The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 06, No. 36, October, 1860

"In putting forward this claim, he does it in full view of the character of the criticism and doubts such an assumption naturally begets. The public are right in doubting; and they should not be convinced except upon sound evidence. Therefore, while he unhesitatingly claims for the collection the foregoing character, he expects and invites from the public the fullest measure of impartial and intelligent criticism.

"The object of the collection is a nucleus for an American Gallery, to be established in the most fitting place and upon a broad basis, sufficient to gratify and improve every variety of taste and to advance the aesthetic culture of the people.

"With this aim, he has declined repeated overtures pecuniarily advantageous to divert it in whole or part to other purposes; and in bringing it to America at his own risk and expense, it is solely to test the disposition of the public to second such a project. If it meet their approbation, the means best adapted for the purpose are to be maturely considered; but if otherwise, it is his intention to return the gallery to Europe.

"It is a simple question, whether, after having had the opportunity of becoming acquainted with the collection and his object in making it, the American public will sustain perfect this humble beginning of a Public Gallery of Art, or abandon the formation of one to future chances, when the difficulties will be much greater and the opportunities for success much fewer. It must be considered, that, at this moment, while genuine works of Art are growing more and more difficult to be procured, the rivalry of public and private collectors is rapidly increasing. It is true that the existing great galleries come into the market only for pictures specially wanted to fill some important gap in their series, for which they pay prices that would startle our public economists. America will have to undergo the competition, even if she now enters this field, of several important foreign galleries in the process of formation, among which are those of Manchester, with a subscribed capital, as a beginning, of £100,000; of the Association of St. Petersburg, for the same purpose, under the patronage of the Imperial Family; and of one even in Australia."

Mr. Jarves's collection is not confined by any means to what may be called the curiosities of Art. It contains one hundred and twenty-five pictures; and, rich as it is in works that mark the successive stages of development in Italian painting, it possesses also specimens of its later and most perfect productions. Examples of the pure Byzantine bring us to those of the Greco-Italian school, and these to the early Italian, represented (in its Umbrian branch) by Cimabue, by Giotto and his followers, the Gaddi, Cavallini, Giottino, Orgagna, and others; while of the Sienese we have Duccio, Simone di Martino, and Lorenzetti, with more of less note. Of the Ascetics we have, among others, Frà Angelico, Castagno, and Giovanni di Paolo. The Realists are ushered in by Masolino, Masaccio, Filippo Lippi, and go on in an unbroken series through Botticelli, Filippino Lippi, and Cosimo Roselli, to Domenico Ghirlandajo, Leonardo, Raffaello, and a design of Michel Angelo, painted by one of his pupils. Nor does the succession end here; Andrea del Sarto, R. Ghirlandajo, Vasari, Bronzino, Pontormo, and others, follow. Of the Religionists, there are Lorenzo di Credi, Frà Bartolommeo, Perugino, and their scholars. The progress of landscape, history, and anatomical drawing may be traced in Paolo Uccello, Dello Delli, Piero di Cosimo, Pinturicchio, the Pollajuoli, and Luca Signorelli. Here also is Gentile da Fabriano. Venice gives us G. Bellini, M. Basaiti, Giorgione, and Paul Veronese. And of the later Sienese, there are Sodoma, Matteo da Siena, and Beccafumi. The list includes, also, Domenichino, Sebastian del Piombo, Guido, Salvator Rosa, Holbein, Rubens, and Lo Spagna.

The names we have cited will be enough to show those familiar with the subject the scope of the collection and its value as a consecutive series, embracing a period which few galleries in any country cover so completely, since few have been gathered on any historical plan.

The chief question, of course, is as to the authenticity of the pictures. This cannot be decided till they are exhibited and Mr. Jarves's proofs are before the public. It is mainly to be decided on internal evidence, and it is on such evidence that a great part of the very early pictures in foreign collections have been labelled with the names of particular artists. The weight of such evidence is to be determined by the judgment of experts, and we are informed that Mr. Jarves has a mass of testimony from those best qualified to decide in such cases,—among it that of Sir Charles Eastlake, M. Rio, and the directors of the two great public galleries of Florence. After all, however, this appears to us a matter of secondary consequence. If the pictures are genuine productions of the periods they are intended to illustrate, if they are good specimens of their several schools of Art, the special names of the artists who may have painted them are a matter of less concern. The money-value of the collection might be lessened without affecting its worth in other more considerable respects, as an illustration of the rise and progress of the most important school of modern Art.

Every year it becomes more difficult to obtain pictures of the class of which Mr. Jarves's collection is mainly composed. The directors of European galleries have become alive to their value, and are sparing no effort to fill the lacuna left by the more strictly virtuoso taste of a former generation. As far as the general public is concerned, such pictures must, no doubt, create the taste by which they will be appreciated. The style of the more archaic ones among them may be easily ridiculed, and the cry of Pre-Raphaelitism may be turned against them; but we should not forget that these earlier efforts, however they might fail in grace of treatment and ease of expression, are sincere and genuine products of their time, and very different in spirit and character from the productions of the modern school, which aims to reproduce a phase of Art when the thought and faith that animated it are gone past recall.

Mr. Jarves is desirous that the gallery should remain in his native city of Boston, and to that end is willing to part with it on very generous terms. We cannot but hope that there will be taste and public spirit enough to realize his design. By the side of the Museum of Natural History under the charge of Agassiz, we should like to see one of Art that would supply another great want in our culture. The Jarves Collection gives the opportunity for a most successful beginning, and we trust it will not be allowed to follow the Ninevite Marbles.

