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

163

This is a more charitable judgment than contemporary documents would suggest. In 1450 Fra Filippo was thrown into prison for a debt which he denied, and under torture confessed that he had forged the receipt. He was deprived of his rectory, and appealed to the Pope, who, however, confirmed the sentence, in a brief in which the painter is accused of "numerous and abominable wickednesses."

164

It is interesting to note the cartellino, or little card at the foot of the picture, on which Antonello inscribes his name and the date. This cartellino was taken as a model by Giovanni Bellini and subsequent Venetian artists (see e. g. 189 and 280).

165

Comparing him with Italian painters, his period of activity is seen to be coincident with the earlier work of Carpaccio and Perugino; he died while Raphael was still a boy. Crowe and Cavalcaselle have shown that Memlinc's work was well known and appreciated among Italian connoisseurs of the time.

166

I venture to retain this title, though the Official Catalogue assures us that it is but "a pleasing illusion," as "the features and the general form of head have little or no resemblance to the quite authentic portraits of Andrea" at Florence, "or to that engraved by Vasari, who was personally acquainted with the painter. If (adds the catalogue) the object in the hands represents, as it well may, a piece of modelling-clay, the subject of the portrait was probably a Florentine sculptor." In that case we may perhaps save our "pleasing illusion" by supposing that Andrea interpreted the expression of a fellow-artist by his own experience. But the case is by no means clear. The earlier portrait in the Uffizi is not very unlike ours. In the later some resemblance remains, though the face has coarsened. But this is a matter on which every one must see resemblances or otherwise for himself. (Reproductions will be found in the monograph on the painter in the "Great Masters" series. The author, H. Guinness, considers the authenticity of our portrait to be "beyond question," p. 23).

167

Lucrezia's character has, however, been whitewashed of late years: see Gazette des Beaux Arts, December 1876 and three following months.

168

This delightful picture, which has hitherto been ascribed to Bellini himself, is now (1898) attributed in the official catalogue to Catena (see 234).

169

"The pet portrait of the lecturer was Moroni's 'Tailor.' Luckily the original painting was in the National Gallery, and all interested could judge for themselves whether, for simplicity, expression, drawing, colour, and above all, soul, the portrait had a rival" (Report of a lecture on "Portraiture" by Mr. Harry Furniss).

170

In a red-figured vase in the British Museum (E 477 in the Third Vase Room) there is a picture of this same subject. "The drawing," says Miss Harrison, "is somewhat coarse, and the painter seems to be struggling with a subject that is expressively too much for him. Procris sinks in death in an odd, ill-drawn attitude; her soul escapes in the form of a bird, Kephalos smites his head in despair, the dog Lailaps watches concerned. Erechtheus, the old king-father, is at hand to sympathise; the curt archaic symbolism of attitude, the utterance of mere gesture, is at fault here. The story was pregnant with modern suggestion. It had to wait, so to speak, for the delicate imagination of the Renaissance painter, Piero di Cosimo, to make us feel the contrast between the dead woman, over-sentient, passion-slain, and the shaggy faun, kindly perplexed, and the dumb, faithful dog; between the soft slack peace of the woodland and the terrible tension of humanity" (Magazine of Art, 1894, p. 61).

171

Formerly ascribed to Margaret van Eyck.

172

Formerly ascribed to Van der Goes.

173

The clouds that gather round the setting sunDo take a sober colouring from an eyeThat hath kept watch o'er man's mortality.Wordsworth.

174

The existence of this supposed younger Foppa, and the date 1492 (rather than 1502) must be considered doubtful in view of the researches published by C. J. Ffoulkes in the Athenæum, February 15, 1902.

175

"Velazquez has left a great number of striking pictures, each containing a single figure. The Count de Pourtalès, in the collection at Paris (from which this picture was bought in 1865), has an excellent specimen of one of these studies, called 'The Dead Orlando'" (Stirling's Annals of the Artists of Spain, 1848, p. 680). Other authorities ascribe the picture to Valdes Leal (see 1291).

176

Among other points we may notice the beautiful landscape; "Nothing can be more perfect in pictorial effect than the old wall, the distant roofs, the gleams of light on water, and the exquisite tones of gray" (Gilbert's Landscape in Art, p. 263).

