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

Solch (?) halten die zehen gebot die uns gebeut unser Gott … unser …

"It seems to have been assumed," adds Mr. Eastlake, "that the choir-book is a Protestant one, and therefore inconsistent with the presence of the silver crucifix recently revealed in the left-hand upper corner of the picture. But it is evident that the hymn or anthem above mentioned is merely a paraphrase of the well-known 'Veni Sancte Spiritus,' which for ages past has appeared in the Roman Catholic breviary for use on Whit Sunday or the Feast of Pentecost, and still survives in the Anglican Ordination Service." The music in the book has been identified by Mr. W. B. Squire, of the British Museum, as the counterpoint sung by the tenor in Johann Walther's setting for the Wittenberg hymn-book of 1524. Mr. Squire adds his opinion that Holbein chose those compositions for copying in the picture, "on account of the bearing which the words had upon either the individuals portrayed, or some incident connected with them, and intended to be commemorated" (Letter to the Times, 14th November 1891). Miss Hervey finds an explanation in the fact that the Bishop of Lavaur was devoted to the cause of religious re-union between the Roman Catholic and the Reformed Churches. The doctrine expressed by the two hymns was common to all the churches.

245

For further particulars the reader is referred to Holbein's 'Ambassadors': the Picture and the Men, by Mary F. S. Hervey (1900). Miss Hervey gives an interesting account of her identification of the sitters, and many curious speculations as to the details of the picture.

246

It has been suggested by some high authorities that the lower portion of the picture was probably left to some pupil to finish; for the Admiral's legs are very flabbily drawn. They look as if there were no bone or muscle in them, but only sawdust or padding. Señor de Bereute, in spite of the very definite history of the picture given by Palomino, attributes the whole work not to Velazquez but to his pupil and son-in-law, J. B. del Mazo (1308). If this be correct, Mazo was another Velazquez. There is nothing in Mazo's known works to justify such an estimate of his powers. "Mazo, still in his early youth, had in 1634 married a daughter of Velazquez, and had only recently got a subordinate place in Philip's court. It is hard to believe that he could have painted this superb picture when only about 25 years of age, or that Philip would have entrusted him with the portrait of a favourite when he had beside him his trusty Court painter, Velazquez" (Quarterly Review, April 1899, p. 521).

247

"Congratulate me (he wrote to his old friend and colleague, Sir H. A. Layard) on a real trouvaille. The picture I bought at G. Bentinck's sale has come out splendidly, and is in first-rate condition. Burton is greatly struck with it. It is a wonderful bit of luck to have picked up so fine a picture from among so many of the cognoscenti." No wonder that Sir William Gregory, who bought his pictures so cheap, was aghast at the large and even fancy price which the nation sometimes has to pay. "The cost of them," he writes of the Longford pictures (Nos. 1314-1316) "makes me blush when I think of it."

248

The composition, however, has been blamed on the ground that the square picture on the wall interferes with the girl's head in a very awkward manner. The Cupid represented in that picture is also very clumsy. A correspondent replying to these criticisms writes: "The composition depends not upon the rhythm of the lines, but upon the arrangement of patches of colour, somewhat in the manner of the Japanese. Dutch painters often represented inferior pictures upon the walls of their interiors, perhaps as a kind of humorous contrast to their own masterpieces. See, for instance, the daub in De Hooch's picture in the National Gallery (No. 834)."

249

By Mr. Berenson ascribed to "Amico di Sandro."

250

"Hung on each side of the great Vandyck, on the east wall of the principal Dutch and Flemish room, they have given the completing touch to that collection of chefs d'œuvre, and made it now beyond question the finest wall of masterpieces of those schools in Europe" (Sir Edward Poynter's speech at the Royal Academy Banquet, 1899).

251

The purchase for the nation was at one time in jeopardy. Early in 1899 the two pictures were offered by Lord de Saumarez to the National Gallery for the sum of £12,500. A special grant was obtained from Her Majesty's Treasury for this sum on the condition that the Trustees should forego the annual grant for 1899-1900, estimated at £5000. Lord de Saumarez found, however, that he had no power to sell the pictures without an order from the Court of Chancery, and having been subsequently offered the sum of £15,000 for these two pictures, the Court decided they could only be sold to the National Gallery for an advance on the sum offered. The Trustees, therefore, offered the sum of £15,050, for which the Court awarded them to the Trustees. Towards the balance of the purchase money, amounting to £2550, two of the Trustees, Mr. Alfred de Rothschild and Mr. Heseltine, liberally contributed £500 each, and the remainder, amounting to £1550, was paid out of the grant for the year 1898-99.

