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

79

Yet Rembrandt's pictures are often more deceptive – look more like reality – than others which are really more true. Why? It is because "people are so much more easily and instinctively impressed by force of light than truth of colour… Give them the true contrast of light, and they will not observe the false local colour." The references to Ruskin are Modern Painters, vol. iii. pt. iv. ch. iii. § 16; vol. iv. pt. v. ch. ii. §§ 11-19; vol. v. pt. ix. ch. vi. § 10; On the Old Road, i. 498-505.

80

Ruskin, writing to the Times in 1847, said of the then condition of the picture: "I have no hesitation in asserting that for the present it is utterly, and for ever partially, destroyed. I am not disposed lightly to impugn the judgment of Mr. Eastlake (that is, the then Keeper and subsequent Director, the late Sir C. L. Eastlake), but this was indisputably of all the pictures in the Gallery that which least required, and least could endure, the process of cleaning. It was in the most advantageous condition under which a work of Rubens can be seen; mellowed by time into more perfect harmony than when it left the easel, enriched and warmed, without losing any of its freshness or energy. The execution of the master is always so bold and frank as to be completely, perhaps even most agreeably, seen under circumstances of obscurity, which would be injurious to pictures of greater refinement; and though this was, indeed, one of his most highly-finished and careful works (to my mind, before it suffered this recent injury, far superior to everything at Antwerp, Malines, or Cologne), this was a more weighty reason for caution than for interference. Some portions of colour have been exhibited which were formerly untraceable; but even these have lost in power what they have gained in definitiveness, – the majesty and preciousness of all the tones are departed, the balance of distances lost. Time may, perhaps, restore something of the glow, but never the subordination; and the more delicate portions of flesh tint, especially the back of the female figure on the left, and of the boy in the centre, are destroyed for ever" (Arrows of the Chace, i, 56, 57).

81

The magnificent portrait No. 52 is by some critics ascribed to Rubens. Van Dyck hardly ever signed his pictures.

82

Not all artists have learnt from this great work gladly. It was exhibited at the first exhibition of "Old Masters" at the British Institution in 1815, and B. R. Haydon tells the following story: "Lawrence was looking at the Gevartius when I was there, and as he turned round, to my wonder, his face was boiling with rage as he grated out between his teeth, 'I suppose they think we want teaching!'" (Autobiography, i. 292).

83

Such is the tradition. By many modern critics the picture is, on internal evidence, taken away from Van Dyck and given to Rubens. Mr. Watts in the article cited above says: "Attributed to Van Dyck, but hardly, I think, suggesting his work, though it would be difficult to attribute it to any other painter, unless, perhaps, on some occasion Rubens might have been inspired with so fervent a love for art that he forgot his satisfaction in scattering his over-ripe dexterity."

84

The statement found in many biographies of the painter that he was a brewer is a mistake. It arose from the fact that his daughter married a brewer, and that the painter himself was buried from his son-in-law's brewery.

85

See Modern Painters, vol. v. pt. vii. ch. iv. § 13.

86

Ruskin (ibid., vol. ii. pt. iii. sec. ii. ch. iv. § 16) notices this treatment of Apollo under the head of "Imagination Contemplative," as an instance of an imaginative abstraction "in which the form of one thing is fancifully indicated in the matter of another; as in phantoms and cloud shapes, the use of which, in mighty hands, is often most impressive, as in the cloudy-charioted Apollo of Nicolo Poussin in our own Gallery, which the reader may oppose to the substantial Apollo in Wilson's Niobe," see No. 110.

87

This figure is specially good. It was to rival this great landscape that James Ward (see 688), as he avows in his autobiography, painted his "Fighting Bulls," now in the South Kensington Museum. "How full of lithe natural movement," says Mr. J. T. Nettleship, "is the man in the foreground, in heavy boots and feathered hat, stooping and creeping towards the covey of partridges under cover of bramble and bush, compared with the clumsy anatomical bulls in Ward's picture" (George Morland, p. 54).

