A Popular Handbook to the National Gallery, Volume I, Foreign Schools

33

"The Dutch painters were not poets, nor the sons of poets, but their fathers rescued a Republic from the slime and covered it with such fair farms that I declare to this day I like Dutch cheese as well as any, because it sends one in imagination to the many-uddered meadows which Cuyp has embossed in gold and silver. What savoury hares and rabbits they had in the low blunt sand-hills, and how the Teniers boor snared them, and how the big-breech'd Gunn-Mann (I haven't any knowledge of Dutch, but I am sure that must be the Dutch for 'sportsman') banged off his piece at them, and then how the shining Vrow saw them in the Schopp and bargained for them. The Schopp had often a window with a green curtain in it, and a basso-relievo of Cupids and goats beneath, with a crack across the bas-relief, and iron stains on the marble, and a bright brass bulging bottle on the sill, and such pickling cabbage as makes the mouth water" (Letters of James Smetham, p. 172).

34

On the ground floor small copies of many of the famous pictures at Madrid may be seen.

35

This statement, though broadly true, requires, of course, much modification: see the early Spanish picture (of the 15th century) on loan in this room from the Victoria and Albert Museum.

36

Elsewhere Mr. Ruskin speaks of "Twickenham classicism" (with a side allusion, of course, to Pope) "consisting principally in conceptions of ancient or of rural life such as have influenced the erection of most of our suburban villas" (Pre-Raphaelitism, reprinted in On the Old Road, i. 283).

37

In a later lecture on landscape (delivered at Oxford and reported in Cook's Studies in Ruskin, p. 290) Ruskin cited Evelyn (who was nearly contemporary with Claude) as another case in point: "We passed through a forest (of Fontainebleau)," says Evelyn, "so prodigiously encompass'd with hideous rocks of white hard stone, heaped one on another in mountainous height, that I think the like is nowhere to be found more horrid and solitary." It is interesting to note how long this ignorance of mountains lasted, even amongst painters. James Barry, the R. A., was "amazed at finding the realities of the Alps grander than the imaginations of Salvator," and writes to Edmund Burke from Turin in 1766 to say that he saw the moon from the Mont Cenis five times as big as usual, "from being so much nearer to it"!

38

It is worth noting that a similar incident (which in this picture has greatly shocked some of the critics) is introduced in Orcagna's great fresco of the Triumph of Death. "The three kings of the German legend are represented looking at the three coffins containing three bodies of kings, such as themselves, in the last stage of corruption… Orcagna disdains both poetry and taste; he wants the facts only; he wishes to give the spectator the same lesson that the kings had, and, therefore, instead of concealing the dead bodies, he paints them with the most fearful detail. And then, he does not consider what the three kings might most gracefully do. He considers only what they actually, in all probability, would have done. He makes them looking at the coffins with a startled stare, and one holding his nose" (Lectures on Architecture and Painting, pp. 209, 210).

A comparison of the various opinions expressed on this picture would form a diverting chapter in the history of art criticism. Thus in Kugler's Handbook we are told that it is "in many respects one of the noblest pictures existing"; Sir Henry Cole ("Felix Summerly") called it "doubtless the greatest Italian painting in this country"; Hazlitt said it was "one of the best pictures on so large a scale that he was acquainted with"; Waagen pronounced it to be "the most important specimen of Italian art in England"; Solly called it "the second picture in the world"; and Mrs. Jameson saw in it a combination of "the characteristic power and beauty of the finest school of design and the finest school of colouring in the world." For an equally uncompromising condemnation see Landseer's Catalogue, pp. 92-119. It is interesting to note that in some cases the admiration excited by the picture was due to the dirt with which by long neglect and lapse in time it had come to be discoloured. Thus Hazlitt says that "the figure of Lazarus is very fine and bold. The flesh is well-baked, dingy, and ready to crumble from the touch, when it is liberated from its dread confinement to have life and motion impressed on it again" (Criticisms on Art, 1843, p. 9). Thus it was inferred that Sebastiano stooped to the trivial artifice of imparting an appearance of half putrefaction to the exhumed corpse. The absurdity of this criticism is well exposed by Henry Merritt, the famous picture restorer, in his essay on "Dirt and Pictures Separated" (Art Criticism and Romance, i. 69). The fact is that the whole picture was sadly darkened with time, and that it had become "embedded beneath a thick covering, compounded of half opaque varnish, patches of modern paint, and dirt." It has only been found possible partly to remove this covering. It may not be uninteresting to add that the picture was a favourite with Charles Darwin. "Many of the pictures in the National Gallery," he wrote, "gave me much pleasure; that of Sebastian del Piombo exciting in me a sense of sublimity" (Life, i. 49).

