the existence of this picture in the royal palaces of Madrid are for the reigns of Philip II., Charles II., and Charles III., thus leaving a large gap unaccounted for. Dimmed as the great portrait is, robbed of its glow and its chastened splendour in a variety of ways, it is still a rare example of the master's unequalled power in rendering race, the unaffected consciousness of exalted rank, natural as distinguished from assumed dignity. There is here no demonstrative assertion of grandeza, no menacing display of truculent authority, but an absolutely serene and simple attitude such as can only be the outcome of a consciousness of supreme rank and responsibility which it can never have occurred to any one to call into question. To see and perpetuate these subtle qualities, which go so far to redeem the physical drawbacks of the House of Haps- burg, the painter must have had a peculiar instinct for what is aristocratic in the higher sense of the word — that is, both outwardly and inwardly distinguished. This was indeed one of the leading characteristics of Titian's great art, more especially in portraiture. Giorgione went deeper, knowing the secret of the soul's refinement, the aristocracy of poetry and passion ; Lotto sympathetically laid bare the heart's secrets and showed the pathetic helplessness of humanity. Tintoretto communicated his own savage grandeur, his own unrest, to those whom he depicted ; Paolo Veronese charmed without arriere-pensee by the intensity of vitality which with perfect simplicity he preserved in his sitters. Yet to Titian must be conceded absolute supremacy in the rendering not only of the outward but of the essential dignity, the refinement of type and bearing, which without doubt come unconsciously to those who can boast a noble and illustrious ancestry. Again the writer hesitates to agree with Crowe and Cavalcaselle when they place at this period, that is to say about 1533, the superb Allegory of the Louvre (No. 1589), which is very gener ally believed to represent the famous commander Alfonso d'Avalos, 1 See " The Picture Gallery of Charles I.," The Portfolio, January I 896, pp. 49 and 99. B 1 8 THE LATER WORK OF TITIAN Marques del Vasto, with his family. The eminent biographers of Titian connect the picture with the return of d'Avalos from the campaign against the Turks, undertaken by him in the autumn of 1532, under the leadership of Croy, at the behest of his imperial master. They hazard the surmise that the picture, though painted after Alfonso's return, symbolises his departure for the wars, " consoled by Victory, Love, and Hymen." A more natural conclusion would surely be that what Titian has sought to suggest is the return of the commander to enjoy the hard-earned fruits of victory. The Italo-Spanish grandee was born at Naples in 1502, so that at this date he would have been but thirty-one years of age, whereas the mailed warrior of the Allegory is at least forty, perhaps older. More over, and this is the essential point, the technical qualities of the picture, the wonderful easy mastery of the handling, the peculiarities of the colouring and the general tone, surely point to a rather later date, to a period, indeed, some ten years ahead of the time at which we have arrived. If we are to accept the tradition that this Allegory, or quasi-allegorical portrait-piece, giving a fanciful embodiment to the pleasures of martial domination, of conjugal love, of well-earned peace and plenty, represents d'Avalos, his consort Mary of Arragon, and their family — and a comparison with the well-authenticated portrait of Del Vasto in the Allocution of Madrid does not carry with it entire conviction — we must perforce place the Louvre picture some ten years later than do Crowe and Cavalcaselle. Apart from the question of identification, it appears to the writer that the technical execution of the piece would lead to a similar conclusion.1 To this year, 1533, belongs one of the masterpieces in portraiture of our painter, the wonderful Cardinal Ippolito de' Medici in a Hungarian habit of the Pitti. This youthful Prince of the Church, the natural 1 The somewhat similar Allegories No. 173 and No. 187 in the Imperial Gallery at Vienna (New Catalogue, 1895), both classed as by Titian, cannot take rank as more than atelier works. Still farther from the master is the Initiation of a Bacchante, No. 1 1 16 (Cat. 1 891), in the Alte Pinakothek of Munich. This is apiece too cold and hard, too opaque, to have come even from his studio. It is a pasticcio made up in a curiously mechanical way, from the Louvre Allegory and the quite late Education of Cupid in the Borghese Gallery ; the latter composition having been manifestly based by Titian himself, according to what became something like a custom in old age, upon the earlier Allegory. THE LATER WORK OF TITIAN 19 son of Giuliano de' Medici, Duke of Nemours, was born in 151 1, so that when Titian so incomparably portrayed him, he was, for all the perfect maturity of his virile beauty, for all the perfect self-possession Cardinal Ippolito de^ Medici. Pitti Palace, Florence. From a Photograph by G. Brogi. of his aspect, but twenty-two years of age. He was the passionate worshipper of the divine Giulia Gonzaga, whose portrait he caused to be painted by Sebastiano del Piombo. His part in the war undertaken by Charles V. in 1532, against the Turks, had been a strange one. 20 THE LATER WORK OF TITIAN Clement VII., his relative, had appointed him Legate and sent him to Vienna at the head of three hundred musketeers. But when Charles withdrew from the army to return to Italy, the Italian contingent, Francis the First. Louvre. From a Photograph by Neurdein. instead of going in pursuit of the Sultan into Hungary, opportunely mutinied, thus affording to their pleasure- loving leader the desired pretext for riding back with them through the Austrian provinces, with eyes wilfully closed the while to their acts of depredation. THE LATER WORK OF TITIAN 21 It was in the rich and fantastic habit of a Hungarian captain that the handsome young Medici was now painted by Titian at Bologna, Portrait of a Nobleman. Pitti Palace, Florence. From a Photograph by E. Alinari. the result being a portrait unique of its kind even in his life- work. The sombre glow of the supple, youthful flesh, the red-brown of the rich velvet habit which defines the perfect shape of Ippolito, the 22 THE LATER WORK OF TITIAN red of the fantastic plumed head-dress worn by him with such sovereign ease, make up a deep harmony, warm, yet not in the technical sense hot, and of indescribable effect. And this effect is centralised in the uncanny glance, the mysterious aspect of the man whom, as we see him here, a woman might love for his beauty, but a man would do well to distrust. The smaller portrait painted by Titian about the same time of the young Cardinal fully armed — the one which, with the Pitti picture, Vasari saw in the closet (guardaroba) of Cosimo, Duke of Tuscany — is not now known to exist.1 It may be convenient to mention here one of the most magnificent among the male portraits of Titian, the Young Nobleman in the Sala di Marte of the Pitti Gallery, although its exact place in the middle time of the artist it is, failing all data on the point, not easy to determine. At Florence there has somehow been attached to it the curious name Howard duca di Norfolk? but upon what grounds, if any, the writer is unable to state. The master of Cadore never painted a head more finely or with a more exquisite finesse, never more happily characterised a face, than that of this resolute, self-contained young patrician with the curly chestnut hair and the short, fine beard and moustache — a personage high of rank, doubtless, notwithstanding the studied simplicity of his dress. Because we know nothing of the sitter, and there is in his pose and general aspect nothing sensational, this masterpiece is, if not precisely not less celebrated among connoisseurs, at any rate less popular with the larger public, than it deserves to be.3 1 A rather tiresome and lifeless portrait of Ippolito is that to be found in the picture No. 20 in the National Gallery, in which it has been assumed that his companion is his favourite painter, Sebastiano del Piombo, to whom the picture is, not without some misgivings, attributed. 2 It has been photographed under this name by Anderson of Rome. 3 In much the same position, since it hardly enjoys the celebrity to which it is entitled, is another masterpiece of portraiture from the brush of Titian, which, as belong ing to his earlier middle time, should more properly have been mentioned in the first section of this monograph. This is the great Portrait of a Man in Black, No. 1 591 in the Louvre. It shows a man of some forty years, of simple mien yet of indefinably tragic aspect ; he wears moderately long hair, is clothed entirely in black, and rests his right hand on his hip, while passing the left through his belt. The dimensions of the canvas are more imposing than those of the feune Homme au Gant. No example in the Louvre, even though it competes with Madrid for the honour of possessing the greatest Titians in the world, is of finer quality than this picture. Near this — No. 1592 in the same great S. Giovanni Elemosinario giving Alms. In the Church of that name at Venice. From a Photograph by Naya. 24 THE LATER WORK OF TITIAN The noble altar-piece in the church of S. Giovanni Elemosinario at Venice showing the saint of that name enthroned, and giving alms to a beggar, belongs to the close of 1533 or thereabouts, since the high-altar was finished in the month of October of that year. According to Vasari, it must be regarded as having served above all to assert once for all the supremacy of Titian over Pordenone, whose friends had obtained for him the commission to paint in competition with the Cadorine an altar-piece for one of the apsidal chapels of the church, where, indeed, his work is still to be seen.1 Titian's canvas, like most of the great altar-pieces of the middle time, was originally arched at the top ; but the vandalism of a subse quent epoch has, as in the case of the Madonna di S. NiccoTo, now in the Vatican, made of this arch a square, thereby greatly impairing the majesty of the general effect. Titian here solves the problem of com bining the strong and simple decorative aspect demanded by the position of the work as the central feature of a small church, with the utmost pathos and dignity, thus doing incomparably in his own way — the way of the colourist and the warm, the essentially human realist — what Michelangelo had, soaring high above earth, accomplished with un approachable sublimity in the Prophets and Sibyls of the Sixtine Chapel. The colour is appropriately sober, yet a general tone is produced of great strength and astonishing effectiveness. The illumination is that of the open air, tempered and modified by an overhanging canopy of green ; the great effect is obtained by the brilliant grayish white of the saint's alb, dominat ing and keeping in due balance the red of the rochet and the under-robes, the cloud-veiled sky, the marble throne or podium, the dark green hanging. This picture must have had in the years to follow a strong and lasting influence on Paolo Veronese, the keynote to whose audaciously gallery — hangs another Portrait of a Man in Black bv Titian, and belonging to his middle time. The personage presented, though of high breeding, is cynical and repellent of aspect. The strong right hand rests quietly yet menacingly on a poniard, this attitude serving to give a peculiarly aggressive character to the whole conception. In the present state of this fine and striking picture the yellowness and want of transparency of the flesh- tones, both in the head and hands, gives rise to certain doubts as to the correctness of the ascription. Yet this peculiarity may well arise from injurv ; it would at any rate be hazardous to put forward any other name than that of Titian, to whom we must be content to leave the portrait. 1 This is the exceedingly mannered yet all the same rich and beautiful St. Catherine, St. Roch, with a boy angel, and St. Sebastian. THE LATER WORK OF TITIAN 25 brilliant yet never over-dazzling colour is this use of white and gray in large dominating masses. The noble figure of S. Giovanni gave him a proto type for many of his imposing figures of bearded old men. There is a strong reminiscence, too, of the saint's attitude in one of the most wonderful of extant Veroneses — that sumptuous altar-piece SS. Anthony, Cornelius, and Cyprian with a Page, in the Brera, for which he invented a harmony as delicious as it is daring, composed wholly of violet-purple, green, and gold. CHAPTER II Francesco Maria delta Rover e — Titian and Eleonora Gonzaga — The " Venus with the Shell " — Titian s later ideals — The " Venus ofUrbino " — The " Bella di Tiziano " — The " Twelve Ctesars" — Titian and Pordenone — The "Battle of Cadore" — Portraits of the Master by himself — The " Presentation in the Temple" — The " Allocation " of Madrid — The Ceiling Pictures of Santo Spirito — First Meeting with Pope Paul III. — The " Ecce Homo'''' of Vienna — "Christ with the Pilgrims at Emmaus." Within the years 1532 and 1538, or thereabouts, would appear to fall Titian's relations with another princely patron, Francesco Maria della Rovere, Duke of Urbino, the nephew of the redoubtable Pope Julius II., whose qualities of martial ardour and unbridled passion he reproduced in an exaggerated form. By his mother, Giovanna da Montefeltro, he descended also from the rightful dynasty of Urbino, to which he suc ceeded in virtue of adoption. His life of perpetual strife, of warfare in defence of his more than once lost and reconquered duchy, and as the captain first of the army of the Church, afterwards of the Venetian forces, came to an abrupt end in 1538. With his own hand he had, in the ardent days of his youth, slain in the open streets of Ravenna the hand some, sinister Cardinal Alidosi, thereby bringing down upon himself the anathemas of his uncle, Julius II., and furnishing to his successor, the Medici pope Leo X., the best possible excuse for the sequestration of the duchy of Urbino in favour of his own house. He himself died by poison, suspicion resting upon the infamous Pier Luigi Farnese, the son of Paul III. Francesco Maria had espoused Eleonora Gonzaga, the sister of Titian's protector, Federigo, and it is probably through the latter that the relations with our master sprang up to which we owe a small group The Girl in the Fur Cloak. Imperial Gallery, Vienna. From a Photograph by Lowy. 28 THE LATER WORK OF TITIAN of his very finest works, including the so-called Venus of Urbino of the Tribuna, the Girl in a Fur Cloak of the Vienna Gallery, and the com panion portraits of Francesco Maria and Eleonora which are now in the Venetian Gallery at the Uffizi. The fiery leader of armies had, it should be remembered, been brought up by Guidobaldo of Montefeltro, one of the most amiable and enlightened princes of his time, and, moreover, his consort Eleonora was the daughter of Isabella d'Este Gonzaga, than whom the Renaissance knew no more enthusiastic or more discriminating patron of art. A curious problem meets us at the outset. We may assume with some degree of certainty that the portraits of the duke and duchess belong to the year 1537. Stylistic characteristics point to the conclusion that the great Venus of the Tribuna, the so-called Bella di Tiziano, and the Girl in the Fur Cloak — to take only undoubted originals — belong to much the same stage of Titian's practice as the companion portraits at the Uffizi. Eleonora Gonzaga, a princess of the highest culture, the daughter of an admirable mother, the friend of Pietro Bembo, Sadolet, and Baldassarre Castiglione, was at this time a matron of some twenty years' standing ; at the date when her avowed portrait was painted she must have been at the very least forty. By what magic did Titian manage to suggest her type and physiognomy in the famous pictures just now mentioned, and yet to plunge the duchess into a kind of Fontaine de Jouvence, realising in the divine freshness of youth and beauty beings who nevertheless appear to have with her some kind of mystic and unsolved connection ? If this was what he really intended — and the results attained may lead us without temerity to assume as much — no subtler or more exquisite form of flattery could be conceived. It is curious to note that at the same time he signally failed with the portrait of her mother, Isa bella d'Este, painted in 1534, but showing the Marchioness of Mantua as a young woman of some twenty-five years, though she was then sixty. Here youth and a semblance of beauty are called up by the magic of the artist, but the personality, both physical and mental, is lost in the effort. But then in this last case Titian was working from an early portrait, and without the living original to refer to. But, before approaching the discussion of the Venus of Urbino, it is necessary to say a word about another Venus which must have been THE LATER WORK OF TITIAN 29 painted some years before this time, revealing, as it does, a completely different and, it must be owned, a higher ideal. This is the terribly ruined, yet still beautiful, Venus Anadyomene, or Venus of the Shell, of the Bridgewater Gallery, painted perhaps at the instigation of some humanist, to realise a description of the world-famous painting of Apelles. It is not at present possible to place this picture with anything approaching to chronological exactitude. It must have been painted some years after the Bacchus and Ariadne of the National Gallery, some years before the Venus of the Tribuna, and that is about as near as surmise can get. The type of the goddess in the Ellesmere picture recalls somewhat the Ariadne in our masterpiece at the National Gallery, but also, albeit in a less material form, the Magdalens of a later time. Titian's conception of perfect womanhood is here midway between his earlier Giorgionesque ideal and the frankly sensuous yet grand luxuriance of his maturity and old age. He never, even in the days of youth and Giorgionesque enchantment, penetrated so far below the surface as did his master and friend Barbarelli. He could not equal him in giving, with the undisguised physical allurement which belongs to the true woman, as distinguished from the ideal conception compounded of womanhood's finest attributes, that sovereignty of amorous yet of spiritual charm which is its complement and its corrective.1 Still with Titian, too, in the earlier years, woman, as presented in the perfection of mature youth, had, accompanying and elevating her bodily loveliness, a measure of that higher and nobler feminine attractiveness which would enable her to meet man on equal terms, nay, actively to exercise a dominating influence of fascination. In illustration of this assertion it is only necessary to refer to the draped and the undraped figure in the Medea and Venus {Sacred and Profane hove) of the Borghese Gallery, to the Herodias of the Doria Gallery, to the Flora of the Uffizi. Here, even when the beautiful Venetian courtesan is represented or suggested, what the master gives is less the mere votary than the priestess of love. Of this power of domination, this feminine royalty, the Venus Anadyomene still retains a measure, but the Venus of Urbino and the splendid succession of Venuses and Danaes, goddesses, nymphs, and heroines belonging to the period of the fullest maturity, 1 See Giorgione's Adrastus and Hypsipyle [Landscape with the Soldier and the Gipsy) of the Giovanelli Palace, the Venus of Dresden, the Concert Champetre of the Louvre. 