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^ ^be art ot tbe IDatfcan v
^J By MARY KNIGHT POTTER *
^ Zbc art of tbe pittl palace (
Cy By JULIA DE W. ADDISON A
5f a;be art of tbe Xouvre (
£y By MARY KNIGHT POTTER j|
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^ L. C. PAGE & COMPANY (
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MOXA LISA (la GIOCONDA) By Leonardo da Vinci
{Seepage 243)
be Brt of tbe Xouvre * ♦
Containing a Brief History of the Palace and of Its Collection of Paintings, as well as ^ '^tions and Cnticisms of Many
nf the- T Pi-t-^-rv-^ unA TVj.-lr Av^fstS
By Mary Knight Potter
of the Vatican," " Love in Art," etc.
/f
on & Company
AfDCCCCV
^HPS^
be Brt of tbc Xouvre ^
Containing a Brief History of the Palace and of Its Collection of Paintings, as well as Descriptions and Criticisms of Many of the Principal Pictures and Their Artists
By Mary Knight Potter
Author of " The Art of the Vatican," " Love in Art," etc.
Boston C. Page & Company
MDCCCCV
2^030 Pi
]5o^
Copyright, igo4
By L. C. Page & Company
(incorporated)
All rights reserved
Published November, 1904
COLONIAL PRESS
BlectrotyPed and Printed by C. H. Simonds &* Co.
Boston, Mass., U.S.A.
Ipreface
The Art of the Louvre, even when that art is restricted in its meaning to the collection of pictures within the vast palace, is a subject almost as vast in its scope as the building that holds it. In a book of this kind, then, it has been deemed necessary to divide the material into three classes. A certain number of pictures and painters have been given extended notice and description ; many have been treated far more cursorily; still others have been merely mentioned or even wholly ignored. It is in just this selection that ground for objection may be taken. The reasons for enlarging upon the merits or demerits of certain pictures and painters and for slight- ing others will, perhaps, appear entirely insufficient. The writer, of course, cannot hope to escape such adverse criticism, but it seems only fair to herself to state briefly the position taken in the book.
In her choice she has been guided first, by the opinions of the greatest art critics of the western world. Even at the risk of tiresome repetitions she has g^ven large space to the greatest masters and their greatest works owned by the Louvre. She has followed as carefully recognized authorities in deciding which works and which painters require slight comment. Between these two extremes, however, is where she has chiefly exercised her own judg-
vi I>retace
ment. Undoubtedly her own preferences have consider- ably influenced her decision as to what was or was not worthy of much place in the pages of this at the best inadequate account of the marvellous gallery. She pleads in extenuation that even the most famous author- ities vary in their estimates of painters or paintings of what may be called the secondary rank, and begs the indulgence of her readers if their taste differs from hers.
In the attempt to give a fair idea of all the schools of painting represented in the museum, it follows that certain works of very mediocre value have had to be con- sidered. This very inclusion necessitates of course, regrettable exclusions. Any one of the works of Rem- brandt, for instance, is certainly infinitely above any Goya or Lawrence owned by the Lx)uvre. Yet, it has been thought desirable to review, however briefly, these two representative men of their own times and countries, even if it meant the elimination of some pictures of more noted men.
This Art of the Louvre cannot claim any real origi- nality. It must perforce in the main be a compilation of the opinions of the most famous art critics. As many of these opinions, however, are entirely at variance one with another, it has been the aim to choose from among them what seems to the writer most generally true, and of especial value to readers who are not connoisseurs or deep students. Besides this careful culling of authorities, the writer has not hesitated to record her own ideas and feel- ings in describing a favourite picture or discussing a much-loved master. Such latitude has not been felt to be inconsistent with the object of the book.
Here it may be well to mention that the list of articles and books given in the bibliography at the end of the volume, does not of course include nearly all that could be
Ipretace vii
studied to advantage in connection with the art treasures of the Louvre. Neither does it represent all that have been consulted in the preparation of this volume. The list holds only those that have on the whole been of most benefit.
Unfortunately the writer left Paris before the opening of the Thomy-Thiery rooms. She has not therefore seen that wonderful collection. In her descriptions she has relied upon some excellent carbon photographs, upon M. Jules Guiffrey's descriptive catalogue, M. Georges Lafenestre's articles in the Beaux Arts, and upon the vivid words of some artist friends who have personally studied these beautiful examples of the Barbizon men.
As the subtitle of the book indicates, only the oil- paintings in the museum have been considered. For lack of room neither the pastels, water-colours, nor the many mural decorations have been included. The com- paratively large space given to the French school was thought desirable for two reasons. First because both the traveller and the general student are usually less familiar with this school than with any other, secondly, because, with the exception of the Luxembourg, the Louvre is the only great museum where French painting can be satisfactorily studied.
There remains to be said, what is perhaps after all an unnecessary reminder, that the book makes no claim to be free from errors. Every effort has been made to avoid them, but the writer is only too sure that many neverthe- less must have crept in.
Contents
♦
CHAPTER TKGK
Preface v
I. History of the Louvre . . . . i II. Concerning the Origin and Growth of
the Picture-gallery .... 26
III. Salle des Primitifs — Room VII — Italian
School 37
IV. Salle Duchatel — Room V. — Italian and
French Schools 59
V. Grande Galerie — Italian Division . . 64 VI. Grande Galerie — Bay Third — Italian
Division 121
VII. Grande Galerie — Bays Fourth and Fifth — Spanish, German and English
Divisions 126
VIII. Grande Galerie — Flemish School . . 152 IX. Salle Van Dyck and Galerie Rubens — Rooms XVII. and XVI 1 1. — Flemish
School 172
X. Salles XIX. to XXXVI. — Flemish School 181 XI. Salles XIX. to XXXVI. — Dutch School 195
XII. Salon Carr6 245
XIII. Les Petites Salles Franqaises — Rooms IX., X., XL, XII., XIIL — Italian and
French Schools 266
XIV. Salle Mollien — Room XIV. — French
School 272
iz
CHAPTER
XV. XVI.
XVII.
XVIII. XIX.
XX.
Contents
PAGB
Salle Daru — French School — Room
XVI 288
Salles Henri II. and des Sept Chemi- NEES — Rooms II. and III. — French
School 312
Salle des Etats — Room VIII. — French
School 334
Salle Lacaze — Room I. — All Schools 370 Salle Denon — Room XV. — All Schools — Portraits ...... 380
Thomy-Thiery Salles — French School 385
Bibliography 401
Index . . • • • • . . 4^5
%i8t ot miustrations
4
PAGB
MoNA Lisa (La Qioco^TiPC) {See page 245)' Frontispiece
By Leonardo da Vinci
Bird's-eye View of the Louvre and Its Sur- roundings 2
Historical Plan of the Louvre and the
Tuileries facing 8
Pavillon Henri IL, the Louvre . , . .12 Perrault's Colonnade, the Louvre . . .18 General View of the Louvre .... 24 Immaculate Conception 34
By Murillo
Plan of the Louvre Gallery . . facing 36 Lorenzo Tornabuoni Led into the Company of
the Liberal Arts 54
By Botticelli
The Visitation 56
By Ghirlandajo
Adoration of the Magi 61
By Luini
La Source 62
By Ingres
Charity . . . i 80
By A ndrea del Sarto
Madonna of Victory •••••• 90
By Mantegna
Portrait of a Man 92
By Messina
xii %ist Of irilustrationa
PAGE
Adoration of the Shepherds . • . .102
Bjf Palma Vecchio
Holy Family 106
By Lotto
Portrait of Philip IV. 130
By Velasquez
Portrait of Richard Warham, Archbishop of
Canterbury 148
By Holbein
Portrait of Mother Catherine Agnes Arnaud
and Sister Catherine of St. Susan . .163
By Champaigtie
Portrait of Charles 1 176
By Van Dyck
Galerie Rubens 178
The Banker and His Wife 190
By Matsys
Bohemian Girl 196
By Frans Hals
Christ at Emmaus 205
By Rembrandt
The Dropsical Woman 214
By Gerard Dou
An Officer Offering Money to a Young Girl . 220
By Ter Borch
The Card Party (A Dutch Interior) . . . 232
By Pieter de Hooch
Bad Company 236
By Jan Steen
The Concert 247
By Giorgione
Entombment 248
By Titian
The Man with the Glove 252
By Titian
La Belle Jardiniere ••••.. 254
By Raphael
%ist ot irilttsttations xUi
PAGK
Jupiter and Antiope 256
£}/ Correggio
Marriage Feast at Can a 260
By Veronese
Portrait of Helen Fourment and Two of Her
Children 262
By Rubens
Portrait of Hendrickje Stoffels . . . 264
By Rembrandt
Time Rescuing Truth from the Attacks of
Envy and Discord 276
By Poussin
Embarkation for Cythera 294
By Watteau
Transportation of Psyche by the Zephyrs to
Cupid's Realm 320
By Prud^hoH
The Bohemians 331
By Diaz
Execution without Judgment 332
By Regnault
A Morning (The Dance of the Nymphs) . . 344
By Corot
Massacre of Chios 348
By Delacroix
Oxen Going to Work 353
By Troyon
The Gleaners . . . . . . . . 358
By MiUtt
Opening in the Forest at Fontainebleau . .361
By Rousseau
Springtime 366
By Daubigny
Head of a Young Girl 379
By Greuze
Great Oak and Watering-place .... 396
By Dupri
Zhc Ert of tbe Xouvre
CHAPTER I.
HISTORY OF THE LOUVRE
Between the rue de Rivoli and the Seine, in the very heart of Paris, lies the great gray rectangle of buildings called the Louvre, the most important, as it is the most perfect architectural expression of the Renaissance in France. A bird's-eye view of this enormous construction, with its vast length of walls, its open courts, its frequent square towers, and its guarded entrances, suggests a walled city rather than a palace. In other words, these forty-eight acres of ground appear to be merely bounded by this long line of wall that throws out a cross-section or two dividing into squares and oblongs the immense rectangular enclosure. But across the eastern end the boundary has gone. With it has gone the whole raison d'etre of this spanning structure. If the Palace of the Tuileries had not stood almost directly west of the Louvre, no such length of wings would ever have been thrown out from either building. From Catherine de' Medici's day the object of both king and architect was to make these two palaces into one continuous and homogeneous edifice. It was not till Napoleon III. that this was
* Ubc Hrt ot tbe Xouvre
entirely accomplished, and its completion was of short duration. The Commune, with the unreasoning ven- geance that destroys even the inanimate surroundings of its enemy, having driven from its portals the empress the people themselves had chosen, set fire to her palace. Thus went up in flames Delorme's famous fagade, one of the most beautiful architectural creations in the city, the wonderful library, with its priceless collection of manu- scripts, and the palace, which was not only of inestimable value, but, by its conjunction with the Louvre, formed one of its integral parts.
It is not easy to get a view of the whole plan of the Louvre, consequently the tremendous loss of the Tuileries is not generally realized. From the Place du Carrousel, certainly, even the most casual observer must feel a lack of meaning in those two parallel arms that end in empty space, joining nothing, finishing nowhere. But even there, it is easy to forget this vacancy in looking beyond the arms out into the Gardens of the Tuileries, the sole remnant of the days of the royal will that demanded the blooms of the tropics before his Paris windows. Despite the vanished palace, the Louvre remains the most nearly perfect, as it is the most valuable architectural possession of the Renaissance in Paris.
Perhaps it is its massiveness that strikes one most forcibly and at once. There is a certain austerity in the very grayness of the stone with which it is built. In general it may be called three stories high. But in effect it is much more than that. For, J^esides the great elevation of each story, the walls are continually spread- ing into "pavilions," — square, domed towers that rise heavily above the connecting walls, adding with their rich, often florid decorations, both height and grandeur to the whole building.
I'.IKI) S - I'.VI'. Vli:\V OF TIIK I.orXKK AM) ITS ST K Hoi ' \ I >l N( JS
l)tstor^ ot tbe Xouvre 3
With the exception of certain foundations, no part of the Louvre is older than the time of Frangois I., and most of it belongs to much later days. Though in its present state it is thus of such comparatively recent erection, the Louvre existed long years before the days of the " Old Regime."
When or by whom this first Louvre was built, neither historians, architects, nor archaeologists have discovered. Nor is the etymology of the name, or why it was applied, any more definitely settled. It has been supposed to be derived from Lupus liipera, and is claimed to have been given because the house at first was a mere hunting-lodge in the middle of the forest, where wolves abounded. Others claim that it was not till Philippe-Auguste that the word was used. Having built what was undoubtedly the most beautiful and important work in Paris, it was natural that he should call it the work, — "' I'oeuvre, quasi chef-d'oeuvre'' — from whence Louvre is easily formed. Again, it has been said that the name came from " robur/' implying the situation of the lodge in the middle of the forest.
Sauval has a still different opinion, and his conjecture has been accepted by Lebeuf and Jaillot. He declares that an old Latin-Saxon glossary translates the word " castellum," fortress, by the word " leouar" which, he says, must later have been transformed into Louvre.
All these etymologic discussions, therefore, not only attempt to settle the derivation of the name, but, if any one of the claims could be absolutely verified, the original purpose of the building itself would also be demonstrated. As it is, we do not know whether it was at first a mere hunting-lodge, or whether it was built as a fortress to guard the Seine at that important point against the Norman inroads. Or, its inception may not date much
4 Ube Hrt ot tbe Xoupre
before the first positive account we have of it, which makes it the work of Philippe-Auguste. The fact that, in all the old accounts of his time, the tower is called the new tower, seems to give ground to the supposition that he was rebuilding, rather than creating anew. And, indeed, the weight of authority is largely in favour of this view. If Childebert, in the beginning of the sixth century, was not its founder, at least there is good reason for supposing that Dagobert's hunting-lodge, in the early part of the seventh century, was none other than this same Louvre. There is even fair ground for believing that as early as Charlemagne the lodge, or fortress, had grow;n to such proportions that he settled Alcuin and other learned men within it, — thus founding the great schools of France.
Sauval, in the time of Louis XIV., was the first his- torian to mention the Louvre, except in the briefest terms. It is to him, and others after him, that we are indebted for what we do know of the palace as it was in the thirteenth century. Whether or not there was a Louvre of any prominence when Philippe-Auguste came to the throne in 1 1 80, from his day on the edifice of that name has never ceased to be one of the chief glories of Paris. It was in 1204 that he began the work which the centuries since have not seen finished. To-day, all that is left of his mighty walls and impregnable tower is a part of the deep foundations on the southeast corner of the Old Louvre. But for three hundred years it stood practically as it was built by " this first of French kings after Charle- magne, who displayed genius for order, reform, and royal independence."
The Louvre, at the end of his reign, was a great tower, situated in the centre of a square court, with its four sides enclosed by four lines of two-storied buildings. The
•fcistor^ of tbe %o\xvtc 5
tower had a conical roof of many coloured tiles, and was surmounted by a huge and brilliant weathercock. Within were numerous apartments, including a chapel and a vault for treasure. Here, too, were the rooms where the lords of France came to pay their feudal tithes to the king. The court, in the centre of which was the tower, was about a quarter the size of the present inner court of the Old Louvre. It was the space to-day lying between the Pavilion des Arts, and that of L'Horloge. The walls surrounding it were of immense thickness, flanked by a number of towers, and infrequently pierced by narrow openings, with neither sculptures nor ornaments of any sort. The principal towers were placed at the four corners, those near the centre of the fagades being lower, and, for the most part, of flat roofs with square battle- ments. Between two of these lower towers w|as the principal entrance on the river side. As it stood, the Louvre of Philippe-Auguste was a palace, a fortress and a dungeon, so constructed as to make its aspect most formidable. Sauval has unearthed documents which go to prove that the great central tower measured 144 feet in circumference, and ninety-six feet in height, with walls thirteen feet thick. Its only direct communication with the buildings of the court was by an elevated gallery. From the time of Philippe-Auguste, during the next three hundred years, many noted prisoners were confined here, and it is said that when Frangois I. began the destruction of this dungeon tower, a great clamour arose among the Parisians. For years, one of the joys of the populace had been to watch the various imprisoned princes walking about the parapets, and they strongly objected to its curtailment.
The first sovereign after Philippe-Auguste to make additions to the Louvre, was his grandson, good King
XTbe Hrt of tbc %o\xvvc
1
Louis. He built, on the first floor of a western wing, an immense hall, seventy-two feet long by forty-two wide, which for years after was called by his name. From his time to 1364, nothing of any importance was added. In that year Charles V. came to the throne, and he was no less energetic and revolutionary in the changes he made in his palace than he was in those he inaugurated in the state. Charles the Wise was one who, though physically weak and of not overpowering mental strength, knew enough to surround himself with, and to be guided by, men of real power and intellect. He it was who recognized the great abilities of Du Guesclin, the man who succeeded in ridding France of those fearful free companies, that for years had plundered and pillaged the whole country unpunished, and who brought back to the Crown town after town that had established its independence.