88

Ruskin is here speaking of the somewhat similar "St. George" picture in the Church of St. James at Antwerp.

89

See also No. 98, in which the tree is said by Ruskin to be "a mere jest" compared to this.

90

No. 78 was formerly Sir Joshua Reynolds's "Holy Family," on which notes will be found in Volume II. of this Handbook. The picture has now been withdrawn from exhibition and little remains of it, for owing to the excessive use of asphaltum the pigments have disappeared.

91

"Garofano" is the Italian for "gillyflower" (or clove-pink), and Tisio sometimes painted this flower as his sign-manual (like Mr. Whistler's butterfly).

92

Authorities differ between this title and "Pan teaching Apollo to play on the pipes." Certainly there is the "Pan's pipe," but then if it is Pan he ought to have goat's legs and horns. The fact that the picture is a companion to "Silenus gathering Grapes" makes also in favour of the description given in the text above.

93

See also Ruskin's remarks on the companion storm piece, No. 36.

94

It should be noted that this, as well as very many other pictures, has of late years been cleaned. Thus 98 and 68 (in 1880), 36 and 40 (in 1868), have been "cleaned and varnished." 31 was "relined, repaired, and varnished" in 1878; 161 was "cleaned and repaired" in 1868.

95

The diminutive title "Il Canaletto" was originally applied to Antonio's nephew and pupil, Bernardo Bellotto, but came to be transferred to Antonio Canale himself. The two Canaletti painted so much alike that their works are not easily distinguished.

96

Ruskin, on one of his latest visits to the National Gallery (1887), confessed that he had found himself admiring Canaletto. "After all," he said to me, "he was a good workman in oils, whereas so much of Turner's work is going to rack and ruin." Ruskin had made a similar concession long before to Claude. Writing to Mr. Fawkes on the death of Turner, he mentions a rumour that the artist had left only his finished pictures to the nation. "Alas! these are finished in a double sense – nothing but chilled fragments of paint on rotten canvas. The Claudites will have a triumph when they get into the National Gallery" (quoted in The Nineteenth Century, April 1900).

97

An amusing instance of the naïve ignorance of the sea which underlay much of the excessive admiration of Vandevelde is afforded by Dr. Waagen, for many years director of the Berlin Gallery, and author of Treasures of Art in England. At the end of a passage describing his "first attempt to navigate the watery paths," he says: "For the first time I understood the truth of these pictures (Bakhuizen's and Vandevelde's), and the refined art with which, by intervening dashes of sunshine, near or at a distance, and ships to animate the scene, they produce such a charming variety on the surface of the sea." "For the first time!" exclaims Ruskin (Arrows of the Chace, i. 16, 17), "and yet this gallery-bred judge, this discriminator of coloured shreds and canvas patches, who has no idea how ships animate the sea until – charged with the fates of the Royal Academy – he ventures his invaluable person from Rotterdam to Greenwich, will walk up to the work of a man whose brow is hard with the spray of a hundred storms, and characterise it as 'wanting in truth of clouds and waves.'" Dr. Waagen, it should be explained, had, on the strength of his first "navigation of the watery ways" pronounced Turner's works inferior in such truth to Vandevelde. Clearly Dr. Waagen, more fortunate than most of our foreign visitors, had a calm crossing.

98

It is interesting that another contemporary man of letters, the late Matthew Arnold, singled out these same lines for special praise: "No passage in poetry," he said, "has moved and pleased me more" (Fortnightly Review, August 1887, p. 299).

99

In this town were born two other painters, who are sometimes known by its name. Curiously enough, all three were originally masons.

100

Ruskin speaks of "the ruffian Caravaggio, distinguished only by his preference of candle-light and black shadows for the illustration and reinforcement of villainy" (On the Old Road, i. § 48).

101

According to Morelli (Italian Masters in German Galleries, p. 56 n.), this familiar tale is legendary, Francia being merely an abbreviation of his Christian name, Francesco. But the painter sometimes signed his name Franciscus Francia, a form which on Morelli's hypothesis would be tautological.