The poet Tennyson was another great admirer of the picture. His son, describing visits with the poet to the National Gallery, says, "he always led the way first of all to the "Raising of Lazarus," by Sebastian del Piombo, and to Titian's "Bacchus and Ariadne."" "The Christ I call Christlike," said Tennyson on one occasion to Carlyle, "is Sebastian del Piombo's in the National Gallery" (Memoir, ii. 235). It is possible that the poet may have written the stanzas cited above with his eye on Sebastiano's picture.

39

"When they went to nature, which I believe to have been a very much rarer practice with them than their biographers would have us suppose, they copied her like children, drawing what they knew to be there, but not what they saw there" (Modern Painters, vol. i. pt. ii. sec. ii. ch. iii. § 7).

40

The "Claude Lorraine glass" – a convex dark, or coloured hand-mirror used to concentrate the features of a landscape in a subdued tone – "gives the objects of nature," says an old writer, "a soft mellow tinge like the colouring of that master."

41

But Ruskin does not quite keep his promise. "If Claude had been a great man he would not have been so steadfastly set on painting effects of sun; he would have looked at all nature, and at all art, and would have painted sun effects somewhat worse, and nature universally much better" (Modern Painters, vol. iii. pt. iv. ch. xviii. § 23).

42

The passages quoted from Sir F. Burton are to be found in his edition of the Official Catalogue (unabridged) of the Foreign Schools. That work, which occupied the late Director's leisure for many years, is a worthy monument of his wide learning and fastidious taste. A large-paper edition was issued by the Stationery Office in 1892.

43

See, however, the sunset picture of his predecessor, Bellini (726). Connoisseurs should note that this picture is referred to by Richter as bearing on the vexed question of Palma Vecchio's relation with Titian, and showing that the latter imitated the former rather than vice versâ (Italian Art in the National Gallery, p. 85. See also Morelli's German Galleries, p. 25).

44

Called also "Sinon before Priam" (Æneid, ii. 79).

45

The two pictures were bought by the nation in 1834 for £11,550. The sum was then thought a very large one, and the trustees fortified themselves with the opinion of experts. Amongst these Sir David Wilkie, R.A., wrote, "It is certainly a large sum for two pictures; but giving this difficulty its due weight, I would decidedly concur in giving this sum rather than let them go out of the country, considering the rarity of such specimens even in foreign countries, and their excellence as examples of the high school to which they belong, to which it must be the aim of every other school to approach."

46

The picture is inscribed "Mariage d'Isaac avec Rebecca," but it is a repetition with some variations in detail of the Claude known as Il Molino (The Mill) in the Doria palace at Rome. Ruskin characterises this version of the subject as a "villainous and unpalliated copy." "There is not," he adds, "one touch or line of even decent painting in the whole picture; but as connoisseurs have considered it a Claude, as it has been put in our Gallery for a Claude, and as people admire it every day for a Claude, I may at least presume it has those qualities of Claude in it which are wont to excite the public admiration, though it possesses none of those which sometimes give him claim to it; and I have so reasoned, and shall continue to reason upon it, especially with respect to facts of form, which cannot have been much altered by the copyist" (Modern Painters, vol. i. pt. ii. sec. iii. ch. i. § 9, sec. iv. ch. ii. § 8).

