* * * * *

The great wood-carver Grinling Gibbons deserves mention among the artists of this date. He was a native of Rotterdam, where he was born in 1648. He came to London with other carvers the year after the great fire of London, and was introduced by Evelyn to Charles II., who took him into his employment. 'Gibbons was appointed master carver in wood to George I., with a salary of eighteen-pence a day.' He died at his house in Bow Street in the sixty-third year of his age, in 1721. It is said that no man before Gibbons 'gave to wood the lightness of flowers.' For the great houses of Burghley, Petworth, and Chatsworth, Gibbons carved exquisite work, in festoons for screens, and chimney-pieces, and panels for pictures, of fruit, flowers, shells, and birds.

* * * * *

Sir Godfrey Kneller was born at Luebeck in 1646, and was the son of an architect. He is said to have studied under Rembrandt; but if this be true, it must have been in Kneller's early youth. It is more certain that he travelled in Italy and returned to settle in Hamburg, but changing his plans, he came to England, when he was about thirty years of age, in 1675. London became his home. There he painted portraits with great success; his prices being fifteen guineas for a head, twenty if with one hand, thirty for a half, and sixty for a whole-length portrait. Charles II, sat at the same time to Kneller and to Lely. Not Titian himself painted more crowned heads than it fell to the lot of Kneller to paint—not less than six reigning kings and queens of England, and, in addition, Louis XIV. of France, Charles VI, of Spain, and the Czar Peter of Russia.

William III, created Kneller a knight, and George I, raised the painter's rank to that of a baronet. Sir Godfrey was notorious for his conceit, irritability, and eccentricity, and for the wit which sparkled more in his conversation than in any originality of observation displayed in his painting. Walpole attributes to Kneller the opposite qualities of great negligence and great love of money. The negligence or slovenliness, whether in the man or the artist, did not interfere with an immense capacity for work, such as it was, but if Horace Walpole be right, that Kneller employed many Flemish painters under him to undertake the wigs, draperies, etc. etc., the amount of work in portrait painting which Sir Godfrey Kneller accomplished is so far explained. He attained the end of being a very rich man, and married an English woman, but left no family to succeed to his wealth and his country-seat of Whitton, when he died at his house in London in his seventy-eighth year, in 1723.

As a painter Sir Godfrey Kneller showed considerable talent in drawing, and a certain cumbrous dignity of design, but he had much more industry of a certain kind than artistic feeling or taste. When he and Lely painted Charles II, together, Kneller's application and rapidity of execution were so far before those of Lely, who was technically the better painter of the two, that Kneller's picture was finished when Lely's was dead-coloured only. Kneller was highly praised by Dryden, Addison, Prior, and Steele. Apropos of these writers, among the most famous works of Kneller are the forty-three portraits, painted originally for Tonson, the bookseller, of the members of the Kit Cat club, the social and literary club of the day, which got its name from the chance of its holding its meetings in a house the owner of which bore the unique name of Christopher Cat. Another series of portraits by Kneller are what ought to be, in their designation, the Hampton Court Beauties. These are still, like the other 'Beauties,' at Hampton. The second series was proposed by William's Queen Mary, and included herself, Sarah Jennings, Duchess of Marlborough, and Mary Bentinck. To Sarah Jennings men did award the palm of beauty, but poor Queen Mary, who had a modest, simple, comely, English face as a princess, had lost her fresh youthful charm by the time she became Queen of England, and was still further disfigured by the swelling of the face to which she was liable. Her proposal to substitute the worthier women of her court for the unworthy beauties of her uncle King Charles' court was not relished, and helped to render Mary unpopular—among the women, at least, of her nobility. Neither was Sir Godfrey Kneller qualified to enhance the attractions of Mary's maids of honour and ladies in waiting, who, to complete their disadvantages, lived at a period when it had become the fashion for women to crown their persons by an erection on their natural heads of artificial 'edifices of three heads.'

To Kneller, as I have already written, we owe the preservation of Raphael's cartoons.



CHAPTER XII.[48]

ITALIAN MASTERS FROM THE FOURTEENTH TO THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES—TADDEO GADDI, 1300, SUPPOSED TO HAVE DIED 1366—FRA FILIPPO, 1412-1469—BENOZZO GOZZOLI, 1424-1496—LUCA SIGNORELLI, 1441, SUPPOSED TO HAVE DIED ABOUT 1524—BOTTICELLI, 1447-1515—PERUGINO, 1446-1522—CARPACCIO, DATE AND PLACE OF BIRTH AND DEATH UNKNOWN—CRIVELLI—FILIPPINO LIPI, EARLIER THAN 1460—ANTONELLA DA MESSINA, BELIEVED TO HAVE DIED AT VENICE, 1496—GAROPALO, 1481-1559—LUINI, DATE OF BIRTH UNKNOWN, SUPPOSED TO HAVE DIED ABOUT 1530—PALMA, ABOUT 1480-1528—PARDENONE, 1483-1538—LO SPAGNA, DATE OF BIRTH UNKNOWN, 1533—GIULIO ROMANO, 1492-1546—PARIS BORDONE, 1500-1570—IL PARMIGIANINO, 1503-1540—BAROCCIO, 1528-1612—CARAVAGGIO, 1569-1609—LO SPAGNOLETTO, 1593-1656—GUERCINO, 1592-1666—ALBANO, 1578-1660—SASSOFERRATO, 1605-1685—VASARI, 1513-1574—SOFONISBA ANGUISCIOLA, 1535, ABOUT 1620—LAVINIA FONTANA, 1552-1614.

Taddeo Gaddi, the most important of Giotto's scholars, was born in 1300, and was held at the baptismal font by Giotto himself. Gaddi rather went back on earlier traditions and faults. His excellence lay in his purity and simplicity of feeling. His finest pictures are from the life of the Virgin, in S. Croce, Florence. He was, like his master, a great architect as well as painter. He furnished the plans for the Ponte Vecchio and Campanile, Florence, after Giotto's death. He was possessed of great activity and industry. He is supposed to have died in 1366, and rests in the scene of his labours, since he was buried in the cloisters of S. Croce.

Fra Filippo, 1412-1469, a Carmelite friar. The romantic, scandalous life, including his slavery in Barbary, attributed to him by Vasari, the great biographer of the early Italian painters, has received no corroboration from modern researches. It is rather refuted. He always signed his pictures 'Frater Filippus,' and his death is entered in the register of the Carmine convent as that of 'Frater Filippus.' In all probability he was from first to last a monk, and not a disreputable one. He describes himself as the poorest friar in Florence, with six marriageable nieces dependent on him, and he is said to have been involved in debt.