102

Francia's friendship with Raphael, on which art historians have based many theories and spun many interesting tales, is now discredited, the documents in question being comparatively modern forgeries (see p. 366 of Kugler's Italian Schools of Painting, 5th edition, revised by Sir A. H. Layard, 1887, elsewhere referred to as Layard).

103

Vasari's story that Francia died of chagrin on seeing how far the whole work of his own life was transcended by Raphael's picture of St. Cecilia, which was sent to its destination at Bologna about 1516, is hardly credible.

104

Ruskin said of this picture in 1847: "The attribution to him of the wretched panel which now bears his name is a mere insult" (Arrows of the Chace, i. 64). "Petrus Peruginus" is inscribed in gold on the base of the mantle of the Virgin, but the picture may be the work of his disciple, Lo Spagna (see 1032).

105

Up to the time of the Van Eycks the general process of artistic painting for detached pictures was tempera. In this method the colours, after being ground with chalk, were laid on with a medium of water, white of eggs, juice of unripe figs, or some similar substance. Some kind of oil varnish was, however, often laid on afterwards, and a few Italian artists sometimes tried to mix their colours with oil in the first instance; but the results cannot have been satisfactory, for even Crivelli, who died in 1495, was still exclusively a painter in tempera. The objection to tempera, so far at any rate as northern countries were concerned, was that it suffered from the damp. Thus in an old retable in Westminster Abbey, so painted, the painting has flaked off. The objection to the early attempts at using oil as a medium was that it took a long time to dry. This caused Van Eyck incessant annoyance; his knowledge of chemistry led him to make experiments, and at last he obtained a medium which hastened the drying without the necessity of exposure to the sun. This medium was probably a mixture of linseed and nut oils. This method is different from that now called oil-painting. Now the colours are laid on by an oily medium, and when the picture is finished the whole surface is protected by a transparent varnish. Then the varnish was incorporated with the surface colours (see Conway's Early Flemish Artists, p. 119; and Wauters's Flemish School of Painting, p. 35).

106

Arrows of the Chace, i. 66. "John Bellini is the only artist who appears to me to have united, in equal and magnificent measures, justness of drawing, nobleness of colouring, and perfect manliness of treatment, with the purest religious feeling. He did, as far as it is possible to do it, instinctively and unaffectedly, what the Carracci only pretended to do. Titian colours better, but has not his piety; Leonardo draws better, but has not his colour; Angelico is more heavenly, but has not his manliness, far less his powers of art" (Stones of Venice, Venetian Index). Morelli's estimate is the same; see German Galleries, p. 361.

107

This letter of Dürer's gives an interesting glimpse into the art life of the time. "I have many good friends among the Italians, who warn me not to eat and drink with their painters. Many also of them are my enemies; they copy my things for the churches, picking them up whenever they can. Yet they abuse my style, saying that it is not antique art, and that therefore it is not good. But Giambellini has praised me much before many gentlemen; he wishes to have something of mine; he came to me and begged me to do something for him, and is quite willing to pay for it. And every one gives him such a good character that I feel an affection for him. He is very old, and is yet the best in painting; and the thing which pleased me so well eleven years ago has now no attractions for me" (Catalogue of Standard Series in the Ruskin Drawing School, P. 7).

108

See Report of Select Committee on the National Gallery, 1853, p. 432, where the whole story will be found very frankly told in Sir C. Eastlake's evidence.

109

Similarly Raphael Mengs, a later Spanish painter, said of Velazquez that he appeared to have painted with his will only, without the aid of his hand.