47

The following is the text of this portion of Turner's will: "I give and bequeath unto the Trustees and Directors for the time being of a certain Society or Institution, called the 'National Gallery' or Society, the following pictures or paintings by myself, namely Dido Building Carthage, and the picture formerly in the De Tabley collection. To hold the said pictures or paintings unto the said Trustees and Directors of this said Society for the time being, in trust for the said Institution or Society for ever, subject, nevertheless, to, for, and upon the following reservations and restrictions only; that is to say, I direct that the said pictures or paintings shall be hung, kept, and placed, that is to say, always between the two pictures painted by Claude, The Seaport and Mill." The "picture formerly in the De Tabley collection" is the "Sun rising in a Mist," 479. Turner bought it back at Lord de Tabley's sale at Christie's in 1827 for £514: 10s., and ever afterwards refused to part with it. The other picture, the Carthage (498), was returned unsold from the Academy, and Turner always kept it in his gallery. His friend Chantrey used to make him offers for it, but each time its price rose higher. "Why, what in the world, Turner, are you going to do with the picture?" he asked. "Be buried in it," Turner replied – a remark he often made to other friends.

48

"So in N. Poussin's 'Phocion' (40) the shadow of the stick on the stone in the right-hand corner, is shaded off and lost, while you see the stick plainly all the way. In nature's sunlight it would have been the direct reverse: you would have seen the shadow black and sharp all the way down; but you would have had to look for the stick, which in all probability would in several places have been confused with the stone behind it" (ibid.).

49

Compare on this point G. Poussin's "Abraham and Isaac" (31).

50

One may compare with Ruskin's description the similar one by Tennyson of a distant view of Monte Rosa —

How faintly-flush'd, how phantom-fair,Was Monte Rosa, hanging thereA thousand shadowy-pencill'd valleysAnd snowy dells in a golden air.

The Daisy.

51

"In some of the convents (in Mexico) there still exist, buried alive like the inmates, various fine old paintings … brought there by the monks" (Dublin National Gallery Catalogue). The Spanish influence gave birth, moreover, to a native Mexican School of painting, said to be of considerable merit.

52

"Murillo, of all true painters the narrowest, feeblest, and most superficial, for those reasons the most popular" (Two Paths, § 57 n.) – "The delight of vulgar painters (as Murillo) in coarse and slurred painting merely for the sake of its coarseness, opposed to the divine finish which the greatest and mightiest of men disdained not" (Modern Painters, vol. ii. pt. iii. sec. i. ch. x. § 3).

53

The French partiality for Murillo is traditional, dating back to Marshal Soult's time, from whose collection the "Immaculate Conception" was bought. Murillos were his favourite spoils from the Peninsular War. "One day, showing General G – his gallery in Paris, Soult stopped opposite a Murillo, and said, 'I very much value that, as it saved the lives of two estimable persons.' An Aide-de-camp whispered, 'He threatened to have both shot on the spot unless they gave up the picture'" (Ford's Handbook).

54

"He was not a bad painter," continued Ruskin, "but he exercises a most fatal influence on the English School, and therefore I owe him an especial grudge. I have never entered the Dulwich Gallery for fourteen years without seeing at least three copyists before the Murillos. I never have seen one before the Paul Veronese… I intend some time in my life to have a general conflagration of Murillos." Ruskin would have been relieved to know that of late years at the National Gallery Paul Veronese – and especially his St. Helena – has been very frequently copied.

55

Amongst the curiosities of criticisms are the differences between experts as to whether this is a morning or an evening effect. Contradictory opinions on the point were submitted to the Select Committee of 1853, but as the picture had been "restored," each side was able to impute the difficulty of deciding to the "ruinous" nature of that operation.

56

It may be interesting to note on the other side that Dr. Waagen (whose experience of the sea is given under No. 149) finds the waves in this picture to "run high," and to be "extraordinarily deep and full."

57

Compare for equally defective perspective the covered portico in 30.