His colouring was 'golden and broad,' in anticipation of that of Titian; his draperies were fine. He was wanting in the ideal, but full of human feeling, which was apt to get rude and boisterous; his angels were 'like great high-spirited boys.' Withal, his style of composition was stately. Among the best examples of his work are scenes from the life of St John the Baptist in frescoes in the choir of the Duomo at Prato. His panel pictures are rather numerous. There are two lunette[49] pictures by Fra Filippo in the National Gallery.

Benozzo Gozzoli, 1424-1496, a scholar of Fra Angelico, but resembling him only in light and cheerful colouring. He is said to have been the first Italian painter smitten with the beauty of the natural world. He was the first to create rich landscape backgrounds, and he enlivened his landscapes with animals. He displayed a fine fancy for architectural effects, introducing into his pictures open porticoes, arcades, balconies, and galleries. He liked to have subsidiary groups and circles of spectators about his principal figures. In these groups he introduced portraits of his contemporaries, true to nature and full of expression and delicate feeling. His best work is in the Campo Santo, Pisa, scenes from the history of the Old Testament, ranging from Noah to the Queen of Sheba. The Pisans were so pleased with his work as to present him, in 1478, with a sarcophagus intended to contain his remains when they should be deposited in the Campo Santo. He survived the gift eighteen years, dying in 1496. His easel pictures are rare, and do not offer good representations of the master. There is one in the National Gallery—a Virgin and Child, with saints and angels.

Luca d'Egidio di Ventura, called also Luca 'da Cortona,' from his birth-place, and Luca Signorelli, 1441, supposed to have died about 1524. His is a great name in the Tuscan School. He played an important part in the painting of the Sistine Chapel, though he is only represented by one wall picture, the History of Moses. At his best he anticipated Michael Angelo in power and grandeur, but he was given to exaggeration. His fame rests principally on his frescoes at Orvieto, where, by a strange chance, he was appointed, after an interval of time, to continue and complete the work begun by Fra Angelico, the master most opposed to Signorelli in style. Luca added the great dramatic scenes which include the history of Antichrist, executed with a grandeur which 'only Lionardo among the painters sharing a realistic tendency could have surpassed.' These scenes, which contain The Resurrection, Hell, and Paradise, bear a strong resemblance to the work of Michael Angelo. In his fine drawing of the human figure Signorelli may be known by 'the squareness of his forms in joints and extremities.' A conspicuous detail in his pictures is frequently a bright-coloured Roman scarf. His work is rarely seen north of the Alps.

Sandro Filipepi, called Botticelli, 1447-1515. He was an apprentice to a goldsmith, and then became a scholar of Filippo Lipi's. Botticelli was vehement and impetuous, full of passion and poetry, seeking to express movement. He was the most dramatic painter of his school. Occasionally he rises to a grandeur that allies him to Signorelli and Michael Angelo. His circular pictures of the Madonna and Child, with angels, are numerous. Like Fra Filippo, Botticelli's angels are noble youths, some of them belonging to the great families of the time. They are prone to be ecstatic with joy or frantic with grief. There is a grand Coronation of the Virgin, by Botticelli at Hamilton Palace, and a beautiful Nativity by the old master belongs to Mr Fuller Maitland. His Madonna and Child are grand and tragic figures always. Botticelli's noble frescoes in the Sistine Chapel are apt to be overlooked because of Michael Angelo's 'sublime work' on the ceiling. There has been a revival of Botticelli's renown within late years, partly due to the new interest in the earlier Italian painters which Mr Browning has done something to stimulate.

I quote some thoughtful remarks on Botticelli by W.C. Lefroy in Macmillan's Magazine: 'Mr Ruskin, we know, divides Italian art into the art of faith, beginning with Giotto, and lasting rather more than 200 years, and the art of unbelief, or at least of cold and inoperative faith, beginning in the middle of Raphael's life. But whatever division we adopt, we must remember that the revival of Paganism, as a matter of fact, affected men in different ways. Right across the schools this new spirit draws its line, but the line is not a hard and sharp one. Some men lie wholly on one side of it, with Giotto, Angelico, and Orcagna; some wholly upon the other, with Titian and Correggio, but there are some on whom it seems to fall as a rainbow falls upon a hill-side. Such, for instance, is Botticelli. Now he tries to paint as men painted in the old days of unpolluted faith, and then again he breaks away and paints like a very heathen.

'The interest which this artist has excited in the present generation has been exaggerated into something like a fashion, and recent criticism has delighted to find or imagine in him the idiosyncrasies of recent thought. To us it may be he does in truth say more than he or his contemporaries dreamed of, but while true criticism will sternly refuse to help us to see in his pictures that which is purely subjective, it will, I think, recognise the fact that a day like ours is capable of reading in the subtle suggestions of ancient art thoughts which have only now come to be frankly defined or exquisitely analysed. To us, moreover, Botticelli presents not only the poem of the apparition of the young and beautiful manhood of humanism before the brooding and entranced, yet half expectant, maidenhood of mediaevalism, but also the poem of the painter's own peculiar relation to that crisis. For us there is the poetry of the thing itself, and also the poetry of Botticelli's attempt to express it. The work of Botticelli does not supply a universal utterance for mankind like Shakespeare's plays, but when we stand before the screen on which his "Nativity" is hung, or contemplate in the adjoining room his two perplexed conceptions of "Aphrodite," we are face to face with a genuine outcome of that memorable meeting, mediaevalism, humanism, and Savonarola, which no generation can afford to ignore, and our own especially delights to contemplate. There has been much dispute about the date of Botticelli's "Nativity," and some defenders of Savonarola have hoped to read 1511 in the strange character of its inscription, so that this beautiful picture, standing forth as the work of one for many years under the influence of "the Frate," may refute the common calumny that that influence was unfriendly to art. Our catalogue, indeed, unhesitatingly asserts of Botticelli, that "he became a follower of Savonarola and no doubt suffered from it;" but though there seems to be really little doubt that the "Nativity" was painted in 1500, the inscription, with its mystic allusion to the Apocalypse, and the whole character of the picture, afford unmistakable evidence of the influence of Savonarola.'