252

Mr. Roger Fry (in The Pilot, Jan. 5, 1901) attributes our picture, which he calls "a distressing production," to "some journeyman painter who treated Fra Bartolommeo's design in the spirit of the earlier furniture painters, but without their charm and naïveté."

253

"His early pictures have only a hint of personal expression. Some of his Madonnas are still almost Byzantine in their hieratic solemnity. It is possible to follow Giovanni Bellini's career almost from year to year by the increase of personal expression in his figures and landscapes" (Mary Logan: Guide to the Italian Pictures at Hampton Court, p. 9).

254

See Bernhard Berenson's Lorenzo Lotto, 1895, pp. 21-120.

255

See Mr. Herbert Cook's Giorgione, pp. 68-74.

256

That fine picture came from the Manfrini Palace at Venice; and though by some called a "bad and late copy" (Mündler, Beiträge zu B.'s Cicerone, 1870, p. 61) is by others highly praised. Thus Waagen, in his Treasures of Art in Great Britain (vol. iii. 1854, p. 19), in describing the Cobham Hall pictures, says of the picture now in the National Gallery that it "agrees essentially with the fine portrait in the Manfrini collection at Venice. But the tone of the flesh is heavier here, and the grey colour of the dress unites too much with the grey ground, while in the Manfrini picture, the brown tones of the dress stand out decidedly from it."

257

See the Second Annual Report of the National Art Collections Fund, 1906, pp. 35, 36. Until the matter was cleared up by the researches of Señor de Beruete, summarised in that Report, it was supposed that our picture was one of five mythologies painted by Velazquez for the Gallery of Mirrors in the Alcazar of Madrid, two of which perished in the great fire of 1734. Knowledge of this fire was doubtless the origin of a suggestion that our picture also had been damaged and repainted. There was correspondence on this subject, and on others connected with the picture, in the Times of November and December 1905 and the early part of 1906.

258

The intermediate processes by which the price of the picture rose from £30,500 to £45,000 have not been disclosed. Towards the latter sum, the largest contributions were – "An Englishman" £10,000; Lord Michelham, £8000; and Messrs. Agnew, £5250.

259

See pp. 75-78 of The Barbizon School, by D. C. Thomson, from whose translation I borrow a few sentences.

260

According to William Morris, most visitors to the Gallery are apt to pass by some of its principal treasures. "If ordinary people go to our National Gallery, the thing which they want to see is the Blenheim Raphael, which, though well done, is a very dull picture to any one not an artist. While, when Holbein shows them the Danish princess of the sixteenth century yet living on the canvas …; when Van Eyck opens a window for them into Bruges of the fourteenth century; when Botticelli shows them Heaven as it lived in the hearts of men before theology was dead, these things produce no impression on them, not so much even as to stimulate their curiosity and make them ask what 'tis all about; because these things were done to be looked at, and to make the eyes tell the mind tales of the past, the present, and the future" (Mackail's Life of William Morris, ii. 273).

261

The precise nature of the transaction was this: – Lady Carlisle received in cash £40,000 and the Treasury paid the death-duties (£2776). Of these sums, the National Gallery funds contributed £15,000; the National Art-Collections' Fund, £10,000; and the Treasury £17,776 (see House of Commons Debate, February 28, 1912).

262

In addition to the "three scenes" mentioned by Vasari there were two single figures, of St. Francis and St. Anthony of Padua respectively: these are in the Dulwich Gallery.

263

Among works of illustration produced of late years, "the publications of the Arundel Society," says Ruskin, "hold the first rank in purpose and principle, having been from the beginning conducted by a council of gentlemen in the purest endeavour for public utility, and absolutely without taint of self-interest, or encumbrance of operation by personal or national jealousy. Failing often, as could not but be the case when their task was one of supreme difficulty, and before unattempted, they have yet on the whole been successful in producing the most instructive and historically valuable series of engravings that have ever been put within reach of the public… I learned more from the Arundel copy than in the chapel itself; for the daily companionship with the engraving taught me subtleties in the composition which had escaped me in the multitudinous interest of visits to the actual fresco" (Stones of Venice, Travellers' edition, ii, 176; and Ariadne Florentina, Appendix, p. 246).