110

I read the other day in an otherwise intelligent memoir of Ruskin that "a generation which admired Velazquez had outlived the art criticism of Ruskin." Not outlived, but absorbed, and so forgotten. It was Ruskin who, half a century before, proclaimed the consummate excellence of Velazquez – the "greatest artist of Spain," and "one of the great artists of the world"; the master to all schools in his "consummate ease"; the man who was "never wrong." In his admiration of Velazquez Ruskin never wavered. The citations above given are from his earlier books. In his later period, a picture by Velazquez was included among the "Four Lesson Photographs" as "an example of the highest reach of technical perfection yet reached in art; all effort and labour seeming to cease in the radiant peace and simplicity of consummated human power" (Fors Clavigera, 1876, p. 188).

111

This was written in 1846. In 1853 some "horrible revelations" were made about the picture before the Select Committee on the National Gallery. Ruskin turned out to be curiously wrong, but also curiously right. He was wrong; for so far from the picture being "in genuine and perfect condition," a considerable portion of the canvas, as we now see it, turned out to be not by Velazquez's hand at all. Lord Cowley, its former owner, had sent it to a Mr. Thane, a picture dealer, to be relined. A too hot iron was used, and a portion of the paint entirely disappeared. Thane was in despair. The picture haunted him at nights. He saw the figure of it in his dreams becoming more and more attenuated until it appeared at length a skeleton. He was near going mad over it, when a good angel came to his rescue in the shape of Lance, the flower and fruit painter, who offered to restore the missing parts out of his head. So far Ruskin was decidedly wrong. But he was also right. The parts which Lance painted in "out of his head" were the groups on the left of the foreground, and some of the middle distance. "I endeavoured," he says, "to fill up the canvas, such as I supposed Velazquez would have done; and I had great facility in doing that, because if there was a man without a horse here, there was a horse without a man there, so I could easily take his execution as nearly as possible, and my own style of painting enabled me to keep pretty near the mark"(!). But the high lights of the sky, he particularly added, were untouched by him. So that there Ruskin was right. The picture, when restored to its owner, gave complete satisfaction, and Lance's share in it was kept a secret. A year or two later he must have felt a proud man. The picture was being exhibited at the British Gallery. In front of it Lance met two cognoscenti of his acquaintance. "It looks to me," he said, testing them, "as if it had been a good deal repainted." – "No! you're wrong there," they said; "it is remarkably free from repaints." It should be added that soon after the Parliamentary inquiry referred to above, a tracing of Goya's copy, procured from Madrid, showed in fact that the restored work differed but slightly from the copy, and Lance's work was probably far less important and extensive than he asserted. An idea of the original condition of the picture may be had from a reduced replica, or first sketch, now in the Wallace Collection.

112

The view Diderot thus took of Greuze's art suggests the importance of historical perspective in criticism. Pictures, like everything else, should be judged with reference to contemporary circumstances, as well as by the standard of abstract principle. From the former point of view Greuze, as we have seen, is a moralist in painting. From the latter Ruskin suggests the consideration "how far the value of a girl's head by Greuze would be lowered in the market if the dress, which now leaves the bosom bare, were raised to the neck" (Modern Painters, vol. iii. pt. iv. chap. v. § 7).

113

Another instance of this intimate union of art with business may be seen in the number of Dutch artists of the period who themselves held municipal office. See, for instance, Terburg (864) and Delen (1010). Many of the Italian painters also were men of business and of official standing. Thus Titian was a timber merchant; whilst Manni, Perugino, and Pinturicchio were all magistrates.

114

"The bit of bluish ribbed paper on which he made his design in light and dark strokes, now gone brown, and which he had pricked through for the purpose of tracing the design on the panel, is framed beside it. He left it about, not thinking that in 350 years it would be under glass in the distant city of London, stared at by English roughs, who would say, "Sithee Bill, he's pricked it a' through with a pin, and spilt th' ile on it!" for there are two or three of these amber-coloured blurs which come from a sketch being inadvertently put down on a palette knife" (Letters of James Smetham, p. 168).