Pietro Perugino, 1446, died of the plague at Frontignano in 1522. Perugino is another painter who has been indebted to the last Renaissance. His fame, in this country rested chiefly on the circumstance that he was Raphael's master, whom the generous prince of painters delighted to honour, till the tide of fashion in art rose suddenly and floated old Pietro once more to the front. At his best he had luminous colour, grace, softness, and enthusiastic earnestness, especially in his young heads. His defects were monotony, and formality, together with comparative ignorance of the principles of his art. His conception of his calling in its true dignity was not high. His attempts at expressing ardour degenerated into mannerism, and he acquired habits and tricks of arrangement and style, among which figured his favourite upturned heads, that in the end were ill drawn, and, like every other affectation, became wearisome. In the process of falling off as an artist, when mere manual dexterity took the place of earnest devotion and honest pains, Perugino had a large studio where many pupils executed his commissions, and where, working for gain instead of excellence in art, he had the satisfaction, doubtless, of amassing a large fortune. Among his finest works is the picture of an enthroned Madonna and Child in the gallery of the Uffizi. Another fine Madonna with Saints is at Cremona. His frescoes in the Sala del Campio at Perugia are among his best works. The subjects of these frescoes are partly scriptural; partly mythological. In the execution there is excellence alike in drawing, colouring, and the disposal of drapery. A chef d'oeuvre by the master is the Madonna of the Certosa at Pavia, now in, the National Gallery. Yet it is said to have been painted at the very period when Michael Angelo ridiculed Perugino's work as 'absurd and antiquated.' Vittore Carpaccio, date and place of birth unknown, though he is said to have been a native of Istria. He was a historical painter of the early Venetian School and a follower of the Bellini. His romantic genre pictures show the daily life of the Venice of his time, and are furnished with landscape and architectural backgrounds. His masterly and rich work is mostly in Venice. He introduces animals freely and well in his designs.

Carlo Crivelli was another master of the fifteenth century who deserves notice. He had strong individuality, yet was influenced by the Paduan and Venetian Schools. He displayed an old-fashioned preference for painting in tempera. Sometimes his drawing approaches that of Mantegna, while he has a gorgeousness of colouring all his own. His pictures occasionally show dignity of composition in combination with grace and daintiness; but he could be guilty of exaggerated vehemence of expression. He frequently introduced fruit, flowers, and birds in his work. He is fully represented in the National Gallery, his works there ranging from 'small tender pictures of the dead Christ with angels, to a sumptuous altar-piece in numerous compartments.'

Filippino Lipi was an adopted son and probably a relation of Fra Filippo's, though a scholar's use of his master's name was not uncommon. The date of his birth is earlier than 1460. Filippino was also a pupil of Botticelli's, while there was a higher sense of beauty and grace in the pupil than in the teacher. Among his last works is the Vision of St Bernard, an easel picture in the Badia at Florence. The apparition of the Madonna in this picture is said to be 'full of charm.' In his larger works he is one of the greatest historical painters of his country. Roman antiquities had the same keen interest for him which they held for the greatest of his contemporaries, and he made free use of them in the architecture of his pictures. He has fine work in the Carmelite Church, Florence, and in S. Maria Sopra Minerva, Rome. Much of some of his pictures is painted over. The National Gallery has a picture of Filippino's 'of grand execution,' though almost colourless—the Madonna and Child, with St Jerome and St Francis.

Antonella da Messina was the Neapolitan painter who brought the practice of painting in oils from the Netherlands into Italy, though it is now believed, from stubborn discrepancies in dates, that the story of his great friendship with Jan Van Eyck, as given by Vasari, is apochryphal. Very likely Hans Memling, called also 'John of Bruges,' was the real friend and leader of Antonella. His best work consisted of portraits. He is believed to have died at Venice in 1496.

Benvenuto Tisio, surnamed from the place of his birth Garofalo, was born in 1481, and died in 1559. He passed from the early school of Ferrara to that of Raphael. His conception was apt to be fantastic, while his colouring was vivid to abruptness, and he was deficient in charm of expression. He fell into the fault of monotonous ideality. At the same time his heads are beautiful, and his drapery is classic. His finest work is an 'Entombment' in the Borghese Palace, Rome. There is an altar-piece by Garofalo, a Madonna and Child with angels, in the National Gallery.

Bernardo Luini, who stands foremost among the scholars of Lionardo da Vinci, was born by the Lago Maggiore, the date unknown, came to Milan in 1500, was elderly in 1525, and is supposed to have died not long after 1530. His work is chiefly found in Milan. His great merit has been only lately acknowledged. He is not 'very powerful or original,' but for 'purity, grace, and spiritual expression,' he ranks very high. He unites the earnestness of the older masters with the prevailing feeling for beauty of the great masters of Italian Art. His pictures were long mistaken for those of his master, Lionardo, though it is said that when the difference between them is once pointed out, it is easily recognised; indeed, the resemblance is confined to a smiling beatific expression in the countenances, which abounds more in Luini's pictures. His heads of women, children, and angels present every degree of serenity, sweet cheerfulness and happiness, up to ecstatic rapture. 'Christ Disputing with the Doctors,' in the National Gallery, formerly called a Lionardo, is now known to be a Luini. He painted much, whether in tempera, fresco, or oil. His favourite subjects in oil were the Madonna and Child, with St John and the Lamb, and the Marriage of St Catherine. Probable he appears to greatest advantage in frescoes. He is said to have reached his highest perfection in the figure of St John in a Crucifixion in the Monasterio Maggiore, Milan.

Jacopo Palma, called Il Palma Vecchio, was born about 1480 near Bergamo, and died in 1528. He is believed to have studied under Giovanni Bellini, while he is also the chief follower of Giorgione. His characteristics are ample forms and gorgeous breadth of drapery. His female saints, with their large rounded figures, have a soft yet commanding expression. He had an enchanting feeling for landscape, which seems to have been the birthright of the Venetian painters. To Palma is owing what are called 'Santa Conversazione,' where there are numerous groups round the Virgin and Child, as if they are holding a court in a retired and beautiful country nook. Palma rivalled Giorgione and Titian as a painter of women's portraits. Among these is that of his daughter Violante, believed to have been loved by Titian. 'Palma's three Daughters,' in the Dresden Gallery, is a masterpiece of 'fair, full-blown beauty.' The hair of the women is of the curiously bleached yellow tint affected then by the Venetian ladies. Palma painted many pictures, leaving at his death forty-our unfinished.

Giovanni Antonio da Pardenone, born 1483, died 1538. He had many names, 'Pardenone' from his birth-place, 'Corticellis' from that of his father, and he is believed to have assumed the name 'Regillo' after he received knighthood from the King of Hungary. He was Venetian in his artistic qualities. Many of his works are in his native Pardetowns near. All have suffered and some are now hidden by whitewash. His chief strength lay in fresco. His scenes from the Passion in the cathedral, Cremona, are greatly damaged and wretchedly restored, but they still reveal the painter as a great master. They have 'fine drawing, action, excellent colouring, grand management of light and shade, with freedom of hand and dignity of conception.' In the prophets and sibyls around the cupola of the Madonna di Campagna, Piacenza, Pardenone's power is fully proven. His immense works in fresco account for the rarity of his oil pictures and their comparative inferiority. There is only one picture, and that a portrait, indisputably assigned to Pardenone in England, in the Baring Collection.