177

It may be interesting to note what Raphael's method actually was. He writes to Count Baldassare Castiglione, in a complimentary way: "To paint a beautiful woman, I must see several, with this condition, that your lordship be near me to select the loveliest. But there being a dearth both of good judges and of beautiful women, I make use of a certain idea that comes into my mind. Whether with benefit to art, I know not; but I strive to form such an ideal in my mind."

178

Readers of Ruskin will remember the high praise accorded to Richter's illustrations of the Lord's Prayer and other engravings in The Elements of Drawing.

179

See their Vittore Carpaccio et la Confrérie de Sainte Ursule, pp. 9-10, and Vittore Carpaccio, Le Vite e le Opere.

180

Raphael was born in 1483. In 1491 his mother died.

181

"Pisano's dragon is a pleasant-looking animal, wild-boar faced, and smilingly showing his fangs, as he crouches by the eminently gentlemanly St. George in the silver-plated and gilt armour; and a word in passing must be said for the lovely hog, with a broad grin overspreading his countenance, who accompanies the placid St. Anthony. Is not St. George, in the broad Tuscan hat, the personification of John Inglesant as il Cavaliere di San Giorgio?" (S. Beale in Good Words, July 1895).

182

"A splendid example of the naïve humour of the painter. There is the father, somewhat sly, and the eldest son resembling him but less 'cute. The next head is that of a jolly, sandy-haired fellow. Then comes the reprobate, with a sensual upper lip, the only one in the family; all the others have thin, long slit mouths, as well as long straight noses. Behind, are the poor relations. We see the good, hard-working cousin, who has found life too much for him; the self-approving fellow, who thanks God he is not as other men are; and above him the man who, if he has been saved from committing some terrible crime, certainly owes his exemption to God's mercy, not, we may be sure, to his own strength of will. On the other side are the ladies of the family. The severe mamma, with flat brow, a veritable Mrs. Grundy. The daughter, evidently a worldling by the jewelled band round her forehead, is praying, because it is the business of the moment. The easy-going maiden above her has taken to religious life because it affords her a certain amount of distinction, with a little soul-saving. Behind, is the old great-aunt, a really pious soul, who has adopted conventual life from a devout conviction that she could live better and do more good as a member of a community than dwelling in the world. Above, are two fat-faced children, both more or less bored; and behind them is another, fascinated by the jewels of her kinswomen" (S. Beale in Good Words, July 1895).

183

See Richter's Italian Art in the National Gallery, p. 44, where a résumé of recent criticism and a facsimile of the Albertina drawing will be found. Signor Frizzoni, cited with approval by Richter, says: "Although the composition seems to me not in the least attractive, nor even successful (and for this very reason the picture might have been left unfinished), yet I cannot but consider it to be an original, and, moreover, a specially interesting one, and worthy of being looked at closely by those who wish to study the master in the numerous characteristic features of his style. In my opinion it is an early work by him; and this becomes evident especially from the purity and delicacy in the features of one of the Maries, standing on the right side, in which, if I am not mistaken, the pure types of his first master, Domenico Ghirlandaio, are much more perceptible than Buonarroti's own grand style. In other parts, however, the sculpturesque manner of modelling peculiar to him is not less noticeable – in the muscles, sturdy as usual, and in the prominent rendering of the corpse." Symonds, on the other hand, has no hesitation in rejecting the picture. "It is," he says, "painful to believe that at any period of his life Michelangelo could have produced a composition so discordant, so unsatisfactory in some anatomical details, so feelingless and ugly. It bears indubitable traces of his influence; that is apparent in the figure of the dead Christ. But this colossal nude, with the massive chest and attenuated legs, reminds us of his manner in old age; whereas the rest of the picture shows no trace of that manner. I am inclined to think that the Entombment was the production of a second-rate craftsman, working upon some design made by Michelangelo at the advanced period when the Passion of our Lord occupied his thoughts in Rome. Even so, the spirit of the drawing must have been imperfectly assimilated; and, what is more puzzling, the composition does not recall the style of Michelangelo's old age. The colouring, so far as we can understand it, rather suggests Pontormo" (The Life of Michelangelo, 1893, i. 68). Sir Edward Poynter, on the other hand, will hear of no doubt: "There is," he says, "no doubt whatever that this picture is the work of the great master. The originality of the composition, the magnificent dignity of the poses, the perfection of the modelling, combined with the profound knowledge and subtle play of the anatomical forms where the work is complete, and the exquisite beauty of the drapery, all stamp it as a work which, if completed, would have been one of the masterpieces of the world, and possible to no one but the great master of design. It is thought desirable to insist on the grand qualities of this picture, because it has been ascribed to Bandinelli, a bombastic sculptor, quite incapable either of the refinement or of the subtle feeling for nature which is evident in all the finished portions of this work" (The National Gallery, i. 72).

