Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845

In January 1774, she wrote letters to her husband as full of gaiety, and as expressive of affection, as any of the others; and on the 5th of March she sued for a separate maintenance! Such is the history, contained in a lawyer's brief, of fourteen years of the wedded life of a French family of the middle rank, or rather below it. And from incidents contained in the account, we perceive that this actual labour of enjoyment, these balls, and fêtes, and entertainments of all kinds, were the usual mode of life of most of the people they associated with. Imagine the same scenes going on in England;—women, after thirteen or fourteen years of marriage, going dressed up as heathen goddesses in boats, and being attended round enchanted isles by Bacchuses and Orsons, dressed in shaggy skins, and chanting doggerel till echo was dead beat! Bacchus, a secretary, at a salary of a hundred a-year—Orson, a sub-collector of taxes! But more than all—let us think that the fault of the Sieur Lebrun does not seem to have consisted, in the eyes of his mother and sister, in allowing the intimacy between his wife and the friends, but in putting a stop to it. When such things are the fashion in England, let us prepare for the National Convention.

The demand of the Sieur Lebrun for restitution of conjugal rights, was rejected; he appealed against the decision, wrote bitter epigrams on the judges, and celebrated his wife in some elegies worthy of Tibullas, under the name of Fanny. From court to court he carried his cause, his epigrams, and his elegies; till finally, in 1781, the Parliament decided against him, and the Dame Lebrun was freed for ever from the matrimonial claim, and the little suppers beside the garret fire. But not for ever was Grimod free from the vengeance of the virtuous Lebrun. And not for the last time was heard the shrill voice of the complaining husband by the fastidious ears of Fanny. A few years passed on—Louis the Sixteenth was hurried to the scaffold—the golden locks of Marie Antoinette were defiled with the blood and sawdust, which Young France regarded as the most acceptable offering to the goddess of liberty; and who is that sharp-featured little man, sitting in the front row of the spectators of those heaven-darkening murders, with a red cap on his head, and a many-stringed harp in his hand, chanting the praises of the murderers, and exciting the drunken populace to greater horrors? Lebrun. Yes, the French Pindar is appointed poet-laureate to the guillotine, and has apartments assigned him at the national cost in the Louvre. Whenever an atrocity is to be committed, an ode is published, "by order of authority," to raise the passions of the people to the proper pitch. When the atrocity is over, another ode is ordered to celebrate the performers, and congratulate the people on their triumph. When Grimod was brought before the Convention as one of the oppressors of the people, and parasites of the aristocracy—a woman, old and trembling, was leaning on his arm—his personal crimes, if any, were so little known, that he was on the point of being dismissed from the bar for want of an accuser. Pindar, in his red cap, with his many-stringed harp in his hand, was there; and all Helicon glowed like molten lead in his vindictive heart when he looked at the miserable pair. "What sentence shall we pass on the person called Grimod, ci-devant sub-collector of taxes, and the woman beside him, who has aided and abetted him in several attempts to escape from the censorship of the Committee of Public Safety?" The accused looked timidly round, in hopes that no answer would be returned to this routine enquiry, in which case their safety would have been assured; but red-capped Pindar struck his hand hurriedly over the chords, and cried, in the shrill sharp tones, that both the prisoners remembered too well, "A la mort! à la mort!" and in ten minutes their bodies were lying headless, side by side, amidst the hootings and howlings of ten thousand demons, exemplifying to astonished Europe the perfection of civilization and philanthropy. Little more needs to be said of the Sieur Lebrun. He lived through the dangers of the Revolution; wrote odes and satires indiscriminately on friend and foe; worshipped power to the last, and was the sycophant, and would have been the murderer, of Napoleon, as he had been of Louis and Robespierre; and died at last in receipt of a pension from the state, member (like Lord Brougham) of the National Institute of France; and had his panegyric pronounced on him by his successor, as if he had united the virtues of Aristides to the genius of Homer. Whereas, we take him to have been the true type of the Frenchman of his time—a monkey, till he got the taste of blood, and then a tiger.