When, in 1380, Charles died, he had, as Mr. Watson pithily summarizes, " abolished every tax not authorized by the national assembly, had amassed a treasure of seventeen million livres, — great for that time, — had collected a library of 910 volumes, which became the nucleus of the national library, and had commenced the building of the Bastile, the fortress-prison so ominously identified with French history." If he was interested in beginning this famous prison, he was no less anxious to remove the jail-like aspect of his palace. He raised the walls, increased the tower, made the exterior more graceful in line and form, gave the towers various shapes, and put all kinds of sculptured figures over the different stones, and enclosed the whole within the city walls. Within, the changes were still more wonderful. The great hall of St. Louis had fallen into ruins, and he re- paired that, still retaining the saintly king's name. The rooms designed for official ceremonies were decorated
t)t6toti5 Of tbe Xoupre 7
most magnificently, and the royal apartments, especially those of the queen, Jeanne de Bourbon, were lavishly ornamented with sculptures, paintings, tapestries, and rare inlays. The furniture was more luxurious than any so far seen. There was one room, the Chambre aux Joyaux, where the king placed his objects of art, and where, filling two stories of a tower called the Tour de la Libraire, were the manuscripts that made his library. This was lighted by chandeliers and lamps, enabling him to read all night. Sixty years after his death his priceless collection of manuscripts was sold at a ridic- ulously low price to the Duke of Betfort, and was thus lost to France for ever. About the palace the king laid out most beautiful gardens, and among them, and more or less attached to the palace proper, were all sorts of out- buildings for the proper running of his establishment, — such as the creamery, the pastry-house, the falconry, etc. As Charles knew how to choose Du Guesclin for general and adviser in state matters, so he knew whom to select for head architect. Raymond du Temple was the master of all these works, and the way he carried out his designs more than justified the king's judgment in placing him at their head. One of the chief marvels that he con- structed was a circular stairway, of 124 steps, admirably planned and decorated, and attached to one of the fagades of the court. This was not destroyed until the time of Louis XIII. , during the reconstruction of the Louvre by Lemercier.
For a century and a half after the death of Charles V. the Louvre was left to a desolation that finally threatened the destruction even of the halls themselves. Charles VI. and Isabelle, his queen, made at first a few short stays there, during one of which was born Princess Catherine who married Henry V. of England. The only
s XEbc Htt of tfoe %o\xvxc
additions this son of Charles the Wise made were to its fortifications, — to do which he destroyed the garden of the king and queen on the banks of the Seine. For nearly the entire forty-two years of this debauched, debased, ruinous, mad reign, the Louvre was uninhabited, and left to a desolation in which, indeed, all Paris shared. In 1438, it is said, twenty-four thousand houses stood empty in the city, and in the streets wolves prowled unafraid. During the reigns of Charles VI., Louis XL, Charles VIIL, and Louis XIL, Les Tournelles was the royal residence. For all those years, nevertheless, the Louvre was the scene of many important events. In 1358, when John of England was a captive, the bourgeois of Paris, who upheld the deputies of the Communes against the general government, besieged and entered the Louvre, expelled the governor, and took to the Hotel de Ville all the arms and munitions found in the arsenal. During the reign of Charles VI., when the king was combatting the insurrection of Flanders, the Parisians revolted also, and would have torn down the tower of both Louvre and Bastile, had not Le Flamand counselled them so effectually to delay, that their plan was never carried out. In 1399, Androuin, and in 1400, Manuel Paleologue, both Emperors of Constantinople, were lodged at the Louvre, as well as the Emperor Sigismond, in 1415, and the King and Queen of England, in 1422. From Louis XII. the officers of the Provost of Paris obtained permission to transport to the Louvre their tribunal and their prisons, while they repaired the " Chatelet," which was fast going to wreck.
Finally came Frangois I. This king, who had neither honour nor gratitude, morality nor decency, swaggered through a reign of bloodshed, fanaticism, dissoluteness, oppression and devastation, and left what had been a
I
Distort ot tbe Xouvre 9
prosperous kingdom in wreck and ruin. Taste for the fine arts, however, Frangois had, and some of the money he wrung from his starving people he lavished on artistic works and their creators. It was to his court that Leonardo came, it was his funds Andrea del Sarto was called guilty of misappropriating, — funds which prob- ably, by any moral test, never really belonged to the royal pilferer. He was the first of the French kings to have a great court. Before his day the nobles came to Paris only for state or business reasons, and for limited periods. Now, however, nobles, ladies, scholars, poets, artists, — all actually lived in or near the palace, and the king never moved without a great retinue of notables in his train. To maintain such state it was absolutely necessary to have a palace of far greater dimensions and convenience than any then at his disposal. The Louvre by this time had fallen into such wretched condition that to make it habitable it needed rebuilding. It was with the great tower of Philippe-Auguste that Frangois began the demolition. So enormously massive were the walls that it took four months of hard labour besides immense expense, to raze it to the ground. Once this was accom- plished, certain repairs to the buildings about the court w;ere undertaken. But the king had too many wars of conquest, oppression and intrigue on hand. The building of a palace became of such minor importance that gradu- ally all work on it ceased, and finally it was once more left to decay and isolation.
Twelve years after, however, Charles V., Emperor of Germany, was planning to pass through the French kingdom on his way to the Netherlands. In spite of various bitter wars between the two, previous to this time, Charles and Frangois were now politically friends. The latter, therefore, determined to lodge the emperor at the
lo Ube Hrt ot tbe Xouvre
Louvre, and to entertain him in a manner that should rival in splendotu* his greeting to Henry VIII. of England on the Field of the Qoth of Gold. With this in mind, despite the short time intervening before the emperor's arrival, he commanded a rehabilitation of the Louvre that was nothing short of a resurrection. Windows were enlarged and multiplied, partitions were torn down between rooms and new ones substituted, walls were cov- ered with sculptures,, tapestries, and embroideries. Most of the buildings which Charles V. had erected between the river and chateau were destroyed, and upon the levelled ground took place the plays, the tourneys, and other things pertaining to a magnificent fete. The reception was splendid. Charles V., the whole court, the King and Queen of Navarre, the Duchesse d'Etampes, all remained at the Louvre for many days.
This restoration, nevertheless, was in reality a mere " tour de force," having nothing of permanence about it. The haste and incompleteness of building left the castle in a less solid condition than before this theatrical splurge was begun. The king himself, though show was ever more his watchword than solidity, realized this, and resolved forthwith on a complete reconstruction. At this time Greek and Roman architecture was succeeding that of the Gothic period. A school of artists at Fontaine- bleau, under celebrated masters, was already started, and in spite of certain contradictory influences, the art of the Renaissance was in full swing. In the twenty-fifth year of his reign, then, Frangois I. confided the execution of his plans to Pierre Lescot, Abbe de Clagny, an architect of some renown. With him were associated the sculptors Jean Bullant, Philibert Delorme, Jean Goujon, and Paolo Ponzio, all leaders of the new and vigorous school. Lescot fairly bubbled over with ideas of richness and
Distort ot tbe Xoupre n
beauty. With the assistance of Goujon and Ponzio, his plan was to be a complete expression of the French Renaissance. Exactly what these plans were, it is now impossible to decide. They were most lamentably lost, and insufficient historical data exist concerning them. But it is pretty certain that the ancient dimensions of the Louvre were to be respected, and that whenever possible, the new walls were to be raised on the old foundations. It is known also that the tops of the building were sharply crenelated, and that at the four angles, conforming to the French traditions, were to be four large, square pavilions, of which one alone. Pavilion du Roi, exists to-day ; — and that is almost lost in the massive framing of the Salle des Sept Cheminees. Also, it is known that the exterior of the palace was to be in a sober, contained style, Lescot reserving for the interior fagades Ponzio's and Goujon's chefs-d'oeuvre of sculpture.
Work was commenced in 1540 by the demolition of the western wing, which contained the grand hall of St. Louis and the library of Charles V. The foundations of these were so solid that Lescot kept them for his new constructions. This fact, attested by the old registries of the Chambre des Comptes, the great wall of the fagade which faced the Tuileries itself confirms. Up to the rez-de-chaussee it is of an even and unbroken thickness, exceeding six feet. Lescot conducted the build- ing of the western wing with greatest care. When, in 1547, Frangois L died, it was still incomplete. Indeed, little of the real work was accomplished. Only one bit was entirely finished. That was the reconstruction of one of the principal corner courts of Charles V., called La Cour aux Offices, which was destroyed in the reign of Louis XIV.
During the twelve years' reign of Henri II., from 1547
la XTbe Hrt of tbe Xouvrc
to 1559, Lescot continued his labours uninterruptedly. A year was given to finishing the western wing, but the sculptures of it were not done till two years later. Paolo Ponzio had charge of decorating the attic, whose finish of detail and perfection of design we admire to-day. The other parts were left to Goujon, — who was murdered while there at work during the massacre of St. Bartholo- mew. When Henri II. was accidentally killed in tourna- ment by Montgomery, the Pavilion du Roi had been completed, and the eastern wing parallel to the river was carried up to the second story. His death was most un- fortunate for the Louvre. Had he lived to his father's age, there is no doubt but that Lescot would have com- pleted the work so ably begun. The seventeen months, during which his son Frangois 11. , the sickly youth of seventeen, reigned, saw no appreciable changes in Lescot's plans. But after his death, after the ill-fated bride, Mary, ~ had sailed back to her Scottish home, the state was in the hands of the queen of Henri II., acting as regent for her nitie-year-old son Charles IX. Like all Italians, Catherine de' Medici had a taste for art. But it was a taste always subordinated to the caprices of an unquiet nature, which loved the legitimate in art as little as in life. She had not the slightest intention of following docilely her husband's example, of continuing patiently a work which at the best offered little to a woman always most attracted by the new. It is not surprising, therefore, that she interrupted in the very debut of her reign the projects of the dead king. Her first aim was to make the Louvre habitable.
The tournament in which Henri II. was killed took place at Tournelles, the royal residence during the reigns of Charles VI., Charles VIL, Louis XL, Charles VIIL, Louis X'lL, Frangois L, and Henri II. As an evidence
•fcistor^ ot tbe Xouvre 13
of her great grief at her husband's death Catherine had had the palace torn down. This made it all the more nec- essary to hasten operations at the Louvre. The works in course of building were stopped, the sculptures left un- finished, and all activity was concentrated upon the prepa- rations for habitation. She pushed these rapidly, and little by little the Louvre was made ready to receive the court.
The appearance of the building at this time was strange enough. At the north and east were the severe lines of Philippe-Auguste and Charles V., with their towers, ogives, bridges, turrets, pinnacles and weathercocks. These faced the calm lines of Lescot's new wing but re- cently finished, with its admirable sculpture of Paolo Ponzio and Jean Goujon. Then, at the south, in the midst of materials and rubbish of all kinds, Catherine started a wing of two stories, which became afterward a part of the southern wing that joined the Tuileries and Louvre. There was, however, no attempt at joining it harmoniously, or even decently, with the rest. One part was hitched on to another by provisional construc- tions that produced, it is true, a certain picturesque effect; but it is of course evident that Lescot had been allowed no say about it at all. In fact, the great archi- tect had been ignored, his advice not even asked. Even after the queen mother was once settled in the palace he was not permitted to proceed with his plans. They were altogether too excellent for her erratic taste. She chose her own way, and her own architects, men of far inferior talent to the one so summarily dismissed. Following the Pavilion du Roi, and perpendicularly to the Seine, she began the building of a res-de-chaiissee, surmounted by a flat roof. The lining wall of an ancient ditch which served as foundation seemed her sole reason for con-
14 Ubc Htt of tbe Xouvre
structing as she did. On the long flat roof of this latest addition, Charles IX. was accustomed daily to walk ; and it was from a balcony there that he has been said to have given the signal for the massacre of St. Bartholomew. The only objection to this is that such a balcony did not exist in his time. It was not till nearly the end of the cen- tury that Henri IV. surmounted the roof by a story which was called the " Petite Galerie," or " Galerie des Rois," which afterward became the " Galerie d'Apollon."
Catherine's plans were followed not only during the minority of Charles IX., but throughout the reign of both himself and his brother Henri III. Considering that even in most important matters of state these two vacillating kings were continually checked and counter- checked by their unscrupulous mother, there is no reason for doubting that if she had chosen to build a veritable Tower of Babel, she would have achieved her design.
When Henri IV. began his reign, — that apostle and defender of the Protestant party, who was actually crowned only after he had officially renounced his Protestantism, — Catherine was dead. Jean Goujon had belonged to the party this Henri of Navarre had so long championed, and it might be supposed the new monarch would have returned to the style of building that sculptor had so ably decorated. But there was now no great architect living. Lescot, Delorme and Bullant were all gone. Androuet du Cerceau alone was left. Whether with his advice or not, Henri determined to build, not on to the unfinished quadrangle of Lescot, but a wing, that, starting from the southern corner of the Tuileries, should join Catherine's southwestern extension of the Louvre. Partly, at least, under Du Cerceau's direction, the great Pavilion de Flore at the corner of the Tuileries, and as much of the Long Gallery as reaches to the
1bi0toti? ot tbe Xouvrc 15
Pavilion de Lesdiguieres was accomplished. Henri's open statement concerning this wing was that it was constructed " to adorn the quays." Actually, it was more for the purpose of preparing a way of escape for him- self, should occasion demand it. The Long Gallery was finished in 1608. As has been noted, to Henri IV. also was due the Galerie d'Apollon.
The future Louis XIH. was only nine when Henri IV. was assassinated in 1610. During the regency of his mother, Marie de' Medici, all work on the Louvre was stopped. Once he himself held the reins of state, or per- haps more correctly, when Richelieu held them, building was again energetically resumed, and this time admirably carried on. The plans of Lescot now seemed decidedly inadequate. The King of France, it was declared, should have the finest palace in Europe. Lemercier, chosen by Richelieu as architect, proposed to leave intact the two facades of Lescot, making as they did a right angle, and bounding what was the south and west side of the original court of the Louvre. The old north and east wings he destroyed. His intent was to continue the two fagades of Lescot, making each twice their com- pleted length, but reproducing in the prolongation the architecture of the already existing part. Then he planned to join to these on the east and north, two other wings, equal in dimensions to the first two. By this plan, the extent of the buildings was doubled and the court quadrupled. The only innovation which Lemercier per- mitted himself was the addition to the four great pavil- ions of the first design, — of which only one in the southwest angle, called the Pavilion du Roi, was already built, — four other pavilions of the same importance and height, placed in the centre of each of the four fagades, and thus agreeably interrupting the uniformity of the
i6 XTbe art of tbe Xouvrc
lines so greatly prolonged. This plan was adopted, and its execution commenced in 1624. On the 28th of June of that year the first stone was laid with much pomp and ceremony by Louis X'lII. Shortly afterward the Pavilion de I'Horloge was erected. This, Lescot had originally intended to be the northwiestern corner of his square. Now it became the central one of the western wing. Lemercier's model was the one Lescot had built at the southwest corner. From this central pavilion to the extremity of the northwestern end of the fagade, Lemer- cier faithfully reproduced the model left him by Lescot. Then in the corner of that fagade he built a new pavilion of like character to the Pavilion du Roi, and began the wing that returns on the north. This he carried through hardly half-way, and but to the first floor.
During the minority of Louis XIV., work in the Louvre was confined to decorating the interiors. Upon his coming of age, and after the death of Lemercier, Fouquet, superintendent, chose Levau as his successor. Levau continued the northern wing, and then commenced the prolongation of the southern. On the inner side he reproduced the architecture of the part already completed. On the river side, however, he made some innovations. Against his central pavilion, for instance, he placed six great Corinthian columns, equal in height to the two first stories of the edifice. This entire wing was nearly finished by 1663. There remained only the completion of the eastern end, which was to be the principal en- trance to the Louvre. Levau had his designs ready, and had begun to lay his foundations when Colbert was named superintendent of the royal buildings.
For reasons best known to himself Colbert professed to believe that it was quite possible to find an architect of more ability and originality than Levau. Perhaps he
Ibtstotp of tbe Xourre
knew that some daring innovation on his part would make him more pleasing in the sight of that king whom Bolingbroke epitomized as " the best actor of majesty the world had ever seen," and who demanded on the part of his subjects not only abject servility, but never- ceasing change and amusement. At all events, Colbert called for plans for the completion of the Louvre quad- rangle from all the architects of France. Among the drawings submitted was one that attracted particular attention. It represented a long series of Corinthian columns, joined two by two, and resting upon an im- mense basement. Under the entablature which was carried by these principal columns, and formed the roof, was a simple line of open balusters. This original, imposing plan was not by an architect, but by a doctor, Qaude Perrault. Colbert was charmed, and wished to adopt it, but before deciding upon such a radical depar- ture he sent to Poussin in Rome the plans of Levau and others of the contestants. Perrault's, however, he did not forward. Poussin returned the plans, overwhelmed with criticisms, but added to them new ones of his own. These pleased neither Colbert nor Louis.
At this juncture a new claimant appeared. Bernini, *' that prince of mediocrity," though now an old man, was still pretty generally considered the greatest living architect. Colbert was pressed by the Abbe Benedetti and the Cardinal Chigi, and finally by Pope Alexander VIL to put the Louvre into his hands. The minister was too much of a Frenchman to acquiesce with unalloyed delight, but at last, urged thereto by the king, he com- missioned the Due de Crequy, ambassador at Rome, to beg the famous man to come to Paris. In his own estimation Bernini was fully as great as he was in the estimation of the world generally. The Due de Crequy
i8 Ube Hrt of tbe Xouvre
could not persuade him that it would be possible him to make such an arduous journey till the king him- self had sent an .autograph letter personally requesting the inestimable favour of his presence and advice. This, of course, brought the Italian. He found it was not altogether easy sailing, however, once he was on French soil. His plans were received with, to him, incredible criticism, and the opposition grew at length so strong that finally the king gave him a large present and a pension and sent him home.
After this Colbert hesitated no longer. Perrault began the work, and the first stone was laid by Louis XIV. on October 17, 1665. Owing to the enormous activity of Colbert the new facade was finished in 1670. The lower part making the base was a smooth wall pierced by twenty-three openings. Above this were fifty-two col- umns and pilasters of Corinthian order, joined two by two. The same order and the arrangement of coupling were repeated in the two corner pavilions. In the base of the central pavilion, opening into the rue de Louvre, was put the principal entrance of the palace.
With an imposing and monumental aspect, the colon- nade is marked with great nobleness and grandeur. Nevertheless, it has been the subject of much criticism. Among other things, it is said that it is difficult to justify the situation of that immense portico in the first story; second, the interruption of the same story by the over- elevation of the principal portal, is a grave fault; third, the whole facade is not in harmony with the style of the four interior fagades that make the admirable court of the Louvre ; and, fourth, the architectural forms of the colonnade are not suitable for the materials used, compelling recourse to artificial consolidations, — which is contrary to the principles of the art of building.