30 THE LATER WORK OF TITIAN show woman in the phase in which, renouncing her power to enslave, she is herself reduced to slavery. These glowing presentments of physical attractiveness embody a lower ideal — that of woman as the plaything of man, his precious possession, his delight in the lower sense. And yet Titian expresses this by no means exalted conception with a grand candour, an absence of arriere- pensee such as almost purges it of offence. It is Giovanni Morelli who, in tracing the gradual descent from his recovered treasure, the Venus of Giorgione in the Dresden Gallery,1 through the various Venuses of Titian down to those of the latest manner, so finely expresses the essential difference between Giorgione's divinity and her sister in the Tribuna. The former sleeping, and protected only by her sovereign loveliness, is safer from offence than the waking goddess — or shall we not rather say woman ? — who in Titian's canvas passively waits in her rich Venetian bower, tended by her handmaidens. It is again Morelli 2 who points out that, as compared with Correggio, even Giorgione — to say nothing of Titian — is when he renders the beauty of woman or goddess a realist. And this is true in a sense, yet not altogether. Correggio's Danae, his lo, his Leda, his Venus, are in their exquisite grace of form and movement farther removed from the mere fleshly beauty of the undraped model than are the goddesses and women of Giorgione. The passion and throb of humanity are replaced by a subtler and less easily explicable charm ; beauty becomes a perfectly balanced and finely modulated harmony. Still the allurement is there, and it is more consciously and more provocatively exercised than with Giorgione, though the fascination of Correggio's divinities asserts itself less directly, less candidly. Showing through the frankly human loveliness of Giorgione's women there is after all a higher spirituality, a deeper intimation of that true, that clear-burning passion, enveloping body and soul, which transcends all exterior grace and harmony, however exquisite it may be in refinement of voluptuousness.3 1 It is unnecessary in this connection to speak of the Darmstadt Venus invented by Crowe and Cavalcaselle, and to which as a type they so constantly refer. Giovanni Morelli has demonstrated with very general acceptance that this is only a late adaptation of the exquisite Venus of Dresden, which it is his greatest glory to have restored to Barbarelli and to the world. 2 Die Galerien zu Munchen und Dresden von Ivan Lermolieff, p. 290. 3 Palma Vccchio, in his presentments of ripe Venetian beauty, was, we have seen, much more literal than Giorgione, more literal, too, less the poet-painter, than the young THE LATER WORK OF TITIAN 31 It is not, indeed, by any means certain that we are justified in seriously criticising as a Venus the great picture of the Tribuna. Titian himself has given no indication that the beautiful Venetian woman who lies undraped after the bath, while in a sumptuous chamber, furnished accord ing to the mode of the time, her handmaidens are seeking for the robes with which she will adorn herself, is intended to present the love-goddess, or even a beauty masquerading with her attributes. Vasari, who saw it in the picture-closet of the Duke of Urbino, describes it, no doubt, as " une Venere giovanetta a giacere, con fiori e certi panni sottili attorno." It is manifestly borrowed, too — as is now universally acknowledged — from Giorgione's Venus in the Dresden Gallery, with the significant alteration, however, that Titian's fair one voluptuously dreams awake, while Gior gione's goddess more divinely reposes, and sleeping dreams loftier dreams. The motive is in the borrowing robbed of much of its dignity and beauty, and individualised in a fashion which, were any other master than Titian in question, would have brought it to the verge of triviality. Still as an example of his unrivalled mastery in rendering the glow and semi-trans parency of flesh, enhanced by the contrast with white linen — itself slightly golden in tinge ; in suggesting the appropriate atmospheric environment ; in giving the full splendour of Venetian colour, duly subordinated never theless to the main motive, which is the glorification of a beautiful human body as it is ; in all these respects the picture is of superlative excellence, a representative example of the master and of Venetian art, a piece which it would not be easy to match even among his own works. Titian. Yet in the great Venus of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge — not, indeed, in that of Dresden — his ideal is a higher one than Titian's in such pieces as the Venus of Urbino and the later Venus, its companion, in the Tribuna. The two Bonifazi of Verona followed Palma, giving, however, to the loveliness of their women not, indeed, a more exalted character, but a less pronounced sensuousness — an added refinement but a weaker personality. Paris Bordone took the note from Titian, but being less a great artist than a fine painter, descended a step lower in the scale. Paolo Veronese un affectedly joys in the beauty of woman, in the sheen of fair flesh, without any under current of deeper meaning. Tintoretto, though like his brother Venetians he delights in the rendering of the human form unveiled, is but little disquieted by the fascinating problem which now occupies us. He is by nature strangely spiritual, though he is far from indulging in any false idealisation, though he shrinks not at all from the statement of the truth as it presents itself to him. Let his famous pictures in the Anticollegio of the Doges' Palace, his Muses at Hampton Court, and above all that unique painted poem, The Rescue, in the Dresden Gallery, serve to support this view of his art. 32 THE LATER WORK OF TITIAN More and more, as the supreme artist matures, do we find him disdaining the showier and more evident forms of virtuosity. His colour is more and more marked in its luminous beauty by reticence and concentration, by the search after such a main colour -chord as shall not only be beautiful and satisfying in itself, but expressive of the motive which is at the root of the picture. Play of light over the surfaces and round the contours of the human form ; the breaking-up and modulation of masses of colour by that play of light ; strength, and beauty of general tone — these are now Titian's main preoccupations. To this point his perfected technical art has legitimately developed itself from the Giorgionesque ideal of colour and tone-harmony, which was essentially the same in principle, though necessarily in a less advanced stage, and more diversified by exceptions. Our master became, as time went on, less and less interested in the mere dexterous juxta position of brilliantly harmonising and brilliantly contrasting tints, in piquancy, gaiety, and sparkle of colour, to be achieved for its own sake. Indeed this phase of Venetian sixteenth-century colour belongs rather to those artists who issued from Verona— to the Bonifazi, and to Paolo Veronese— who in this respect, as generally in artistic temperament, proved themselves the natural successors of Domenico and Francesco Morone, of Girolamo dai Libri, of Cavazzola. Yet when Titian takes colour itself as his chief motive, he can vie with the most sumptuous of them in splendour, and eclipse them all by the sureness of his taste. A good example of this is the cele brated Bella di Tiziano of the Pitti Gallery, another work which, like the Venus of Urbino, recalls the features without giving the precise personality of Eleonora Gonzaga. The beautiful but somewhat ex pressionless head with its crowning glory of bright hair, a waving mass of Venetian gold, has been so much injured by rubbing down and restoration that we regret what has been lost even more than we enjoy what is left. But the surfaces of the fair and exquisitely modelled neck and bosom have been less cruelly treated ; the superb costume retains much of its pristine splendour. With its combination of brownish-purple velvet, peacock- blue brocade, and white lawn, its delicate trimmings of gold, and its further adornment with small knots, having in them, now at any rate, but an effaced note of red, the gown of La Bella has remained the type of photet/rapfi by. 'i Ct-riari.. f.,1 /hi /ti i// Sf.ttiftr' THE LATER WORK OF TITIAN 33 what is most beautiful in Venetian costume as it was in the earlier half of the sixteenth century. In richness and ingenious elaboration, chastened by taste, it far transcends the over-splendid and ponderous dresses in which later on the patrician dames portrayed by Veronese and his school loved to array themselves. A bright note of red in the upper jewel of one earring, now, no doubt, cruder than was originally intended, gives a fillip to the whole, after a fashion peculiar to Titian. The Girl in the Fur Cloak, No 197 in the Imperial Gallery at Vienna, shows once more in a youthful and blooming woman the features of Eleonora. The model is nude under a mantle of black satin lined with fur, which leaves uncovered the right breast and both arms. The picture is undoubtedly Titian's own, and fine in quality, but it reveals less than his usual graciousness and charm. It is probably identical with the canvas described in the often-quoted catalogue of Charles I.'s pictures as " A naked woman putting on her smock, which the king changed with the Duchess of Buckingham for one of His Majesty's Mantua pieces." It may well have suggested to Rubens, who must have seen it among the King's possessions on the occasion of his visit to London, his superb, yet singularly unrefined, Helene Fourment in a Fur Mantle, now also in the Vienna Gallery. The great portraits of the Duke and Duchess of Urbino in the Uffizi belong, as has already been noted, to 1537. Francesco Maria, here represented in the penultimate year of his stormy life, assumes deliberately the truculent warrior, and has beyond reasonable doubt made his own pose in a portrait destined to show the leader of armies, and not the amorous spouse or the patron of art and artists. Praise enthusiastic, but not excessive, has ever been and ever will be lavished on the breadth and splendid decision of the painting ; on the magnificent rendering of the suit of plain but finely fashioned steel armour, with its wonderful reflections ; on the energy of the virile countenance, and the appropriate concentration and simplicity of the whole. The superb head has, it must be confessed, more grandeur and energy than true individuality or life. The companion picture represents Eleonora Gonzaga seated near an open window, wearing a sombre but magnificent costume, and, completing it, one of those turbans with which the patrician ladies of North Italy, other than those of 34 THE LATER WORK OF TITIAN Venice, habitually crowned their locks. It has suffered in loss of fresh ness and touch more than its companion. Fine and accurate as the portrait is, much as it surpasses its pendant in subtle truth of character isation, it has in the opinion of the writer been somewhat overpraised. For once, Titian approaches very nearly to the northern ideal in portrait ure, underlining the truth with singular accuracy, yet with some sacrifice of graciousness and charm. The daughter of the learned and brilliant Isabella looks here as if, in the decline of her beauty, she had become something of a precieuse and a prude, though it would be imprudent to assert that she was either the one or the other. Perhaps the most attractive feature of the whole composition is the beautiful landscape so characteristically stretching away into the far blue distance, suggested rather than revealed through the open window. This is such a picture as might have inspired the Netherlander Antonio Moro, just because it is Italian art of the Cinquecento with a difference, that is, with a certain admixture of northern downrightness and literalness of statement. About this same time Titian received from the brother of this princess, his patron and admirer Federigo Gonzaga, the commission for the famous series of the Twelve Caesars, now only known to the world by stray copies here and there, and by the grotesquely exaggerated engravings of iEgidius Sadeler. Giulio Romano having in 1536 : completed the Sala di Troja in the Castello of Mantua, and made con siderable progress with the apartments round about it, Federigo Gonzaga conceived the idea of devoting one whole room to the painted effigies of the Twelve Caesars to be undertaken by Titian. The exact date when the Casars were delivered is not known, but it may legitimately be inferred that this was in the course of 1537 or the earlier half of 1538. Our master's pictures were, according to Vasari, placed in an anti- camera of the Mantuan Palace, below them being hung twelve storie a olio — histories in oils — by Giulio Romano.2 The Caesars were all half- 1 Crowe and Cavalcaselle, Life of Titian, vol. i. p. 420. - Two of these have survived in the Roman Emperor on Horseback, No. 257, and the similarly named picture, No. 290, at Hampton Court Palace. These panels were among the Mantua pieces purchased for Charles I. by Daniel Nys from Duke Vincenzo in 1628-29. If the Hampton Court pieces are indeed, as there appears no valid reason to doubt, two of the canvases mentioned by Vasari, we must assume that though they bore Giulio's name as chef d' atelier, he did little work on them himself. In the Mantuan catalogue contained in d'Arco's Notizie they were entered thus: — "Dieci altri quadri, THE LATER WORK OF TITIAN 35 lengths, eleven out of the twelve being done by the Venetian master and the twelfth by Giulio Romano himself.1 Brought to England with Francesco Maria della Rovere, Duke of Urbino. Uffizi Gallery, Florence. From a Photograph by E. Alinari. dipintovi un imperatore per quadro a cavallo — opera di mano di Giulio Romano " (see The Royal Gallery of Hampton Court, by Ernest Law, 1898). 1 The late Charles Yriarte in a recent article, " Sabionneta la petite Athenes," pub lished in the Gazette des Beaux Arts, March 1898, states that Bernardino Campi of Cremona, Giulio's subordinate at the moment, painted the Twelfth Ccesar, but adduces no evidence in support of this departure from the usual assumption. 