CENNINO CENNINI ON PAINTING

Translated from the Italian by Mrs Merrifield

So long ago as 1839, in the June number of this Magazine, we noticed M. Merimée's posthumous work on oil-painting. It was ushered into the world with no little parade, under the sanction and strong recommendation of a committee of the Royal Institute of France; and in this country with the somewhat authoritative and permitted dedication to the President of our Royal Academy, by the editor and translator, Mr Sarsfield Taylor. We should have cared little about reviewing such a work, had we not felt persuaded that the public, and more especially artists, required some caution, under the high influence of the mode of its publication, how they should receive a work whose direct tendency was to misguide them—to mislead them from the path towards the practice of the old masters, and to confirm artists in the evil practice of mixing varnish with the oils with which their pigments are ground.

The work was the more insidious, as it professed to take the excellence of the old masters as the attainable object. We believe that we satisfactorily showed that M. Merimée was so predisposed in favour of copal varnish, that in his researches he would make every thing bend, even the most stubborn facts, and most opposing sense of passages quoted by him, to that prejudice. We exposed the numerous, we had almost said wilful, mistranslations from the Latin and Italian—especially the former—with which the volume abounded. We showed how entirely and frequently original passages had been distorted from their plain meaning, as if with a systematic purpose, to uphold a fanciful theory. We offer a specimen:—The monk Theophilus, who wrote in the tenth century "De Arte Pingendi," mentions a "Gummi Fornis." This, though M. Merimée confesses it does not resemble it in consistence, he still will have to be copal. Theophilus says, "Hoc glutine omnis pictura superlinita lucida fit et decora, ac omnino durabilis."—"Every picture smeared over with this gluten becomes lucid and beautiful, and altogether durable." It might be thought almost impossible to mistranslate this. But the varnishing over, or smearing over, being a direct contradiction to the mixing with the pigments, with the view of rendering it according to the writer's prejudice, the passage is thus translated—"Pictures prepared with this varnish are brilliant, and remain without any alteration."

Again, M. Merimée, speaking of M. Tingry, the able professor of chemistry of Geneva, affects to regret that he did not apply his scientific knowledge to the practice of the art, in painting pictures. But the fact is, that the professor does give his attention to the subject, not only by his experiments on oils and varnishes—the vehicles of picture painting; but as one who was well acquainted with the nature of varnishes, he very distinctly warns artists against the practice which it is M. Merimée's object to establish. The passage is so important (and the authority of Tingry so undeniable) that we are here tempted once more to quote it:—

"Some of the English painters, too anxious to receive the fruits of their composition, neglect these precautions. Several artists even paint in varnish, and apply it with their colours. This precipitate method gives brilliancy to their compositions at the very moment of their being finished; but their lustre is temporary and of short duration. It renders it impossible for them to clean their paintings, which are, besides, liable to crack and to lose their colour. In a word, it is not uncommon to see an artist survive his works, and to have nothing to expect from posterity." But lest it should be said, as M. Merimée did say, that Tingry, the author of the above passage, wrote only to house painters, he adds thus—"Nothing that relates to the house painter is foreign to the artist of a higher order who paints compositions; in like manner, the precepts admitted by the celebrated painters deserve the attention of the varnisher, to whom the painter entrusts his greatest interests. The observations contained in this note are the brief result of some instructive conversations I had with Saintours, a celebrated painter, my friend and relation."5

We revert to our review of M. Merimée's work, as preliminary to our notice of the beautiful volume of Mrs Merrifield's translation on Tambroni's edition of Cennino Cennini, because the subject of vehicles is here again brought before the public; and we know of no subject more important, as it regards the interests of art, for the consideration of this and of every other country. For it appears incontestable that there was a period when the art of painting, through the discovery of a vehicle, broke forth into uncommon splendour and beauty, which splendour and beauty remain in works fresh and perfect to this day; and that there was a subsequent period at which this particular vehicle was lost. We therefore thank the authoress (for her notes are important, and demand that we should give her this title in addition to that of translator) for again bringing this subject before the public in so attractive a manner, by the elegance of the type, illustration, and binding of this volume, so agreeable to the eye; and for the addition of many of her own judicious remarks. So that, through this feminine grace and good sense, an interest and attention are awakened, which the bare recipes of Cennino Cennini would hardly have commanded.