Giovanni di Pietro, known as Lo Spagna (the Spaniard), was a contemporary of Raphael's, a fellow-pupil of his under Perugino. There is no record of the time and place of Lo Spagna's birth. He died in 1533. He was a careful, conscientious follower of Perugino and Raphael, doing finished and delicate work; an 'Assumption' in a church at Trevi is a fine example of his qualities. His best picture was painted in 1516, and is at Assisi. It represents the Madonna enthroned with three saints on each side. In his later works he betrayed feebleness. Pictures by Lo Spagna are often attributed to Raphael.

Giulio Pippi, surnamed Romano, born in 1492, died in 1546, was a very different painter, while he was the most celebrated of Raphael's scholars. He had a vigorous, daring spirit, with a free hand and a bold fancy. So long as he painted under Raphael, Giulio followed his master closely, especially in his study of the antique, but he lacked the purity and grace of his teacher, on whose death, the pupil leaving Rome, pursued his own coarser, more vehement impulses. The frescoes in the Villa Modama, Rome, are good examples of his style, so is the altar-piece of the Martyrdom of St Stephen in S. Stefano, Genoa. Giulio Romano was the architect who designed the rebuilding of half Mantua. His best easel picture in England is the 'Education of Jupiter by Nymphs and Corybantes,' in the National Gallery. In Raphael's lifetime his principal scholar was accustomed to work on the master's pictures, and on his death Giulio, together with another pupil, Gianfrancesco Penni, were left executors of Raphael's will and heirs of his designs.

Paris Bordone was born at Treviso in 1500 and died in 1570. He was educated in the Venetian School, and remained remarkable for delicate rosy colour in his flesh tints and for purple, crimson, and shot hues in his draperies, which were usually small and in crumpled folds. His chef d'oeuvre is in the Venetian Academy. It is a fisherman presenting a ring to the Doge, and is a large and fine picture with many figures. He dealt frequently in mythological or poetic subjects. There is an example of the first in the National Gallery. He was great in single female subjects and women's portraits. There is a portrait by Bordone of a lovely woman of nineteen belonging to the Brignole family, in the National Gallery. He had often fine landscape and grand architecture in his pictures.

Il Parmigianino, born 1503, died 1540, was a follower of Correggio's. In Parmigianino's case the danger of the master's peculiarities became apparent by the lapse into affectation and frivolity. 'His Madonnas are empty and condescending, his female saints like ladies in waiting.' Still there were certain indestructible beauties of the master which yet clung to the scholar. He had clear warm colouring, decision, and good conception of human life. He was highly successful in portraits. There is a splendid portrait by Parmigianino, said to be Columbus, in Naples. Among his celebrated pictures is 'The Madonna with the Long Neck,' in the Pitti Palace. An altar-piece in the National Gallery, which represents a Madonna in the clouds with St John the Baptist appearing to St Jerome, is a good example of Parmigianino. It is said that he was engrossed with this picture during the siege of Rome in 1527. The soldiers entered the studio intent on pillage, but surprising the master at his work, respected his enthusiasm and protected him.

Federigo Baroccio, of Urbino, born in 1528, died in 1612, was also a follower of Correggio's, and made a stand against the decline of art in his day. He was tender and idyllic, though apt in his turn to be affected and sentimental. When painting in the Vatican, Rome, his rivals sought to take his life by poison. The attempt caused Baroccio to return to Urbino, where he established himself and executed his commissions.

Amirighi da Caravaggio was born at Caravaggio in 1569, and died at Porto Ercole in 1609. He was chief of the naturalistic school, the members of which painted common nature and violent passions in bitter opposition to the eclectics, especially the Caracci. The feud was sometimes carried on appositely enough on the side of the naturalistic painters by poison and dagger. Caravaggio was distinguished by his wild temper and stormy life, in keeping with his pictures. He resided principally in Rome, but dwelt also in Naples. He is vulgar but striking, even pathetic in some of his pictures. The 'Beheading of John the Baptist,' in the Cathedral, Malta, is one of his masterpieces. His Holy Families now and then resemble gipsy menages.

Guiseppe Ribiera, a Spaniard, and so called Lo Spagnoletto, was born 1593 and died 1656. He followed Caravaggio, while he retained reminiscences of the Spanish School and of the Venetian masters. Some of his best pictures, such as 'the Pieta with the Marys and the Disciples,' and his 'Last Supper,' are in Naples. He had a wild fancy with a preference for horrible subjects—executions, tortures—in this respect resembling Domenichino. Lo Spagnoletto is said to be particularly unpleasant in his mythological scenes. Many of his pictures have blackened with time. His 'Mary of Egypt standing by her open Grave' is a remarkable picture in the Dresden Gallery.

Giovanni Francesco Barbiera, surnamed Guercino da Cinto, approached the school of the Caracci. In his art he resembled Guido Reni, with the same sweetness, greater liveliness, and fine chiaroscuro. 'Dido's Last Moments' and 'St Peter raising Tabitha' in Rome and in the Pitti Palace are fine examples of Guercino's work. His later pictures, like Guido's, are fascinating in softness, delicate colouring and tender sentiment, degenerating, however, into mannerism and insipidity, while his colouring becomes at last pale and washy.

Albano, born 1578, died 1660. He had elegance and cheerfulness which hardly rose to grace. He painted mostly scenes from ancient mythology, such as 'Venus and her Companions.' Religious subjects were comparatively rare with him; one, however, often repeated was the 'Infant Christ sleeping on the Cross.'

Giovanni Battista Salvi, surnamed from his birth-place Sassoferrato, was born in 1605 and died in 1685. He followed the scholars of the Caracci, but with some independence, returning to older and greater masters. His art was distinguished by a peculiar but slightly affected gentleness of conception, pleasing and sweet—with the sweetness verging on weakness. He finished with minute care. He gave constant representations of the Madonna and Child and Holy Families in a domestic character. In one of his pictures in Naples the Madonna is engaged in sewing. His most celebrated, 'Madonna del Rosario,' is in S. Sabina, Rome. The Madonna bending in ecstatic worship over an infant Christ lying on a cushion is in the Dresden Gallery.

Giorgio Vasari was born at Arezzo in 1512 and died at Florence in 1574. He was an architect, or jeweller, and a historical painter of heavy crowded pictures. His lives of the early Italian painters and sculptors up to his own time, the sixteenth century, though full of traditional gossip, are invaluable as graphic chronicles of much interesting information which would otherwise have been lost.

Sofonisba Anguisciola, born 1535, died about 1620, was a pupil of Bernardino Campi about the close of the sixteenth century at Cremona. She is justly praised by Vasari. Though her works are rare there are a few in England and Scotland. Three of her pictures which are mentioned with high commendation by Dr. Waagen are, 'a nun in the white robes of her order, nobly conceived and delicately coloured,' in Lord Yarborough's collection; in Mr Harcourt's collection, 'her own portrait, still very youthful, delicate, charming, and clear;' and in the collection of the late Sir W. Stirling Maxwell, 'another portrait of herself at an easel painting the Virgin and Child on wood, delicately conceived, clear in colour, and very careful.'