58

Visitors to Venice may like to be reminded that most of Ruskin's criticism upon Tintoret's works there is now easily accessible in (1) The Relation between Michael Angelo and Tintoret, (2) The Stones of Venice, travellers' edition, and (3) the reissue of the second volume of Modern Painters. Mr. Ruskin always accounted his "discovery" of Tintoret as one of the chief works of his life. "I have supplied," he wrote in Stones of Venice (1853), "somewhat copious notices of the pictures of Tintoret, because they are much injured, difficult to read, and entirely neglected by other writers on art." "I say with pride," he wrote in the epilogue to the second volume of Modern Painters (1883), "what it has become my duty to express openly, that it was left to me, and to me alone, first to discern, and then to teach, so far as in this hurried century any such thing can be taught, the excellency and supremacy of five great painters, despised until I spoke of them; – Turner, Tintoret, Luini, Botticelli, and Carpaccio. Despised, – nay, scarcely in any true sense of the word, known." For the Pre-Ruskinian view of Tintoret, the reader may consult Kugler's Handbook of Painting.

59

For an exhaustive and interesting history of the legend see Mr. J. R. Anderson's Supplement to St. Mark's Rest. One account, it seems, places both Perseus and St. George in the Nile Delta. Politicians who say that England has gone to Egypt to save that country from itself may perhaps see some significance in this. The superstitious in such things will not forget either that one of Gordon's names was George.

60

It is proper to mention that most of the critics dispute the genuineness of this picture, and consider it a copy by some scholar or imitator. "It is but a school repetition of a signed picture in The Hermitage, with the omission, however, of a charming figure of St. Catherine." In connection with this disputed point, it may not be out of place to recall the famous forgery in which Andrea himself played the chief part. The Duke of Mantua coveted Raphael's portrait of Leo X., and obtained permission from the Pope to appropriate it. The owner determined to meet force by fraud, and employed Andrea to make a copy which was sent to the Duke as the original. The copy, when at Mantua, deceived even Giulio Romano, who had himself taken part in the execution of the original – a fact which might well induce some modesty of judgment in connoisseurs.

61

The title usually given to this picture, "Christ Disputing with the Doctors," cannot be correct, for the figure of Christ is too old for an incident which occurred when he was twelve years old.

62

In the little-known collection in the library of Christ Church, Oxford, there is a powerful but unpleasantly realistic picture of a group in a butcher's shop, by one of the Carracci, which is perhaps a family portrait.

63

See Blake's Auguries of Innocence.

64

Gaspard was particularly unfaithful to the variety of nature in his representation of leaves (see 98). It is interesting therefore, as showing how long it passed for truth, to note that Lanzi (i. 481) singles out this point for special praise: "Everything that Gaspard expresses is founded in nature; in his leaves he is as various as the trees themselves."

65

Compare on this point Claude's "Isaac and Rebecca," No. 12.

66

This anecdote is a modern counterpart of that of Protogenes, the rival of Apelles, who worked continuously, we are told, during the siege of Rhodes by Demetrius Poliorcetes, notwithstanding that the garden in which he painted was in the middle of the enemy's camp. Demetrius, unsolicited, took measures for the painter's safety, and when he was told that one of the masterpieces by Protogenes was in a part of the town exposed to assault, he changed his plan of operations.

67

"If you live in London you may test your progress accurately by the degree of admiration you feel for the leaves of vine round the head of the Bacchus in Titian's Bacchus and Ariadne" (Elements of Drawing, p. 82). Another technical beauty referred to in the same book (p. 77 n.) is "the points of light on the white flower in the wreath of the dancing child-faun." Similarly, "the wing of the cupid in Correggio's picture (10) is focused to two little grains of white at the top of it." Elsewhere Ruskin calls attention to "the leaves which crown the Bacchus, and the little dancing faun: every turn of the most subtle perspective, and every gradation of colour, is given with the colossal ease and power of the consummate master" (Academy Notes, 1855, p. 22).