Cennino Cennini has frequently been partially quoted from Vasari downwards; partially quoted, but little read. He finished writing his book on the arts the 31st day of July 1437; was born soon after 1350; had been twelve years the disciple of Agnolo Gaddi, who died 1387; son of Taddeo Gaddi, the disciple and godson of Giotto, the "father of modern art." The precepts which he delivers are therefore those acquired in immediate succession from that great first master, and as the secrets of his art. We grieve to add that the work was written in prison, dated from the Stinche in Florence, at eighty years of age, and in extreme poverty; a proof among many, that the patronage of the arts in those days was not a mantle of charity of adequate dimensions to cover the wants of the numerous professors of the art; while it tells somewhat unfavourably for the gratitude of the contemporary world to know, that the one work alone of this deserted old man, the Virgin in the Hospital of Bonifacio Lupi, (so well coloured, says Vasari, that it is to this day in good preservation,) would produce a sum that would probably not only be sufficient to have paid his debts, but to have equalled the wants of no small portion of his prolonged life. The work itself seems to bear testimony to an earnest, amiable, and religious mind; there would appear, therefore, no moral fault to which to attribute his unfortunate condition. We must suppose that struggles with the world's difficulties, incompatible though they seem with art, are necessary; and that the cradle of genius must be first rocked by Want—that necessity is the great "Magister Artium;" for we find it has ever been so, even to the present enlightened age. A few favourites occupy the Goshen of patronage, who at their death are not remembered, and whose works do "follow them;" and then, the works of those who have lived neglected, lived, worked, and died in penury, are eagerly sought after at any price. Such men, whilst they lived, were yet teaching a lesson in taste which the world were slow to learn; for it is in the nature of genius to be before the age, and in some respects to teach a novelty, which the world in not prepared to receive. Genius works on by the compulsion of its own nature, and the world is improved by it when it can no longer reward it but by a too late admiration, that reaches not, as far as we know, the dead. The complaint of Horace has been ever justified, and is still, in the eager search after works of our Wilson and Gainsborough—

"Virtutem incolumem odimus,Sublatam ex oculis quærimus invidi."

This edition of Tambroni is not from an original MS. or printed copy, but from a transcript about a century old, discovered by Angelo Mai among the Ottobonican manuscripts. Two other copies of Cennino Cennini are known to exist; we are curious for their examination, the present rescript may in some respects be deficient. As Cennino Cennini completed his work 1437, and the discovery of Van Eyck is said to have been 1410, it might have been expected that we should find some notice of Van Eyck's vehicle. We rather lament than are surprised that we find none. Those were the days for secrecies. Cennino himself speaks of many of his recipes as great secrets; and we are told that Van Eyck only in his old age taught his secret to Antonello—and the whole story goes to show the profound secrecy with which this vehicle was retained; nor is there any reason to doubt that it occasioned the murder of Domenico, said to have been perpetrated in 1470, thirty-three years after the writing of Cennino Cennini. Vasari says positively, that "John Van Eyck would not let any one see him work, nor would he teach the secret to any one—but being old," &c. This is certainly an argument against those who would affirm, if Van Eyck had discovered a vehicle, it would have been universally known. Such secrets are slow in progress, independent of the caution to keep them so. Artists did not formerly spring up self-taught; they were bound to masters, and learned their art from the beginning, and slowly, and learned not many of their secrets till after years of servitude, for such we must call it. They had then to make as well as to grind their own colours, to make their own brushes, tablets, and cloths.