184

According to one of the dramatic critics in the daily press, Sir Henry Irving in playing Richelieu was made up to resemble closely this picture; and (added the critic) the actor brought out the three sides of Richelieu's character here depicted. "At times we see him as the pitiless, unscrupulous man who forced himself from obscurity to a power greater than his monarch's; at others we see the fine courteous gentleman who patronised literature, founded the French Academy, and collaborated in half a dozen bad plays; and there is also not a little of the paltry, small-minded tyrant of whom Corneille said —

Il m'a trop fait de bien pour en dire du mal.Il m'a trop fait de mal pour en dire du bien."

185

See Morelli's German Galleries, p. 393. He dismisses the idea of an original Vicentine School as one which "cannot be entertained at all."

186

"By Gentile Bellini, and not by Giovanni, as stated in the Catalogue. The latter artist drew the ear of a different shape than did his brother Gentile" (Morelli: German Galleries, p. 10 n.). If by Gentile, the signature is forged or altered.

187

"I subjoin," writes the poet to his mother (December 23, 1880), "a sonnet I have done on the Michelangelo in the National Gallery. In this picture the Virgin is withdrawing from the child the book which contains the prophecy of his sufferings – I suppose that of Isaiah. The idea is a most beautiful one; and behind the group are angels perusing a scroll. Shields was helpful to me in the interpretation of this" (Letters and Memoir, ii. 365).

188

Signed Joannes Bellini, but by some critics ascribed to Gentile Bellini. See Frizzoni's Arte Italiana del Rinascimento, p. 314.

189

To the same effect, Sir Edward Poynter: "The painting of the green forest is the most perfectly beautiful piece of workmanship that ever was put into a picture" (Lectures on Art, p. 128).

190

But see note on No. 53.

191

"Unfortunately, Hobbema has allowed some one, apparently Wyntrank, to put a few ducks into the foreground. They are not wanted, and the manipulation required to fit them in has caused the lower part of the picture to darken disagreeably" (Armstrong: Notes on the National Gallery, p. 38).

192

Ruskin speaks of him as an artist "first-rate in an inferior line" (On the Old Road, i. 558).

193

Some of Mr. Gladstone's purchases for the National Gallery are noticed in the introduction to Appendix II. The "Ansidei Madonna" was also purchased by a special vote when he was in power. The Gallery owes the present picture to Mr. Disraeli's taste. "I happened," says Sir William Fraser in his Disraeli and his Day, "to be at the saleroom in King Street: the crowd was considerable. A picture was on the easel for sale; I did not know the name of the painter: the subject, 'The Nativity,' of the pre-Raphaelite school. I was so charmed with it that I bid up to two thousand pounds. I then felt that I could not trust my judgment further: that I might be mistaken: and that the picture might be 'run up' for trade purposes. It was bought for £2415. A few days afterwards I met Mr. C. Having noticed him in the crowd, I said, 'Do you happen to know who bought that "Francesca"?' 'I did. Disraeli told me to buy it for the National Gallery.'"

194

The fondness of the Old Masters for the brute creation is illustrated in this picture, as in so many others. The ox is evidently fascinated by the music; the ass is disturbed and brays fiercely. Note also the goldfinch upon the roof.

195

"The painter must, for the present, remain as an unknown Umbrian, almost equally influenced by Pinturicchio and Signorelli, and with peculiar qualities of simple grace and romance, which give his work an extremely individual character" (Cruttwell's Signorelli, p. 117).