36 THE LATER WORK OF TITIAN the rest of the Mantua pieces purchased by Daniel Nys for Charles I., they suffered injury, and Van Dyck is said to have repainted the Vitellius, which was one of several canvases irretrievably ruined by the quicksilver of the frames during the transit from Italy.1 On the disposal of the royal collection after Charles Stuart's execution the Twelve Caesars were sold by the State — not presented, as is usually asserted — to the Spanish Ambassador Cardenas, who gave ^1200 for them. On their arrival in Spain with the other treasures secured on behalf of Philip IV., they were placed in the Alcazar of Madrid, where in one of the numerous fires which successively devastated the royal palace they must have perished, since no trace of them is to be found after the end of the seventeenth century. The popularity of Titian's decorative canvases is proved by the fact that Bernardino Campi of Cremona made five successive sets of copies from them — for Charles V., d'Avalos, the Duke of Alva, Rangone, and another Spanish grandee. Agostino Caracci subsequently copied them for the palace of Parma, and traces of yet other copies exist. Numerous versions are shown in private collections, both in England and abroad, purporting to be from the hand of Titian, but of these none — at any rate none of those seen by the writer — are originals or even Venetian copies. Among the best are the examples in the collection of Earl Brownlow and at the royal palace of Munich respectively, and these may possibly be from the hand of Campi. Although we are expressly told in Dolce's Dialogo that Titian " painted the 'Twelve Casars, taking them in part from medals, in part from antique marbles," it is perfectly clear that of the exact copying of antiques — such as is to be noted, for instance, in those marble medallions by Donatello which adorn the courtyard of the Medici Palace at Florence — there can have been no question. The attitudes of the Cesars, as shown in the engravings and the extant copies, exclude any such supposition. Those who have judged them from those copies and the hideous grotesques of Sadeler have wondered at the popularity of the originals, somewhat hastily deeming Titian to have been here inferior to himself. Strange to say, a better idea of what he intended, and what he may have realised in the originals, is to be obtained from a series of small copies now in the Provincial Museum of Hanover, than from anything else that has 1 See "The Picture Gallery of Charles ].," The Portfolio, October 1897, pp. 98, 99. THE LATER WORK OF TITIAN 37 survived.1 The little pictures in question, being on copper, cannot well be anterior to the first part of the seventeenth century, and they are not in themselves wonders. All the same they have a unique interest as proving that, while adopting the pompous attitudes and the purely decorative standpoint which the position of the pictures in the Castello may have rendered obligatory, Titian managed to make of his Emperors creatures of flesh and blood ; the splendid Venetian warrior and patrician appearing in all the glory of manhood behind the con ventional dignity, the self-consciousness of the Roman type and attitude. These last years had been to Titian as fruitful in material gain as in honour. He had, as has been seen, established permanent and intimate relations not only with the art-loving rulers of the North Italian princi palities, but now with Charles V. himself, mightiest of European sovereigns, and, as a natural consequence, with the all-powerful captains and grandees of the Hispano-Austrian court. Meanwhile a serious danger to his supremacy had arisen. At home in Venice his unique position was threatened by Pordenone, that masterly and wonderfully facile frescante and painter of monumental decorations, who had on more than one occasion in the past been found in competition with him. The Friulan, after many wanderings and much labour in North Italy, had settled in Venice in 1535, and there acquired an immense reputation by the grandeur and consummate ease with which he had carried out great mural decorations, such as the facade of Martin d' Anna's house on the Grand Canal, comprising in its scheme of decoration a Curtius on horse back and a flying Mercury which according to Vasari became the talk of the town.2 Here, at any rate, was a field in which even Titian himself, seeing that he had only at long intervals practised in fresco painting, could not hope to rival Pordenone. The Friulan, indeed, in this his special branch, stood entirely alone among the painters of North Italy. 1 Nos. 529-540 — Catalogue of 1891 — Provincial Museum of Hanover. The dimensions are 0.19 c. by 0.15 c. 2 Of all Pordenone's exterior decorations executed in Venice nothing now remains. His only works of importance in the Venetian capital are the altar-piece in S. Giovanni Elemosinario already mentioned ; the San Lorenzo Giustiniani altar-piece in the Accademia delle Belle Arti ; the magnificent though in parts carelessly painted Madonna del Carmelo in the same gallery ; the vast St. Martin and St. Christopher in the church of S. Rocco ; the Annunciation of S. Maria degli Angeli at Murano. 38 THE LATER WORK OF TITIAN The Council of Ten in June 1537 issued a decree recording that Titian had since 15 16 been in possession of his senseria, or broker's patent, and its accompanying salary, on condition that he should paint " the canvas of the land fight on the side of the Hall of the Great Council looking out on the Grand Canal," but that he had drawn his salary without performing his promise. He was therefore called upon to refund all that he had received for the time during which he had done no work. This sharp reminder operated as it was intended to do. We see from Aretino's correspondence that in November 1537 Titian was busily engaged on the great canvas for the Doges' Palace. This tardy recognition of an old obligation did not prevent the Council from issuing an order in November 1538 directing Pordenone to paint a picture for the Sala del Gran Consiglio, to occupy the space next to. that reserved for Titian's long- delayed battle-piece. That this can never have been executed is clear, since Pordenone, on receipt of an urgent summons from Ercole II., Duke of Ferrara, departed from Venice in the month of December of the same year, and falling sick at Ferrara, died so suddenly as to give rise to the suspicion of foul play, which too easily sprang up in those days when ambition or private vengeance found ready to hand weapons so many and so convenient. Crowe and Cavalcaselle give good grounds for the assumption that, in order to save appearances, Titian was supposed— replacing and covering the battle-piece which already existed in the Great Hall — to be presenting the Battle of Spoleto in Umbria, whereas it was clear to all Venetians, from the costumes, the banners, and the landscape, that he meant to depict the Battle of Cadore fought in 1508. The latter was a Venetian victory and an Imperial defeat, the former a Papal defeat and an Imperial victory. The all-devouring fire of 1577 annihilated the Battle of Cadore with too many other works of capital importance in the history both of the primitive and the mature Venetian schools. We have nothing now to show what it may have been, save the print of Fontana, and the oil painting in the Venetian Gallery of the Uffizi, reproducing on a reduced scale part only of the big canvas. This last is of Venetian origin, and more or less contemporary, but it need hardly be pointed out that it is a copy from, not a sketch for, the picture. To us who know the vast battle-piece only in the feeble echo of the THE LATER WORK OF TITIAN 39 print and the picture just now mentioned, it is a little difficult to account for the enthusiasm that it excited, and the prominent place accorded to it among the most famous of the Cadorine's works. Though the whole has abundant movement and passion, and the mise-en-scene is undoubtedly imposing, the combat is not raised above reality into the region of the The Battle of Cadore [from a reducea copy of part only). Uffizi Gallery, Florence. From a Photograph by G. Brogi. higher and more representative truth by any element of tragic vast- ness and significance. Even though the Imperialists are armed more or less in the antique Roman fashion, to distinguish them from the Venetians, who appear in the accoutrements of their own day, it is still that minor and local combat the Battle of Cadore that we have before us, and not, above and beyond this battle, War, as some masters of the 4° THE LATER WORK OF TITIAN century, gifted with a higher power of evocation, might have shown it. Even as the fragment of Leonardo da Vinci's Battle of Anghiari survives in the free translation of Rubens's well-known drawing in the Louvre, we see how he has made out of the unimportant cavalry combat, yet with out conventionality or undue transposition, a representation unequalled in art of the frenzy generated in man and beast by the clash of arms and the scent of blood. And Rubens, too, how incomparably in the Battle of the Amazons of the Pinakothek at Munich, he evokes the terrors, not only of one mortal encounter, but of War — the hideous din, the horror of man let loose and become beast once more, the pitiless yell of the victors, the despairing cry of the vanquished, the irremediable overthrow ! It would, however, be foolhardy in those who can only guess at what the picture may have been to arrogate to themselves the right of sitting in judgment on Vasari and those contemporaries who, actually seeing, enthusiastically admired it. What excited their delight must surely have been Titian's magic power of brush as displayed in individual figures and episodes, such as that famous one of the knight armed by his page in the immediate foreground. Into this period of our master's career there fit very well the two portraits in which he appears, painted by himself, on the confines of old age, vigorous and ardent still, fully conscious, moreover, though without affectation, of pre-eminent genius and supreme artistic rank. The portraits referred to are those very similar ones, both of them undoubtedly originals, which are respectively in the Berlin Gallery and the Painters' Gallery of the Uffizi. It is strange that there should exist no certain likeness of the master or Cadore done in youth or earlier manhood, if there be excepted the injured and more than doubtful production in the Imperial Gallery of Vienna, which has pretty generally been supposed to be an original auto-portrait belonging to this period. In the Uffizi and Berlin pictures Titian looks about sixty years old, but may be a little more or a little less. The latter is a half-length, showing him seated and gazing obliquely out of the picture with a majestic air, but also with something of combativeness and disquietude, an element, this last, which is traceable even in some of the earlier portraits, but not in the mytho logical poesie or any sacred work. More and more as we advance through the final period of old age do we find this element of disquietude and THE LATER WORK OF TITIAN 41 misgiving asserting itself in male portraiture, as, for instance, in the Maltese Knight of the Prado, the Dominican Monk ot the Borghese, the Portrait of a Man with a Palm Branch of the Dresden Gallery. The atmosphere of sadness and foreboding enveloping man is traceable back to Giorgione ; but with him it comes from the plenitude of inner life, from the gaze turned inwards upon the mystery of the human individuality rather than outwards upon the inevitable tragedies of the exterior life common to all. This same atmosphere of passionate contemplativeness enwraps, indeed, all that Giorgione did, and is the cause that he sees the world and himself lyrically, not dramatically ; the flame of aspiration burning steadily at the heart's core and leaving the surface not indeed unruffled, but outwardly calm in its glow. Titian's is the more dramatic temperament in outward things, but also the more superficial. It must be remembered, too, that arriving rapidly at the maturity of his art, and painting all through the period of the full Renaissance, he was able with far less hindrance from technical limitations to express his conceptions to the full. His portraiture, however, especially his male portraiture, was and remained in its essence a splendid and full-blown development of the Giorgionesque ideal. It was grander, more accomplished, and for obvious reasons more satisfying, yet far less penetrating, less expressive of the inner fibre, whether of the painter or of his subject. But to return to the portrait of Berlin. It is in parts unfinished, and therefore the more interesting as revealing something of the methods employed by the master in this period of absolute mastery, when his palette was as sober in its strength as it was rich and harmonious ; when, as ever, execution was a way to an end, and therefore not to be vain- gloriously displayed merely for its own sake. The picture came, with very many other masterpieces of the Italian and Netherlandish schools, from the Solly collection, which formed the nucleus of the Berlin Gallery. The Uffizi portrait emerges noble still, in its semi-ruined state, from a haze of restoration and injury, which has not succeeded in destroying the exceptional fineness and sensitiveness of the modelling. Although the pose and treatment of the head are practically identical with that in the Berlin picture, the conception seems a less dramatic one. It includes, unless the writer has misread it, an element of greater mansuetude and a less perturbed reflectiveness, 42 THE LATER WORK OF TITIAN The double portrait in the collection of Her Majesty the Queen at Windsor Castle, styled Titian and Franceschini,1 has no pretensions whatever to be even discussed as a Titian. The figure of the Venetian senator designated as Franceschini is the better performance of the two ; the lifeless head of Titian, which looks very like an afterthought, has been copied, without reference to the relation of the two figures the one to the other, from the Uffizi picture, or some portrait identical with it in character. A far finer likeness of Titian than any of these is the much later one, now in the Prado Gallery ; but this it will be best to deal with in its proper chronological order. We come now to one of the most popular of all Titian's great canvases based on a sacred subject, the Presentation in the Temple in the Accademia delle Belle Arti at Venice. This, as Vasari expressly states, was painted for the Scuola di S. Maria della Carita, that is, for the con fraternity which owned the very building where now the Accademia displays its treasures. It is the magnificent scenic rendering of a subject lending itself easily to exterior pomp and display, not so easily to a more mystic and less obvious mode of conception. At the root of Titian's design lies in all probability the very similar picture on a compara tively small scale by Cima da Conegliano, now No. 63 in the Dresden Gallery, and this last may well have been inspired by Carpaccio's Present ation of the Virgin, now in the Brera at Milan.2 The imposing canvases belonging to this particular period of Titian's activity, and this one in particular, with its splendid architectural framing, its wealth of life and movement, its richness and variety in type and costume, its fair prospect of Venetian landscape in the distance, must have largely contributed to form the transcendent decorative talent of Paolo Veronese. Only in the exquisitely fresh and beautiful figure of the childlike Virgin, who ascends the mighty flight of stone steps, clad all in shimmering blue, her head crowned with a halo of yellow light, does the artist prove that he has penetrated to the innermost significance of his subject. Here, at any 1 No. 108 in the Winter Exhibition at Burlington House in 1896. By Franceschini is no doubt meant Paolo dcgli Franceschi, whose portrait Titian is known to have painted. He has been identified among the figures in the foreground of the Presentation of the I "irgin. " See a very interesting article, " Vittore Carpaccio — La Scuola degli Albanesi," by Dr. Gustav Ludwig, in the Archivio Storico deW Arte for November-December 1897. The Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple. Accademia delle Belle Arti, Venice. From a Photograph by Naya. 44 THE LATER WORK OF TITIAN rate, he touches the heart as well as feasts the eye. The thoughts of all who are familiar with Venetian art will involuntarily turn to Tintoretto's rendering of the same moving, yet in its symbolical character not naturally ultra-dramatic, scene. The younger master lends to it a significance so vast that he may be said to go as far beyond and above the requirements of the theme as Titian, with all his legitimate splendour and serene dignity, remains below it. With Tintoretto as interpreter we are made to see the beautiful episode as an event of the most tremendous import — one that must shake the earth to its centre. The reason of the onlooker may rebel against this portentous version, yet he is dominated all the same, is overwhelmed with something of the indefinable awe that has seized upon the bystanders who are witnesses of the scene. But now to discuss a very curious point in connection with the actual state of Titian's important canvas. It has been very generally assumed — and Crowe and Cavalcaselle have set their seal on the assumption — that Titian painted his picture for a special place in the Albergo (now Accademia), and that this place is now architecturally as it was in Titian's time. Let them speak for themselves. " In this room (in the Albergo), which is contiguous to the modern hall in which Titian's Assunta is displayed, there were two doors for which allowance was made in Titian's canvas ; twenty-five feet — the length of the wall — is now the length of the picture. When