Dtstori^ ot tbe Xouvre 19
In spite of these just criticisms, many authorities return to the opinion that the work of Perrault is among the most original and remarkable of modern architects. For long regarded as the chef-d'cKUvre without equal, it has, as has been said, exercised upon the architecture in France an influence that is considerable and that still endures.
Perrault had no sooner finished the colonnade than he began to occupy himself with joining it to the former constructions. By 1680, however, Louis had tired of the Louvre, and was wholly absorbed with the building plans for Versailles. There was no money left for Paris, and finally, when in 1688 Perrault died, the great palace was once more abandoned. From then till Marigny was made director of fine arts in 1754, the Louvre was a place of desolation. Rooms in it were let out to needy hangers-on of the court, to artists, and to nondescripts of all sorts. No care was taken of interior or exterior, no repairs of any kind made. In the courts and gardens all sorts of rickety buildings were erected for all sorts of purposes, some leaning against the palace walls, others huddled in groups outside the gates. That which for centuries had been the pride of royalty became a squatting- ground for the petty merchant, the fakir, the mendicant.
Perhaps the names of Pompadour and Du Barry best recall that puppet king whose jaunty phrase, " Apres moi le deluge," was so typical of all the selfish callousness, not only of himself, but of the epoch. It is rather sur- prising, considering the nature of Louis XV., that he took any interest in the gaunt, gloomy palace he kept away from. Nevertheless, Marigny persuaded him to sanction his plans for putting it into son^e kind of reputable condition. Gabriel superintended the new work. He continued the three exterior fagades in the
20 zbc Ert of tbe Xouvre
style that had so far governed, but he introduced certain changes in the great vestibule which to-day looks over the rue de Marengo, — a vestibule commenced by Lemercier, continued by Perrault, and not entirely finished in decoration until Soufflot. In spite of Mari- gny's efforts, in 1774, when the ill-fated Louis XVI. succeeded, the condition of the palace of his ancestors was not unlike the state in which he found his king- dom. If the former was not tottering to its very founda- tions, it was at least despoiled of all its grandeur. Its walls were almost lost in the clustering buildings that barnacle-like clung to its sides to a height far above the rez-de-chaussee. Louis XVI. had his hands too full of other threatening ruin to do much for the palace. Nevertheless, he ordered the courts cleared so far as possible of this rubbish of years, and put architect Brebion in charge of what alterations could be attempted. Brebion succeeded in finishing the new vestibule, which was opened on the Seine side almost on the identical spot where had been the ancient door of Charles V. But the days had come when the Old Regime was to build no more. Perishing in the flames of its own oppression, callousness, wantonness and ignorance, it was to be held for three years a quaking prisoner in the palace it had meant to make one with this most ancient seat of its forbears.
From early in the reign of Louis XVT., and during all the scenes of horror of the Revolution, the Louvre was left to a destruction that made its condition in the days of Pompadour and Du Barry seem respectable. In the court and all through the Place du Carrousel, the dirty, low, tumbledown houses, shops and stables grew apace, crowding against each other, making narrow, refuse-filled alleys, clinging like leeches to the palace
Ibistori? of tbe Xouvre 21
walls, darkening all its windows, till, as one writer puts it, the whole conglomeration was like a rag fair rather than a famous palace and its environs. But within the building itself, the desecration was even worse. Where before had been a few artists and court pensionnaires, the rooms now fairly swarmed with a herd of dirty, im- poverished disreputables of all conditions. If there were some able artists and writers among the lot, even they could not be said to show any reverence or care for the palace they were helping to destroy. Windows were blocked up and torn down. Partition walls were bored through to make ugly entrances, and the enormous galleries were divided and subdivided by hastily erected partitions that were constructed regardless of the ruin of beautiful carving or decoration. The halls were piled with refuse and plunder, tottering stairways were thrown up anywhere, cutting through ceilings or floors without compunction. Out of the windows iron stovepipes belched smoke and soot into the very eyes of passers-by. Before long the lower halls were used for stables, and everywhere was pandemonium. To such estate had fallen the palace which Frangois I. planned should be a Renaissance dream of beauty. And apparently no one cared. The very artists were helping to make it hideous. It was during these years of neglect that the ditch and the entire substructure of both Lemercier's and Perrault*s work got entirely buried beneath the rubbish that was continually piled higher and higher. This substructure was finally forgotten, and it was not till the later part of 1903 that, through M. Redon, it was once more partly brought to light.
No sooner had the Republic arisen from the ruins that had created it, than the restoration of the Lx)uvre became one of its chief objects. First was cleared out
22 Ube Hrt of tbe Xouvre
the army of pensioners and noble beggars, only the artists and their ateliers being allowed to remain. David was at this time the most distinguished occupant of these. Finally, under the consulate, nearly all the painters were transferred to the Sorbonne, and the whole palace was given up to the treasures that Napoleon's triumphs secured. These, it was determined, should be properly and beautifully housed in the Louvre for the benefit of the people. Raymond, and later, Percier and Fontaine, were charged with the task of reconstructing the rooms and halls. By 1803, working with extraor- dinary vigour, they had entirely remodelled the great gallery where were to be placed the works of the Italian School. Napoleon as First Consul, and as Emperor, ,carried on the work the Republic had begun. With muclTbad taste, however, he went against the advice of the architects who wished to continue the plans of Lescot in the attic of the wings. He determined instead, on all sides except the west, to build a third story after the plans of Perrault. Thus came the end of that nobly harmonious Court of the Louvre. Besides adding this story to the quadrangle of the Louvre, he purposed to throw out a line of buildings that would join the Louvre to the Tuileries on the north, as it was already joined on the south. Peroier and Fontaine had charge of the plans, which they prepared and showed to the government in 181 3. But Napoleon's overthrow pre- vented their fulfilment.
When Louis XVIIL became head of the reconstructed monarchy, he continued the work on the Louvre. The sculptures on the walls of the court were finished, and the rooms in the first story of all four wings were pre- pared to receive their decorations.
Under Charles X. these were executed with great
t)l5toti^ Of tbe Xou\>te 23
richness, both with painting and sculpture. Finally, after the unstable, phoenix-like nation had recovered from the revolution of 1830, and Louis Philippe was at the head of the government, came again the question of joining the Tuileries and Louvre on the north. M. Thiers, then minister, presented the project to the Chambers, demanding a hundred million francs for the many monuments necessary if the continuation was com- pleted. The mere building of the wings that should unite the two would cost but fourteen millions. The scheme did not become fact, and it was practically the same one that Comte Jaubert brought up in 1843. Four days after the revolution of 1848, a decree eman- ating from the government ordered the completion of the Louvre, now called the Palace of the People. General Cavaignac the same year put to vote a bill proposing the restoration of the two great salons of the Louvre and of the Galerie d'Apollon. It was M. Duban, architect, who superintended this restoration in a most intelligent manner. Then the Assembly tried to carry through the old project of the 28th of February, after the revolution of 1848, of joining the Tuileries and Louvre. The plan submitted was by M. Visconti, and is essentially what we now see, with only slight modificatioiis. This Assembly, however, did not act upon it, and it was left for the next to ratify it.
Napoleon IIL was now emperor, and whatever crimes may be laid at his door, he at least was earnest in his desire to beautify Paris. Work was commenced on the Louvre July 25, 1854, under the direction and after the plans of Visconti. Dying at the end of that year, he was succeeded by M. Lefuel, who at certain points slightly modified the designs of his predecessor. Five years after all the constructions were finished.
a4 Ubc art ot tbe Xouvre
To unite the Tuileries and Louvre, they began by clearing the Carrousel of the parasitic buildings that still encumbered it, and then proceeded to finish the northern wing which Napoleon I. and Louis XVI IL had only half accomplished. Besides continuing this northern wing till it formed a complete connection between the two palaces, Lefuel threw out from the half nearest the Louvre, short transverse lines to the south, and joined them with a wing that, slightly at an angle to the north- ern wing, was on an exact line with the northern boundary of the Old Louvre. This arrangement helped to conceal the lack of parallelism between the Tuileries and the Louvref From the eastern end of the southern long wmg, he Duilt a similar construction on the north. In each of these two masses of buildings, the cross* sections made three open courts, which were to be used as gardens. Besides these additions, parts of new interior fagades were also added to that portion of the wings nearest the Tuileries.
Considered as a whole, these plans, which in the main are Visconti's, were such that much of the simple gran- deur and fine lines of the old buildings were destroyed. The new facades on the Place du Carrousel were at the same time mean and banal, and of an amplitude and exuberance beyond description. In general, the whole addition has, as has often been noted, an appearance of theatrical decoration without accent or depth, a luxury without reason, a lack of harmony, and a manifest dis- proportion between the framework and the ornamentation. The six enormous pavilions add to this ruination of pro- portion and measure. They are covered with an incalcu- lable number of ornaments, of a pell-mell of flowers, fruits, garlands, figures, etc., and present immense holes, badly measured arcades and gigantic coronations. Placed in
t)istorp ot tbe Xouvre 25
every conceivable spot on the fagades of these new build- ings are caryatides, colossal statues (among them eighty- six of eminent Frenchmen), and unlimited groups of sculpture, of which sixty-three are of allegorical char- acter. Most of these are far from the highest art achieve- ments and in the main serve only to accentuate the over- elaboration of this Napoleonic structure.
And yet, when every adverse criticism has been made, and most of them even recognized to be just, it is still true, as has been in varying words so often stated, that the Louvre is one of the most beautiful examples of the French Renaissance, and one of the most wonderful palaces in the world. So wonderful and beautiful both in its interior and exterior that the gravest faults of its construction cannot spoil its tremendous wprth as a whole.
CHAPTER II.
CONCERNING THE ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE PICTURE - GALLERY
The first of the museums of the world, is the probably undisputed rank of the Louvre. There are others, cer- tainly, that possess individual treasures more valuable perhaps than any among its collection. If it can claim the Venus, London has the Parthenon fragments. If the Victory of Samothrace stands guard within its portals, Olympia still keeps the Hermes, and Rome holds the Mercury, the Apollo Belvedere, the Torso, and the Laocoon. Even its collection of paintings, rich, wonder- ful and tremendous as it is, does not for the most part contain the greatest works of the greatest masters. None of its Raphaels can compare with the Sistine Madonna or the Vatican frescoes. Michelangelo, of course, can only be known in Rome. Leonardo, indeed, is there almost at his highest in the Gioconda, but Milan claims the Last Supper. Titian's Entombment, and Man with the Glove, are not far from its greatest expression, but Rome has his Sacred and Profane Love, Florence his Venus, and Venice his Presentation of the Virgin, — to mention only these among their many. The most wonderful productions of Velasquez, Rembrandt, and Van Dyck are in other galleries. And so it goes. Of men of both earlier and later date, Italy, rather than
26
QviQin of tbe pictute*(5alleti? 27
Paris, retains their masterworks. Yet, if many of the unapproachable creations of the artistic world are not found in the Louvre, it does possess an unrivalled collec- tion of representative and noble works of almost all the great painters of all time. It is this general and very unusual excellence, joined to its vast numbers, that puts this museum at the head of all European galleries, and makes a thorough study of it a study really of the art of the world.
The picture-galleries of the Louvre are on the first floor, and occupy a part of the western side of the old quadrangle, and then continue with the Salle Lacaze, into the Salon Carre, and from there through the Galerie d'Apollon to the end of the Rubens room, which fills the long gallery over the rez-de-chaussee of Catherine de' Medici and the Napoleonic additions of the southern wing of the Louvre. With these are the three rooms opened in 1903, which are in the second story, beyond the Musee de Marine.
It may be well to say here that besides its collection of paintings, within the Louvre are galleries of drawings, engravings, ancient sculpture, sculpture of the middle ages and the Renaissance, modern French sculpture, Assyrian antiquities, Egyptian antiquities, Greek and Etruscan antiquities, the Algerine Museum, the Marine Museum, the Ethnographical Museum, a collection of enamels and jewels, the Sauvageot, the Campana, the Oriental and Le Noir Museums.
Containing now almost three thousand works, the picture-gallery has grown to such proportions through centuries of effort. To Frangois I. is due the first in- ception of the art collections of the Louvre. This sovereign acquired, during his Italian wars, a decided artistic taste, which he proceeded to satisfy in a truly
28 Uhc Hrt ot tbe Xouvre
royal manner. Since France had no great artists, he would import into that country all whom he could per- suade to leave their sunny Italy. Leonardo da Vinci was the most famous of those, but his greatest work had been already accomplished before he found in the French court a refuge from his troubles. Besides him and Andrea del Sarto, Frangois succeeded in getting various others of lesser fame, and his court was a veritable Gol- conda for all artistic talent. When he could not induce the painters themselves to leave Italy, he ordered great numbers of works from them. Leonardo's Gioconda, and Virgin of the Rocks, Raphael's Holy Family and St. Michael, Sebastiano del Piombo's Visitation, and Andrea del Sarto's Charity, were among those he purchased, and they are to be seen at the Louvre to-day. Not only did he care for paintings and sculpture, but he developed a fondness for all sorts of objects of art and antiquity, such as bronzes, medallions, jewels, cameos, intaglios, etc. At one time he brought from Italy 124 antique statues and reliefs, and a great number of busts. It was at Fontainebleau, where the new school of art under Italian influences was begun, that he stored his acquired treasures. The collection received little addition till the time of Louis XIII. A writer in 1692 said that this king found forty-seven paintings in his cabinet. Many of the valued gems of Frangois had been dispersed, no one could say where. Among those mentioned at the close of the seventeenth century were two by Andrea del Sarto, one by Fra Bartolommeo, one by Paris Bordone, fourteen by Ambroise Dubois, two by Clouet, four by Leonardo da Vinci, one by Michelangelo, — which was the Leda, since destroyed, — three by Perugino, two by Primaticcio, four by Raphael, three by Sebastiano del Piombo and one by Titian.
QxiQin ot tbe ptcture*(5alleri? 29
These had been increased to about two hundred when Louis XIV. came to the throne. At his death the cabinet held more than two thousand. Colbert, he who discovered Perrault, the architect of the colonnade of the Louvre, was also the minister who brought about such an enor- mous increase to the royal collection. He spared neither time, pains, nor money in adding to it, and gave its care and direction to the painter Le Brun.
The banker Jabach, of Cologne, had acquired a large part of the art treasures of Charles I. of England, and had transported them to Paris. Ruined finally by his love of the beautiful, he was obliged to sell at a great sacrifice. Part went to Mazarin, and part, mostly draw- ings, was bought by the King of France. At the death of Mazarin, Colbert purchased for Louis XIV. all the objects of art left by the minister. These consisted or 546 original paintings, 92 copies, 130 statues, 196 busts, etc. Other acquisitions made in various ways and various countries included works cf masters not in this or Jabach's collection. For awhile the king's cabinet was taken over to Paris and lodged in the Louvre, in the very place where, more than a century later, the Convention created and organized the National Museum.
The Mercure Galant of December, 1681, gives this account of the opening of the gallery : " On Friday, the 5th of the month, the king graced Paris with his presence, and came to the old Louvre to visit his cabinet of pictures. It is in a new apartment near the splendid gallery called ' Galeric d'Apollon.' . . . What is called the cabinet of his Majesty's pictures, in the old Louvre, comprises seven large and very high halls, some of which are more than fifty feet in length. Besides those, there are four others in the old Hotel de Grammont, that adjoins the Louvre . . . Among the greatest of the pictures are
30 Ube Hrt ot tbe Xouvre
sixteen by Raphael, six by Correggio, ten by Leonardo, eight by Giorgione, four by Palma Vecchio, twenty-three by Titian, eighteen by Paolo Veronese, fourteen by Van Dyck, etc." So that one would say, even while it held Napoleon's spoils, the Louvre was scarcely richer in the works of the masters of the Renaissance.
Not long, however, did it keep these marvels. Louis wished them where he could see them oftener, and where his view would be undisturbed by the public. He there- fore moved most of them to Versailles, where they were scattered in different rooms, and were of little use for the instruction of artists or public.
During the reign of Louis XV., a critic, La Font de Saint Yenne, discoursed loudly against this burying of these great treasures of France, and claimed they should be put where the people might have a chance to see them, and where artists and students could study them. Four years later this was really done under orders of the Marquis de Marigny, director of buildings, he who attempted to restore the Louvre to something of its original noble estate. He charged Bailly, guardian of the pictures of the king, to put them into the apartments of the Luxembourg, which the Queen of Spain had occupied. Here, on October 14, 1750, were opened to the public about one hundred and ten pictures. Few as the number, they represented at least the most valuable part of the king's entire collection. On Wednesday and Saturday the public in general were granted admittance. Other days were reserved for artists and students. On the same days and hours Rubens's Medici gallery was also open.
Up to -the time of Louis XVL the collection remained divided, part in the Luxembourg, another and much larger part at Versailles. At the Louvre, meanwhile.
©rigin ot tbe lPicture*«(^allet^ 31
were about ten thousand drawings, and in the Galerie d'Apollon, which served as a studio for six proteges of the king, were the Battles of Alexander, and certain other pictures of Le Brun, Mignard and Rigaud. This continued till 1775. About that time Comte d'Angiviller, director of the palaces, wished to collect all the great works in painting or sculpture owned by the king, and to put them all into the Louvre. The writers of the day highly praised his plan, especially M. de la Conda- mine. But nothing was actually done, and, the Luxem- bourg being at the same time given over to other uses, the pictures were all taken back once more to Versailles.