196

English readers will find some account, with occasional translations, of Poliziano's poem in Symonds's Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, ii. 334, and Renaissance, iv. 350. Symonds, had already remarked that much of the poem is like a picture of Botticelli. The same painter's "Birth of Venus" may have been suggested by stanza 99 of Poliziano, though the peculiar sentiment of that famous picture is the painter's own. See also under 916.

197

"We venture to ask," says Dr. Richter, "is this really an Italian picture?" (Italian Art in the National Gallery, p. 87).

198

The figures are by Tiepolo (see under 1192).

199

Visitors who have been to Venice will remember that "Carpaccio trusts for the chief splendour of any festa in cities to the patterns of the draperies hung out of windows" (Bible of Amiens, p. 3).

200

Or, according to Mr. Berenson, of Alvise Vivarini and Lotto (see his Lorenzo Lotto, pp. 113, 304).

201

It was exhibited at the "Old Masters" exhibition in 1873 as a Raphael. Mr. Ruskin, who had noticed it there, wrote to Mr. Fairfax Murray, "Please look at the Raphael, and tell me how far the colour may have changed on St. John's shoulder and in Judas' dress, and how far the fantastic shot silks of this last are absolutely as they were."

202

It is a repetition with but slight variations of the Medici picture in the Uffizi.

203

"The early Italian masters felt themselves so indebted to, and formed by, the master-craftsman who had mainly disciplined their fingers, whether in work on gold or marble, that they practically considered him their father, and took his name rather than their own; so that most of the great Italian workmen are now known, not by their own names, but by those of their masters (or of their native towns or villages – these being recognised as masters also), the master being himself often entirely forgotten by the public, and eclipsed by his pupil; but immortal in his pupil, and named in his name… All which I beg you to take to heart and meditate on concerning Mastership and Pupilage" (Fors Clavigera, 1872, xxii. 3, 4). Vasari's story may be true, says Dr. Richter, "even though no contemporary record of a goldsmith called Botticello has been found. We know, however, that he had a brother, Giovanni Battista, a carpenter and frame-maker of some repute, nicknamed Botticegli, i. e. 'Little Barrel'; this nickname may have been inherited by the younger brother" (Lectures on the National Gallery, p. 48).

204

See Richter's Lectures on the National Gallery for the list, p. 46.

205

Reference may be made also to Mr. Swinburne's "Notes on Designs of the Old Masters at Florence" (first published in the Fortnightly Review for July 1868), in which he speaks of "the faint and almost painful grace which gives a distinct value and curious charm to all the works of Botticelli." At an auction in 1867 D. G. Rossetti picked up a Botticelli for £20. "If he had not something to do," writes his brother, "with the vogue which soon afterwards began to attach to that fascinating master, I am under a misapprehension." Pater's essay first appeared in the Fortnightly Review of August 1870. Ruskin's first mention of Botticelli was in a lecture delivered at Oxford during the Lent Term, 1871. Carpaccio had been proclaimed in a lecture of the preceding year, and it became a standing joke among the profane to ask who was Ruskin's last "greatest painter." It was in answer thereto that Mr. Bourdillon wrote:

To us this star or that seems bright,And oft some headlong meteor's flightHolds for awhile our raptured sight.But he discerns each noble star;The least is only the most far,Whose worlds, may be, the mightiest are.

206

"The dress appears to have been originally crimson or pink. If so, it has faded to so agreeable a tone that one could hardly wish it otherwise" (Poynter).

207

The visitor should contrast Canaletto's painting of still water with Turner's (see under 535).

208

"Upon asking how he had been taught the art of a cognoscento so very suddenly, he assured me that nothing was more easy. The whole secret consisted in a strict adherence to two rules: the one, always to observe that the picture might have been better if the painter had taken more pains; and the other to praise the works of Pietro Perugino" (Vicar of Wakefield, ch. xx.).

209

The author of the catalogue of the Burlington Fine Arts Club's Exhibition of 1898 maintains that the two side panels are later in date than the central panel, and have no connection with it (p. xxxvii.).