this vast canvas was removed from its place, the gaps of the doors were filled in with new linen, and painted up to the tone of the original. . . ." That the pieces of canvas to which reference is here made were new, and not Titian's original work from the brush, was of course well known to those who saw the work as it used to hang in the Accademia. Crowe and Cavalcaselle give indeed the name of a painter of this century who is responsible for them. Within the last three years the new and enterprising director of the Venice Academy, as part of a comprehensive scheme of rearrangement of the whole collection, caused these pieces of new canvas to be removed and then proceeded to replace the picture in the room for which it is believed to have been executed, fitting it into the space above the two doors just referred to. Many people have declared themselves delighted with the alteration, looking upon it as a tardy act of justice done to Titian, whose work, it is assumed, is now THE LATER WORK OF TITIAN 45 again seen just as he designed it for the Albergo. The writer must own that he has, from an examination of the canvas where it is now placed, or replaced, derived an absolutely contrary impression. First, is it con ceivable that Titian in the heyday of his glory should have been asked to paint such a picture — not a mere mural decoration — for such a place ? There is no instance of anything of the kind having been done with the canvases painted by Gentile Bellini, Carpaccio, Mansueti, and others for the various Scuole of Venice. There is no instance of a great decorative canvas by a sixteenth century master of the first rank,1 other than a ceil ing decoration, being degraded in the first instance to such a use. And then Vasari, who saw the picture in Venice, and correctly characterises it, would surely have noticed such an extraordinary peculiarity as the abnormal shape necessitated by the two doors. It is incredible that Titian, if so unpalatable a task had indeed been originally imposed upon him, should not have designed his canvas otherwise. The hole for the right door coming in the midst of the monumental steps is just possible, though not very probable. Not so that for the left door, which, accord ing to the present arrangement, cuts the very vitals out of one of the main groups in the foreground. Is it not to insult one of the greatest masters of all time thus to assume that he would have designed what we now see ? It is much more likely that Titian executed his Presentation in the first place in the normal shape, and that vandals of a later time, deciding to pierce the room in the Scuola in which the picture is now once more placed with one, or probably two, additional doors, partially sacrificed it to the structural requirements of the moment. Monstrous as such barbarism may appear, we have already seen, and shall again see 1 A gigantic canvas of this order is, or rather was, the famous Storm of the Venetian Accademia, which has for many years past been dubitatively assigned to Giorgione. Vasari described it as by Palma Vecchio, stating that it was painted for the Scuola di S. Marco in the Piazza SS. Giovanni e Paolo, in rivalry with Gian Bellino (!) and Mansueti, and referring to it in great detail and with a more fervent enthusiasm than he accords to any other Venetian picture. To the writer, judging from the parts of the original which have survived, it has long appeared that this may indeed be after all the right attribution. The ascription to Giorgione is mainly based on the romantic character of the invention, which certainly does not answer to anything that we know from the hand or brain of Palma. But then the learned men who helped Giorgione and Titian may well have helped him ; and the structure of the thick-set figures in the foreground is absolutely his, as is also the sunset light on the horizon. 46 THE LATER WORK OF TITIAN later on, that it was by no means uncommon in those great ages of painting, the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. When the untimely death of Pordenone, at the close of 1538, had extinguished the hopes of the Council that the grandiose facility of this master of monumental decoration might be made available for the purposes of the State, Titian having, as has been seen, made good his gravest default, was reinstated in his lucrative and by no means onerous office. He regained the senseria by decree of August 28, 1539. The potent d'Avalos, Marques del Vasto, had in 1539 conferred upon Titian's eldest son Pomponio, the scapegrace and spendthrift that was to be, a canonry. Both to father and son the gift was in the future to be productive of more evil than good. At or about the same time he had commissioned of Titian a picture of himself haranguing his soldiers in the pompous Roman fashion ; this was not, however, completed until 1 54 1. Exhibited by d'Avalos to admiring crowds at Milan, it made a sensation for which there is absolutely nothing in the picture, as we now see it in the gallery of the Prado, to account ; but then it would appear that it was irreparably injured in a fire which devastated the Alcazar of Madrid in 1621, and was afterwards extensively repainted. The Marquis and his son Francesco, both of them full-length figures, are placed on a low plinth, to the left, and from this point of vantage the Spanish leader addresses a company of foot-soldiers who with fine effect raise their halberds high into the air.1 Among these last tradition places a portrait of Aretino, which is not now to be recognised with any certainty. Were the pedigree of the canvas a less well-authenticated one, one might be tempted to deny Titian's authorship altogether, so extraordinary are, apart from other considerations, the disproportions in the figure of the youth Francesco. Restoration must in this instance have amounted to entire repainting. Del Vasto appears more robust, more martial, and slightly younger than the armed leader in the Allegory of the Louvre. If this last picture is to be accepted as a semi-idealised presentment of the Spanish captain, it must, as has already been pointed out, have been painted nearer to the time of his death, which took place in 1546. The 1 This is an arrangement analogous to that with the aid of which Tintoretto later on, in the Crucifixion of San Cassiano at Venice, attains to so sublime an effect. There the spears — not brandished but steadily held aloft in rigid and inflexible regularity — strangely heighten the solemn tragedy of the scene. THE LATER WORK OF TITIAN 47 often-cited biographers of our master are clearly in error in their conclusion that the painting described in the collection of Charles I. as " done by The Magdalen. Pitti Palace, Florence. From a Photograph by Anderson. Titian, the picture of the Marquis Guasto, containing five half-figures so big as the life, which the king bought out of an Almonedo," is identical with the large sketch made by Titian as a preparation for the Allocution 48 THE LATER WORK OF TITIAN of Madrid. This description, on the contrary, applies perfectly to the Allegory of the Louvre, which was, as we know, included in the collection of Charles, and subsequently found its way into that of Louis Quatorze. It was in 1542 that Vasari, summoned to Venice at the suggestion of Aretino, paid his first visit to the city of the Lagoons in order to paint the scenery and apparato in connection with a carnival performance, which included the representation of his fellow-townsman's Talanta} It was on this occasion, no doubt, that Sansovino, in agreement with Titian, obtained for the Florentine the commission to paint the ceilings of Santo Spirito in Isola — a commission which was afterwards, as a consequence of his departure, undertaken and performed by Titian himself, with whose grandiose canvases we shall have to deal a little later on. In weigh ing the value of Vasari's testimony with reference to the works of Vecellio and other Venetian painters more or less of his own time, it should be borne in mind that he paid two successive visits to Venice, enjoying there the company of the great painter and the most eminent artists of the day, and that on the occasion of Titian's memorable visit to Rome he was his close friend, cicerone, and companion. Allowing for the Aretine biographer's well-known inaccuracies in matters of detail and for his royal disregard of chronological order — faults for which it is manifestly absurd to blame him over-severely — it would be unwise lightly to disregard or overrule his testimony with regard to matters which he may have learned from" the lips of Titian himself and his immediate entourage. To the year 1542 belongs, as the authentic signature and date on the picture affirm, that celebrated portrait, The Daughter of Roberto Strozzi, once in the splendid palace of the family at Florence, but now, with some other priceless treasures having the same origin, in the Berlin Museum. Technically, the picture is one of the most brilliant, one of the most subtly exquisite, among the works of the great Cadorine's maturity. It well serves to show what Titian's ideal of colour was at this time. The canvas is all silvery gleam, all splendour and sober strength of colour — yet not of colours. These in all their plentitude and richness, as in the crimson drapery and the distant landscape, are duly subordinated to the main effect ; they but set off" discreetly the figure of the child, dressed all in white satin with hair of reddish gold, and contribute without fanfare to 1 Crowe and Cavalcaselle, Life of Titian, vol. vi. p. 59. THE LATER WORK OF TITIAN 49 the fine and harmonious balance of the whole. Here, as elsewhere, more particularly in the work of Titian's maturity, one does not in the first The Infant Daughter of Roberto Strozzi. Royal Gallery, Berlin. From u Photograph by F. Hanfst'dngl. place pause to pick out this or the other tint, this or the other com bination of colours as particularly exquisite ; and that is what one is 50 THE LATER WORK OF TITIAN so easily led to do in the contemplation of the Bonifazi and of Paolo Veronese. As the portrait of a child, though in conception it reveals a marked progress towards the intimite of later times, the Berlin picture lacks something of charm and that quality which, for want of a better word, must be called loveableness. Or is it perhaps that the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries have spoilt us in this respect? For it is only in these latter days that to the child, in deliberate and avowed portraiture, is allowed that freakishness, that natural espieglerie and freedom from artificial control which has its climax in the unapproached portraits of Sir Joshua Reynolds. This is the more curious when it is remembered how tenderly, with what observant and sympathetic truth the relation of child to mother, of child to child, was noted in the innumerable "Madonnas" and "Holy Families" of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries ; how both the Italians, and following them the Netherlanders, relieved the severity of their sacred works by the delightful roguishness, the romping impudence of their little angels, their putti. It has already been recorded that Titian, taking up the commission abandoned by Vasari, undertook a great scheme of pictorial decoration for the Brothers of Santo Spirito in Isola. All that he carried out for that church has now found its way into that of the Salute. The three ceiling pictures, The Sacrifice of Isaac, Cain and Abel, and David victorious over Goliath, are in the great sacristy of the church ; the Four Evangelists and Four Doctors are in the ceiling of the choir behind the altar ; the altar-piece, The Descent of the Holy Spirit, is in one of the chapels which completely girdle the circular church itself. The ceiling pictures, depict ing three of the most dramatic moments in sacred history, have received the most enthusiastic praise from the master's successive biographers. They were indeed at the time of their inception a new thing in Venetian art. Nothing so daring as these foreshortenings, as these scenes of dramatic violence, of physical force triumphant, had been seen in Venice. The turbulent spirit was an exaggeration of that revealed by Titian in the St. Peter Martyr ,• the problem of the foreshortening for the purposes of ceiling decoration was superadded. It must be remembered, too, that even in Rome, the headquarters of the grand style, nothing precisely of the same kind could be said to exist. Raphael and his pupils either dis- THE LATER WORK OF TITIAN 51 dained, or it may be feared to approach, the problem. Neither in the ceiling decorations of the Farnesina nor in the Stanze is there any attempt on a large scale to faire plafonner the figures, that is, to paint them so that they might appear as they would actually be seen from below. Michel angelo himself, in the stupendous decoration of the ceiling to the Sixtine Chapel, had elected to treat the subjects of the flat surface which constitutes the centre and climax of the whole, as a series of pictures designed under ordinary conditions. It can hardly be doubted that Titian, in attempting these tours de force, though not necessarily or even probably in any other way, was inspired by Correggio. It would not be easy, indeed, to exaggerate the Venetian master's achievement from this point of view, even though in two at least of the groups — the Cain and Abel and the David and Goliath — the modern professor might be justified in criticising with considerable severity his draughtsmanship and many salient points in his design. The effect produced is tremendous of its kind. The power suggested is, however, brutal, unreasoning, not nobly dominating force ; and this not alone in the Cain and Abel, where such an impression is rightly conveyed, but also in the other pieces. It is as if Titian, in striving to go beyond anything that had hitherto been done of the same kind, had also gone beyond his own artistic convictions, and thus, while compassing a remarkable pictorial achievement, lost his true balance. Tintoretto, creating his own atmosphere, as far outside and above mere physical realities as that of Michelangelo himself, might have succeeded in mitigating this impression, which is, on the whole, a painful one. Take for instance the Martyrdom of St. Christopher of the younger painter — not a ceiling picture by the way — in the apse of S. Maria del Orto. Here, too, is depicted, with sweeping and altogether irresistible power, an act of hideous violence. And yet it is not this element of the subject which makes upon the spectator the most profound effect, but the impression of saintly submission, of voluntary self-sacrifice, which is the dominant note of the whole. It may be convenient to mention here The Descent of the Holy Spirit, although in its definitive form, as we see it in its place in the Church of the Salute, it appears markedly more advanced in style than the works of the period at which we have now arrived, giving, both in manner and feeling, a distinct suggestion of the methods and standpoint which 5 2 THE LATER WORK OF TITIAN mark the later phase of old age. Vasari tells us that the picture, originally painted in 1541, was seriously damaged and subsequently repainted ; Crowe and Cavalcaselle state that the work now seen at the Salute was painted to replace an altar-piece which the Brothers of Santo Spirito had declined to accept. Even as the picture now appears, somewhat faded, and moreover seen at a disadvantage amid its cold surroundings of polished white marble, it is a composition of wonderful, of almost febrile animation, and a painting saturated with light, pierced through everywhere with its rays. The effect produced is absolutely that which the mystical subject requires.1 Abandoning the passionless serenity which has been the rule in sacred subjects of the middle time, Titian shows himself more stimulated, more moved by his subject. It was in the spring of 1543 that the master first came into personal contact with Pope Paul III. and the Farnese family. The meeting took place at Ferrara, and our painter then accompanied the papal court to Busseto, and subsequently proceeded to Bologna. Aretino's correspond ence proves that Titian must at that time have painted the Pope, and that he must also have refused the sovereign pontifF's offer of the Piombo, which was then still, as it had been for years past, in the possession of Sebastiano Luciani. That Titian, with all his eagerness for wealth and position, could not find it in his heart to displace his fellow-countryman, a friend no doubt of the early time, may legitimately excite admiration and sympathy now, as according to Aretino it actually did at the time. The portraits of the Farnese family included that of the Pope, repeated subsequently for Cardinal Santafiore, that of Pier Luigi, then that of Paul III. and this monstrous yet well-loved son together,2 and a likeness of Cardinal Alessandro Farnese. Upon the three-quarter length portrait of Paul III. in the Naples Museum, Crowe and Cavalcaselle have lavished their most enthusiastic praise, placing it, indeed, among his master pieces. All the same — interesting as the picture undoubtedly is, remarkable in finish, and of undoubtedly Titianesque origin — the writer finds it difficult, 1 The writer is unable to accept as a genuine design by Titian for the picture the well-known sepia drawing in the collection of the Uffizi. The composition is too clumsy in its mechanical repetition of parts, the action of the Virgin too awkward. The design looks more like an adaptation by some Bolognese eclectic. 