Mrs Merrifield and Tambroni certainly do not agree in their opinions respecting this discovery of a vehicle by Van Eyck. The Italian is rather foolishly sensitive for the honour of his country, and his sensitiveness seems to bias his judgment. He would not that a foreigner should have the merit. Tambroni believes, and probably truly, that Vasari never thoroughly read Cennino; but he bears testimony to the noble-mindedness of Vasari—"Whence," says he, "we are constrained to believe that he merely glanced lightly over the titles to the chapters of part of the manuscript; and that, thinking it useless, he did not care to examine and investigate the whole work. For this reason it cannot be supposed that this noble-minded man, so zealous for the honour of his country, and whose every effort had been directed to make it pre-eminent, would withhold from one of his fellow-countrymen the just fame which he deserved by so valuable a work. Nor do I intend here to reprove him, or to lessen his glory. I shall only say that he committed a great error in not having examined the work of this old master: for then, perhaps, he would not so easily have given the credit of those things to strangers which certainly were known in his own beautiful Tuscany, and in all Italy, as I shall hereafter study to prove." Yet he does not hesitate after this to charge "this noble-minded man" with fabricating "a romance or tale of the imagination." But he misquotes Vasari. As Mrs Merrifield justly observes, "he takes only part of Vasari's account into consideration, instead of stating the whole, and reasoning on it as Lanzi has done. Vasari does not limit Van Eyck's discovery to the simple fact, that he had discovered that linseed and nut oils were more drying than any he had tried; but he adds, "these then, boiled with his other mixtures, made the varnish, which he, as well as all the other painters of the world, had so long desired." It is very singular that this most important passage should have been entirely omitted by the editor, (Tambroni.) It is in these mixtures that the secret consisted, not in using the oils; and we may certainly conclude that the process of Van Eyck was very different from that of Theophilus and Cennino, both of whom used linseed oil without the mixture of any other substance. "It will be observed that lake even was used by Cennino without any addition to increase its drying qualities. The only dryer he mentions (as such) is verdigris, which he used for mordants only. The difference in the texture of pictures painted in the Flemish (that is, Van Eyck's manner) and those painted with oil alone, or with the modern megilp, (oil and mastic varnish,) is so well known that it is scarcely necessary to allude to it.

"Picture-cleaners are perfectly aware of this circumstance, having been instructed by observing the manner in which different solvents act upon such pictures, (spirit-of-wine, for instance, will dissolve old pictures, but it has no effect on pictures painted with oil only.—See Lanzi.) Vasari gives no clue by which we can discover of what those mixtures consisted; but we know that what Vasari calls vernice liquida did not form part of them, because that had been tried and disapproved of.—See Vasari's Lives of Antonello da Messina, and Alesso Baldovinetti. It is probable that the ingredients were common and cheap, or they would not have been accessible to the greater part of Europe; and they appear to have been equally successful in the sunny clime of Italy as in the fogs of Holland."