* * * * *

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1

Bernini, being asked what was the most beautiful statue in Rome, replied, "That of Pasquin." This reply the sensible Milizia taxes with affectation,—saying, that, although an artist may discover in the work some marks of good design, it is now too maimed to pass for a beautiful statue. Possibly Bernini was thinking of his own works in comparison with it.

2

Andreas Schott,—who published an Itinerary of Italy about the beginning of the seventeenth century, copies this account, and adds,—"At present this custom is prohibited under the heaviest penalties."

3

Mrs. Piozzi, in her amusing Journey through Italy, ii. 113, quotes these verses and gives a translation of them which shows that she quite mistook their point. In spite of her quoting Latin, Greek, and even on occasion Hebrew, her scholarship was not very accurate or deep.

4

The Historie of Guicciardin, reduced into English by Geffray Fenton. 1579. p. 308. Another epigram of barbarous bitterness against Alexander refers, if we understand it aright, to one of the gloomiest events of his pontificate, the murder of his son Giovanni, Duca di Gandia, by his other son, Caesar Borgia. Giovanni was killed at night, and his body was thrown into the Tiber, from which it was recovered the next morning.

Piscatorem hominum ne te non, Sexte, putemus,Piscaris natum retibus ecce tuum."

"Lest we should not fancy you, O Sextus, a fisher of men, you fish for your own son with nets."

5

Vasari relates, that Michel Angelo, when he was making the bronze statue of Julius, at Bologna, having asked the Pope if he should put a book in his left hand,—"No," replied the fiery old man, "put a sword in it, for I know not letters": "Mettivi una spada, che io non so lettere."

6

At the beginning of his pontificate, upon occasion of Leo's taking possession of the Lateran with a solemn procession, an arch of triumph was erected at the bridge of Sant' Angelo, which bore an inscription worthy of the tailor's successor:—

"Olim habuit Cypria sua tempera, tempora MavorsOlim habuit, sua nunc tempora Pallas habet.""Venus once had her time, Mars also hashad his, but now Minerva rules."

7

In Murray's Handbook for Rome, a book for the most part of great accuracy, there is a curious blunder in the account of Pasquin. It is said, that, "on the election of Pope Leo X., in 1440, the following satirical acrostic appeared, to mark the date MCCCCXL:—'Multi caeci cardinales creaverunt caecum decimum (X) Leonem: 'Many blind cardinals have created a tenth blind Lion.'" Now in 1440 Leo was not born, and no Pope was chosen in that year. Leo was not made Pope till 1513, and the acrostic has apparently nothing to do with the date of his accession to the pontificate.

8

One of those copies was formerly in the Royal Library at Munich, and sold as a duplicate. The other has the bookplate of the Baron de Warenghien. Colonel Stanley's copy sold for £11 lls. The book was printed at Basle, by Jean Oporin. See Clément, Bibl. Cur. Hist, et Crit., vii. 371. See also, for an account of it, Salleugre, M.m. de Litt., ii. 6, 203; and Schelhorn, Amoen. Lit., iii. 151.

9

An entertaining and curious account of Curio and his family is to be found in a commemorative oration delivered in 1570 before the Academy of Basle by Stupanus, and printed by Schelhorn in Amoen. Lit., Tom. xiv.

10

In two or three of the dialogues Hutten is introduced as one of the speakers; and several of the poetic epigrams are ascribed to him by name.

11

In Luther's Table-Talk, he says, "Whoso in Rome is heard to speak one word against the Pope received either a Strappecordo or is punished with death, for his name is Noli me tangere." Pasquin himself has hardly said a shrewder saying than this. Noli me tangere is the name under which Pius IX. pleads against the diminution of his temporal power, while he threatens his opponents with the Strappecorde.

12

Lectures upon Shakespeare and other Dramatists, ii. 90.

13

Novaes, x. 56. Artaud de Montor, Hist. des Pont. Rom., v. 523.

14

Vita d' Innocenzio X., dal Cav. Ant. Bagatta.

15

Whatever it may be, it is not "the homoeopathic form of the transmutative hypothesis," as Darwin's is said to be, (p. 252, Amer. reprint,) so happily that the prescription is repeated in the second (p. 259) and third (p. 271) dilutions, no doubt, on Hahnemann's famous principle, with an increase of potency at each dilution. Probably the supposed transmutation is per saltus. "Homoeopathic doses of transmutation," indeed! Well, if we really must swallow transmutation in some form or other, as this reviewer intimates, we might prefer the mild homoeopathic doses of Darwin's formula to the allopathic bolus which the Edinburgh general practitioner appears to be compounding.

16

Vide North American Review, for April, 1860, p. 475, and Christian Examiner, for May, p. 457.

17

Page 188, English ed.

18

In American Journal of Science, July, 1860, pp. 148, 149.

19

In Contributions to the Nat. Hist. of U. S., Vol. i. pp. 128, 129.

20

Contr. Nat. Hist. U.S., Vol. i. p. 130; and Amer.

Journal of Science, July, 1860, p. 143.

21

North American Review, for April, 1860, p. 506.

22

Vide mottoes to the second edition of Darwin's work.

23

North American Review, l.c. p. 504.

24

North American Review, l.c. p. 487, et passim.

25

In American Journal of Science, July, 1860, p. 143.

26

Vide article by Mr. C. Wright, in the Mathematical Monthly for May last.

27

Vide Edinburgh Review for January, 1860, article on "Acclimatization," etc.

28

Contributions; Essay on Classification, etc., Vol. i. pp. 60-66.

29

North Amer. Review, April, 1860, p. 475.

30

Amer. Journal of Science, July, 1860, p. 146.