2 This double portrait has not been preserved. According to Crowe and Cavalcaselle the full length of Pier Luigi still exists in the Palazzo Reale at Naples (not seen by the writer). THE LATER WORK OF TITIAN 53 nay impossible, to accept this Paul III. as a work from the hand of Titian himself. Careful to excess, and for such an original too much wanting in brilliancy and vitality, it is the best of many repetitions and variations ; of this particular type the original is not at present forthcoming. Very different is the " Paul III." of the Hermitage, which even in a reproduc tion loudly proclaims its originality.1 This is by no means identical in design with the Naples picture, but appears much less studied, much more directly taken from the life. The astute Farnese Pope has here the same simiesque type, the same furtive distrustful look, as in the great unfinished group now to be described.2 This Titian, which doubt less passed into the Hermitage with the rest of the Barbarigo pictures, may have been the first foundation for the series of portraits of the Farnese Pope, and as such would naturally have been retained by the master for his own use. The portrait-group in the Naples Museum, showing, with Paul III., Cardinal Alessandro Farnese and Ottavio Farnese (afterwards Duke of Parma), is, apart from its extraordinary directness and swift technical mastery, of exceptional interest as being unfinished, and thus doubly instructive. The composition, lacking in its unusual momentariness the repose and dignity of Raphael's Leo X. with Cardinals Giulio de' Medici and de' Rossi at the Pitti, is not wholly happy. Especially is the action of Ottavio Farnese, as in reverence he bends down to reply to the supreme Pontiff, forced and unconvincing ; but the unflat- tered portrait of the pontiff himself is of a bold and quite unconventional truth, and in movement much happier. The picture may possibly, by reason of this unconventional conception less than perfectly realised, have failed to please the sitters, and thus have been left in its present state.3 Few of Titian's canvases of vast dimensions have enjoyed a higher degree of popularity than the large Ecce Homo to which the Viennese proudly point as one of the crowning ornaments of the great Imperial 1 The writer, who has studied in the originals all the other Titians mentioned in this monograph, has had as yet no opportunity of examining those in the Hermitage. He knows them only in the reproductions of Messrs. Braun, and in those new and admirable ones recently published by the Berlin Photographic Company. 2 This study from the life would appear to bear some such relation to the finished original as the Innocent X. of Velazquez at Apsley House bears to the great portrait of that Pope in the Doria Panfili collection. 3 This portrait-group belongs properly to the time a few years ahead, since it was undertaken during Titian's stay in Rome. 54 THE LATER WORK OF TITIAN Gallery of their city. Completed in 1 543 J for Giovanni d'Anna, a son of the Flemish merchant Martin van der Hanna, who had established himself in Venice, it was vainly coveted by Henri III. on the occasion of his memor able visit in 1574, but was in 1620 purchased for the splendid favourite, George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, by the English envoy Sir Henry Wotton. From him the noblest and most accomplished of English col lectors, Thomas, Earl of Arundel, sought to obtain the prize with the un paralleled offer of £-]ooo, yet even thus failed. At the time of the great debacle, in 1 648, the guardians and advisers of his youthful son and successor were glad enough to get the splendid gallery over to the Low Countries, and to sell with the rest the Ecce Homo, which brought under these circumstances but a tenth part of what Lord Arundel would have given for it. Passing into the collection of the Archduke Leopold William, it was later on finally incorporated with that of the Imperial House of Austria. From the point of view of scenic and decorative magnificence combined with dramatic propriety, though not with any depth or intensity of dramatic passion, the work is undoubtedly imposing. Yet it suffers somewhat, even in this respect, from the fact that the figures are not more than small life-size. With passages of Titianesque splendour there are to be noted others, approaching to the acrid and inharmonious, which one would rather attribute to the master's assistants than to himself. So it is, too, with certain exaggerations of design characteristic rather of the period than the man — notably with the two figures to the left of the foreground. The Christ in His meekness is too little divine, too heavy and inert ; 2 the Pontius Pilate not inappropriately reproduces the features of the worldling and viveur Aretino. The mounted warrior to the extreme right, who has been supposed to represent Alfonso d'Este, shows the genial physiognomy made familiar by the Madrid picture so long deemed to be his portrait, but which, as has already been pointed out, represents much more probably his successor Ercole II. d'Este, whom we find again in that superb piece by the master, the so-called Giorgio Cornaro of Castle Howard. The Ecce Homo of Vienna is another of J The imposing signature runs Titianus Eques Ces. F. I 543. 2 The type is not the nobler and more suave one seen in the Crista delta Moyieta and the Pilgrims of Emmaus ; it is the much less exalted one which is reproduced in the Ecce Homo of Madrid, and in the many repetitions and variations related to that picture, which cannot itself be accepted as an original from the hand of Titian. Ecce Homo. Imperial Gallery, Vienna. From a Photograph by Lowy. 56 THE LATER. WORK OF TITIAN the works of which both the general ordonnance and the truly Venetian splendour must have profoundly influenced Paolo Veronese. Aretino. Pitti Palace, Florence. From a Photograph by E. Alinari. To this period belongs also the Annunciation of the Virgin now in the Cathedral of Verona — a rich, harmonious, and appropriate altar-piece, but not one of any special significance in the life-work of the painter. THE LATER WORK OF TITIAN si Shall we not, pretty much in agreement with Vasari, place here, just before the long-delayed visit to Rome, the Christ with the Pilgrims at Emmaus of the Louvre ? A strong reason for dating this, one of the noblest, one of the most deeply felt of all Titian's works, before rather than after the stay in the Eternal City, is that in its naivete, in its realistic episodes, in its fulness of life, it is so entirely and delightfully Venetian. Here again the colour-harmony in its subdued richness and solemnity has a completeness such as induces the beholder to accept it in its unity rather than to analyse those infinite subtleties of juxtaposition and handling which, avoiding bravura, disdain to show themselves on the surface. The sublime beauty of the landscape, in which, as often elsewhere, the golden radiance of the setting sun is seen battling with masses of azure cloud, has not been exceeded by Titian himself. With air lhe_ daring yet perfectly unobtrusive and unconscious realism of certain details, the conception is one of the loftiest, one of the most penetrating in its very simplicity, of Venetian art at its apogee. The divine mansuetude, the human and brotherly sympathy of the Christ, have not been equalled since the early days of the Cristo della Moneta. Altogether the Pilgrims at Emmaus well marks that higher and more far-reaching conception of sacred art which reveals itself in the pro ductions of Titian's old age, when we compare them with the untroubled serenity and the conventional assumptions of the middle time.1 To the year 1545 belongs the supremely fine Portrait of Aretino, which is one of the glories of the Pitti Gallery. This was destined to propitiate the Grand Duke Cosimo of Tuscany, the son of his passionately 1 Vasari saw a Christ with Cleophas and Luke by Titian, above the door in the Salotta d' Oro, which precedes the Sala del Consiglio de' Dieci in the Doges' Palace, and states that it had been acquired by the patrician Alessandro Contarini and by him presented to the Signoria. The evidence of successive historians would appear to prove that it remained there until the close of last century. According to Crowe and Cavalcaselle the Louvre picture was a replica done for Mantua, which with the other Gonzaga pictures found its way into Charles I.'s collection, and thence, through that of Jabach, finally into the gallery of Louis XIV. At the sale of the royal collection by the Common wealth it was appraised at £600. The picture bears the signature, unusual for this period, " Tician." There is another Christ with tbe Pilgrims at Emmaus in the collection of the Earl of Yarborough, signed "Titianus," in which, alike as to the figures, the scheme of colour, and the landscape, there are important variations. One point is of especial importance. Behind the figure of St. Luke in the Yarborough picture is a second pillar. This is not intended to appear in the Louvre picture ; yet underneath 58 THE LATER WORK OF TITIAN attached friend of earlier days, Giovanni delle Bande Nere. Aretino, who had particular reasons for desiring to appear before the obdurate Cosimo in all the pomp and opulence of his later years, was obviously wounded that Titian, true to his genius, and to his method at this moment, should have made the keynote of his masterpiece a dignified simplicity. For once unfaithful to his brother Triumvir and friend, he attacks him in the accompanying letter to the Tuscan ruler with the withering sarcasm that " the satins, velvets, and brocades would perhaps have been better if Titian had received a few more scudi for working them out." If Aretino's pique had not caused the momentary clouding over of his artistic vision, he would have owned that the canvas now in the Pitti was one of the happiest achievements of Titian and one of the greatest things in portraiture. There is no flattery here of the " Divine Aretino," as with heroic impudence the notorious publicist styles himself. The sensual type is preserved, but rendered acceptable, and in a sense attractive, by a certain assurance and even dignity of bearing, such as success and a position impregnable of its unique and unenviable kind may well have lent to the adventurer in his maturity. Even Titian's brush has not worked with greater richness and freedom, with an effect broader or more entirely legitimate than in the head with its softly flowing beard and the magnificent yet not too ornate robe and vest of plum-coloured velvet and satin. the glow of the landscape there is just the shadow of such a pillar, giving evidence of a pentimento on the part of the master. This, so far as it goes, is evidence that the Louvre example was a revised version, and the Yarborough picture a repetition or adaptation of the first original seen by Vasari. However this may be, there can be no manner of doubt that the picture in the Long Gallery of the Louvre is an original entirely from the hand of Titian, while Lord Yarborough's picture shows nothing of his touch and little even of the manner of his studio at the time. CHAPTER III The Visit to Rome — Titian and Michelangelo — The " Danae" of Naples — " St. John the Baptist in the Desert " — Journey to Augsburg — " Venus and Cupid " of the Tribuna — '•'¦Venus with the Organ Player'1'' of Madrid — The Altar-piece of Serravalle — " Charles V. at the Battle of Miihlberg " — " Prometheus Bound " and companion pictures — Second Journey to Augsburg — Portraits of Philip of Spain — The so-called '¦'¦Marques del Vasto" at Cassel — The " St. Margaret'''' — The "-Danae" of Madrid—The '¦'¦Trinity "— " Venus and Adonis "—"La Fede." At last, in the autumn of 1545, the master of Cadore, at the age of sixty- eight years, was to see Rome, its ruins, its statues, its antiquities, and what to the painter of the Renaissance must have meant infinitely more, the Sixtine Chapel and the Stanze of the Vatican. Upon nothing in the history of Venetian art have its lovers, and the many who, with profound interest, trace Titian's noble and perfectly consistent career from its com mencement to its close, more reason to congratulate themselves than on this circumstance, that in youth and earlier manhood fortune and his own success kept him from visiting Rome. Though his was not the eclectic tendency, the easily impressionable artistic temperament of a Sebastiano Luciani — the only eclectic, perhaps, who managed all the same to prove and to maintain himself an artist of the very first rank — if Titian had in earlier life been lured to the Eternal City, and had there settled, the glamour of the grand style might have permanently and fatally disturbed his balance. Now it was too late for the splendid and gracious master, who even at sixty-eight had still before him nearly thirty fruitful years, to receive any impressions sufficiently deep to penetrate to the root of his art. There is some evidence to show that Titian, deeply impressed with the highest manifestations of the Florentine and Umbro-Florentine art trans planted to Rome, considered that his work had improved after the visit of 1 545-1 546. If there was such improvement — and certainly in the 60 THE LATER WORK OF TITIAN ultimate phases of his practice there will be evident in some ways a wider view, a higher grasp of essentials, a more responsive sensitiveness in the conceiving anew of the great sacred subjects — it must have come, not from any effort to assimilate the manner or to assume the standpoint which had obtained in Rome, but from the closer contact with a world which at its centre was beginning to take a deeper, a more solemn and gloomy view of religion and life. It should not be forgotten that this was the year when the great Council of Trent first met, and that during the next twenty years or more the whole of Italy, nay, the whole of the Catholic world, was overshadowed by its deliberations. Titian's friend and patron of that time, Guidobaldo II., Duke of Urbino, had at first opposed Titian's visit to the Roman court, striving to reserve to himself the services of the Venetian master until such time as he should have carried out for him the commissions with which he was charged. Yielding, however, to the inevitable, and yielding, too, with a good grace, he himself escorted his favourite with his son Orazio from Venice through Ferrara to Pesaro, and having detained him a short while there, granted him an escort through the Papal States to Rome. There he was well received by the Farnese Pope, and with much cordiality by Cardinal Bembo. Rooms were accorded to him in the Belvedere section of the Vatican Palace, and there no doubt he painted the unfinished portrait-group Paul III. with Cardinal Alessandro Farnese and Ottavio Farnese, which has been already described, and with it other pieces of the same type, and portraits of the Farnese family and circle now no longer to be traced. Vasari, well pleased no doubt to renew his acquaintance with the acknowledged head of the contemporary Venetian painters, acted as his cicerone in the visits to the antiquities of Rome, to the statues and art-treasures of the Vatican, while Titian's fellow-citizen Sebastiano del Piombo was in his company when he studied the Stanze of Raphael. It was but three years since Michelangelo's Last Judgment had been uncovered in the Sixtine, and it would have been in the highest degree interesting to read his comments on this gigantic performance, towards which it was so little likely that his sympathies would spontaneously go out. Memorable is the visit paid by Buonarroti, with an unwonted regard for ceremonious courtesy, to Titian in his apartments at the Belvedere, as it is recalled by Vasari with that naive touch, that power of suggestion, which THE LATER WORK OF TITIAN 61 gives such delightful colour to his unstudied prose. No Imaginary Conversation among those that Walter Savage Landor has devised equals in significance this meeting of the two greatest masters then living, simply Pope Paul III. with Cardinal Farnese and Ottavio Farnese. Naples Gallery. From a Photograph by E. Alinari. as it is sketched in by the Aretine biographer. The noble Venetian representing the alternating radiance and gloom of earth, its fairest pages as they unfold themselves, the joys and sorrows, the teeming life of humanity ; the mighty Florentine disdainful of the world, its colours, its 62 THE LATER WORK OF TITIAN pulsations, its pomps and vanities, incurious of mankind save in its great symbolical figures, soaring like the solitary eagle into an atmosphere of his own where the dejected beholder can scarce breathe, and, sick at heart, oppressed with awe, lags far behind ! Titian the gracious, the serene, who throughout a long life of splendid and by comparison effortless achievement has openly and candidly drunk deep of all the joys of life, a man even as others are ! Michelangelo the austere, the scornful, to whom the pleasures of the world, the company in well-earned leisure of his fellow-man, suggest but the loss of precious hours which might be devoted to the shaping in solitude of masterpieces ; in the very depths of whose nature lurk nevertheless, even in old age, the strangest ardours, the fiercest and most insatiate longings for love and friendship ! Let Vasari himself be heard as to this meeting. " Michelangelo and Vasari going one day to pay a visit to Titian in the Belvedere, saw, in a picture which he had then advanced towards completion, a nude female figure representing Dana'e as she receives the embrace of Jove transformed into a rain of gold, and, as the fashion is in people's presence, praised it much to him. When they had taken leave, and the discussion was as to the art of Titian, Buonarroti praised it highly, saying that the colour and handling pleased him much, but that it was a subject for regret that at Venice they did not learn from the very beginning to design correctly, and that its painters did not follow a better method in their study of art." It is the battle that will so often be renewed between the artist who looks upon colour as merely a complement and adjunct to design, and the painter who regards it as not only the outer covering, but the body and soul of art. We remember how the stifF-necked Ingres, the greatest Raphaelesque of this century, hurled at Delacroix's head the famous dictum, " Le dessin c'est la probite de l'art," and how his illustrious rival, the chief of a romanticism which he would hardly acknowledge, vindi cated by works rather than by words his contention that, if design was indeed art's conscience, colour was its life-blood, its very being. The Dana'e, seen and admired with reservations by Buonarroti in the painting-room of Titian at the Belvedere, is now, with its beauty diminished in important particulars, to be found with the rest of the Farnese pictures in the gallery of the Naples Museum. It serves to show that if the artist was far beyond the stage of imitation or even of assimila- Dana'e and the Golden Rain. Naples Galiery. From a Photograph by E. Alinari. 