115

These pictures, like the other Florentine works here exhibited, except 564 (which is on linen cloth attached to wood) and 276 (which is in fresco), are painted in tempera on wood. Tempera (or distemper) painting is a generic term for the various methods in which some other substance than oil was the medium. Various substances were thus used – such as gum, glue or size, flour-paste, white of egg, milk of figs. Cennino Cennini, who wrote a treatise on painting at the end of the fourteenth century, professes to give the exact method of Giotto. Egg beaten up with water was preferred by him, except where the yellowness of the mixture injured the purity of the colour. The colours thus mixed were laid on to a panel (or on to a cloth stretched over the panel) previously prepared with a smooth white ground of plaster. And finally oil or albumen was used to go over the whole surface. This was the practice in general use for all detached pictures until the middle of the fifteenth century, when what is known as "the Van Eyck method" came into vogue (see under 186).

Fresco painting is painting upon walls of wet plaster with earths of different colours diluted with water. It is so called from the colour being applied to the fresh wet surface of lime, but it is of two kinds: (1) fresco secco, when the plaster of lime has been allowed to dry on the wall and is then saturated with water before painting; this was the method in use till after Giotto's time; (2) buon fresco, when the colours are laid on to the fresh plaster before it is yet dry. (The fullest account of these various technical processes and their history is Sir C. Eastlake's "Materials for a History of Oil Painting," a review of which by Ruskin appeared in the Quarterly Review, and is reprinted in On the Old Road, vol. i.).

116

The note in the Official Catalogue says that the picture does not correspond in the scheme of colour to the works of Velazquez's early period. On the other hand, "it shows so decided an affinity with the fine picture by Zurbaran, in the Palace of San Telmo, at Seville, not only in colouring but in every detail of the treatment, that there can be no doubt that the attribution to Velazquez was an error, and that Zurbaran is the true painter of this beautiful work, which may be considered the best picture he ever painted." But "we would fain see proof," says another critic, "that Zurbaran ever painted a head like that of the Divine Child. The rest of the picture recalls the early Seville manner of Velazquez in the style of Ribera" (Quarterly Review, April 1899).

117

This picture, when first purchased for the National Gallery in 1853, was ascribed to Giorgione. For many years it was given to the "School of Bellini." In 1883 it was identified by Messrs. Crowe and Cavalcaselle as a work by Catena. Signor Morelli and other critics of his school supported this view, which in 1898 was adopted by the authorities of the Gallery. No. 694 has also been so attributed to him in the Catalogue. Other pictures which have at one time or another been connected with Catena are 599, 812, and 1160.

118

"The roguish little terrier pretends not to see what is going on. But what are the partridges doing behind the chair of the Blessed Virgin? Was the Knight a worldling, given to sport, but arrested in the pursuit of pleasure by some inward voice or vision; and so, taking the result of the day's work, he lays it at the feet of the Divine Child and His Mother? Or was worship simply the pious Knight's godly commencement of the day? Why, too, is the dog so sly looking? Is that little mass of curly white wool a sceptic, doubting his master's good resolutions?" (Sophia Beale in Good Words, July 1895).

119

Ruskin, in his classification of artists from this point of view, calls them "sensualists," reserving the traditional title "naturalists" to the greatest men, whose "subject is infinite as nature, their colour equally balanced splendour and sadness, reaching occasionally the highest degrees of both, and their chiaroscuro equally balanced between light and shade." This class represents the proper mean. In excess on one side are the "purists" (Angelico, Perugino, Memlinc, Stothard), who take the good and leave the evil. "The faces of their figures express no evil passions; the skies of their landscapes are without storm; the prevalent character of their colour is brightness, and of their chiaroscuro fulness of light." Then in excess on the other side are the "sensualists" (Salvator Rosa, Caravaggio, Ribera), who "perceive and imitate evil only. They cannot draw the trunk of a tree without blasting and shattering it, nor a sky except covered with stormy clouds; they delight in the beggary and brutality of the human race; their colour is for the most part subdued or lurid, and the greatest spaces of their pictures are occupied by darkness" (Stones of Venice, vol. ii. ch. vi.). Elsewhere, Ruskin speaks of Caravaggio and Ribera as "the black slaves of painting" (Elements of Drawing, p. 317).