It was left for the Revolution to act upon M. d'Angiviller's suggestion. The National Assembly, the Legislative Assembly, the Convention, one after another dealt with the question, and finally carried it out as far as they were able. The Louvre was called first the Museum de la Republique, then the Museum Frangais, and the Musee Central des Arts. It was opened to the public November 8, 1793. It was doubtless a good deal of a helter-skelter placing, in rooms where there was no proper arrangement. The painters still retained their studios, and everywhere remained the confusion and dirt of the old days. Etienne Delecluse, who was a pupil of David, and later critic of arts of the Debats, gives a vivid description of the deplorable state of affairs both within and without the building.
Meanwhile the city of Versailles had seriously objected to losing its art treasures, and for some time the col- lection that was opened in the Louvre lacked many of the masterpieces which were there. " It was not till the month of * Thermidor,' year II., that Varon, a member of the Conservatoire, or board of trustees of the museum, obtained the delivery of these pictures." It is interesting
3a Ube Htt of tbe Xourre
to note that the Republic subscribed one hundred thou- sand livres per annum for the purpose of buying pictures exposed at private sales in foreign countries, or which were likely to go there, — a sum considerably larger than the budgets of later times have allowed for such purpose.
This interest in preserving and adding to the art treasures that France, having guillotined their owners, could claim for her own, is the more amazing when one reflects upon the times which gave it expression. Almost, one is tempted to say, it was the only sane, creditable, and intelligent act of that entire bloody reign.
After Napoleon's wars, the museum was named for him, and well it might be. From Italy, Holland, Austria, and Spain came the caravans of precious objects which he had pillaged. Immense wagons, carts, vans of every description were laden with boxes and bales to the number of thousands. As they were landed from the ships on the Seine, the Parisians swarmed over the quays in vast herds, greeting each new arrival with cheers. The huge crates were all marked with the names of their contents, and as one after another was carried away, the crowds would fall in behind, screaming a welcome to the pic- tures or statues, and escort them in triumph to the Louvre. These processions have been likened to Caesar's triumphal returns to Rome, laden with the spoils and captives of his conquered countries. Rather, perhaps, to our modern vision do they suggest a mammoth circus parade, where, instead of the fearsome inscriptions of Lion or Tiger upon the great travelling arks, one might read, " Titian's Assumption of the Virgin," " Miracle of St. Mark, Tintoretto," "Descent from the Cross, Rubens," "Communion of St, Jerome, Domenichino."
It is not at all to be wondered at, after the allies had finally overthrown Napoleon, that France bitterly objected
OtiQin ot tbe picturc^Galleri^ 33
to returning all these treasures to the countries from which they had been taken. She claimed that many had been ceded in the treaties of peace after Napoleon's Italian wars, and as such were for ever hers. They were not pillage, she asserted, but honourable fruits of Napoleon's victories. So reluctant were the directors of the museum to loosen their hold on these gems that all sorts of ex- pedients were resorted to. Pictures and statues suddenly disappeared. Records as to where certain objects came from were lost; and when a country claimed this or that, the government stoutly maintained the impossibility of proof that it ever belonged to the nation claiming it. More than one foreign city and state sent in final despera- tion envoys to England or to Wellington, asking his aid in the recovery of their old-time possessions. And they did not ask in vain. In almost all important cases France was forced to disgorge. The priceless trophies were sent back, and the Louvre was left denuded. To read some of the old accounts of this time, it would seem as if the directors of fine arts, and curators of the Louvre more bitterly mourned this loss of their art spoils than they did the overthrow of the whole country.
To help fill up the vacant wall-spaces, the Louvre took from the Luxembourg the Rubens paintings, comprising the Medici gallery, Le Sueur's Life of St. Bruno, Ports of France, by Joseph Vernet, and a few more that had been placed there in 1803.
From 1817 to 1824, under Louis XVIIL, iii pictures were added, costing 668,265 francs. Under Charles X., in six years, twenty-four more were acquired, at a cost of 62,790 francs. Louis Philippe spent at least eleven million francs on the Versailles museum, and the Louvre therefore gained little, costing the civil list only 74,132 francs, with thirty-three pictures bought.
34 TLbc art of tbe Xouvre
The Second Republic in 1848 voted two million francs to repair, restore, and set up the Galerie d'Apollon, the Salon Carre, the Salle des Sept Cheminees, the Grande Galerie, the halls looking on the river and the halls of the Colonnade. By 1851 the pictures were chronologically arranged as well as possible m the different rooms. About as early appeared Frederic Villot's excellent cata- logue, still a model. The Louvre had only fifty thousand francs yearly for purchase-money, but the National Assembly added to that sum whenever necessary, sub- scribing one hundred thousand francs at the time of the art sale of the King of the Low Countries, and twenty-five thousand francs for Gericault's Hunter and Cuirassier. In 1852 the allowance was increased to one hundred thousand francs, and the president of the Republic, by a decree, granted 615,300 francs for purchasing at the Marshal Soult's sale, Murillo's Conception.
During the Second Empire, about two hundred paint- ings of early Italian schools came with the acquisition of the Campana Museum, in 1862. Besides these, from 1854 to 1870 133 pictures were either purchased or donated. This does not include the splendid Collection Lacaze of 265 pictures, which was presented to the museum in 1869. Since then the museum has continued to acquire most valuable works, both by purchase and donation, till, when the end of the nineteenth century approached, it became more and more apparent that the old rooms were all too crowded. For long, the student and artist, and even the tourist, had felt that many of the most important paintings were so badly lighted that any real knowledge of them was quite impossible.
Finally, in 1900, was completed what might well be called a " New Louvre." Everything was perfectly arranged and accessible. It was possible to go from one
IMMACULATE CONCEPTION Hy Murillo
OviQin of tbe ptcture*6allerp 3S
room and one department to another without climbing stairs or, as in the old time, being forced to go outdoors from one big court to another to obtain entrance. Schools were hung together, overcrowded walls were thinned down, pictures hidden in dark corners were brought out into easy light and vision. Altogether it became to sight, as it was before in intrinsic value, the '' most splendid and attractive museum in Europe."
There are still changes that could be made, especially to give the great French collection of pictures more room. M. Sandier, in a recent article in Scribner's Magazine, points out that to accomplish this it may be necessary to unhouse the Ministry of the Colonies. That accomplished, the western door of the Rubens hall would open into what is known as the Galeries des Gardes, "a gallery," says M. Sandier, " one hundred metres long, leading in a direct line to the Pavilion de Flore. This will then open another entrance to the Louvre, and will connect with the upper story by the great stairway named after its architect Lefuel, with its celebrated ceil- ing by Cabanel."
To keep sufficient revenue for the enormous expenses of the museum, — the buying and caring for collections, the salaries of officials, etc., — the Louvre has the same right as the Luxembourg, Versailles and St. Germain-en Laye. This is called '' la personalite civile/' and means that the museum can, like private individuals, "possess, buy, and sell," and thus has its own income, and can dis- pose of its own belongings. This revenue amounts to more than four hundred thousand francs a year. In spite of this it may happen that the Louvre does not have in hand enough money to purchase some important works for its collections. To guard against this, there is in Paris an association called " La Societe des Amis du
36 Ube Htt ot tbe Xouvrc
Louvre,'* "whose purpose is to help the museum to the possession of works of great importance, and worthy to appear in its g-alleries. Already, on different occasions, this association has been of great aid to the museum."
CHAPTER III.
SALLE DES PRIMITIFS — ROOM VII. — ITALIAN SCHOOL
The Salle des Primitifs, sometimes called Salle des Sept Metres, and numbered VII. on the plan, contains, as its name denotes, works of the early Renaissance masters. Especially rich is it in pictures by the painters of Florence, one of the first of the Italian cities to feel the awakening power of the spirit that was to rejuvenate all art and all learning.
Cimabue, the man who for so many generations was regarded as the founder of all modern painting, is here, according to the catalogue, represented by one Madonna. In reality, there is as grave doubt about the authorship of the picture as there is about his real right to the title Vasari claimed for him. To-day, criticism has proved that not a single work can be absolutely certified as a Cimabue. The most that can be said of the Madonna in the Louvre is that it bears a strong resemblance to the Rucellai Madonna, which has for centuries been attributed to Cimabue, — though many critics strenu- ously insist that even that altar-piece is not by his hand. If not by him, this one here is probably by some early Siennese master, and in spite of its archaistic attributes, — its lack of form, its conventional posing, its total absence of what Mr. Berenson calls "tactile values," —
37
38 Uhc Hrt ot tbe Xoupte
it does evince a certain improvement over the rigidity of the Greek and the Byzantine schools.
It represents the Virgin on a high architectural throne, clad in a blue mantle that closely confines her head. She holds the infant Christ upon her knee, and he too is wrapped in thick folds of drapery, beneath which his bare feet show. With his right hand he makes the sign of blessing. At each side of the throne are three winged angels, arranged without any regard for perspective, one above the other, so that only the lowest is seen in full length. The background is of gold, as of course are the halos. The draperies also were once sprinkled with the precious metal, but they have been repainted, as indeed have the background and many parts of the picture. In the borders of the old elaborate Gothic frame are twenty- six medallions of the busts of many saints. Most of these, too, have been retouched.
As has been noted, there are certain hard to define but none the less appreciable differences between this panel and others of the same or earlier date, in which the rigidity is much more pronounced. Nevertheless, the long, staring, unseeing eyes, the immobility of the countenance, the regularity of lines — all indicate the Greek style of painting that flourished even as late as the beginning of the fourteenth century.
The Giotto in this room has been much repainted, but it is generally regarded as an authentic piece of work.
The old story of Giotto's youth that Vasari tells, which Leonardo believed and retold to his pupils, is now dis- credited. Giotto was not a shepherd boy, and Cimabue did not discover him drawing his flock on the rocks or bits of stray board. What he was is rather uncertain, but he probably did begin to study with Cimabue early in life. Modern criticism, however, now seems inclined
Salle bes prtmtttts 39
to insist that he owes more to Pisano and Cavallini than to Cimabue. He is, at any rate, the first Italian painter to display any real appreciation of actual life. For the first time painted figures begin really to stand, to walk, and, most wonderful of all, are so depicted that one feels it possible to walk between them and their background. Individual character, purposeful gestures, and some attempt at anatomical correctness are among the entirely new achievements of this first great modern.
St. Francis of Assisi Receiving the Stigmata, was painted for the altar of San Francesco in Assisi. Ac- cording to Vasari's pleasing fiction, the picture was such an object of veneration to the Pisans that it was the cause of Giotto's being summoned to their city, to paint in the Campo Santo the Trials of Job, — these in their turn bringing an invitation from the Pope to go to Rome. The St. Francis here is the one he painted for Pisa, and closely resembles that at Assisi. The saint, clad in a coarse cloth robe, is kneeling at the foot of a mountain that towers behind him, reminding one, it must be ac- knowledged, something of a toboggan slide. Above in the sky is Girist in the form of a winged seraph. From his head, his feet and his breast come the sharp red lines of the stigmata which reach to the hands, feet and breast of St. Francis. In the predella of the picture are three scenes, the one at the left being the Dream of Innocent III., in which St. Peter commands him to maintain the order founded by St. Francis. The middle panel reveals him presenting the Rules of the Order to St. Francis, who kneels before him. In the third, St. Francis is preaching to the birds. Most of the original colour of this painting has been obscured by dirt, time and restoring. But there is still recognizable something
40 Ube Hrt ot tbe Xouv)re
of Giotto's feeling for form and expression which marks him as a true inventor.
Probably by Taddeo Gaddi are Salome's Dance, The Crucifixion, and Christ Giving the Soul of Judas to Demons, which are but parts of an old predella. The Gjaddi, Agnolo and Taddeo, were helpers of Giotto, and like Giottino, and, in fact, like painters for a generation after, they simply carried on the Giottesque traditions. For it was long before any men of real ability arose to express more clearly than he could express, reality or beauty. Taddeo worked for twenty-four years under Giotto before he became an independent painter. As Crowe and Cavalcaselle observe, he stood in the same relation to Giotto as Giulio Romano stood to Raphael. And Leonardo's claim that art retrograded under Giotto's followers applies to no one more forcibly than to him. He copied the faults of his master even more slavishly than the excellences, and really kept art at a standstill in Tuscany.
Gentile da FabrianOy who has ten panels here, though generally reckoned among the painters of the Umbrian school, could as easily be claimed for the Venetian or Florentine, as he spent years working in both those cities. He and Fra Angelico have been likened to brothers with similar tastes and tendencies, except that one became a monk and the other a knight. Fabrino used gold in high relief very often and freely, putting it on architectural forms, folds of garments, head-dresses, trap- pings of horses, and emphasizing and building out with it petals and leaves of flowers. Many of his pictures are extraordinairly amusing, because of their apparently helter-skelter arrangement, combined with a total lack of feeling for appropriateness. His was a joyous nature, and the most solemn of his Biblical scenes often are con-
Salle Des prtmitits 41
ducive to laughter by the naive and unconstrained attitudes of his personages, or by the introduction of froUcking animals that have nothing to do with the scene depicted. But there is an exuberance, a gaiety and brilliancy of colour in Fabriano's pictures that give them an individuality in its way as marked as Fra Angelico's. He has, nevertheless, as modern critics agree, been over- rated, and scarcely deserves the encomiums lavished upon him. It is his Adoration of the Kings in Florence, by which he is best known.
In his Virgin and Child in this room the Virgin is seated in an extensive landscape, dressed in brown robes edged with golden embroidery, about her head a heavy nimbus of gold, on the border of which are the words, Ave Mater Regina Mundi. The child stands on her right knee, his right hand lifted in blessing, his left clasping his mother's forefinger to steady himself. Her right hand is placed against his hip, and she holds a piece of transparent drapery in front of him. At the left of the two kneels Pandolfo Malatesta, arrayed in a gorgeous, embossed and brocaded robe. Back of them stretches a hilly landscape, with fortified castles and walls of towns.
The Madonna shows some indication of knowledge of the figure. Her shoulders are fully felt under her drapery, and the modelling of her face is delicately ren- dered. The child, too, though far from anatomical cor- rectness, is much better drawn than the babies of the early Dutch school. Both mother and child have a sweet tenderness of expression, in excellent contrast to the strongly marked profile of the donor kneeling beside them.
The Presentation in the Temple is elaborately filled with architectural constructions. The lack of correct
42 'Q^be Hrt ot tbe Xouvre
perspective between the buildings and the people, though very evident, shows some appreciation of the vanishing- point in the lines of the buildings themselves. There is a real effort, as well, to indicate figures under the draperies, and always a more or less successful attempt to portray individual character and expression.
Not far away is the Coronation of the Virgin, by Fra Angelico, the painter-monk whose works are the veritable prayers of his devout spirit. No one has ever approached Fra Giovanni in his rendering of religious beauty. No angels have ever quite equalled his in their delicacy, their exquisite colour, their tender flow of line, and in their beatific expressions. There is no hint of worldliness, of earth-heaviness about these flower-like beings, who play on their musical instruments, or sing hymns, or lead the blessed within the gates of Paradise. Neither is this piety, like a perfume over all that Angelico painted, his only gift. He had a rare sense of harmony of line and of balance of mass, of purity of colour and of dignity of composition. He had, too, a decided talent for ex- pressing character, — as witness his greatest work in the chapel of Nicholas V. in the Vatican. It was only in his later days that he began to understand perspective and correct relations between figures and buildings; but if his compositions show archaic traces in this respect, they more than make up for it even in their strictly technical beauties of luminosity of colour, grace of line, proportion and balance. To-day this Coronation is regarded as one of the great treasures of the Louvr6. It was among the spoils of Napoleon, and when most of his booty was returned to its owners, this was not considered by the Tuscan government of sufficient value to pay for its transportation. For long it was huddled
Salle &e5 prtmttits 43
away in the Garde-Robe of the Louvre, and was called roughly " a coloured drawing."
On a throne at the top of a flight of wide marble steps sits Christ in full rich robe, holding in his hands the golden crown which he is about to place on the head of his kneeling mother. On each side of these two are grouped the lovely angel choirs that only Beato Angelico could paint. With their trumpets and violins and zithers, or with voice alone, they sing the praises of their King. Below them on the steps and still lower across the front of the picture, are saints, martyrs, apostles, Popes, the " hienheureux " of Heaven. Among them are seen St. Dominic, Moses, John the Baptist, Charlemagne, with his crown of fleurs-de-lis, St. Nicholas, St. Catherine with her wheel, and many others. Each has a halo, which Fra Angelico, like all the earliest masters, treated as a very solid substance. When angel or saint is facing the spectator, this solidity of course does not matter, since only the wide rim appears like a frame around the face. It is a different affair when the head is back to. There was nothing to do, since Angelico was not willing to cover their heads entirely from sight, but to place the gold plate-like halo so that each aureoled saint or angel seems to have his face pressed hard and fast against it. Below this scene is a predella of seven compartrtiicnts showing miracles performed by St. Dominic, the founder of the order to which Fra Giovanni da Fiesole belonged.
It seems as if this brilliant yet soft-toned picture, with its gold, its blues, its pinks, its reds, had been painted by an angel rather than a man. As Gautier says, its colours are taken from the white of the lily, the rose of the dawn, the blue of the sky, the gold of the stars. The charming variety in the delicate angelic faces, each so full of love, of joy, of veneration, the skill with which the
44 Ube Hrt ot tbc Xouvre
painter massed and differentiated the varying colours of their robes, the air of sweet humility that shrouds the Virgin, — all show Fra Angelico in one of his most exalted moments.
In the Beheading of St. John the Baptist, Herod and four companions, magnificently dressed, are seen behind a long table. In front, at the right, is Salome, dancing, dressed in a rose-coloured gown. At the left a soldier brings in a platter bearing the head of the Baptist. Here there is a total lack of the gruesome and horrible. Were it not for the head, one might guess the occasion was some ordinary occurrence. And Salome's face is far too sweetly featured to suggest the cold-blooded dancer.