64 THE LATER WORK OF TITIAN tion on the larger scale, he was, at any rate, affected by the Roman atmosphere in art. For once he here comes nearer to the realisation of Tintoretto's ideal — the colour of Titian and the design of Michelangelo — than his impetuous pupil and rival ever did. While preserving in the Dana'e his own true warmth and transparency of Venetian colour — now somewhat obscured yet not effaced — he combines unusual weighti- ness and majesty with voluptuousness in the nude, and successfully strives after a more studied rhythm in the harmony of the composition generally than the art of Venice usually affected. Titian, in his return from Rome, which he was never to revisit, made a stay at Florence with an eye, as we may guess, both to business and pleasure. There, as Vasari takes care to record, our master visited the artistic sights, and rimase stupefatto — remained in breathless astonishment — as he had done when he made himself acquainted with the artistic glories of Rome. This is but vague, and a little too much smacks of self-flattery and adulation of the brother Tuscans. Titian was received by Duke Cosimo at Poggio a Caiano, but his offer to paint the portrait of the Medici ruler was not well received. It may be, as Vasari surmises, that this attitude was taken up by the duke in order not to do wrong to the " many noble craftsmen " then practising in his city and dominion. More probably, however, Cosimo's hatred and contempt of his father's minion Aretino, whose portrait by Titian he had condescended to retain, yet declined to acknowledge, impelled him to show something less than favour to the man who was known to be the closest friend and intimate of this self-styled " Scourge of Princes." Crowe and Cavalcaselle have placed about the year 1555 the ex travagantly lauded St. John the Baptist in the Desert, once in the church of S. M. Maria Maggiore at Venice, and now in the Accademia there. To the writer it appears that it would best come in at this stage — that is to say in or about 1545 — not only because the firm close handling in the nude would be less explicable ten years later on, but because the conception of the majestic St. John is for once not pictorial but purely sculptural. Leaving Rome, and immediately afterwards coming into contact for the first time with the wonders of the earlier Florentine art, Titian might well have conceived, might well have painted thus. Strange to say, the influence is not that of Michelangelo, but, THE LATER WORK OF TITIAN 65 unless the writer is greatly deceived, that of Donatello, whose noble ascetic type of the Precursor is here modernised, and in the process deprived of some of its austerity. The glorious mountain landscape, with its brawling stream, fresher and truer than any torrent of Ruysdael's, is all Titian. It makes the striking figure of St. John, for all its majesty, appear not a little artificial. The little town of Serravalle, still so captivatingly Venetian in its general aspect, holds one of the most magnificent works of Titian's late time, a vast Virgin and Child with St. Peter and St. Andrew. This hangs — or did when last seen by the writer — in the choir of the Church of St. Andrew ; there is evidence in Titian's correspondence that it was finished in 1547, so that it must have been undertaken soon after the return from Rome. In the distance between the two majestic figures of the saints is a prospect of landscape with a lake, upon which Titian has shown on a reduced scale Christ calling Peter and Andrew from their nets ; an undisguised adaptation this, by the veteran master, of the divine Urbinate's Miraculous Draught of Fishes, but one which made of the borrowed motive a new thing, no excrescence but an integral part of the conception. In this great work, which to be more universally celebrated requires only to be better known to those who do not come within the narrow circle of students, there is evidence that while Titian, after his stay at the Papal court, remained firm as a rock in his style and general principles — luckily a Venetian and no pseudo-Roman, — his imagination became more intense in its glow, gloomier but grander, than it had been in middle age — his horizon altogether vaster. To a grand it sometimes too unruffled placidity succeeded a physical and psychical perturbation which belonged both to the man in advanced years and to the particular moment in the century. Even in his treatment of classic myth, of the nude in goddess and woman, there was, as we shall see presently, a greater unrest and a more poignant sensuality — there was evidence of a mind and temperament troubled anew instead of being tranquillised by the oncoming of old age. Are we to place here, as Crowe and Cavalcaselle do, the Venus and Cupid of the Tribuna and the Venus with the Organ Player of the Prado ? The technical execution of these canvases, the treatment of landscape in the former, would lead the writer to place them some years 66 THE LATER WORK OF TITIAN farther on still in the ceuvre of the master. There are, however, certain reasons for following them in this chronological arrangement. The Venus and Cupid which hangs in the Tribuna of the Uffizi, as the pendant to the more resplendent but more realistic Venus of Urbino, is a darker and less well-preserved picture than its present companion, but a grander if a more audacious presentment of the love-goddess. Yet even here she is not so much the Cytherean as an embodiment of the Venetian ideal of the later time, an exemplification of the undisguised worship of fleshly loveliness which then existed in Venice. It has been pointed out that the later Venus has the features of Titian's fair daughter Lavinia, and this is no doubt to a certain extent true. The goddesses, nymphs, and women of this time bear a sort of general family resemblance to her and to each other. This piece illustrates the preferred type of Titian's old age, as the Vanitas, Herodias, and Flora illustrate the pre ferred type of his youth ; as the paintings which we have learnt to associate with the Duchess of Urbino illustrate that of his middle time. The dignity and rhythmic outline of Eros in the Dana'e of Naples have been given up in favour of a more naturalistic conception of the insinuat ing urchin, who is in this Venus and Cupid the successor of those much earlier amorini in the Worship of Venus at Madrid. The landscape in its sweeping breadth is very characteristic of the late time, and would give good reason for placing the picture later than it here appears. The difficulty is this. The Venus with the Organ Player1 of Madrid, which in many essential points is an inferior repetition of the later Venus of the Tribuna, contains the portrait of Ottavio Farnese, much as we see him in the unfinished group painted, as has been recorded, at Rome in 1546. This being the case, it is not easy to place the Venus and Cupid, or its subsequent adaptation, much later than just before the journey to Augsburg. The Venus with the Organ Player has been overrated ; there are things in this canvas which we cannot without offence to Titian ascribe to his own brush. Among these are the tiresome, formal landscape, the wooden little dog petted by Venus, and perhaps some other passages. The goddess herself and the amorous Ottavio, though this last is not a very striking or successful portrait, may perhaps 1 Purchased at the sale of Charles I.'s collection by Alonso de Cardenas for Philip IV. at the price of .£165. THE LATER WORK OF TITIAN 67 be left to the master. He vindicates himself more completely than in any other passage of the work when he depicts the youthful, supple form of the Venetian courtesan, as in a merely passive pose she personates the goddess whose insignificant votary she really is. It cannot be denied that he touches here the lowest level reached by him in such delineations. What offends in this Venus with the Organ Player, or rather Ottavio Farnese with his Beloved, is that its informing sentiment is not love, or indeed any community of sentiment, but an ostentatious pride in the possession of covetable beauty subdued like that of Danae herself by gold. If we are to assume with Crowe and Cavalcaselle that the single figure Ecce Homo of the Prado Gallery was the piece taken by the master to Charles V. when, at the bidding of the Emperor, he journeyed to Augsburg, we can only conclude that his design was carried out by pupils or assistants. The execution is not such as we can ascribe to the brush which is so shortly to realise for the monarch a group of masterpieces. It was in January 1548 that Titian set forth to obey the command of the Emperor, " per far qualche opera," as Count Girolamo della Torre has it in a letter of recommendation given to Titian for the Cardinal of Trent at Augsburg. It is significant to find the writer mentioning the painter, not by any of the styles and titles which he had a right to bear, especially at the court of Charles V., but extolling him as " Messer Titiano Pittore et il primo huomo della Christianita." 1 It might be imagined that it would be a terrible wrench for Titian, at the age of seventy, to transplant himself suddenly, and for the first time, into a foreign land. But then he was not as other men of seventy are. The final years of his unexampled career will conclusively show that he preserved his mental and physical vigour to the end. Further, the imperial court with its Spanish etiquette, its Spanish language and manners, was much the same at Augsburg as he had known it on previous occasions at Bologna. Moreover, Augsburg and Nuremberg 2 had, during the last fifty years, been in close touch with Venice in all matters appertaining to art and commerce. Especially the great banking 1 Crowe and Cavalcaselle, Life of Titian, vol. ii., Appendix (p. 502). 2 Moritz Thausing has striven in his Wiener Kunstbriefe to show that the coat of arms on the marble bas-relief in the Sacred and Profane Love is that of the well-known Nuremberg house of Imhof. This interpretation has, however, been controverted by Herz Franz Wickhoff. 68 THE LATER WORK OF TITIAN house of the Fuggers had the most intimate relations with the queen-city of the Adriatic. Yet art of the two great German cities would doubtless appeal less to the Venetian who had arrived at the zenith of his develop ment than it would and did to the Bellinis and their school at the begin ning of the century. The gulf had become a far wider one, and the points of contact were fewer. The trusted Orazio had been left behind, notwithstanding the success which he had achieved during the Roman tour, and it may be assumed that he presided over the studio and workshop at Biri Grande during his father's absence. Titian was accompanied to Augsburg by his second cousin, Cesare Vecellio,1 who no doubt had a minor share in very many of the canvases belonging to the period of residence at Augsburg. Our master's first and most grateful task must have been the painting of the great equestrian portrait of the Emperor at the Battle of Miihlberg, which now hangs in the Long Gallery of the Prado at Madrid. It suffered much injury in the fire of the Pardo Palace, which annihilated so many masterpieces, but is yet very far from being the " wreck " which, with an exaggeration not easily pardonable under the circumstances, Crowe and Cavalcaselle have described it. In the presence of one of the world's masterpieces criticism may for once remain silent, willingly renouncing all its rights. No purpose would be served here by recording how much paint has been abraded in one corner, how much added in another. A deep sense of thankfulness should possess us that the highest manifesta tion of Titian's genius has been preserved, even though it be shorn of some of its original beauty. Splendidly armed in steel from head to foot, and holding firmly grasped in his hand the spear, emblem of command in this instance rather than of combat, Cassar advances with a mien impassive yet of irresistible domination. He bestrides with ease his splendid dark-brown charger, caparisoned in crimson, and heavily weighted like himself with the full panoply of battle, a perfect harmony being here subtly suggested between man and beast. The rich landscape, with a gleam of the Elbe in the distance, is still in the half gloom of earliest day ; but on the horizon, and in the clouds overhead, glows the red ominous light of 1 Cesare Vecellio must have been very young at this time. The costume-book, Degli abiti antichi e moderni, to which he owes his chief fame, was published at Venice in 1590. THE LATER WORK OF TITIAN 69 sunrise, colouring the veils of the morning mist. The Emperor is alone — alone as he must be in life and in death — a man, yet lifted so high above Charles V. at the Battle of Miihlberg. Gallery of the Prado, Madria. From a Photograph by Braun, Clement, fif Cie. other men that the world stretches far below at his feet, while above him this ruler knows no power but that of God. It is not even the sneer of cold command, but a majesty far higher and more absolutely convinced 70 THE LATER WORK OF TITIAN of its divine origin, that awes the beholder as he gazes. In comparison with the supreme dignity of this ugly, pallid Hapsburger, upon whom disease and death have already laid a shadowy finger, how artificial appear the divine assumptions of an Alexander, how theatrical the Olympian airs of an Augustus, how merely vulgar and ill-worn the imperial poses of a Napoleon. No veracious biographer of Titian could pretend that he is always thus imaginative, that coming in contact with a commanding human individuality he always thus unfolds the outer wrappings to reveal the soul within. Indeed, especially in the middle time just past, he not infrequently contents himself with the splendid outsides of splendid things. To interpret this masterpiece as the writer has ventured to do, it is not necessary to assume that Titian reasoned out the poetic vision, which was at the same time an absolutely veracious presentment, argu- mentatively with himself, as the painter of such a portrait in words might have done. Pictorial genius of the creative order does not proceed by such methods, but sees its subject as a whole, leaving to others the task of probing and unravelling. It should be borne in mind, too, that this is the first in order, as it is infinitely the greatest and the most significant among the vast equestrian portraits of monarchs by court painters. Velazquez on the one hand, and Van Dyck on the other, have worked wonders in the same field. Yet their finest productions, even the Philip IV., the Conde Duque Olivarez, the Don Balthasar Carlos of the Spaniard, even the two equestrian portraits of Charles I., the Francisco de Moncada, the Prince Thomas of Savoy of the Fleming, are in com parison but magnificent show pieces aiming above all at decorative pomp and an imposing general effect. We come to earth and every-day weariness again with the full- length of Charles V., which is now in the Alte Pinakothek of Munich. Here the monarch, dressed in black and seated in a well-worn crimson velvet chair, shows without disguise how profoundly he is ravaged by