68

Ruskin's analysis of Rubens's technical method, which is here omitted as foreign to the scope of this handbook, will be found in his review of Eastlake's History of Oil Painting, now reprinted in On the Old Road, i. §§ 98-136.

69

"The conditions of art in Flanders – wealthy, bourgeois, proud, free, – were not dissimilar to those of art in Venice. The misty flats of Belgium have some of the atmospheric qualities of Venice. As Van Eyck is to the Vivarini, so is Rubens to Paolo Veronese. This expresses the amount of likeness and difference" (Symonds: Renaissance, iii. 265 n).

70

See, for a further instance of this, what is said of Rubens's landscapes below, under 66.

71

Dr. Elisabeth Denio, in her monograph on Poussin (1899), adduces good reason for altering the commonly accepted date 1594 to 1593.

72

See Lanzi, i. 477, and a paper by Mr. R. Heath in the Magazine of Art for September 1877, where Poussin's theory is illustrated from his pictures in the Louvre. English readers may be reminded that Poussin is particularly well represented in the Dulwich Gallery.

73

Elsewhere Ruskin says of Poussin, "Whatever he has done has been done better by Titian." Also, "the landscape of Nicolo Poussin shows much power, and is usually composed and elaborated on right principles, but I am aware of nothing that it has attained of new or peculiar excellence; it is a graceful mixture of qualities to be found in other masters in higher degrees. In finish it is inferior to Leonardo's, in invention to Giorgione's, in truth to Titian's, in grace to Raphael's" (Modern Painters, vol. i. pt. ii. sec. i. ch. vii. § 14).

74

"He feared the fascinations of colour, and once wrote from Venice that he must flee from a place where they lured him too much. He did not know how needless was the alarm" (Sir F. Burton).

75

Constable, who made some studies from this picture, was of the same opinion. In a letter to Fisher he describes it as "a noble Poussin: a solemn, deep, still summer's noon, with large umbrageous trees, and a man washing his feet at a fountain near them. Through the breaks in the trees are mountains, and the clouds collecting about them with the most enchanting effects possible. It cannot be too much to say that this landscape is full of religious and moral feeling" (Leslie's Life of Constable, p. 90).

76

"Hang these pictures in a very strong light," said Rembrandt of his early work. "The smell of paint is not good for the health," he said many years afterwards, when a visitor came close up to one of his later pictures.

77

Baldwin Brown's The Fine Arts, p. 298, where Mr. Whistler's beautiful description of a "nocturne" on the Thames is cited as being in direct artistic descent from Rembrandt. "To Rembrandt," said the late Mr. Wornum (Epochs of Painting, 1864, p. 421), "belongs the glory of having first embodied in art and perpetuated [such] rare and beautiful effects of nature" as are referred to above. Ruskin took up the sentence, and replied with characteristic emphasis: "Such effects are indeed rare in nature; but they are not rare, absolutely. The sky, with the sun in it, does not usually give the impression of being dimly lighted through a circular hole; but you may observe a very similar effect any day in your coal-cellar. The light is not Rembrandtesque on the current, or banks, of a river; but it is on those of a drain. Colour is not Rembrandtesque, usually, in a clean house; but is presently obtainable of that quality in a dirty one. And without denying the pleasantness of the mode of progression, which Mr. Hazlitt, perhaps too enthusiastically, describes (in a criticism upon the present picture) as obtainable in a background of Rembrandt's, 'you stagger from one abyss of obscurity to another,' I cannot feel it an entirely glorious speciality to be distinguished, as Rembrandt was, from other great painters, chiefly by the liveliness of his darkness, and the dulness of his light. Glorious or inglorious, the speciality itself is easily and accurately definable. It is the aim of the best painters to paint the noblest things they can see by sunlight. It was the aim of Rembrandt to paint the foulest things he could see – by rushlight," – a statement from which, of course, deduction must be made, in forming a general idea of Ruskin's estimate, for his appreciation of Rembrandt's portraits. See, e. g. under 51.

78

To further understand Rembrandt's principle of choice, contrast that of Veronese. See the passage quoted under No. 26.