On the walls of the upper landing of the Escalier Daru is his Crucifixion. Against a bluish background the cross is raised with the figure of the Christ nailed upon it. At its foot, grasping it, kneels St. Dominic, his halo making a flat gold background for his profile. At the right stands St. John, his hands clasped, his eyes raised, and at the left is Mary, in full face, dressed in a violet mantle. Fra Angelico could not portray grief, or terror or despair as he could joy, prayer or praise. His lack of knowledge of the nude, too, is apparent in the figure of Christ. Yet true sorrow and the devout spirit of belief are very apparent.
There is a battle-scene in the Louvre by Paolo Uccello, and also a portrait panel. Uccello and linear perspective may almost be said to be synonymous. His whole efforts as a painter were directed toward achieving complete success in every kind of a difficult problem in perspective. As Vasari states, he was much more interested in study- ing lines of architecture, in getting the exact proportions of curiously foreshortened objects than he was in por- traying human nature. The American editors of the
Salle bes prtmttifs 45
Italian biographer say that "His battle pieces are stiff, ungainly performances; and w^ remember him rather for what he strove to attain than for what he actually accomplished."
The one here is sadly damaged by time and by the unskilful " restoring " of Brigiardini in the sixteenth century. It is chiefly remarkable, perhaps, for its ex- traordinary horses, extraordinary in bulk, in construc- tion, and in attitude. Uccello's evident and laboured attempts to join legs, bodies and heads correctly, result in producing an animal that if somewhere near true anatom- ically is far from that in appearance.
The oblong panel with the portrait busts of five noted men, is in a sense more interesting. Hard and rigid as it is as portraiture, it has a solid strength and characteri- zation that presage the great days of Florentine su- premacy in line and mass. These five men were all celebrated in their own fields, and Uccello, according to Vasari, was a great admirer of each one, and kept this panel in his own rooms. The first on the board is Giotto, the painter, the second, Paolo himself, the great exponent of the principles of perspective, the third Donatello, the sculptor, the fourth Antonio, not Giovanni, Manetti, the mathematician, and the fifth Brunellesco the architect. The name of each is written on the frame below the portrait.
From Uccello's archaic battle-scene to the Virgin and Child with Saints and Priests of Filippo Lippi, is a far cry, though Uccello was only nine years older than the latter. Art critics are agreed that Fra Filippo Lippi was influenced by both Masaccio and Fra Angelico. His fig- ures have a roundness, a fulness, and a real existence that those of Fra Angelico lack, while his saints and angels have a sw:eetness and a spirituality beyond Masaccio's
46 Ubc Hrt ot tbe Xouvrc
power. If he owes something of the solidity of hisj figures to Masaccio, and something of his delicacy and! purity of line to Angelico, yet he is always and distinctly himself, with a charm that is wholly his own, and before unknown in art. Like all Italians he painted religious pictures almost exclusively. But for the first time in art he made them human. His Madonnas are real mothers, his baby Christs real babies ; even his angels are very natural, and not always beautiful children. Still, he never lost the reHgious sentiment in spite of thus human- izing his types. He introduced what may be called the genre picture into Italy, painting his Madonnas, Nativ- ities, and Annunciations on small, round surfaces, suitable for home walls as well as for church altars.
After Filippo's fiftieth year he used only one type of face for his Madonnas. It is a well-known story of his commission to paint a Nativity for the nuns of Sta. Margherita, and of how he chose for his model of the Virgin young Lucrezia Buti who was a boarder in the convent. For generations the end of the story was that he ran away with Lucrezia and then refused to marry her who became the mother of his son Filippino. The truth, as Milanesi found it out from old letters and documents, is not so widely known. Poor Fra Filippo is not the only one that " Gossip Vasari " wronged. That garrulous commentator scattered scandal through his accounts with a free hand. Fra Filippo, then, did marry Lucrezia by a special dispensation from the Pope, and for her sake gave up all his priestly revenues, and lived and died a poor man. It is Lucrezia's face that he paints over and over, ever dwelling on each softly arched brow, on the wide eyes, the broad, ingenuous forehead, the tormentingly pretty nose, the kissable mouth, the little chin, — with a veritable lover's caress.
Salle 5e0 ©rtmtttts 47
The Virgin and Child alluded to above was painted when Lippo was only twenty-six years old. It is fuller of architectural forms than some of his later works, but already he was in full possession of the style that was so distinctively and so originally his own. Three orna- mented arches divide the upper part of this picture, which represents the interior of a church or some sort of sanctuary. Under the central arch, before a highly decorated throne, stands Mary in full face, holding the child against her right hip. Six angels guard her throne, three on the right, three on the left. A low balustrade which curves behind the angels, partly hides from view two children who look over it at the scene in front. Farther back at the left a monk's head peers over the railing, and this has been called a portrait of the painter himself. Though executed long before he knew Lucrezia, the Madonna has the wide forehead, short, piquant nose, and small chin, characteristic of both his earlier and later portrayals of the Virgin. She is clad in the conven- tional red gown and blue mantle, and has the fascinat- ingly diaphanous head-dress Lippo loved to paint. Her expression is gently serious and contemplative, and if she is not drawn with quite the understanding of a Raphael, at least there is a very solid figure under the heavy drapery. The folds of this drapery are well managed and carefully realistic. A sort of sling made of a long piece of cloth and tied in a knot goes about Mary's neck, and on this knot the baby has put his right foot, the support helping to keep him in his upright posi- tion. In one hand he holds a pomegranate, the other pulls down the drapery at his waist. His tight, curling hair, fat little limbs and chubby shoulders, are expressed with Fra Filippo's naturalistic freedom of handling^. The angels are delightful little beings, with
48 Ube Htt ot tbe !lLouv>rc
their high, curved wings, their voluminous robes and their easy, unstrained attitudes. Each one bears a single stalk of Ascension lilies, and if their boyish faces suggest earthly rather than heavenly denizens, they are not thereby the less attractive. The two prelates kneel- ing in front are vigorous, studied portraits, drawn with strength and emphasis. As a whole, the picture is full of charm, of individuality, and of power, as well as of that subtle grace which with Fra Filippo had so much of sweet homeliness about it.
Morelli thinks the Nativity is probably not by Fra Filippo, but by some one of the school of Alesso Baldo- vinetti. It has, at all events, been pretty generally credited to Filippo, and has many of his characteristics, though there is some archaic drawing that seems at least hardly up to his best work. In front of a ruined barn built of bricks, and apparently even in its first days far too small to hold man and beast, kneel Mary and Joseph, adoring the child who is lying flat on the ground between them. Behind, through one of the numerous breaks in the wall, an ox and a donkey look out, and above them two angels float in the air, their hands met prayer-wise. At the top of the picture is the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove, sending golden rays on to the group below. At the left, behind Mary, a very much cut-up landscape of rivers, pastures and castles is seen, with shepherds and their flocks curiously out of proportion.
Mary is by far the best of the figures here represented. The careful drawing of the hands, the youthful face, with its drooped lids, its sweet mouth, its delicate head-dress, all recall the style of Filippo Lippi. Joseph, too, has a certain rough, puzzled expression that is both pathetic and amusing.
Benozzo Gozzoli is represented by only one picture.
Salle ^es primitifs 49
This painter of earth's gaieties was, strangely enough, Fra Angelico's pupil, and in Rome his assistant, and was greatly beloved by the painter-monk. The American editors of Vasari sum him up well in saying, '' He is a story-teller par excellence, ... a lover of nature, a stu- dent of fields and flowers and animals. . . . On the vast wall-spaces that he covered so rapidly and easily with a world of story, he revealed himself in turn as landscape- painter, portrait-painter, animal-painter, costumer, archi- tect, designer of ornament and superlatively a decorator."
His Triumph of St. Thomas Aquinas is in three parts. The upper shows Christ blessing, while slightly below him are St. Paul, Moses and the four Evangel- ists. In the central division St. Thomas is seated be* tween Aristotle and Plato, Guillaume de St. Amour lying at his feet, vanquished. Below all this is the entire Church of doctors, cardinals and Pope Alexander IV. who are being instructed by St. Thomas. Here the painter had little chance to introduce the birds and beasts and flowers he was so fond of, and by its very subject the picture is so much the less characteristic of him.
Signorelli is represented by a fragment of a com- position, and by the Birth of the Virgin, but they are far below the best works of the man who is called " the immediate successor of Michelangelo." Signorelli was apprentice to Pietro della Francesca, and it was he who finished the fresco of the Last Judgment which Michel- angelo had begun. It is his frescoes at Orvieto that have given him his greatest fame, for in them he shows a grandeur of form, a strength and virility of expression, a concentrated passion of action that were never equalled till the day of Michelangelo. His colour is not always agreeable, his compositions are frequently crowded.
5© XTbc Hrt of tbc Xouvre
But he is one of the first great moderns in art. He appeals to us, to our times, to our minds, as almost no' painter before and as few since.
In the Birth of the Virgin is a certain dignity of line that marks almost all of Signorelli's works, but it is far below the height of his power. In a bare-walled room, slightly at the left, is Anne in bed. She leans out to reach the new-born Mary to a woman who stoops to take her. At the foot of the bed a man rests against the foot-board, leaning over back to. Standing near the woman taking the child is a young girl whose tall figure with its fine lines is the one bit in the picture most suggestive of Signorelli. At the extreme right Joseph is sitting on the floor writing on his knee, and next to him a serving-woman bends over some dishes.
Of the pictures in the Louvre catalogued as by Botti- celli, only the Lemmi frescoes are universally acknowl- edged to be really by him. These are on the upper land- ing of the Escalier Daru, near Fra Angelico's Crucifixion.
Berenson says of Botticelli that he is " Never pretty, scarcely ever charming or even attractive; rarely cor- rect in drawing and seldom satisfactory in colour; in types, ill-favoured; in feeling, acutely intense and even dolorous." It is perhaps this intensity of feeling, com- bined with its dolorous-languidness in expression, that has captured so many modern critics, even more than the wonderful decorative qualities and the grace and movement of line that are as integral parts of this Floren- tine's art. The wistful-faced, yearning-eyed Madonnas, the tired, weary-looking baby Christs, the intense, strained expression on so many of his angel faces, all this greatly appeals to the neurotic, anemic, and the mind-at-high-pressure so characteristic of present day humanity. No other painter strikes quite the same chord.
Salle t)C0 prtmtttts 51
He has as little of the tragic, solemn depth of Michel- angelo as he has of the serene poise of Raphael. There is always poetry, always grace, always the wonderful sinuosity of line that seems fairly vibrant with music; but there are other things as well. If there is subtlety of expression, one suspects disingenuousness in that very subtlety; if there is rhythmic curve of line, there is an ignoring of solidity of construction; and if no one has ever better expressed motion in waving hair, falling drapery, or turning head, no one either has so revelled in awkward, ill-formed shapes. The lack of ingenuous- ness is, however, one of the most salient features of much of Botticelli's work. There really is some ground for feeling that he was a bit of a poseur. A certain sort of artificiality permeates the majority of his pictures; a fascinating, sensuous, appealing artificiality, doubtless, but the forced, unreal note is, nevertheless, nearly always there.
Botticelli was living and working at the same time as Ghirlandajo, Benozzo Gozzoli, Verocchio, and Perugino, and for awhile, Filippo Lippi, who was his teacher. He was considered, at the time of the latter's death, to be the best master in Florence, though he was then only twenty-two. His circular pictures of the Virgin and Child may be assigned to this period, or immediately after. These tondi are slightly reminiscent of the friar- painter, but they nevertheless are strongly indicative of Botticelli's own peculiar qualities.
One of these tondi is the round Madonna called " Le Magnificat," in Room VH., though it is now considered to be a rather poor copy of the great one in the Uffizi. It is certainly far from that in its technique, showing poor brush-work and inferior treatment of values and colour. In composition it is identical, except that whereas in the
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one in Paris only one angel holds the crown over Mary's head, in that of the Uffizi there are two, her head being thus framed by the two uplifted hands. This arrange- ment fills up the round more harmoniously, and is so much the more characteristic of Botticelli. No one has more beautifully balanced a composition in a circle than has he in the famous Uffizi tondo.
Mary sits at the right in front of a curved opening giving a distant view of a " winding stream and wooded meadow." Behind her is the boy angel in profile whose right hand holds over her head the crown made of deli- cate golden tracery. Standing by her knee on the other side are two more angels, holding an open book and an ink-well, into which she is dipping her pen preparatory to writing on the book's half-blank pages. Behind these two, also looking at the book, a third bends over them, a hand on each of the others' shoulder. His position exactly, yet without too much apparent effort, conforms to the curving line of the picture. On Mary's lap is the baby Christ, his head lifted, his eyes raised. He rests his right hand partly on his mother's wrist and partly on the open book, his left grasping the cut pomegranate which she holds at his side. The baby is rather uncouth and heavy and is the least attractive of the whole group. The boy angels are remarkably charming, their Medicean type of face infused with a delightful feeling of innocence.
The Virgin, Child and St. John is a much better piece of work from a technical standpoint than the Magnificat. It is supposed, however, not to be by Botticelli but by some painter who was greatly inspired by him. The Virgin sits at the right, in a garden, her face in profile, looking down under deep, full lids at the child who is standing on her lap. At the left is the little St,
Salic DCS IpttmititB S3
John, his hands crossed on his breast, his great eyes gazing straight out of the picture. Mary has much of the ruminative melancholy of BotticelH's Madonnas, but the type of head is somewhat unlike his usual choice, her hands are squarer and better articulated, and the fingers far less long and serpentine. The baby is an exquisite bit of childhood. The tender loveliness of his chubby face, as he looks up adoringly at his mother, the little love pressure of his hand at her throat, are beautifully rendered. Scarcely less appealing is John, with the dreamy wistfulness of his expression and his humble, self-effacing attitude.
The two so-called Lemmi frescoes are parts of a decoration that Botticelli executed for Giovanni Torna- buoni when his son Lorenzo married Giovanna degli Albizzi. The Tornabuoni were related to the Medici and much interested in art. For years these frescoes had apparently disappeared. In 1541 the villa had gone from the family, and later the rooms were whitewashed and the frescoes wholly covered up. In 1873, when Doctor Lemmi was owner of the house, some cracks gave signs of colour beneath, and the whitewash being removed, Botticelli's paintings appeared. Only two were really preserved, a third falling to pieces when uncovered. In 1882 they were somehow purchased and ever since have been in the Louvre. Both of them are more or less damaged, one of them being in a much worse state than the other. Unfortunately the better preserved, Lorenzo Tornabuoni Led into the Company of the Liberal Arts, is the poorer painting. Indeed, it is so much less successful than the other that critics have thought it could not have been Wholly Botticelli's work. The balance of opinion, however, seems now to ascribe it as well as the other to him.
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At the edge of a wood on a high seat at the right sits Philosophy surrounded by her handmaidens, the " Liberal Arts." From the left comes Lorenzo led by Dialectics. A small Cupid was apparently beside him, but only his head has escaped destruction. Lorenzo, with his long, blond hair, and serious, thoughtful profile, is evidently a portrait of the young man who was so highly esteemed by his contemporaries for his learning and character. He has a round red cap on his head, and is dressed in a blue and red striped gown, with a red cloak falling from his right shoulder. The pensive, graceful girl figure of Dialectics, who leads him up to the distinguished company, is clad in white. Philosophy, in profile, is in the centre of the six " Arts," these latter making a semicircle about her. She is dignified, heavily draped with fur-trimmed robes, and is much older than the others. On her right are Arithmetic, Grammar and Rhetoric, on her left Geometry, Astronomy and Music. They are all young maidens and sit or kneel in graceful attitudes.
Giovanni Tornabuoni Receiving the Gifts of the Graces, is the other and more valuable fresco. It repre- sents the interior of a room in which the hostess stands at the right holding out her apron to receive the gifts of the Graces, or, as some have said, the four cardinal Virtues. She is the best preserved bit in the panel, and is supposed to be a very faithful likeness of the young wife who was so noted for all the virtues and charms of womanhood. Her face is in three-quarters view, turned to the left. Clad in a brownish red gown that falls in straight, unbroken folds to her ankles, with a white veil over her hair, and a necklace of pearls, she presents a sober, quiet appearance, far diflferent from that of most of the women of Italy of her day. Coming toward her
Salle &es iprimitits S5
from the left are the four maidens, marching two by two, dressed in soft-coloured robes that are billowed about them in tortuous folds, caught up by bands and falling over under-draperies equally turbulent, in a style that was all Botticelli's own. The girl who seems to lead the four is supposed to represent Venus, both from her more prominent position and because she alone wears sandals and has golden-edged draperies. She has been a good deal obliterated, the whole back of her head and part of her shoulder and right leg being lost. Her profile is not over pretty, but is still intact, as well as the faces of her three companions, who, while all are of a marked Botticelli type, are more than usually regular in outline and charming in expression. Their flowing locks of hair are painted with all his love for these waving, living, caressing strands.
As pure decoration, this panel shows Botticelli's genius at its height. His command of line, his rhythmic curves were never more beautifully displayed, and one feels with Berenson that here is " the greatest artist of lineal design that Europe has ever had."
Ghirlandajo, whose Visitation and Portrait of an Old Man and Little Boy are in this room, was one of the three great Florentine painters of the last quarter of the fif- teenth century, the other two being Botticelli and Filip- pino. Messrs. Blashfield and Hopkins consider him less tender than Filippino, less original than Botticelli, but more powerful and more direct than either. " The note which he strikes is less thrilling, but deeper; the types he presents are less fascinating, but more human." His most distinctive attribute, perhaps, is his ability as a portrait-painter. In his pictures of the Nativity, the Annunciation, and other religious subjects, the best part of the scenes are not the Madonnas and saints that give
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the name of the picture, but the onlookers, the " donors," or the attendant citizens. In these figures he painted simply and directly the actual Florentines of his day, and painted them with a truth, a reality and an incisiveness that proclaim him a rare portrait-painter for his own or any time. In colour he is often far from pleasing, indulg- ing as he does in an overabundance of bricky red, but in drawing he is superior to all the painters who had pre- ceded him. He had, too, a keen sense of the general effect in his compositions, and did not hesitate to sacrifice details and accessories to this, which, for the time, was an unusual and veritable painter's attribute.