ill-health and ennui. Fine as the portrait still appears notwithstanding its bad condition, one feels somehow that Titian is not in this instance, as he is in most others, perfect master of his material, of the main elements of his picture. The problem of relieving the legs cased in black against a relatively light background, and yet allowing to them their full plastic THE LATER WORK OF TITIAN 71 form, is not perfectly solved. Neither is it, by the way, as a rule in the canvases of those admirable painters of men, the quasi- Venetians, Moretto of Brescia and Moroni of Bergamo. The Northerners — among them Holbein and Lucidel — came nearer to perfect success in this particular matter. The splendidly brushed-in prospect of cloudy sky and far- stretching country recalls, as Morelli has observed, the landscapes of Rubens, and suggests that he underwent the influence of the Cadorine in this respect as in many others, especially after his journey as ambassador to Madrid. Another portrait, dating from the first visit to Augsburg, is the half- length of the Elector John Frederick of Saxony, now in the Imperial Gallery at Vienna. He sits obese and stolid, yet not without the dignity that belongs to absolute simplicity, showing on his left cheek the wound received at the battle of Muhlberg. The picture has, as a portrait by Titian, no very commanding merit, no seduction of technique, and it is easy to imagine that Cesare Vecellio may have had a share in it. Singular is the absence of all pose, of all attempt to harmonise the main lines of the design or give pictorial elegance to the naive directness of the present ment. This mode of conception may well have been dictated to the courtly Venetian by sturdy John Frederick himself. The master painted for Mary, Queen Dowager of Hungary, four canvases specially mentioned by Vasari, Prometheus Bound to the Rock, Ixion, Tantalus, and Sisyphus, which were taken to Spain at the moment of the definitive migration of the court in 1556. Crowe and Cavalcaselle state that the whole four perished in the all-devouring conflagration of the Pardo Palace, and put down the Prometheus and Sisyphus of the Prado Gallery as copies by Sanchez Coello. It is difficult to form a definite judgment on canvases so badly hung, so darkened and injured. They certainly look much more like Venetian originals than Spanish copies. These mythological subjects may very properly be classed with the all too energetic ceiling -pictures now in the Sacristy of the Salute. Here again the master, in the effort to be grandiose in a style not properly his, overreaches himself and becomes artificial. He must have left Augsburg this time in the autumn of 1548, since in the month of October of that year we find him at Innsbruck making a family picture of the children of King Ferdinand, the Emperor's 72 THE LATER WORK OF TITIAN brother. That monarch himself, his two sons and five daughters, he had already portrayed. Much feasting, much rejoicing, in the brilliant and jovial circle presided over by Aretino and the brother Triumvirs, followed upon our master's return to Venice. Aretino, who after all was not so much the scourge as the screw of princes, would be sure to think the more highly of the friend whom he really cherished in all sincerity, when he returned from close and confidential intercourse with the mightiest ruler of the age, the source not only of honour but of advantages which the Aretine, like Falstaff, held more covetable because more substantial. To the year 1549 belongs the gigantic woodcut The Destruction of Pharaoh's Host, designed, according to the inscription on the print, by " the great and immortal Titian," and engraved by Domenico delle Greche, who, not withstanding his name, calls himself " depentore Venetiano." He is not, as need hardly be pointed out, to be confounded with the famous Veneto-Spanish painter, Domenico Theotocopuli, II Greco, whose date of birth is just about this time (1548). Titian, specially summoned by the Emperor, travelled back to Augsburg in November 1550. Charles had returned thither with Prince Philip, the heir-presumptive of the Spanish throne, and it can hardly be open to question that one of the main objects for which the court painter was made to undertake once more the arduous journey across the Alps was to depict the son upon whom all the monarch's hopes and plans were centred. Charles, whose health had still further declined, was now, under an accumulation of political misfortune, gloomier than ever before, more completely detached from the things of the world. Barely over fifty at this moment, he seemed already, and, in truth, was an old man, while the master of Cadore at seventy-three shone in the splendid autumn of his genius, which even then had not reached its final period of expansion. Titian enjoyed the confidence of his imperial master during this second visit in a degree which excited surprise at the time ; the intercourse with Charles at this tragic moment of his career, when, sick and disappointed, he aspired only to the consolations of faith, seeing his sovereign remedy in the soothing balm of utter peace, may have worked to deepen the gloom which was overspreading the painter's art if not his soul. It is not to be believed, all the same, that this THE LATER WORK OF TITIAN 73 atmosphere of unrest and misgiving, of faith coloured by an element of terror, in itself operated so strongly as unaided to give a final form to Titian's sacred works. There was in this respect kinship of spirit between the mighty ruler and his servant ; Titian's art had already become sadder and more solemn, had already shown a more sombre passion. The tragic gloom is now to become more and more intense, until we come to the climax in the astonishing Pieta left unfinished when the end comes a quarter of a century later still. And with this change in the whole atmosphere of the sacred art comes another in the inverse sense, which, being an essential trait, must be described, though to do so is not quite easy. Titian becomes more and more merely sensuous in his conception of the beauty of women. He betrays in his loss of serenity that he is less than heretofore impervious to the stings of an invading sensuality, which serves to make of his mythological and erotic scenes belonging to this late time a tribute to the glories of the flesh unennobled by the gilding touch of the purer flame. And the painter who, when Charles V. retired into his solitude, had suffered the feeble flame of his life to die slowly out, was to go on working for King Philip, as fierce in the intensity of his physical passion as in the fervour of his faith, would receive encouragement to develop to the full these seemingly conflicting tendencies of sacred and amorous passion. The Spanish prince whom it was the master's most important task on this occasion to portray was then but twenty-four years of age, and youth served not indeed to hide, but in a slight measure to attenuate, some of his most characteristic physical defects. His unattractive person even then, however, showed some of the most repellent peculiarities of his father and his race. He had the supreme distinction of Charles but not his majesty, more than his haughty reserve, even less than his power of enlisting sympathy. In this most difficult of tasks — the portrayal that should be at one and the same time true in its essence, distinguished, and as sympathetic as might be under the circumstances, of so unlovable a personage — Titian won a new victory. His Prince Philip of Austria in Armour at the Prado is one of his most complete and satisfying achievements, from every point of view. A veritable triumph of art, but/ as usual a triumph to which the master himself disdains to call attejjtion, is the rendering of the damascened armour, the puffed hose, and the 74 THE LATER WORK OF TITIAN white silk stockings and shoes. The two most important variations executed by the master, or under his immediate direction, are the full- lengths of the Pitti Palace and the Naples Museum, in both of which sumptuous court-dress replaces the gala military costume. They are practically identical, both in the design and the working out, save that in the Florence example Philip stands on a grass plot in front of a colonnade, while in that of Naples the background is featureless. As the pictures are now seen, that in the Pitti is marked by greater subtlety in the characterisation of the head, while the Naples canvas appears the more brilliant as regards the working out of the costume and accessories. To the period of Titian's return from the second visit to Augsburg belongs a very remarkable portrait which of late years there has been some disinclination to admit as his own work. This is the imposing full-length portrait which stands forth as the crowning decoration of the beautiful and well-ordered gallery at Cassel. In the days when it was sought to obtain quand meme a striking designation for a great picture, it was christened Alfonso d'Avalos, Marques del Vasto. More recently, with some greater show of probability, it has been called Guidobaldo II, Duke of Urbino. In the Jahrbuch der koniglich-preuss- ischen Kunstsammlungen,1 Herr Carl Justi, ever bold and ingenious in hypothesis, strives, with the support of a mass of corroborative evidence that cannot be here quoted, to prove that the splendid personage presented is a Neapolitan nobleman of the highest rank, Giovan Francesco Acquaviva, Duke of Atri. There is the more reason to accept his conjecture since it helps us to cope with certain difficulties presented by the picture itself. It may be conceded at the outset that there are disturbing elements in it, well calculated to give pause to the student of Titian. The handsome patrician, a little too proud of his rank, his magnificent garments and accoutrements, his virile beauty, stands fronting the spectator in a dress of crimson and gold, wearing a plumed and jewelled hat, which in its elaboration closely borders on the grotesque, and holding a hunting-spear. Still more astonishing in its exaggeration of a Venetian mode in portraiture 2 is the great crimson, 1 "Das Tizianbildniss der koniglichen Galerie zu Cassel," Jahrbuch der koniglich- preussischen Kunstsammlungen, Funfzehnter Band, III. Heft. 2 See the Francesco Maria, Duke of Urbino at the Uffizi ; also, for the modish headpiece, the Ippolito de1 Medici at the Pitti. THE LATER WORK OF TITIAN 75 dragon-crowned helmet which, on the left of the canvas, Cupid himself supports. To the right, a rival even of Love in the affections of our enigmatical personage, a noble hound rubs himself affectionately against the stalwart legs of his master. Far back stretches a prospect singularly unlike those rich -toned studies of sub -Alpine regions in which Titian as a rule revels. It has an august but more colourless beauty recalling the middle Apennines ; one might almost say that it prefigures those prospects of inhospitable Sierra which, with their light, delicate tonality, so admirably relieve and support the portraits of Velazquez. All this is unusual, and still more so is the want of that aristocratic gravity, of that subordination of mere outward splendour to inborn dignity, which mark Titian's greatest portraits throughout his career. The splendid materials for the picture are not as absolutely digested, as absolutely welded into one consistent and harmonious whole, as with such authorship one would expect. But then, on the other hand, take the magnificent execution in the most important passages : the distinguished silvery tone obtained notwithstanding the complete red- and-gold costume and the portentous crimson helmet ; the masterly brush-work in these last particulars, in the handsome virile head of the model and the delicate flesh of the amorino. The dog might without exaggeration be pronounced the best, the truest in movement, to be found in Venetian art — indeed, in art generally, until Velazquez appears. Herr Carl Justi's happy conjecture helps us, if we accept it, to get over some of these difficulties and seeming contradictions. The Duke of Atri belonged to a great Neapolitan family, exiled and living at the French court under royal countenance and protection. The portrait was painted to be sent back to France, to which, indeed, its whole subsequent history belongs. Under such circumstances the young nobleman would naturally desire to affirm his rank and pretensions as emphatically as might be ; to outdo in splendour and prestance all previous sitters to Titian ; to record himself apt in war, in the chase, in love, and more choice in the fashion of his appointments than any of his compeers in France or Italy. An importance to which it is surely not entitled in the life-work of the master is given to the portrait of the Legate Beccadelli, executed in the month of July 1552, and included among the real and fancied 76 THE LATER WORK OF TITIAN masterpieces of the Tribuna in the Uffizi. To the writer it has always appeared the most nearly tiresome and perfunctory of Titian's more im portant works belonging to the same class. Perhaps the elaborate legend inscribed on the paper held by the prelate, including the unusual form of signature " Titianus Vecellius faciebat Venetiis MDLII, mense Julii," may have been the cause that the canvas has attracted an undue share of attention.1 At p. 218 of Crowe and Cavalcaselle's second volume we get, under date the nth of October 1552, Titian's first letter to Philip of Spain. There is mention in it of a dueen of Persia, which the artist does not expressly declare to be his own work, and of a Landscape and St. Margaret previously sent by Ambassador Vargas (" . . . il Paesaggio et il ritratto di Sta. Margarita mandatovi per avanti "). The comment of the biographers on this is that " for the first time in the annals of Italian painting we hear of a picture which claims to be nothing more than a landscape, etc." Remembering, however, that when in 1574, at the end of his life, our master sent in to Philip's secretary, Antonio Perez, a list of paintings delivered from time to time, but not paid for, he described the Venere del Pardo, or Jupiter and Antiope, as " La nuda con il paese con el satiro," would it not be fair to assume that the description II Paesaggio et il ritratto di Sta. Margarita means one and the same canvas — The Figure of St. Margaret in a Landscape ? Thus should we be relieved from the duty of searching among the authentic works of the master of Cadore for a landscape pure and simple, and in the process stumbling across a number of spurious and doubtful things. The St. Margaret is evidently the picture which, having been many years at the Escorial, now hangs in the Prado Gallery. Obscured and 1 A number of fine portraits must of necessity be passed over in these remarks. The superb if not very well-preserved Antonio Porcia, within the last few years added to the Brera, dates back a good many years from this time. Then we have, among other things, the Benedetto Varchi and the Fabrizio Salvaresio of the Imperial Museum at Vienna — the latter bearing the date 1558. The writer is unable to accept as a genuine Titian the interesting but rather matter-of-fact Portrait of a Lady in Mourning, No. 174 in the Dresden Gallery. The master never painted with such a lack of charm and distinc tion. Very doubtful, but difficult to judge in its present state, is the Portrait of a Lady with a Vase, No. 173 in the same collection. Morelli accepts as a genuine example of the master the Portrait of a Lady in a Red Dress also in the Dresden Gallery, where it bears the number 176. If the picture is his, as the technical execution would lead the observer to believe, it constitutes in its stiffness and unambitious na'ivct'e a curious exception in his long series of portraits. THE LATER WORK OF TITIAN 77 darkened though it is by the irreparable outrages of time, it may be taken as a very characteristic example of Titian's late but not latest Venus with the Mirror. Gallery of the Hermitage, St. Petersburg. From a Photograph by Braun, Clement, fjf Cie. manner in sacred art. In the most striking fashion does it exhibit that peculiar gloom and agitation of the artist face to face with religious subjects which at an earlier period would have left his serenity undis- 78 THE LATER WORK OF TITIAN turbed. The saint, uncertain of her triumph, armed though she is with the Cross, flees in affright from the monster whose huge bulk looms, terrible even in overthrow, in the darkness of the foreground. To the impression of terror communicated by the whole conception the distance of the lurid landscape — a city in flames — contributes much. In the spring and summer of 1554 were finished for Philip of Spain the Dana'e of Madrid ; for Mary, Queen of Hungary, a Madonna Ad- dolor ata ; for Charles V. the Trinity, to which he had with Titian devoted so much anxious thought. The Dana'e of the Prado, less grandiose, less careful in finish than the Naples picture, is painted with greater spon taneity and elan than its predecessor, and vibrates with an undisguisedly fleshly passion. Is it to the taste of Philip or to a momentary touch of cynicism in Titian himself that we owe the deliberate dragging down of the conception until it becomes symbolical of the lowest and most venal form of