Lavinia Fontana, born in 1552, died 1614, was a daughter of Prospero Fontana, who belonged to the fast degenerating Bolognese artists at the close of the sixteenth and beginning of the seventeenth century. She was a better artist than her fellow painters, worked cleverly and boldly, and showed truth to nature. She has left excellent portraits. In the late Sir W. Stirling Maxwell's collection there is a picture by her, 'Two girls in a boat with a youth rowing,' on wood, 'of very graceful motive and careful treatment.'



CHAPTER XIII.[50]

GERMAN, FLEMISH, AND DUTCH ARTISTS FROM THE FIFTEENTH TO THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY—VAN DER WEYDEN, A CONTEMPORARY OF THE VAN EYCKS, 1366-1442—VAN LEYDEN, 1494-1533—VAN SOMER, 1570-1624—SNYDERS, 1579-1657—G. HONTHORST, 1592-1662—JAN STEEN, 1626-1679—GERARD DOW, 1613-1680—DE HOOCH, DATES OF BIRTH AND DEATH UNKNOWN—VAN OSTADE, 1610-1685—MAAS, 1632-1693—METZU, 1615, STILL ALIVE IN 1667—TERBURG, 1608-1681—NETCHER, 1639-1684—BOL, 1611-1680—VAN DER HELST, 1613-1670—RUYSDAEL, 1625 (?)-1682—HOBBEMA, 1638-1709—BERCHEM, 1620-1683—BOTH, 1610 (?)-1650 (?)—DU JARDIN, 1625-1678—ADRIAN VAN DE VELDE, 1639-1672—VAN DER HEYDEN, 1637-1712—DE WITTE, 1607-1692—VAN DER NEER, 1619(?)-1683—WILLIAM VAN DE VELDE THE YOUNGER, 1633-1707—BACKHUYSEN, 1631-1708—VAN DE CAPELLA, ABOUT 1653—HONDECOETER, 1636-1695—JAN WEENIX, 1644-1719—PATER SEGERS, 1590-1661—VAN HUYSUM, 1682-1749—VAN DER WERFF, 1659-1722—MENGS, 1728-1774.

Roger van der Weyden was a contemporary of the Van Eycks, born at Tournai. His early pictures in Brussels are lost. He visited Italy in 1439, and was treated with distinction at Ferrara. His Flemish realistic cast of mind and artistic power remained utterly unaffected by the grand Italian pictures with which he came in contact; so did his profound earnestness, which must have been great indeed, since its effects are felt through all impediments down to the present day. His expressive realism chose subjects in which the sentiments of grief and pity could be most fitly shown. He sternly rejected any suggestion to idealise the human form, and paint heads, hands, or feet different from those in ordinary life. 'It is the simplicity with which he gives expression by large and melancholy eyes, thought by projections of the forehead, grief by contracted muscles, and suffering by attenuation of the flesh which touches us.' The deadly earnestness of the man impresses the spectator at this distant date. 'There is no smile in any of his faces, but there is many a face wrung with agony, and there is many a tear.' He objected to shadow in every form, and filled his pictures with an invariable atmosphere and light—those which belong to dawn before sunrise. Among his finer works are a triptych[51] belonging to the Duke of Westminster, a 'Last Judgment' in the Hospital at Bearne, and a large 'Descent from the Cross' in Madrid. In the triptych in the centre is Christ with black hair, which is unusual, in his left hand the globe. On his right is the Virgin Mary, on his left St John the Evangelist; on the right wing is St John the Baptist, on his left the Magdalene.

Lucas Van Leyden was born in 1494 and died in 1533. He painted both scriptural subjects and everyday scenes, being a man of varied powers. He worked admirably for his time, and added to his art that of an engraver. He followed the Van Eycks, but lowered their treatment of sacred subjects. In incidents taken from common life he showed himself full of observation, and possessed of some humour. His pictures are rare. A 'Last Judgment,' in the Town House, Leyden, is a striking but unpleasant example of Lucas Van Leyden's work.

Paul Van Somer was born at Antwerp in 1570, and died in 1624. He worked for many years in England, where his best works—portraits—remain. He was truthful, a good colourist, and finished carefully. His portraits of Lord Bacon at Panshanger and of the Earl and Countess of Arundel at Arundel Castle are well known.

Frans Snyders was born in 1579, and died, at Antwerp in 1657. After Rubens, Snyders was the greatest Flemish animal painter. He painted along with Rubens often, Snyders supplying the animals and Rubens the figures. Frans Snyders paid a visit to Italy and Rome, from which he seems to have profited, judging by his skill in arrangement. This skill he displayed also in his kitchen-pieces (magnificent shows of fruit, vegetables, game, fish, etc.), which, like his animal pictures, are numerous. In one of these kitchen-pieces in the Dresden Gallery, Rubens and his second wife are said to figure as the cooks. Princes and nobles bade for Snyders' pictures. There is a famous 'Boar Hunt' in the Louvre, in Munich 'Lionesses Pursuing a Roebuck,' in Vienna 'Boar attacked by Nine Dogs.' Snyders' animal pictures are full of energetic action and fierce passion. To these qualities is frequently added hideous realism in detail. There are many Snyders in English galleries.

Gerard Honthorst was born at Utrecht in 1592, and died in 1662. He was a follower of Caravaggio. He visited Italy and found favour in Rome, where he got from his night-pieces Correggio's name, 'Della Notte.' Honthorst was summoned to England by Charles I., for whom he painted several pictures. He entered the service of Prince Frederick Henry of Orange, and painted also for the King of Denmark. He left an extraordinary number of works, sacred, mythological, historical, and latterly many portraits. He drew well and painted powerfully, but was coarsely realistic in his treatment. At Hampton Court there are two of his best portraits, those of the unfortunate Queen of Bohemia and the Duke of Buckingham and his family. Gerard Honthorst's younger brother, William, was a portrait painter not unlike the elder brother in style.