The Visitation was one of Napoleon's spoils, and was left in Paris after most of the pillaged treasures were returned. It was painted by Ghirlandajo late in life for the church of Castello, to-day Santa Maria Maddalena de Pazzi, in Florence. Though it is claimed that he did not wholly finish it, and that Mainardi's hand can be seen in its completion, it is, nevertheless, full of Ghirlandajo's characteristic dignity of pose, vigour of line, and inten- sity of action.
In a portico before an arched opening that gives a glimpse of a fortified town on the sea, with boats and a bridge, Mary and Elizabeth have met. Elizabeth, in yellow robe with white head-dress, kneels in front of Mary who leans over her, her hands on the elder woman's shoulders. Mary is in blue, the long, full mantle caught at her breast with an enormous brooch set with precious stones. A soft piece of gauze drawn about her neck and a ruffled head-dress of muslin nearly covers her hair which is drawn over her ears on each side. At the left Mary Cleophas stands, looking away from the group; at the right Salome advances rapidly toward them, her hands met prayer-wise in front of her.
THE VISITATION By CJhirlandajo
I
Salle Oes prtmttits 57
Her figure is spirited, and full of moveinent, emphasized by the flying draperies. This waving of folds and ends of draperies is one of Ghirlandajo's idiosyncrasies, and he sometimes employs it when there is no evidence that wind or motion caused the commotion. In this case, however, it is telling and effective. Mary Cleophas is a tall, stately figure, well posed and of much individuality. She has something of the Lippo cast of countenance, with a slightly longer chin and somewhat less breadth across the eyes. Her attitude, as she greets the other woman, is touchingly tender and reverent. Elizabeth's profile is strong and fine and full of character.
The Portrait of an Old Man and Little Boy is a re- markable example of Ghirlandajo's skill at portraiture. Beside an open window sits the old man, his head nearly in profile, looking down at the child's lifted face, which is in strict profile. The picture ends at the line of the boy's shoulder, so that the old man's hands are not shown nor the child's right one. His left rests affection- ately on his guardian's chest. Absolute realism was here Ghirlandajo's evident aim. He has made no attempt to soften or beautify the old man's visage, dwelling almost with gusto on the huge bottle-nose, with its painful ex- crescences, and on the big wart on his forehead. In spite of these physical deformities his expression, as he gazes at the little one, is full of a longing love and a ten- der joy that yet verges upon sorrow. It is a remarkable bit of character-painting. The child, with its golden curls so carefully drawn, almost every hair outlined, has a beautiful face, its questioning little profile as full of adoring veneration as is the old man's face of protecting love.
The Louvre owns two of Credi's works, but neither the Madonna Enthroned between Two Saints in this
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room, nor the Christ and Mary Magdalene in the Grande Galerie are really worthy of the man whom Verrocchio recommended to finish the Colleoni monument.
In the former of these two pictures, under the central one of three archways, the Madonna is represented seated on a throne. The niche behind her is closed, the other two arches each spanning an opening that shows the sky beyond. The arcades and pilasters are richly and minutely ornamented. Mary holds the child Jesus on her right knee, her head bent toward her right shoulder, looking down at him with a sorrowful tender- ness in her gaze. The transparent veil of her head- dress is exquisitely rendered as well as the soft curls that fall over her shoulder. The child has twisted around till his face is turned to the left, while he blesses St. Julian who stands before the open arch, his face nearly in profile, his hands joined in prayer. At the right, in his pontifical robes, is St. Nicholas, reading a book. Though too hard, and lacking the feeling of malleable flesh, his head is finely drawn and modelled and has decided char- acter. The whole picture is more affected than much of Credi's earlier work, and has a hard, brilliant polish almost like porcelain, along with slight and rather un- meaning chiaroscuro. There are, however, a certain grace in the treatment of the head of Mary, and a tender movement of her hands that recall Credi at his happiest.
CHAPTER IV.
SALLE DUCHATEL — ROOM V. — ITALIAN AND FRENCH SCHOOLS
In the fifth room, called Salle Duchatel, are a number of important frescoes by Luini, transferred from the Litta Palace. Of all Italian painters Luini, perhaps, shows the influence of Leonardo the most. Yet it is not at all certain that he ever was an actual pupil of the great Tuscan. Indeed, very little is known about Luini except through his works. These are quite sufficient to indicate that he is almost another Da Vinci over again, without Da Vinci's depth, tragedy, virile power or mysterious fascination. It is the sweetness, the charm, the soft modelling, the entrancing chiaroscuro of Leonardo that Luini repeats so successfully. And though in the main it can properly be called repetition, yet it is not without really distinct personality, and, within certain lines, originality. The tender charm of a Luini Madonna, the grace of expression, of arrangerruent, of grouping in his frescoes, are all his own even though they became his through long Leonardesque infiltration. His sweet- ness is rarely cloying, for it is backed up by vigorous, if smooth, modelling, by judicious colour, by skilful light- ing. And his tenderness and grace never, in his best works, degenerate into mawkishness and pose. The
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frescoes from the Litta Palace show him', not as he is known at the Brera, at San Maurizio, at Lugano and Saronna, but they at least give a very good idea of his ability as a decorator. And his ability was of a very high order, if not the highest.
Of these frescoes the most beautiful are the Nativity and the Adoration of the Magi. The first is the interior of a stable with heavy beams cutting the walls into squares. At the left on the ground is the child Jesus, in a very babyish position, his toes kicking up, his forefinger in his mouth. Beside him are two small angels. The one at his head lifts the cloth beneath the baby's shoulders while the other at his feet grasps a wooden cross with both arms and bends over it, looking intently at the infant. This group is placed directly below the manger, over which the heads of an ox and a donkey appear. Above are two adoring angels, kneeling on clouds, though still within the confines of the building. On the same level with them at the right, a square opening in the wall gives a view of the crest of a hill where three shepherds are observed receiving the " glad tidings " from an angel who descends out of the sky. In the fore- ground, at the right of Jesus, kneel Mary, her hands clasped in prayer, and behind her Joseph. Mary is dressed in a violet-toned mantle lined with green, and edged with gold embroidery. Joseph wears a yellow cloak, also edged with gold. Mary has the Leonardesque type of face, even with something of the subtle, un- translatable smile curving her delicate lips, the same purely lined brows of the Gioconda, — the whole ethere- alized, and made more spiritual by Luini's brush. St. Joseph here recalls the Christ type. The long, waving, parted hair and broad brow are very like the conventional head of Christ. It was a curious fancy for an Italian
ADORATION OF THK MAGI Hy Luini
Salle Ducbatel 6i
painter to suggest that Christ would have resembled St. Joseph in physical attributes.
In the Adoration, where only the head and shoulders of Joseph appear, and in profile, the likeness to the conven- tional Christ type is even more noticeable. The scene is again in the stable, showing Mary sitting on a raised bit of flooring, with the child standing on her knee, while he blesses the three kings before him, Joseph looks over the mother's shoulder. Above, through two oblong openings, is seen a caravan winding down a mountain road. Of the three kings, the one in front, with long gray beard and ermine-trimmed cloak, is kneeling, his vase of precious ointment laid at Mary's feet. The other two stand behind him, each bearing his gift. The three are sharply differentiated, each well individualized and subtly drawn. Mary, dressed in blue skirt, violet waist and green mantle, is in three-quarters position, her head bent forward, her eyes nearly covered by the heavy, drooped lids. Her face is ideally beautiful and ex- quisitely painted, the soft, waving hair falling against her neck, and the transparent border to her head-dress displaying Luini's delicate surety of touch.
In this room is the Virgin and Child Adored by the Donors, the work of the Fleming Hans Memlinc, or Memling, as he is usually called. In the centre of the nave of a church, seated on a stone throne, with em- broidered drapery behind her and a canopy over her head, is Mary, holding the infant Jesus across her lap. At the left of the picture, on her right, stands St. James, and kneeling beside him the donor, James Floreins, and his six sons. On the other side St. Dominic presents the donor's wife, accompanied by her twelve daughters, the second of whom is in the costume of a Dominican nun. Back of the central group stretches the church,
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and through the arches on each side is a glimpse of the country, with a castle on the left and a farmhouse at the right. The figures of both Mary and the child are ex- quisitely rendered. The little nude body is unusually correct in outlines and construction and is softly rounded in forms, if rather tightly painted, compared with the style of the far more modern Luini. His expression is both childlike and dreamy, the far-away look in his eyes giving him a certain aloofness that intensifies the real piety so strongly felt throughout the picture. The Madonna, in her red dress and blue cloak, holds the child with a well-expressed pressure of her slender right hand, while with the other she keeps open the Scriptures on which Jesus's left hand rests. Her blond hair waves softly off her wide forehead and falls in curling masses over her shoulder. Her eyes are looking downward and she seems wrapped in a reverie that makes her quite unconscious of what is going on about her. The soft oval of her face, her long, slender nose and small, but finely curved mouth are all characteristic of Memling. It is the Flemish type, indeed, but painted with the insight, the veneration, the real adoration of this man, who painted, one feels, on his knees. He is only equalled in religious purity and fervour by Fra Angelico. Among all Flem- ings he is unapproached.
Besides the pictures noted, two by Ingres deserve mention. These, as well as the Memling, were be- queathed to the Louvre by Mme. la Comtesse Duchatel, in whose honour the room was named. Of these two, La Source is by far the more beautiful. It was not painted till Ingres was seventy-six years old, though he made a sketch for it forty years earlier.
Against the rock at the foot of which is a shallow pool, stands the nude figure of a slender girl, holding
LA SOURCE By Ingres
Salle Bucbatel 63
on her left shoulder a Greek vase which she has tipped far up, and out of which the water is running into the pool at her feet. Her blond head is bent slightly to the left under the raised right arm,, and her weight rests on her left leg, the right drawn back a very little. In the pool her bare feet are reflected. This figure is as beauti- ful as a Grecian statue of the great Grecian epoch, and is as subtly modelled, as smoothly rounded, its tones as exquisitely graded as any marble from a master's hand could be. Purity, grace, perfection of line, are here carried to such a height that for the moment it is easy to forget how Titian's rendering of such a subject would glow with colour, or how the flesh would fairly throb with its pulsing life. In its own way it is a bit of almost absolute perfection, — so perfect that even Ingres's adver- saries must acknowledge its masterliness.
The other by Ingres, (Edipus Interrogating the Sphinx, is far less satisfactory. A youth of extraordinarily faultless Creek figure is seen in profile within a grotto which opens at the right, giving a glimpse of sky and clouds, and, lower down, a village. (Edipus is nude save for a sort of mantle-like scarf which is thrown over his right shoulder and falls between his knees. Bending over, with his elbow resting on his knee, he seems to be questioning the so-called Sphinx, a woman-headed sort of griffin. Behind CEdipus, seen through the opening, a man is flying in fright. The young Greek is so carefully drawn, so smoothly modelled, indeed, so tiresomely drawn and modelled, that it cannot arouse the enthusiasm such perfection otherwise might.
CHAPTER V.
GRANDE GALERIE — ITALIAN DIVISIONS
The Grande Galerie, numbered VI. on the plan, is divided into six bays. The first three of these, and part of the fourth, are devoted to the ItaHan school. In the fourth however, besides the few late Italians, are most of the Spanish, English and German pictures owned by the Louvre. The fifth and sixth bays contain Flemish works. For convenience of placing, these bays are marked A, B, C, D, E and F, as they are in the general catalogue of the Louvre.
Beginning at the Italian end, which has an entrance from both Salle des Primitifs and the Salon Carre, one of the earliest masters represented is Francesco di Marco di Giacomo Raibolini, known generally by the name he took in honour of his first master, II Francia. The Nativity and the Crucifixion do not show II Francia at his best, though the latter, with the figure of Job kneeling at the foot of the cross, does give some adequate idea of the tender gravity that is so notable a distinction of the Bolognese painter. II Francia, says M. Alexandre, is somewhat the Perugino of Bologna, with more reflection and less spontaneity than Perugino possessed. His figures, if not made so much after a formula, have, on the whole, less personality, and he has, continues the French critic, a predilection for calm and pure types, for
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pleasing landscape, for silhouettes against a light back- ground, and for intense limpidness of tones. Undoubt- edly it is true that Francia was influenced by Perugino and later by Raphael. His works have a sweet serious- ness, a placid joy and a serenity that partakes of Raphael's earlier manner and in general of the school of Perugino. His colour is rich and full, rather less trans- parent than the Umbrian school at its best. His types are not generally beautiful, but there is a reverent air, a humble every-day sort of piety in all his works that make them the highest achievements of the Bolognese school. Contrary to perhaps the general rule of Italian painting, he is most successful in his easel pictures. Vasari's story of Francia's death from envy of the young Raphael is one of his numerous decorative fictions. The two painters, when Raphael was in all his glory at Rome, and when Francia was an old man, were, it seems likely, acquainted, and it may be that Raphael did send a picture for a church in Bologna to the care of Francia. It is even possible that not long after receiving the St. Cecilia, the old Bolognese painter was taken with the sickness that proved mortal. It is far from Hkely, however, that this sickness was caused by his overmastering envy at the sight of painting so far from what he could produce. The Nativity represents the infant Jesus lying on the ground, his head resting on a hard, round pillow, his mother, Joseph and two angels kneeling in adoration around him. The angel in the centre is a really lovely creation. Her little body is drawn with a fineness of line matching the purity of her face. Mary, too, who is something of the Peruginesque type, is scarcely less lovely. The line from the top of her head to her right shoulder is charming in its sweep and curve. As a com- position the picture is not highly successful. The group
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in the foreground is too much of a straight mass and insufficiently balances the background of high cliffs and distant mountains.
Perugino has a Holy Family, and a Combat between Love and Charity in the first division. Judged by the height Perugino reached in his finest mural paintings, he is a great painter. Judged by innumerable easel pictures, he is weak, sentimental, sugary. It is because these latter are so many and so broadly scattered that the general opinion has given Perugino a relatively low place in art. At his best, however, he is so fine, says so fully the last word of the quattrocento, is so far in advance of most of his contemporaries in purity and brilliance of colour, in feeling for the nude, in a very unusual perception of the beauty and value of landscape and in appreciation of compositional unity, that he must be given, as the American editors of Vasari say, " one of the very highest places in the secondary group."
His Holy Family is one of the half-length pictures he so often painted. The Virgin is sitting in full face, holding the Christ-child on her knee. St. Catherine of Alexandria, in a gold brocaded gown and carrying a pen, is on the right, Joseph, in a red mantle, at the left. The Madonna has a red waist and blue mantle. Her face is heavier about the chin than usual with Perugino, but, though far from one of his best easel pictures, there are still the grace and purity of expression peculiar to him and which, in his greatest works, reach a nobility that is as fine as it is beautiful.
Isabella d'Este ordered the Combat between Love and Charity, giving very full directions as to how it should be painted. It was finished in distemper, about 1505. It is not one of Perugino's most successful works in composition, in expression or in colour. A wide
Granbe Galerie 67
prairie-like field with scattered trees and bushes and a rolling line of hills toward the back is the scene of the conflict. A most unequal conflict it seems, too, though, in accordance with his orders, Perugino left the actual outcome of the affair uncertain. In the foreground Venus and Diana are engaged in a hand-to-hand battle. Diana, at the left, aims her arrow straight at Venus's breast, while the goddess of love has meanwhile applied her torch to her opponent's drapery, which already is scorched. A little at the left Pallas is seen holding Cupid by a bandage tied over his eyes. His bow and arrows are broken at his feet, and her lance is poised to pierce the little fellow to the heart. All about are other Loves, satyrs, and the nymphs of Diana. The little Loves are much the best of the whole scene, the one who is climbing a tree being the m;ost exquisite bit of all. Altogether, though the serene sky and softly rolling plain are admirably treated, it was a subject which was far from Perugino's taste.
A very poor Virgin and Child that is ascribed to Pin- turicchio, gives no idea of the rarely fascinating quali- ties of this master of decoration. Pinturicchio, though said to be a pupil of Perugino, seems to have acquired comparatively few of his teacher's peculiarities, and he never learned to draw the human figure with surety or ease. Nevertheless, his frescoes at Siena and Rome are among the world's treasures. As has been well said, they are full of " an ever-present, tireless fancy, a joyous and fertile imagination."
Full of none of these is the Virgin and Child here. It has the golden background he loved so well to paint, and shows the Madonna seated between two saints, hold- ing a book upon which the child Jesus writes.