210

Sir Walter Armstrong attributes No. 1079 to David. "The National Gallery possesses one of the best of David's authenticated works (1045), and a comparison between it and the "Adoration of the Magi," numbered 1079, goes far to prove them to be by one hand. Compare, for instance, the figure of the beggar in the one picture with that of St. Joseph in shadow behind the Virgin, in the other. And the evidence of style is confirmed by a curious discovery that I happened to make one bright day, when the glass was off the latter picture. Low down in the left-hand corner the word Ouvvater is written in a way that precludes the notion of forgery, for it has been scratched with, perhaps, the butt end of a brush, while the paint was still wet, so that the red under-painting shows through the letters. David was born at Ouwater, or Oudewater, about 1450, and did not migrate to Bruges till 1484" (Notes on the National Gallery, p. 29).

211

See Morley's Diderot, ii. 62. "Yet he cannot refuse to concede about one of Boucher's pictures that after all he would be glad to possess it. Every time you saw it, he says, you would find fault with it, yet you would go on looking at it. This is perhaps what the severest modern amateur, as he strolls carelessly through the French school at his leisure, would not in his heart care to deny."

212

Ruskin speaks under the head of typical beauty (of beauty, that is, as typical of divine attributes) of the absolute necessity in pictures for some suggestion of infinity. "Escape, Hope, Infinity, by whatever conventionalism sought, the device is the same in all, the instinct constant" (Modern Painters, vol. ii. pt. iii. sec. i. ch. v. §§ 7, 8).

213

Ruskin finds Leonardo's landscape unconvincing. "In realisation of detail he verges on the ornamental; in his rock outlines he has all the deficiencies and little of the feeling of the earlier men. The rocks are grotesque without being ideal, and extraordinary without being impressive." "The forms of rock in Leonardo's celebrated 'Vierge aux Rochers' are literally no better than those on a china plate" (Modern Painters, vol. i. pt. ii. sec. i. ch. vii. § 13; Edinburgh Lectures on Architecture and Painting, p. 157). A high authority on the Alpine region, Mr. Douglas Freshfield, has suggested that the originals of Leonardo's backgrounds are to be found among the mountains between Val Sassina and the Lago di Lecco: "The last spurs of the Alps are here singularly picturesque. The bold forms of the Corno di Canzo and Monte Baro break down to display the shining pools of the Laghi di Pusiano and d' Annone. Hither Leonardo may have come, and looking across the narrow lake or from beside some smaller pool or stream at the stiff upright rocks of the Grigna and the Resegone, have conceived the strange backgrounds with which we are all familiar" (Italian Alps, 1875, p. 126). Mr. Freshfield's suggestion is borne out by Leonardo's own topographical notes, since published. He had visited the district and specially remarks upon its fantastic rocks.

214

When in the Hamilton Collection, this picture was ascribed to Giorgione. Some critics strongly dispute the ascription (see, e. g., Richter's Italian Art in the National Gallery, p. 87), others accept it (see, e. g., an article in the Times, July 26, 1882). Sir Edward Poynter says: "The qualities of colour and painting in this picture so closely resemble those of the famous 'Fête Champêtre' by Giorgione in the Louvre, that it is difficult not to believe that the two pictures are by the same hand, and that, if the Louvre picture is rightly named, the original attribution to Giorgione may be correct" (National Gallery, i. 24). Mr. Herbert Cook is of the same opinion: "The figures, with their compactly built and rounded limbs, are such as Giorgione loved to model, the sweep of draperies and the splendid line indicate a consummate master, the idyllic landscape is just such as we see in the Louvre picture and elsewhere, the glow and splendour of the whole reveal a master of tone and colouring" (Giorgione, p. 94). As an illustration of the uncertainty of criticism it may be interesting to append the observations on Sir E. Poynter's remarks made by a writer in the Daily Telegraph of Dec. 29, 1899: "In reality no two works belonging to more or less the same period of Venetian art could be more utterly different. The Hamilton Palace picture is a soulless and second-rate production, dating a good many years later than the Louvre idyll, wholly different from it in handling, and remarkable only for its beautiful golden tone. The Louvre 'Fête Champêtre' – a late example of the divine master – is one of the loveliest and most characteristic pieces produced in the early prime of Venetian painting. Should the 'Venus and Adonis' be set down to Giorgione, the misrepresentation in the National Gallery of a unique figure in art would be complete."