Jan Steen was born at Leyden in 1626, and died in 1679. He was great as a genre painter. He is said to have been, after Rembrandt, the most humorous of Dutch painters, full of animal spirits and fun. At his best, composition, colouring, and execution were all in excellent keeping. At his worst, he was vulgar and repulsive in his heads, and careless and faulty in his work. He was very rarely either kindly or reverent in his subjects, though, in spite of what is known to have been his riotous life, he is comparatively free from the grossness which is often the shame of Flemish and Dutch art. Jan Steen succeeded his father as a brewer and tavern-keeper at Delft. He renounced the brewery, in which he did not succeed, and joined the Painters' Guild, Haarlem; but his position as a tavern-keeper is reflected in his pictures, of which eating and drinking, card-playing, etc., are frequently the motifs. His family relations were not conducive to higher principles and tastes. He is said to have been so lost to common feeling as to have painted his first wife when she was in a state of intoxication.[52] His second wife may have been a worthier woman, but she was drawn from the lowest class, and had been accustomed to sell sheeps' heads and trotters in the butchers' market. Without doubt Jan Steen had extraordinary genius coexisting with his coarse, careless nature and jovial habits, and he must have worked with great facility, since, in spite of his idleness and comparatively early death, he left as many as two hundred pictures, rendered him extremely popular. Besides his favourite subjects, such as 'The Family Jollification,' 'The Feast of the Bean King,' 'Game of Skittles,' he has pictures in a slightly higher atmosphere, such as 'A Pastor Visiting a Young Girl,' 'The Parrot,' 'Schoolmaster with Unmanageable Boys,' 'The Pursuit of Alchemy.' Among the latter a good example is 'The Music Master' in the National Gallery.

Gerard Dow was born in 1613 and died in 1680. He was a genre painter of great merit. He belonged to Leyden, and was a pupil of Rembrandt. He began with portraiture, often painting his own face, and went on to scenes from low and middle-class life, but rarely attempted to represent high society. Compared to Jan Steen, however, he is refined. He had a curious fondness for painting hermits. The lighting of his pictures is frequently by lantern or candle. They are mostly small, and without animated action, but are full of picturesqueness. He was a good colourist, 'with a rare truth to nature and a marvellous distinctness of eye and precision of hand.' Minute as his execution was, his touch was 'free and soft.' His best pictures are 'like nature's self seen through the camera obscura.' An instance often given of his exquisite finish is that of a broom in the corner of one of his pictures. Some contemporary had remarked how careful and elaborate was the labour bestowed on it, when the painter answered that he was still to give it several hours' work. He must have been exceedingly industrious as well as painstaking, since he left two hundred pictures as his contribution to Dutch art. Among his finer pictures are 'An Old Woman reading the Bible to her Husband,' in the Louvre; 'The Poulterer's Shop,' in the National Gallery. His chef d'oeuvre, 'The Woman Sick of the Dropsy,' is in the Louvre. His candlelight is the finest rendered by any master. There is a good example of it in 'The Evening School,' in the Amsterdam Gallery.

Peter de Hooch—spelt often, De Hooge—was the genre painter of full, clear sunlight. The dates of his birth and death can only be guessed by those of his pictures, which extend from 1656 to 1670. His groups are generally playing cards, smoking, drinking, or engaged in domestic occupations—almost always in the open air. No other genre painter can compare with him in reproducing the effects of sunlight. His prevailing colour is red, varied and repeated with great delicacy. English lovers of art brought De Hooch into favour, and many of his pictures are in England. There are fine examples—'The Court of a Dutch House' and 'A Courtyard'—in the National Gallery.

Adrian van Ostade was born at Haarlem in 1610 and died in his native town in 1685. He has been called 'the Rembrandt of genre painters,' and, like Rembrandt, he was without the sense of human beauty and grace, for even his children are ugly; yet it is the purer, happier side of national life which he constantly represents, and he had great feeling for nature, with picturesqueness and harmony of design and colouring, as well as mastery of the technique of his art. He suffered many hardships in his youth, and grew up a quiet, industrious, family man. He left a very large number of pictures, nearly four hundred, many of them good, and not a few in England. 'The Alchemist'[53] is in the National Gallery.

Maas, born in 1632, died in 1693, is a much-prized genre painter, whose pictures are rare. He was a pupil of Rembrandt. He is said to have treated 'very simple subjects with naive homeliness and kindly humour.' His pictures are 'well lit, with deep warm harmony, and a vigorous touch.' 'The Idle Servant-maid,' in the National Gallery, is a masterpiece.

Metzu, like Terburg, is par excellence one of the two painters of Dutch high life. Metzu was born in 1615, and is known to have been alive in 1667. He painted both on a large and a small scale, and occasionally departed from his peculiar province to represent market-scenes, etc. He is the most refined and picturesque of genre painters on a small scale. Among his chefs d'oeuvre are a 'Lady holding a Glass of Wine and receiving an Officer,' in the Louvre; and a 'Girl writing, a Gentleman leaning on her chair and another girl opposite playing the Lute,' in the Hague Gallery. The fine 'Duet,' and the 'Music Lesson' are both in the National Gallery.

Gerard Terburg was born at Zwol, in 1608, and died in 1681. He visited Germany and Italy in his youth. His small groups and single figures, taken from the wealthier classes, with their luxurious surroundings, are 'given with exquisite delicacy and refinement.' Included in his masterpieces are a 'Girl in white satin (a texture which he rendered marvellously) washing her hands in a basin held before her by a maid-servant,' in the Dresden Gallery; an 'Officer in confidential talk with a Young Girl, and a Trumpeter who has brought him a Letter,' in the Hague Gallery; a 'Young Lady in white satin sitting playing the Lute,' in the Chateau of Wilhelmshoee, at Cassell. There are twenty-three Terburgs in England and Scotland.

Caspar Netcher, born in 1639, died in 1684. He formed himself upon Metzu and Terburg. He is the great Dutch painter of childhood. His finest works are in the Dresden Gallery. In the National Gallery is his 'Children blowing Bubbles.'

Ferdinand Bol was born at Dordrecht in 1611, and died at Amsterdam in 1680. He was a student of Rembrandt's, and distinguished himself in sacred and historical pictures, and especially in portraits. He followed his master in his youth, fell off in his art in middle life, but became again excellent in his later years. Among his fine pictures are 'David's Charge to Solomon,' in the Dublin National Gallery; and 'Joseph presenting his father Jacob to Pharaoh,' in the Dresden Gallery. His last portraits are considered very fine. They are taken in the fullest light, and have a surprising amount of animation. Such a portrait, called 'The Astronomer,' is in the National Gallery.[54]

Jacob Ruysdael was born in 1625(?) at Haarlem. In 1668 he was in Amsterdam, and acted as witness to the marriage of Hobbema, whose lack of worldly prosperity Ruysdael shared. He himself was unmarried, and maintained his father in his old age. In the prime of life Jacob Ruysdael in turn fell into extreme poverty, and died an inmate of the Haarlem Almshouse in 1682—a sad record of Holland's greatest landscape painter, for 'beyond dispute' Ruysdael is the first of the famous Dutch landscape painters.