Nowhere so well as at the Louvre can Leonardo da
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Vinci be studied. Of the nine pictures most generally regarded as actually by him the Louvre possesses four> and these four are, with the exception of the Cenacola, his most important works and the best preserved of all. For four hundred years the world has sung the praises of Leonardo. Honoured, admired and adored in his own time by both his countrymen and foreigners to an ex- tent accorded few men that history ranks great, the cen- turies have but added wreaths to the laurels of his fame. Perhaps one of the most extraordinary things about this fame is its unlimited scope. " Beyond all men in all things,'* seems to be its dictum. And indeed, there is scarcely any department of human thought or activity for which he does not stand as inventor, instigator, pred- ecessor or at least godfather. Physiologist, astrono- mer, mathematician, engineer, essayist, poet, musician, architect, sculptor, painter, — these are but few of the titles he earned in his wonderful life. Born into the awakening consciousness of a world whose dawn of modern life was flushing her horizon, it is as if all the erstwhile slumbering forces of a mighty universe awoke to find in him a perfect medium for expression. Even to-day, science, invention, mechanism, see his explana- tions, his models, his appliances, in advance of their new est discoveries. The world is still observing the fulfilment of the prognostications of this magician of the fifteenth century. This is what m'akes Leonardo's name a synonym for all wisdom, for all insight, for all discovery, for all genius. No life was ever so wide in its activities, so penetrating in its perceptions, so accomplished in its manifestations. And yet, the curious part of it is that it is due to the least of these manifestations of his genius that his name is accorded such world-wMe paeans of applause. For the part that painting played in the life
(Branbe Galerie 69
of this Florentine, compared with all the other activities of his crowded years, is as a noonday rest in a week of toil. And of what; he accomplished in this brief nooning, only one perfectly complete picture is known to exist to-day. And that, as well as the others which his brush left unfinished, has so suffered from; the ravages of time, of the restorer and of his own feverish experiments, that any adequate idea of their first estate must be im- possible. Nevertheless, it is safe to say that Leonardo's genius, even his genius as shown in hydraulics, in mathe- matics, in physiology, in astronomy, in what-not, rests largely upon just these few, dimmed, incomplete, half- destroyed pictures. He would be known to scientific students in many and diverse fields as a wonderful fore- runner, a marvellous discoverer. But it is his Cenacola, his Mona Lisa, that have drawn the attention of the entire world to his unlimited explorations, his preeminent inventions, his unapproached supremacy in almost every line of human speculation and endeavour.
He has always been called a Florentine, but he was really born at Vinci, half-way between Florence and Pisa. Entering Verocchio's studio when fifteen, where were Perugino and Lorenzo di Credi, at twenty he was a member of the Painters' Guild, and soon after was in receipt of a pension. From Florence, somewhere between 1482 and 1487, he went to Milan, and was in the service of Lodovico Sforza, where he not only modelled the famous colossal statue of Lodovico's father, but where he was engineer, painter, architect and general scientific consulter of the Milanese court. It is during these years that the Virgin of the Rocks now in the Louvre, was painted. From 1449, ^^^er the downfall of Lodovico, for sixteen years Leonardo travelled everywhere in the Italian peninsula, fulfilling all kinds of important com-
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missions. In 1505 came the exposition of his cartoon of the Florentines and Milanese at Anghiari, and some- where near this date must the Mona Lisa be placed. In 15 1 5, after repeated urgings from France, Leonardo went to Paris, where Francois I. lodged him as befitted his fame, and treated him henceforth with the greatest honour. The St. Anne in the Louvre is the only painted record we have of these years. In 15 19 the great spirit was at rest.
The Madonna of the Rocks is so named from the rocky cavern in which the group is placed. In the centre Mary is kneeling in nearly full face, her right hand out- stretched and resting on the shoulder of the little St. John, who kneels at the left of the picture. His hands are clasped in adoring praise and in his arms is his long reed cross. Mary's left hand is spread open and is held above the head of the tiny Christ who sits in front of her in profile, his right hand lifted, blessing the little Baptist. He is supported by a young girl angel sitting beside him, her wings half lost in the shadow. Behind the group the rocky walls of the cave break into sharp points and open places, showing a winding stream and distant moun- tains. The whole scene is one of ineffable beauty. The Virgin has something of the smile of Mona Lisa, but it is chastened, saddened and more tender. The lines of her face are longer, her head is more delicate, with finer, purer planes. The angel is still lovelier. There is such match- less purity, such a winsome wistfulness, such a naivete, and yet such a wonderful pride as no painter had ex- pressed before. Gautier says that no human face has ever had such beauty, — it is what men may only dream of. As for the children, he goes on to cry rapturously that " Nothing could be more admirable than the foreshorten- ing of the two tender little crouching bodies, nothing
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more finely modelled than the little limbs, with their in- finite gradations of shadow." The picture is darkened by the years, but still keeps a tender harmony of tones.
St. John the Baptist was also in the collection of Fran- gois I. It has grown very deep in the shadows, and has been repainted in many places. But neither time nor un- skilled hands have wholly spoiled the wondrous modelling of the face or of that uplifted hand and arm. It is a half- length figure showing the Baptist, if it is he, standing, with his body facing the right, his face turned far toward the left. In his left hand he holds the tall reed cross, while with his right he points up to it.
The claim that he does not represent the Man of the Wilderness at all seems borne out by his type of face and especially by his expression. It is the head of a Greek nymph or fawn, — for it is hard to guess whether it be man or woman, — soft, luxurious in outline, full of an aesthetic beauty of curve and contour, only intensified and made more voluptuously seductive by the entrancing smile of the curving lips, the dancing light in the melting eyes that look out from under the wealth of curls. The mystery of the shadow out of which his figure emerges as if drawn from a dream into reality, adds to the sublety and tenderness of the modelling of this face and shoulder and arm.
There is more doubt among critics about the portrait called La Belle Feronniere. Morelli, Frizzoni, Richter, Armstrong and Berenson consider it not at all his work, while Miintz, Liibke, Rosenburg, Brun and Gruyer all think it can belong to no one else. It is badly cracked and has been much repainted. In spite of a certain hard- ness in contour and modelling, with a decided lack of that suavity so peculiarly Leonardo's, the portrait has great charm and is full of a personality that, if far less intense
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and subjective than the Mona Lisa, is franker, simpler and perhaps more honest. And out of the eyes looks the soul as only Leonardo and Rembrandt could show it
It is hardly a half-length figure, a balustrade cutting it above the waist line. She is in three-quarters position, dressed in a square-cut velvet gown with a pearl necklace wound four times about her firm, full neck. Her hair is brought down on to each cheek and covers both ears, with a jewel on the forehead between the waves. She is evidently a " lady of quality," though not now believed to be Isabella of Mantua. It seems more probable that she was Lucrezia Crevelli of Milan.
Salome Receiving the Head of John the Baptist, by Luini, was in the collection of Louis XIV. Salome, in a green dress with plaited muslin undersleeves and chemi- sette, stands at the left, a half-length figure only, holding in her outstretched hands the huge platter. At the right, on about a line with her forehead, a hand, wrist and bit of sleeve appear, the rest of the arm as well as all the person owning it being out of the picture. The hand holds by the hair the severed head of the Baptist, streams of blood running from it into the platter. The grue- someness of the scene is intensified by this unattached hand coming out, it seems, of nowhere, with its prey. Salome has an unusual sort of beauty, with no hint of wickedness, unless it lies in the depths of those calmly watching eyes. She is absolutely indifferent, apparently, to the fearful trophy she is to carry, though she has turned her face so that she does not actually see it. The red brown tresses falling in waves over her temples and down below her shoulders, emphasize her pure, pale beauty, and with their colour, joined to the sombre flames in those mysterious eyes, help to suggest the passionate possibilities in this otherwise seemingly coldly placid
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woman. The head of John is livid; its bluish lips, its fallen, dead lids that still appear to quiver with the last agony, the dripping blood, — all adding to its ghastly- horror.
Fra Bartolommeo and Albertinelli are each represented here by two pictures. The Holy Family, sometimes called The Marriage of St. Catherine, was painted by Bartolommeo while the two men were still working in companionship, but it is wholly by the Frate's hand. After he had finished it he painted another, like it except for certain variations, which is now in the Pitti. The one here was done in 151 1 for the convent of San Marco. The following year the Florentine government purchased it and gave it to Jacques Hurault, Bishop of Autun, and then envoy of Louis XII. at Florence. He bequeathed it to the cathedral at Autun, and there it stayed till the French Revolution, when it was taken away and at length placed in the Louvre.
It represents the Virgin on a low throne under a sort of dome, with the child Jesus standing at her knee, plac- ing the ring on the hand of St. Catherine of Siena, who kneels at the left at his feet. On either side are groups of saints, and above three beautifully modelled angels lift the folds of the green drapery that depends from the curving dome. Mary is clad in a red robe, a long blue mantle lined with green hanging from her shoulders. Her position is both noble and graceful, the lines con- forming admirably to the space allotted her. One hand is on her knee loosely holding a book, while with the tips of the fingers of her other hand she gently touches the forehead of the little Jesus. Her head is bent downward and to the left, and, with the soft, contemplative curves of her lovely mouth, the purity of her brow, and her ador- able chin, she is one of the Frate's fairest creations.
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The child is a round, rosy, smiling babe, and if not of a very high order spiritually considered, yet with an en- trancing humanness about him that is rarely appealing. St. Catherine, who kneels nearly back to, her profile lost in shadow, is dressed in the white of the Dominican order. She makes, with her substantial, firmly modelled figure, a splendid balance, bringing the centre of the picture thus nearer to the foregrolind, though she herself is so treated that one's eyes slip directly from her to the child before her. The saints on each side are noble, individualized personages, giving, by the arrangement of the lines of their figures and draperies, a fine depth to the picture. On the left are St. Peter, St. Vincent and St. Stephen. On the right a young girl saint in green and red, St. Bartholomew and another saint, and in the back- ground St. Dominic and St. Francis are observed em- bracing each other.
If this picture is not one of Fra Bartolommeo's greatest efforts, it does give a very fair idea of his especial abili- ties. It is as a master of composition, this term including not only well-balanced masses, but a management of drapery so skilful that they become integral parts of the pictorial scheme, and as a rich and harmonious colourist, that he takes rank among the leading painters of the great Florentine school. He was one of the very first of the Renaissance masters to feel the beauty of space, and to treat his figures not as individuals so much, but as adjuncts to the picture as a whole. His scheme of geometrical and rhythmical composition was similar to Leonardo's, but he carried it to a scientific extent not attempted by Leonardo. Bartolommeo's draperies, till they became overheavy and voluminous from the in- fluence of Michelangelo, are rarely beautiful, falling in line and fold with a stateliness that is almost as express-
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ive as the figures themselves. In colour, too, especially after his visit to Venice, Bartolommeo shows a vigour and brilliancy joined with a richness and depth unexcelled by any of his contemporaries, and beyond that of any Florentine of his day.
Albertinelli never equalled his friend as a painter, but his pictures have many of the same general characteristics, and if he had never done anything but his Visitation, now> in the Uffizi, it would be enough to rank him as an admi- rable artist. And in all his work he is felt to have been a serious, dignified and earnest worker.
Of his two pictures in the Louvre, the Virgin and Child is the more interesting. In it Mary, heavily draped, stands on a pedestal, holding the infant Jesus in her arms. He is turning to the left to bless St. Jerome who kneels at the side of the pedestal reading from a big book. At the right is St. Zenobius in his episcopal robes, his mitre before him. His hands are met in prayerful adoration, and his fine old head, which is in profile, is lifted to the group above. Behind him in the landscape are scenes taken from his life, while back of St. Jerome, on a rocky moun- tain, are depicted episodes from his career. The pedestal is ornamented with a low relief of Adam and Eve, the serpent wound about a tree-trunk between them. The pyramidal form here used is evidence of Bartolommeo's influence, though the latter usually employed it in a less patent and simple manner. The figure of Mary, if rather overweighted with clothes, has a nobility of bearing that, with a trifle less movement of the head, would be classic in its pose.
There are four pictures by Andrea Solario, in the first bay, of which the Virgin with the Green Cushion is by far the most lovely. In this, as in much of his work, Solario shows how strongly he was influenced by Leo-
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nardo in both modelling and treatment of chiaroscuro. M. Alexandre, however, remarks that he often reflects more the old school of Lombardy and of Padua. But there are also other influences discernible in his paintings. For though he is classed as belonging to the Lombard school, he was much in Venice, where he certainly was brought into contact with the works of the Flemish school and of Antonello da Messina. He also went to France and decorated the chapel of the Chateau de Gaillon.
The Madonna with the Green Cushion is one of Solario's most celebrated pictures, and is full of a ma* ternal tenderness that is supremely aflfecting. Lifting the child slightly with her right hand from the green cushion where he lies, the Madonna bends over to nurse him. Behind them is a mass of foliage on each side of which a distant landscape can be seen. The child has a round little body of most bewitching curves, and modelled with the fulness and freedom of a hand sure and supple. His baby-like attitude as he grabs his right foot and strikes out into the air with the other, is more naturalistic than would have seemed possible to painters even a few years before Solario's time. As uncon- ventional and natural is the baby's beautiful head with its thick, long curls, its broad forehead, its questioning eyes. Mary, as she leans over, is equally lovely. Her soft hair, rolling off her forehead, is mostly hidden by a thick white drapery. Nothing more appealing than her love-lit face can be imagined, drawn as it is with an exquisiteness of line only matched by its spiritual expression.
The Portrait of Charles d'Amboise is an example of what Solario could do in portraiture. It too, M. Alex- andre says, suggests Leonardo in its treatment. At all events it is a vigorous, lifelike portrait, whose accuracy of line and proportion is balanced by its excellent colour
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and lighting. It is not much more than a bust, showing M. d'Anrboise clad in a very magnificent brocaded and fur-trimmed garment, with a heavy chain over his shoulders and a cap on his Medici-cut hair. Turned three- quarters to the left, he is painted with his eyes looking directly at the spectator. A landscape of winding river and distant mountains again reminds one of Leonardo.
The Head of St. John cut off and placed on a dish is even more Leonardesque in its feeling.
A Christ Appearing to Mary Magdalene, by Credi, is a poor replica of the same subject in the Uffizi. The surface has been much abraded. Christ is in the garden walking toward the left and stopping to turn and bless the Magda- lene, who is kneeling at the right. The figure of Christ is lacking in dignity and power and his face in expres- sion. Mary's face is more successful, and her long curl- ing hair is well treated, but as a whole it is not even a good example of Credi.
Of very different calibre are the four pictures by Andrea del Sarto in Bay A of the Grande Galerie. From the time of Vasari Andrea del Sarto's name has been coupled with dishonour, disaster and despair. Dis- honour, because he confiscated to his own use funds that had been confided to him for other purposes; disaster, because he was married to a termagant, a coquette and an utterly selfish, headstrong woman, and because he was shunned by his compatriots after his theft; despair, because of anguish at his own misdeeds, his wife's perfidy and his failure to reach the standard in art set by Leo- nardo, Michelangelo and Raphael. The man himself has been more the subject of controversy and question than have been his works. It would seem as if, having dis- cussed his personality with all the avidity of a cross-road gossip, the scandal-mongers found no time to consider
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his pictures. If such consideration was given, however, the paintings did not greatly gain thereby. Compared always, and, be it noted, only, with those of Michelangelo, Leonardo and Raphael, they were rapidly dismissed as being neither so majestic, so powerful, so purely beautiful nor so epoch-making.
The facts of the case now appear to show that Andrea del Sarto has been maligned by historian, poet and critic. Absolutely no proof of his treachery to Frangois I. can be found, except Vasari's word. Many other things make it extremely improbable that Vasari's statement was even approximately true. That he died despised by his countrymen, with his works unsought, unbought, another of Vasari's cheerful bits of scandal, is proved to be the exact opposite of the truth. There only remains the truculent account of poor Del Sarto's wife. Whether this is true or not, is perhaps less possible of verification. But at least even Vasari states that Del Sarto counted himself proud to be the husband of the beautiful woman who was always his Madonna model. And surely, if the hus- band was satisfied, he required no pity.
As a painter the criticism stands more just, though in its terms far too limited. Michelangelo, at his supremest, did reach heights Andrea never scaled; Leonardo, when the mood was on him, explored the mystery, the secrets of a world Andrea scarce knew existed; Raphael, the loved of gods and men, at his happiest wielded a brush that turned all to gold when Andrea might, at best, have only silvered. And yet, that is only half-truth. For, to begin with, Andrea del Sarto never had the chances that fate bestowed so prodigally upon these others. Given a Sistine or a Vatican council-chamber to decorate, what might the superior call have forced him to accomplish? It was Michelangelo who is reported to have told
1
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Raphael that if Del Sarto had his opportunity he would give him a hard pull. Atid at least it is true that the greater the demand upon him the greater his achievement. As the American editors of Vasari have noted, after the Sistine and the Stanze, the mural decoration of the six- teenth century in Italy that can rank third is Andrea del Sarto's series of frescoes in the Chiostro dello Scalzo.
Here it may be well to emphasize again the fact that it is always with the mightiest works of these mighty masters that his labours are compared. It seems to be truth that this Florentine painter, who was one of the two great Italians that Frangois I. persuaded to come to Paris, suffers most from his proximity to the three magic names of Italy's Renaissance. And yet this very proximity can be regarded as evidence of his real great- ness. For he was never absorbed by these men. Unlike the painters in Rome who were about Michelangelo and Raphael, or those others who were followers of Leo- nardo, he never lost his personality. He learned to use chiaroscuro with a skill and beauty unequalled by any disciple of the painter of the one Cenacola. But he used it in his own way, adapting it to his own ends and making it truly his. The sweep of line, the grandeur of form, the imposing attitude, — those he learned perhaps partly from the sculptor who painted the vault of the Sistine Chapel. Yet it is always Andrea, not Michelangelo, we think of when looking at a Del Sarto Madonna. From Raphael, too, he may have acquired some of the grace, the brilHancy, the solidity of his compositions, — but not even by Raphael is he dominated. In fact, he was of him- self big enough to take from any one what he wished and to transform it till it was his alone, — which assuredly is a trait of only the great originators.
To sum up : in everything he did there is great knowl-
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edge concealed by greater charm ; great skill, again sub- merged by the greater seduction of his "soft silver harmonies." There is grasp of personality, power of analysis, ability to present the very heart of the subject, a colour that is as sensuous as it is delicate, a beauty of line as sure as it is sweeping, an understanding of compo- sition as large and free as it is definite and certain, a spiritual quality that in its last analysis is felt perhaps to be allied to the flesh, yet that is never fleshly. In other words, there are truth, beauty and infinite grace in all Del Sarto's works. The best of them even closely ap- proach the grandeur and dignity that only the greatest masters of all timie have fully expressed. But generally he is just below this group. He holds perhaps a place somewhat like that accorded Van Dyck. If not among the stars of the first magnitude, he is above those of the second, and thus has a unique position, by its very separa- tion more human, more appealing, more knowable.