The translator here entirely agrees with the learned and indefatigable Lanzi, who, aware of discrepancies of dates, ascribes the "perfect" method to Van Eyck. He gives full credit to the facts as stated by Vasari, and speaks of the difficulties he lay under in obtaining any certain dates, particularly with regard to Venetian matters. That painting in oil was known long prior to Van Eyck, no one who has read the documents upon the subject can for a moment doubt; but it was, in the common way, so inferior in brilliancy, and probably in facility of use to other methods, that it ceased to be in use. It seems pretty clear that this "perfect method" came from Flanders, first to Naples, then to Venice; and probably by means of Antonello da Messina, (however some dates may disagree, or it may be possible there were two of that name to have given some confusion to the dates.) In fact, no dates but the strictly historical can be depended upon. There are pictures at Venice with the name of Antonello, and dated 1474—years after his supposed death. We can scarcely suppose that the "noble-minded" Vasari would have fabricated an epitaph for Antonello, if none had ever existed; we know how easily not only epitaphs, but the very monuments that bear them, are removed to give place to others. Vasari does not say, in quoting this inscription, that Antonello was the first who painted in oil, but the first who gave splendour, &c. "Sed et quod coloribus oleo miscendis splendorem et perpetuitatem Italiæ contulit." And Hackert says, that this Antonello lived some years in Venice, receiving payment from the state. "Ob mirum hic ingenium Venctiis aliquot annos publice condutus vixit." His celebrity arose from the introduction of the Flemish manner into Italy. The murder of Domenico at Florence, to whom it is said Antonello had imparted the secret, cannot be denied; it was notorious, and must be confirmed by public documents; nor can we imagine so "noble-minded" a writer as Vasari would have mentioned the disclosure of the murder by Castagno himself, if the fact had not been notorious. We set aside the labyrinth of dates, which, with regard to the same persons' lives and deaths, are inconsistent and irreconcilable; still there remains a continuous story, not only probable as to its facts, but confirmed by works that exist at this day; for whatever may have been the oil-painting of an earlier age, (and it must be observed, as Lanzi remarks, that there is no certainty that many of the works said to have been in oil, were of that vehicle, for chemists have doubted, and some have been of contrary opinion,) the oil-painting of that precise period when it is said by Vasari to have been introduced into Italy, and as it continued subsequently, is quite a different thing—and exactly agrees with the description of it given by Vasari, and as it was practised in his time. Vasari was but a little more than a century after the supposed discovery of Van Eyck, and was born soon after the death of Raffaelle, and must have known that he was speaking of a vehicle that was not oil alone. It may be here worth while to put down what Vasari does say with respect to Van Eyck's vehicle—that John of Bruges having cracked a picture by exposing it to the sun to dry, being "filosofo e filologo a sufficienza," made many experiments, and "trovò che l'olio de lino e quello de noce erano i più seccativi. Questi dunque bolliti con altre sue misture gli fecero la vernice ch' egli, e tutti pittori del mondo aveano lungamente desiderata"—"found that linseed and nut oil were the most siccative. These, then, boiled together with his other mixtures made the varnish, (vehicle,) which he and all the painters of the world had long desired." Lanzi here well observes, that the expression "long desired," shows that there must have been many attempts to make oils properly subservient to the painter's use, and that there was none successful until Van Eyck's "solo quella perfetta;" which, as Vasari says, "secca non teme acqua, che accende i colori e gli fa lucidi, e gli unisce mirabilmente"—"which when dry does not fear water, heightens the colours and makes them lucid, and unites them in a wonderful manner." We have a picture by this Van Eyck in our National Gallery; he must have no eyes who will believe that it was painted with oil alone. We have the Correggios—we say the same of them—we have the proof from the experience of picture-cleaners, the hardness of the old paint, and the test of spirits-of-wine, which, as Mrs Merrifield states, solves the paint of old pictures, and leaves the modern untouched. In a former paper, in which we dwelt much on this subject, we mentioned that we had the report of a very scientific friend, who had spent nearly a life of leisure and competence in experiments on pictures, that the paint of the old masters fused, not only where white lead had been used, but in every part; and we ourselves saw him try the experiment upon the background of an old picture, by means of the blow-pipe, and the result was a fused substance—a glass. We here leave the question of the discovery of a vehicle by Van Eyck, or by any other person, satisfied that there was a discovery by some one at some time, of a vehicle different from the first painting with oil, and from any of modern use. To dispute this fact, appears to us as absurd as if any one should deny the discovery of America, because there may be disputes as to dates and persons of the first discoverers. We are only surprised that Tambroni and others do not take any notice of the chemical differences in the substances of old and new paint—we mean subsequent to the supposed discovery; and we confess we are surprised at the unworthy, unsatisfactory, and ambiguous manner in which Tambroni settles the matter. "Now, being willing to act with generosity towards this noble writer, and to believe that his religion was not overcome by deception, we should perhaps be able to admit that we were indebted to John of Bruges for the practice of tempering colours with both nut and linseed oils, and to Antonello for having used and made common, through all Italy, a method which, in beauty, greatly exceeds distemper-painting, which, until his time, had always been preferred." Does he really mean, or believe, that this new method consisted only in the use of linseed and nut oils? Is he acquainted with the works of John of Bruges, or with that picture of Andrea del Castagno, the supposed murderer of Domenico, which is called by Guarienti "the wonder of painting;" and which, by the description of its finish, particularly of the room in which the action is represented, is supposed to have been an imitation of the style of the Flemish master? If it be asked, how could any good practice in any art be lost? we have only to answer that we are not bound to account for a notorious fact with regard to arts in general. Many have been totally lost; but the troubles, the plague, and dispersion of artists in Italy, and the charm of novelty, may be sufficient to account for these changes. Lanzi every where laments them, and tells us that Nicolo Franchini became famous for detaching pieces of paint from old pictures of inferior value, to match deficiencies in more valuable.