'In no other is there the feeling for the poetry of Northern nature united with perfect execution, admirable drawing, great knowledge of chiaroscuro, powerful colouring, and a mastery of the brush which ranged from the minutest touch to broad, free execution.' His prevailing tone of colour is a full, decided green, though age has given many of his pictures a brown tone. A considerable number of his pictures are in a greyish, clear, cool tone (good examples of the last are to be seen in the Dresden Gallery). He generally painted the flat Dutch country in tranquil repose. He dealt usually in heavy clouded skies which told of showers past and coming, and dark sheets of water overshadowed by trees, lending a melancholy sentiment to the picture. He was fond of wide expanses of land and water, fond also of introducing the spires of his native Haarlem, touching the horizon line. He has left a few sea-pieces, always with cloudy heavens and heaving or raging seas;[55] where he has given sketches of sea, and shore, the aerial perspective is rendered in tender gradations 'full of pathos.' He has other pictures representing hilly, even mountainous, landscapes. In these foaming waterfalls form a prominent feature. Ruysdael was weak in his drawing of men and animals, in which he was occasionally assisted by fellow-artists, such as Berchem and Van de Velde. Among his finest pictures are 'A View of the Country round Haarlem,' in the Museum of the Hague; 'A flat country, with a road leading to a village and fields with wheat sheaves,' in the Dresden Gallery; 'A hilly bare country through which a river runs; the horseman and beggar on a bridge, by Wouvermans,' in the Louvre. His most remarkable waterfall is in the Hague Museum. In the Dresden Gallery there is 'A Jewish Cemetery,' 'full of melancholy.' Three of Ruysdael's fine waterfalls are in the National Gallery. Of two very grand storms which he painted one is in the Louvre, the other in the collection of the Marquis of Lansdowne at Bowood. There are many of Ruysdael's pictures in England. In the great landscape painter, as in the other renowned Dutch artists of the seventeenth century, the influence of Rembrandt is marked.

Meindert Hobbema was born in 1638, married in 1638, and died in poverty at Amsterdam in 1709. His works, which were neglected in his lifetime, now fetch much more than their weight in gold. Sums as large as four thousand pounds have been paid more than once for a Hobbema, yet his name was not found in any dictionary of art or artists for more than a century after his death. The English were the first to acknowledge Hobbema's merit, and nine-tenths of his works are in England, where he is the most popular Dutch landscape painter. But he is said by judges to have less invention and less poetic sensibility than his contemporary and friend Ruysdael. Hobbema's subjects are usually villages surrounded by trees like those in Guelderland, water-mills, a slightly broken country, with groups of trees, wheatfields, meadows, and small pools, more rarely portions of towns, and still more seldom old castles and stately mansions.[56] He has all the lifelike truthfulness of the Dutch artists. In tone he is as warm and golden as Ruysdael is cool in his greens. In the National Gallery there are excellent specimens of Hobbema, such as 'The Avenue Middelharnis' and 'A Landscape in Showery Weather.'

Nicolas Berchem, often spelt Berghem, was born at Haarlem in 1620, and died at Amsterdam in 1683. He was an excellent Dutch landscape painter. He had evidently visited Italy, and displayed great fondness for Italian subjects. His pictures show 'varied composition, good drawing, fine aerial effects, freedom, playfulness, and spirit.' As a colourist he was unequal, being often warm and harmonious, but at other times heavy and cold. It is clear that he was no student of life, from the monotony of his shepherds and shepherdesses and the sameness of his animals. He was naturally industrious, and was spurred on, as a still greater artist is said to have been, by the greed of his wife. He painted upwards of four hundred pictures, besides doing figures and animals for other painters. The great northern European galleries are rich in his works. One of his best pictures, 'A Shepherdess driving her cattle through a ford in a rocky landscape,' where the cool tone of the landscape is contrasted with the golden tone of the cattle, is in the Louvre. Another fine picture, 'Crossing the Ford,' is in the National Gallery.

Jan Both, born in 1610 (?), died in 1650 (?), was another Dutch landscape painter still more spellbound by Italy,[57] which he visited, and where he fell under the influence of Claude Lorraine. Both devoted himself thenceforth to Italian landscape to a greater degree than was practised by any other Dutch painter. He was excellent in drawing and skilful in rendering the golden glories of Italian sunsets. He painted freely and with solidity. The figures of men and animals in his pictures were often introduced by his brother Andreas. Jan Both excelled both in large and small pictures, but he was most uninterestingly uniform in design. He had generally a foreground of lofty trees, and for a background a range of mountains rising step by step, with a wide plain at their feet. Sometimes he introduced a waterfall or a lake. He rarely painted particular points in a landscape. His life was not a long one, so that his pictures do not number more than a hundred and fifty. Occasionally his warm tone of colouring degenerates to a foxy red. One of Both's best pictures—a landscape in which the fresh light of morning is apparent—is in the National Gallery.

Karil du Jardin, born in 1625, died in 1678, is a third great Dutch landscape painter, whose fancy Italy laid hold of, so that he settled in the country, dying at Venice. He was, it is said, a pupil of Berchem's, from whom he may have first drawn his Italian proclivities. He has more truth and feeling for animated nature than Berchem. Indeed, in this respect Du Jardin followed Paul Potter. According to contemporary accounts, Du Jardin, who had his share of the national humour, wasted his time in the pursuit of pleasure, and did not leave more pictures behind him than Both left. Du Jardin's best works are in the Louvre, but there are also many of his pictures in England. Among his masterpieces, 'Cattle of all kinds in a meadow surrounded by rocks, and watered by a cascade; a horseman giving alms to a peasant boy;' and his celebrated 'Charlatan,' full of observation and humour, are in the Louvre. A fine picture, 'Figures of Animals under the shade of a Tree,' is in the National Gallery.

Adrian Van de Velde, born in 1639, died in 1672, the younger brother of a great marine painter, ranks almost as high as Paul Potter in cattle painting. If 'inferior in modelling and solidity' to his rival, Adrian Van de Velde is superior in variety, taste, and feeling. Like the great English animal painter, Landseer, Van de Velde was a distinguished artist when a mere boy of fourteen. Like his compatriot, Paul Potter, Van de Velde died young, at the age of thirty-two. He generally disposed of his cattle among broken ground with trees and pools of water. Sometimes he has a herdsman or a shepherdess, sometimes there is a hunting party passing. His scenery is reckoned masterly. It is mostly taken from the coast of Scheveningen. He often painted in men, horses, and dogs for other painters. He must have been very industrious, with great facility in his work, since, in spite of his premature death, he had painted nearly two hundred pictures. 'A brown cow grazing and a grey cow resting,' which is in the Berlin Museum, was done at the age of sixteen, yet it is full of observation, delicacy, and execution. 'Cattle grazing before a peasant's cottage,' which is in the Dresden Gallery, is considered very fine. A fine 'Winter Landscape,' and a 'Farm Cottage,' are in the National Gallery. Some of Adrian Van de Velde's best work, as well as his brother's, is in England.