love ? In the Naples version Amor, a fairly-fashioned divinity of more or less classic aspect, presides ; in the Madrid and subsequent in terpretations of the legend, a grasping hag, the attendant of Danae, holds out a cloth, eager to catch her share of the golden rain. In the St. Petersburg version, which cannot be accounted more than an atelier piece, there is, with some slight yet appreciable variations, a substantial agreement with the Madrid picture. Of this Hermitage Dana'e there is a replica in the collection of the Duke of Wellington at Apsley House. In yet another version (also a contemporary atelier piece), which is in the Imperial Gallery at Vienna, and has for that reason acquired a certain celebrity, the greedy duenna is depicted in full face, and holds aloft a chased metal dish. Satisfaction of a very different kind was afforded to Queen Mary of Hungary and Charles V. The lady obtained a Christ appearing to the Magdalen, which was for a long time preserved at the Escorial, where there is still to be found a bad copy of it. A mere fragment of the original, showing a head and bust of Christ holding a hoe in his left hand, has been preserved, and is now No. 489 in the gallery of the Prado. Even this does not convince the student that Titian's own brush had a predominant share in the performance. The letter to Charles V., dated from Venice the 10th of September 1554, records the sending of a Madonna Addolorata and the great 'Trinity. These, together with another Landscape Drawing in Pen and Bistre by Titian. Collection of Professor Legros. THE LATER WORK OF TITIAN 79 Virgen de los Dolores ostensibly by Titian, and the Ecce Homo already mentioned, formed afterwards part of the small collection of devotional paintings taken by Charles to his monastic retreat at Yuste, and appropriated after his death by Philip. If the picture styled La Dolorosa, and now No. 468 in the gallery of the Prado, is indeed the one painted for the great monarch who was so sick in body and spirit, so fast declining to his end, the suspicion is aroused that the courtly Venetian must have acted with something less than fairness towards his great patron, since the Addolorata cannot be acknowledged as his own work. Still less can we accept as his own that other Virgen de los Dolores, now No. 475 in the same gallery. It is very different with the Trinity, called in Spain La Gloria, and now No. 462 in the same gallery. Though the master must have been hampered by the express command that the Emperor should be portrayed as newly arisen from the grave and adoring the Trinity in an agony of prayer, and with him the deceased Empress Isabel, Queen Mary of Hungary, and Prince Philip, also as suppliants, he succeeded in bringing forth not indeed a complete masterpiece, but a picture all aspiration and fervent prayer — just the work to satisfy the yearnings of the man who, once the mightiest, was then the loneliest and saddest of mortals on earth. The crown and climax of the whole is the group of the Trinity itself, awful in majesty, dazzling in the golden radiance of its environment, and, beautifully linking it with mortality, the blue-robed figure of the Virgin, who stands on a lower eminence of cloud as she intercedes for the human race, towards whom her pitying gaze is directed. It would be absurd to pretend that we have here a work entitled, in virtue of the perfect achievement of all that has been sought for, to rank with such earlier masterpieces as the Assunta or the St. Peter Martyr. Yet it represents in one way sacred art of a higher, a more inspired order, and contains some pictorial beauties — such as the great central group — of which Titian would not in those earlier days have been equally capable. There is another descent, though not so marked a one as in the case of the Dana'e, with the Venus and Adonis painted for Philip, the new King-Consort of England, and forwarded by the artist to London in the autumn of 1554. That the picture now in the Sala de la Reina 80 THE LATER WORK OF TITIAN Isabel at Madrid is this original is proved, in the first place, by the quality of the flesh-painting, the silvery shimmer, the vibration of the whole, the subordination of local colour to general tone, yet by no means to the point of extinction — all these being distinctive qualities of this late time. It is further proved by the fact that it still shows traces of the injury of which Philip complained when he received the picture in London. A long horizontal furrow is clearly to be seen running right across the canvas. Apart from the consideration that pupils no doubt had a hand in the work, it lacks, with all its decorative elegance and felicity of movement, the charm with which Titian, both much earlier in his career and later on towards the end, could invest such mythological subjects.1 That the aim of the artist was not a very high one, or this poesia very near to his heart, is demonstrated by the amusingly material fashion in which he recommends it to his royal patron. He says that " if in the Dana'e the forms were to be seen front-wise, here was occasion to look at them from a contrary direction — a pleasant variety for the ornament of a Camerino." Our worldly-wise painter evidently knew that material allurements as well as supreme art were necessary to captivate Philip. It cannot be alleged, all the same, that this purely sensuous mode of conception was not perfectly in consonance with his own temperament, with his own point of view, at this particular stage in his life and practice. The new Doge Francesco Venier had, upon his accession in 1554, called upon Titian to paint, besides his own portrait, the orthodox votive picture of his predecessor Marcantonio Trevisan, and this official performance was duly completed in January 1555, and hung in the Sala de' Pregadi. At the same time Venier determined that thus tardily the memory of a long - deceased Doge, Antonio Grimani, should be rehabilitated by the dedication to him of a similar but more dramatic and allusive composition. The commission for this piece also was given to Titian, who made good progress with it, yet for reasons unexplained never carried the important undertaking to completion. It remained in the workshop at the time of his death, and was completed — with what divergence from the original design we cannot authoritatively 1 It is impossible to discuss here the atelier repetitions in the collections of the National Gallery and Lord Wemyss respectively, or the numerous copies to be found in other places. THE LATER WORK OF TITIAN 81 say — by assistants. Antonio Grimani, supported by members of his house, or officers attached to his person, kneels in adoration before an emblematic figure of Faith which appears in the clouds holding the cross and chalice, which winged child-angels help to support, and haloed round with an oval glory of cherubim — a conception, by the way, quite new and not at all orthodox. To the left appears a majestic figure of St. Mark, while the clouds upon which Faith is upborne, rise just sufficiently to show a very realistic prospect of Venice. There is not to be found in the whole life-work of Titian a clumsier or more disjointed composition as a whole, even making the necessary allowances for alterations, additions, and restorations. Though the figure of Faith is a sufficiently noble conception in itself, the group which it makes with the attendant angels is inexplicably heavy and awkward in arrangement ; the flying putti have none of the audacious grace and buoyancy that Lotto or Correggio would have imparted to them, none of the rush of Tintoretto. The noble figure of St. Mark must be of Titian's designing, but is certainly not of his painting, while the corresponding figure on the other side is neither the one nor the other. Some consolation is afforded by the figure of the kneeling Doge himself, which is a masterpiece — not less in the happy expression of naive adoration than in the rendering, with matchless breadth and certainty of brush, of burnished armour in which is mirrored the glow of the Doge's magnificent state robes. e CHAPTER IV Portraits of Titian s daughter Lavinia — Death of Aretino — " Martyrdom of St. Lawrence " — Death of Charles V. — Attempted assassination of Orazio Vecellio — "Diana and Actaeon" and " Diana and Calisto" — The "Cornaro Family" — The " Magdalen " of the Hermitage — The " Jupiter and Antiope " and " Rape of Europa" — Vasari defines Titian's latest manner — " St. Jerome" of the Br era — " Education of Cupid" — "Jacopo da Strada " — Impressionistic manner of th end — " Ecce Homo " of Munich — " Nymph and Shepherd " of Vienna — The unfinished " Pieta " — Death of Titian. It was in the month of March 1555 that Titian married his only daughter Lavinia to Cornelio Sarcinelli of Serravalle, thus leaving the pleasant home at Biri Grande without a mistress ; for his sister Orsa had been dead since 1549.1 It may be convenient to treat here of the various portraits and more or less idealised portrait-pieces in which Titian has im mortalised the thoroughly Venetian beauty of his daughter. First we have in the great Ecce Homo of Vienna the graceful white-robed figure of a young girl of some fourteen years, placed, with the boy whom she guards, on the steps of Pilate's palace. Then there is the famous piece Lavinia with a Dish of Fruit, dating according to Morelli from about 1549, and painted for the master's friend Argentina Pallavicino of Reggio. This last- named work passed in 1821 from the Solly Collection into the Berlin Gallery. Though its general aspect is splendidly decorative, though it is accounted one of the most popular of all Titian's works, the Berlin picture cannot be allowed to take the highest rank among his performances of the same class. Its fascinations are of the obvious and rather superficial kind, its execution is not equal in vigour, 1 For the full text of the marriagecontract sec Giovanni Morelli, Die Galerien zu Miinchen and Dresden, pp. 300-302. P?-,>l,-iirii/i?L liy 'J-I/l'itjit'st.a.n.ijt. 7nlft,-rJ'fllf(-\,sJiflJiWMjr r/r##J I 'l | , HEa - ¦ iVHbbbbV -wT^jF .uABbbh ¦ HK Pieta. By Titian and Palma Giovine. Accademia delle Belle Arti, Venice. From a Photograph by E. Alinari. he left his great canvas unfinished, and willed that his body should be taken to Cadore, and there buried in the chapel of the Vecelli. The well-known inscription on the base of the monumental niche which occupies the centre of the Pieta, "Quod Titianus inchoatum reliquit, Palma reverenter absolvit, Deoque dicavit opus," records how what Titian had left undone was completed as reverently as might be 108 THE LATER WORK OF TITIAN by Palma Giovine. At this stage — the question being much complicated by subsequent restorations- — the effort to draw the line accurately between the work of the master on one hand and that of his able and pious assistant on the other, would be unprofitable. Let us rather strive to appreciate what is left of a creation unique in the life-work of Titian, and in some ways his most sublime invention. Genius alone could have triumphed over the heterogeneous and fantastic surroundings in which he has chosen to enframe his great central group. And yet even these — the great rusticated niche with the gold mosaic of the pelican feed ing its young, the statues of Moses on one side and of the Hellespontic Sibyl on the other — but serve to heighten the awe of the spectator. The artificial light is obtained in part from a row of crystal lamps on the cornice of the niche, in part, too, from the torch borne by the beautiful boy-angel who hovers in mid-air, yet another focus of illumination being the body of the dead Christ. This system of lighting furnishes just the luminous half-gloom, the deeply significant chiaroscuro, that the painter requires in order to give the most poignant effect to his last and most thrilling conception of the world's tragedy. As is often the case with Tintoretto, but more seldom with Titian, the eloquent passion breathed forth in this Pieta is not to be accounted for by any element or elements of the composition taken separately ; it depends to so great an extent on the poetic suggestiveness of the illumination, on the strange and indefinable power of evocation that the aged master here exceptionally commands. Wonderfully does the terrible figure of the Magdalen contrast in its excess of passion with the sculptural repose, the permanence of the main group. As she starts forward, almost menacing in her grief, her loud and bitter cry seems to ring through space, accusing all mankind of its great crime. It is with a conviction far more intense than has ever possessed him in his prime, with an awe nearly akin to terror, that Titian, himself trembling on the verge of eternity, and painting, too, that which shall purchase his own grave, has produced this profoundly moving work. No more fitting end and crown to the great achievements of the master's old age could well be imagined. There is no temptation to dwell unnecessarily upon the short period of horror and calamity with which this glorious life came to an end. If THE LATER WORK OF TITIAN 109 Titian had died a year earlier, his biographer might still have wound up with those beautiful words of Vasari's peroration : " E stato Tiziano sanissimo et fortunato quant' alcun altro suo pari sia stato ancor mai ; e non ha mai avuto dai cieli se non favori e felicita." Too true it is, alas, that no man's life may be counted happy until its close ! Now comes upon the great city this all-enveloping horror of the plague, beginning in 1575, but in 1576 attaining to such vast proportions as to sweep away more than a quarter of the whole population of 190,000 inhabitants. On the 17th of August, 1576, old Titian is attacked and swept away — surprised, as one would like to believe, while still at work on his Pieta. Even at such a moment, when panic reigns supreme, and the most honoured, the most dearly beloved are left untended, he is not to be hurried into an unmarked grave. Notwithstanding the sanitary law which forbids the burial of one who has succumbed to the plague in any of the city churches, he receives the supreme and at this awful moment unique honour of solemn obsequies. The body is taken with all due observance to the great church of the Frari, and there interred in the Cappella del Crocifisso, which Titian has already, before the quarrel with the Fran ciscans, designated as his final resting-place. He is spared the grief of knowing that the favourite son, Orazio, for whom all these years he has laboured and schemed, is to follow him immediately, dying also of the plague, and not even at Biri Grande, but in the Lazzaretto Vecchio, near the Lido ; that the incorrigible Pomponio is to succeed and enjoy the inheritance after his own unworthy fashion. He is spared the knowledge of the great calamity of 1577, the destruction by fire of the Sala del Gran Consiglio, and with it, of the Battle of Cadore, and most of the noble work done officially for the Doges and the Signoria. One would like to think that this catastrophe of the end must have come suddenly upon the venerable master like a hideous dream, appearing to him, as death often does to those upon whom it descends, less significant than it does to us who read. Instead of remaining fixed in sad contemplation of this short final moment when the radiant orb goes suddenly down below the horizon in storm and cloud, let us keep steadily in view the light as, serene in its far-reaching radiance, it illuminated the world for eighty splendid years. Let us think of Titian as the greatest painter, if not the greatest genius in art, that the world has produced ; as, what Vasari with no THE LATER WORK OF TITIAN such conviction described him to be, " the man as highly favoured by fortune as any of his kind had ever been before him." 1 1 It was the intention of the writer to add to this monograph a short chapter on the drawings of Titian. The subject is, however, far too vast for such summary treatment, and its discussion must therefore be postponed. Leaving out of the question the very numerous drawings by Domenico Campagnola which Morelli has once for all separated from those of the greater master, and those also which, while belonging to the same class and period, arc neither Titian's nor even Campagnola's, a few of the genuine landscapes may be just lightly touched upon. The beautiful early landscape with a battlemcnted castle, now or lately in the possession of Mr. T. W. Russell (reproduction in the British Museum marked 1879-5-10-224) is in the opinion of the writer a genuine Titian. The t'ision of St. Eustace, reproduced in the first section of this monograph ("The Earlier Work of Titian") from the original in the British Museum, is a noble and pathetic example of the earlier manner. Perhaps the most beautiful of the landscape drawings still preserving something of the Giorgionesque aroma is that with the enigmatic female figure, entirely nude but with the head veiled, and the shepherds sheltering from the noonday sun, which is in the great collection at Chatsworth (No. 318 in Venetian Exhibition at New Gallery). Later than this is the fine landscape in the same collection with a riderless horse crossing a stream (No. 867 in Venetian Exhibition at New Gallery). The well-known