Jan Van der Heyden, 'the Gerard Dow of architectural painters,' was born in 1637 and died in 1712. He combined an unspeakable minuteness of detail with the closest observation of nature. His subjects, which he selected with great taste, were chiefly well-known buildings, palaces, churches, and canal banks in Holland and Belgium. He painted in a warm transparent tone, with close application of the laws of perspective. The figures in his pictures, in excellent keeping, were often introduced by Adrian Van de Velde. Van der Heyden's productiveness as a painter was lessened by the circumstance that his mechanical talent led him to make an invention by which the construction of the fire-engines of his day was greatly improved. In consequence he was placed by the magistrates of Amsterdam at the head of their fire-engine establishment, which had thus many claims on his time. A beautiful 'Street in Cologne' is in the National Gallery.

Emanuel De Witte, born in 1607, died in 1692, was great in architectural interiors, especially in churches of Italian architecture. He stood to this branch of Dutch art in the same relation that Ruysdael did to landscape and William Van de Velde to seascape.

Aart Van der Neer was born in 1619(?), died in 1683. He is famous for his canal banks by moonlight, and fine disposal of broad masses of shadow. After his moonlights come his sunsets, conflagrations, and winter scenes. He rarely painted full daylight. He sometimes painted on the same Van der Neer in the National Gallery. Many of his works are in England.

William Van de Velde the younger, the elder brother of Adrian Van de Velde, the cattle painter, was born at Amsterdam in 1633, and died at Greenwich in 1707. His early life was spent in Holland. He followed his father, William Van de Velde, a painter also, to England, where, under the patronage of Charles II, and James II., William the younger painted the naval victories of the English over the Dutch, just as in Holland he had already painted the naval victories of the Dutch over the English. He was a greater and more consistent artist than he was a patriot. Without question he is the first marine painter of the Dutch School. He was untiring in his study of nature, so that his perfect knowledge of perspective and the incomparable mastery of technical qualities which he inherited from his school, enabled him to render sea and sky under every aspect. His vessels 'were drawn with a knowledge which extended to every rope.' He has been an exceedingly popular painter both with the Dutch and the English. Of upwards of three hundred pictures left by him many are in Holland and still more in England, where in his lifetime he was largely employed by the English nobility and gentry. William Van de Velde has a great picture in the Amsterdam Museum, where the English flag-ship, the Princess Royal, is represented as striking her colours to the Dutch fleet in 1666. In the companion picture, also by Van de Velde, 'Four English men-of-war brought in as prizes,' the painter introduces himself in the small boat from which he witnessed the fight. William Van de Velde's triumphs in calm seas are seen especially in his pictures at the Hague and in Munich. Some of Van de Velde's best works are in the National Gallery.

Backhuysen born in 1631, died at Amsterdam in 1708, was another admirable marine painter. He did not study painting till he had followed a trade up to the age of eighteen years; he then gave himself with ardour to art, making many studies of skies, coasts, and vessels. He was inferior to William Van de Velde in his colouring, which was heavy, with a cold effect. But he had in full a Dutch painter's truthfulness, while his 'stormy waves and rent clouds' are given with poetic feeling. He was an industrious and successful man, painting nearly two hundred pictures, and receiving many commissions from the King of Prussia, Grand Duke of Tuscany, etc. One of his finest works, 'A View of the River from the Landing-place called the Mosselsteiger,' is in Amsterdam Museum. In the Louvre is 'A view of the Mouth of the Texel, with ten Men-of-war Sailing before a Fresh Wind.' 'Dutch Shipping' is in the National Gallery.

Van de Capella is another capital marine painter, though little is known of him. He was a native of Amsterdam about 1653. His favourite subject is a quiet sea in sunny weather. His work bears some resemblance to that of Cuyp. His best pictures are in England. 'A Calm at Low Water' is in the National Gallery.

Melchior de Hondecoeter, born in 1636, died in 1695, chose the feathered tribe for his subjects. He has been called 'the Raphael of bird painters.' He painted especially poultry, peacocks, turkeys, and pigeons, which he usually represented alive, and treated with great truthfulness and picturesque feeling. Among his best pictures are 'The Floating Feather,' a feather given with singular lightness drifting in a pool, with different birds on the water and the shore—a pelican prominent—in Amsterdam Museum, and 'A Hen defending her Chickens against the attacks of a Pea-hen, with a Peacock, a Pigeon, a Cassowary, and a Crane,' also in Amsterdam.

Jan Weenix, born in 1644, died in 1719. He was a painter of 'still life,' and was especially famous for his dead hares, 'which in form and colour, down to the rendering of every hair, are marvels of execution.' He painted sometimes, though rarely, a living dog in his pieces. A fine Weenix sometimes painted flower pieces.[58]

Pater Segers, so called because he was a Father in a Jesuit convent, which he entered at twenty-four years of age. He was born in 1590, and died in the Jesuit convent, Antwerp, 1661. He was a famous flower painter, but did not paint flowers by themselves; he painted them in conjunction with the historical and sacred subjects of other painters. He added many a wreath to the Virgin and Child. He worked in this fashion with Rubens, but painted more frequently along with painters of a lower rank in art. Pater Segers' flowers are finely drawn and tastefully arranged. The red of his roses has remained unchanged by years, while the roses of other painters have become violet or faded altogether. He had endless royal commissions. There are six of his pictures of much merit in the Dresden Gallery.

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

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

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



NOTE TO PAGE 96.

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



INDEX.

PAGE

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

FOOTNOTES:

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

[2] Kugler's Handbook of Art.

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

[4] Kugler's Handbook of Painting.

[5] Kugler's Handbook of Painting.

[6] See note, page 422.

[7] Mrs Roscoe's Life of Vittoria Colonna

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

[9] Lady Eastlake, History of Our Lord.

[10] Hare, Walks in Rome.

[11] Lanzi, in Hare's Walks in Rome.

[12] Rio. Poetry of Christian Art, in Hare's Walks in Rome.

[13] Mrs Jameson.

[14] Dean Alford.

[15] Imperial Biographical Dictionary.

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

[17] Kugler.

[18] The term originated in the French expression, 'du genre bas.'

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

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

[21] Mrs Jameson.

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

[23] Life of Rubens.

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

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

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

[27] Sir W. Stirling Maxwell.

[28] Sir W. Stirling Maxwell.

[29] Hare, Wanderings in Spain.

[30] Hare's Wanderings in Spain.

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

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

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

[34] Imperial Biographical Dictionary.

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

[36] Wornum.

[37] Wornum.

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

[39] Rev. J. Lewis, 1731.

[40] Wornum.

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

[42] Walpole.

[43] Walpole.

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

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

[46] Walpole.

[47] Walpole.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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