All of his pictures in the Louvre have suffered greatly from restoration. So much indeed have they been re- painted, that often, instead of being Italian in the char- acter of the heads, they have a distinctly French aspect, as if Lucrezia had lost her Italian beauty in an effort to acquire the style of the French capital. The Charity, one of his most noble works, has, in some respects, been ruined by this treatment. Originally it was upon wood. In 1550 it was transferred to canvas by Picault, and then in 1842, having become hurt from dampness, it was once more put upon a new canvas. The result, so far as colour goes, has been disastrous in the extreme. Not less lamentable is the change that has- taken place in the face of Charity. As usual, the model for this majestic figure was his wife, and there is still enough left of the original work to show the well-known oval of cheek and
CHARITY liy Andrea del Sarto
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chin, the high brow and the deep eyes. But over it all an insidious something has spread, giving a most extra- ordinarily French character to the whole face. The general lines of the picture, however, the fall of the draperies, the scheme of the chiaroscuro, are presumably practically as the painter left them. And they are all of wonderful beauty. The picture was painted for Frangois I. sometime about 1518, soon after Andrea arrived in the French capital. It belongs, then, to what is called his second period.
In a charming hilly landscape, seated on a rock in the foreground, is Charity, clad in a rose-pink gown and a turquoise blue mantle. In her lap she holds and nurses one small, naked boy, while her right arm encircles another who kneels beside her and offers her a bunch of flowers. Below, at the left, a third has flung himself over on to a bit of the drapery from her robe, and, with face buried in his arms, is fast asleep in an oblivion that speaks absolute trust in the care above him. The majestic beauty of this woman, the noble lines of her pose, the supple folds of the ample but quiet drapery about her, are beyond praise. Here are no exaggeration for effect, no overloading of drapery, no straining for theatrical attitude. The absolute naturalness and sim- plicity of the whole scheme are among its greatest charms. In spite of the tender supervision she evinces for these babies in her care, there is a certain impersonality in her regard that exactly defines the allegory. As M. Gautier has happily observed, she is Charity, not Maternity. The three children are no less perfect in their own way. Their chubby, well-fed little bodies, over which the light plays so entrancingly, changing from brilliancy to a dim mysteriousness of shadow, giving an effect that is almost equal to a Correggio, their graceful, childlike abandon-
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ment in their unstudied poses, — all is rendered with a skill that never strikes a false note. It is impossible, too, not to speak again of the wonderful drapery of Charity. No one, surely, has ever better expressed the softness, the pliability of stuff than Andrea del Sarto. No one, either, has ever treated big, loose folds more simply, more inevitably than in that robe as it falls over her right knee and on to her extended foot.
The little oval picture of the Holy Family has been so completely repainted, that there is little of Del Sarto left. Only in the general lines of its composition, and big mass- ing of light and shade is it probably as he first blocked it out. A soft brown carbon photograph of it gives per- haps a truer idea of its first estate than does its present unsatisfactory colour.
On her knees in the centre is the Virgin, almost in profile, though her bent face is turned three-quarters to the spectator. On her lap is the child Jesus, his little body so twisted that his back is brought round toward the front, while his head is turned again over his left shoul- der as he looks out of the picture. Nearly opposite at the left is Elizabeth, with the little John standing within her surrounding arms. Elizabeth's face is in profile and she is looking into the background where, behind Mary, Joseph is seen. The light falls full on the Christ-child, on the right side of John and over Mary's face and Elizabeth's cap and chin. The rest of the composition is largely submerged in a luminous shadow that, in its original state, must have been of rare beauty of tone. Mary is again Lucrezia, and has a piquant, girlish charm that even restoring has not spoiled. Elizabeth's fine, strong profile is even more interesting in its suggestion of vigorous but gentle personality.
The other Holy Family was, according to Vasari,
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painted for the King of France, who was so hugely pleased with it that he gave the merchants who trans- ported it to him four times the price agreed upon with Del Sarto. It is supposed to be the original of those in Munich and Vienna, but has, as usual, been so badly repainted that its first condition can only be conjectured. Mary kneels at the left, facing three-quarters to the right, dressed in a rose-coloured robe, with a blue mantle falling about her knees. Her left arm is on the shoulders of the baby Jesus, who, with his right knee pressed against her leg, and his right hand grasping her waist, seems prepar- ing to spring into her lap. He has stopped a second to turn a laughing, backward glance over his shoulder to the small St. John who stands beside him between Eliza- beth's knees, her encircling arms about him. Elizabeth appears to be the same model who posed for this charac- ter in the oval picture. Here she is looking down at her son, her head heavily draped in a white covering that comes on to her shoulders over her blue robe. Back of the Virgin, in the shadow, are two angels, their wings breaking the dark space over their heads. The figures almost wholly fill the composition, but there is no crowd- ing, no overloading, — always a perfect balance of parts, a fine arrangement of light and shade and beautiful lines. In this same bay are a Nativity and a Portrait of a Man by Giulio Romano, Raphael's most noted assistant. He not only worked constantly with the Urbinate before he died, but he finished many of his works after his death. While Raphael was alive, Romano's talent was entirely absorbed by his master. He painted very little, if anything, that was wholly his own, though many of the works attributed to-day to Raphael are his only in original conception of composition, every bit of the execution being by Giulio. After Raphael's death,
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Giulio's own more impetuous fancy, more robust nature and decidedly coarser temperament, led him to desert the style and manner of the greater artist. His works showed less and less of Raphael's influence and more and more exaggeration, excessive action and cruder colour. Nevertheless, Giulio had a vivid, if sometimes rather hysterical imagination, a good, if occasionally raw sense of colour. He was a vigorous draughtsman, and his compositions had dignity and not seldom grandeur. Of his easel pictures, which are few except those he painted under Raphael's direction, the Louvre possesses several excellent examples.
The Portrait of a Man was for long supposed to be a likeness of himself. It was an incorrect attribution, though whose it is is still a matter of conjecture. The picture is a half-length, turned three-quarters to the right, dressed in black, with a long beard and short black curly hair. There is much spirit in the handling.
The next bay of the Grande Galerie holds a large pro- portion of the Louvre's Italian pictures. Among them are the two which the catalogue ascribes to the brothers Bellini. The brothers Giovanni and Gfentile Bellini were sons and pupils of Jacopo Bellini, who, in his turn, was a pupil of Gentile da Fabriano, and named his oldest son for that well-loved teacher. Giovanni again was teacher of Titian. He was much influenced by Mantegna, the latter in turn by him', so that some of Giovanni's earlier pictures have been confounded with Mantegna's. Giovanni was the greatest Venetian painter of the fifteenth century. His development was slow but sure, and his last great works are incomparably beautiful in colour, line and mass. There are a dignity and aus- terity about his Madonnas that no other Venetian ever succeeded in expressing. His brother Gentile's special
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field was portraiture, in which he was both reaHstic and dramatic. The brush-work of the two is smooth, subtle and almost imperceptible.
The Holy Family catalogued as by Giovanni is, ac- cording to Morelli and other authorities, not by him, but by Rondinello, one of his pupils and assistants. It has, of course, certain " Bellinesque " traits, as would be natural in the work of an assistant. There is a hint of the wonderful golden tone of Giovanni; the Madonna has something of the grand aloofness of the Venetian, and the drawing and modelling recall Giovanni, if not at his highest. Like so many of the Bellini pictures, too, the figures are only half-length.
Behind a balustrade, the very top of which is the base of the picture, stands Mary, turned in three-quarters view to the left, supporting the baby Jesus who stands up- right on the top of the railing. He is a fat, rather tightly modelled little figure, with eyes far apart, gazing out with a babyish, wondering look, while with his right hand he makes the sign of the blessing. Mary, dressed in blue, with a yellow over-robe and white head-dress, is drawn with a dignity but coldness of line that gives her a sort of impersonality, as if she were an uninterested spectator. Her heavy eyebrows, drooping lids, pronounced nose and small mouth, make her face very unlike the Umbrian, Florentine or Siennese type of Madonna. Behind the miother and child, at the left, is Sebastian, his hands joined, his eyes wistful. At the right is St. Peter, his rugged, bushy-bearded face in strong contrast to the soft, full, smooth countenance of St. Sebastian. Above this group are three cherubs, two in extremely fore- shortened positions.
The panel of Portraits of Two Men, called by Gentile Bellini, is now generally considered not to be by Bellini,
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It may perhaps be by Catena, or Bissolo. They are really very fine heads, full of strong drawing, characterization and individuality, as modern in their feeling as if done by a painter of to-day. They are merely heads, being cut off just below their shoulders. Half facing each other, each is thus in three-quarters view. With their long, thick hair, strongly marked features and searching eyes, they are typical Italians of the late fifteenth century.
One of the two pictures attributed to Crivelli in the Louvre is St. Bernard of Siena, which is in this room. Crivelli called himself a Venetian, but he partakes of little that was characteristic of that school. His colour was frequently unpleasing, his figures angular, often ugly, generally ill-drawn. He remained very archaic in many ways, keeping, for instance, always to the raised gold work in trimmings of gowns, halos, and accessories. Yet he had great form and energy, and only Mantegna really eclipsed him in a certain rude powder. He is sup- posed to have been a pupil of Squarcione. Unlike his contemporary Venetian artists he always painted in tempera.
His St. Bernard was originally in Santa Annunziata at Ascoli. It shows the saint in the costume of his order, standing before a drapery where are suspended fruits, looking at two little " donors " who are kneeling before him.
Andrea Mantegna, who has four pictures here, was born in Padua, and studied with Squarcione, which feeble painter claimed many of his works as his own. Mantegna was greatly influenced by Fra Filippo Lippi, whose works in Padua he had a chance to study, and also by Bellini. He has been said as well to unite the qualities of both Diirer and Michelangelo. His colour was clear and trans- parent if rather dry, his modelling was sure and definite
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with good effects of light and shade. He was a better colourist than any contemporary Venetian. Kugler says : " He combined an intensely realistic tendency with an ardent love for the antique, adding to them great powers of invention, a solemn poetry of feeling, the grandest ex- pression of passion and a mastery of hand which is almost unique. Whoever has learned to relish this great master will never overlook a scrap by him; for while his works sometimes show a certain austerity and harsh- ness bordering on grimace, they have always a force and an energy of will which belong to no one else."
The Crucifixion here was only a predella of an altar- piece painted for St. Zeno at Verona. The whole work was taken to Paris by Napoleon and returned minus this predella, now one of the most prized gems of the Louvre. For nobility of feeling and dignity of treatment it would be hard to surpass it. The foreground of the picture is a paving made of big square stones into which the three crosses have been driven. Upon the central one, placed with its arms squarely across, is Christ. On each side is another, so turned that its arms make a right angle with the central one. There is nothing directly in front of or very near to Christ, the other personages of the scene being grouped about the robbers. At the right two mounted soldiers taunt the robber, or watch the Romans below, who are playing dice over the division of the clothes of Jesus. At the left Mary has fallen into the arms of two women, while others guard her behind. St. John stands at the foot of the second robber's cross gazing at his master, his hands clasped in agony. In the distance on a high hill is Jerusalem, and on the road thither, leaving Calvary, a procession of people mounted and on foot. Above, a blue sky streaked with clouds. So much for the general placing. Horrible as is the subject,
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Mantegna has treated it with a restrained passion that alone bespeaks the great artist. Nothing is overdone, — the extreme agony of the time, the despair and grief of Mary and John never transcend the Hmits of pictorial art. Though the climax of grief is here depicted, all immoderation is avoided. It is this very restraint that makes the scene even more poignant. The figure of the Crucified One is a marvel of anatomical correctness The way he hangs upon the driven nails is only one of the master-strokes. Mary has perhaps never been better expressed as the Mater Dolorosa. The utter slump of her body, the helpless drop of her arms and hands, the sense of weight upon her supporters, this is all a technical marvel only equalled by the agonized face that has half lost consciousness under its woe. Very beautiful is the figure of John, young, graceful, as befits the "best beloved " of the master. Equally splendid in drawing, modelling and pose are the Romans on the right. Their indiflference and carelessness, while interrupting the other- wise unbroken anguish of the scene, add, by their very callousness, to the tremendous effect of the whole.
Far removed from this is the spirit of the Parnassus. Mantegna is one of the few painters who could adapt his style absolutely to the subject in hand. Neither his types nor his manner of treatment suggest cast-iron rules. The Parnassus is the very essence of Greek myth- ology. The joyousness, the freedom, the beauty, the in- consequence, so typical of the lives of the gods as told in myth, are as clearly shown as are the rhythm of curving line, the grace of dancing form!, the perfection of classic figure. Mantegna's love of the antique, and his keen knowledge of the human figure, are here both blazoned. But perhaps it is its spontaneity, its gay abandonment, that makes the longest impression. Were ever the nine
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Muses so exquisitely depicted ? Has he not here ensnared the very spirit of Dance? It is not only the individual grace and rhythm and motion of each one of the flying figures that so enthrall. It is the composite picture of the whole nine that leaves in the mind a vision of flying, diaphanous drapery, of dancing feet, of arms and legs that seem music incarnated. Light as thistle-down, soft as summer clouds, full of a lilt that is the quintessence of melody, this line of dancing Muses is Greece, and Greek art, epitomized.
The rest of the picture is scarcely less remarkable. Above these Muses, on a high, wooded and rocky arch, through which the distant landscape is seen, stand Venus and Mars. Behind them is a couch with a group of trees as background. Mars is a royal figure in full armour, Venus is nude. No one up to this time in Italian art had ever half so perfectly expressed the nude. She stands there in a typically classic position, not far removed from the pose of the Venus of Milo, her weight so resting upon her left leg that her left hip makes the outward curve of the graceful line from shoulder to ankle. Other Italians were to paint this goddess of love, perhaps, more sensuously, more humanly, but it is doubtful if any ever kept so strongly the feeling of the Greek ideal. Through her left arm Mars has drawn his right and the two lovers are saying farewell. Just below the arched rock at the foot of a mountain Vulcan is seen in an overpowering rage, while a small Cupid blows a shooting-tube at him in derision. At the left in the foreground Apollo plays a lyre to which the Muses dance. And at the extreme right Mercury holds Pegasus, whose wings are spread ready for flight. Mercury is another rarely beautiful figure, and Pegasus is the realization of a poet's dream.
Another important Mantcgna is his Madonna of
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Victory. This he painted for Giovanni Francesco Gon- zaga, Marquis of Mantua, as a commemoration of his victory over Charles VIII. of France. The Madonna is .seated on a throne made of trellis work covered with vines, fruits and flowers. The baby Jesus stands upright upon her lap blessing the donor who kneels in armour at the left. Opposite him is St. Elizabeth whose right elbow rests on the base of the throne and beside the feet of a little nude John who stands there gazing upward, his right hand raised in greeting. On each side of the Virgin are two other saints : St. Michael on the left, a very unusually beautiful figure with an ideal face of purity and strength, with St. Andrew behind him. On the other side are St. Gteorge or St. Maurice, and St. Longinus. St. George and St. Michael hold out on each side the Virgin's mantle, so that Gonzaga, as well as Elizabeth and John, are within its shelter. Gonzaga, by the way, is evidently true to life. Mantegna would never have ventured to paint such a treacherous face if it had not existed in the model. The overloading here of fruit and flower does not spoil this rarely splendid picture. There are dignity, nobility and grace in the Madonna, and the saints are very fine specimens of early Italian art.
It was in 1474 that Antonello da Messina painted his famous Portrait of a Man, now in this room of the Louvre. Antonello was a southern Italian who preferred North Italy to live in, and though called a Neapolitan, his work belongs distinctly to the school of which Bellini, Giorgione and Titian are the great names. His work at first was angular, feeble and ill-drawn, and it was not till he went to Venice, somewhere about 1470, that his style showed the wonderful advance that soon made him a master of greater power than Giovanni Bellini. That
MADONNA OF VICTORY By MatUegna
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this is not overstated the mere dates of some of the works of the two painters will prove. Compare any picture of Bellini's of the date of Antonello's Portrait here, with this latter, and see how far below it falls. It was not till 1487 that the great Venetian revealed his slow-growing but more wonderful genius in the Madonnas that are world-famed. It was as a portrait-painter that Antonello was at his best, and it was in that line that his contem- poraries acknowledged his supremacy. He was the one from whom Giovanni Bellini learned the use of oil paints, and thus Antonello may be said to have introduced it into Italy. Vasari's statement that he acquired his knowledge of the new medium on a visit to Flanders is probably untrue. Pictures by Van Eyck were imported into Italy and Antonello may easily have seen them in Naples.
The Portrait-bust here is considered not only one of the finest works of the painter, but one of the finest por- traits in existence. Bellini himself, nor Titian, scarcely ever surpassed it in reality, in intensity of expression, in its plastic feeling, its subtle modelling, its splendid flesh-tones. It represents a man in early middle-age, clean shaven, with a thick wig of hair cropped straight across the forehead and bunching over the ears to the base of the neck. Over this is a high, round, black cap. His loose coat is black also and fits into a straight standing collar close about his neck, at the edge of which a bit of white shows. His head is turned three-quarters to the left, while his eyes look to the right so that he gazes straight at the spectator. These eyes are remarkable. There is a translucence, a limpidity about the pupil, a marvellous feeling of flesh about the eyelids that accen- tuate what seems to be actual vision. It seems hardly credible that those sternly regarding eyes do not see as
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clearly as those of a living man. Not less remarkable is the rest of the countenance. To speak of the smooth^ astute modelling, that never suggests brush-work ; of the flesh with the undertones made, it seems, of actual blood- corpuscles ; of those full, pressed lips as pulsingly soft as life itself ; of that finely drawn, rather sharp nose ; of that square, aggressive chin and high cheek-bones, — to speak of any or all of these is only to emphasize the vary- ing elements in the picture as a whole. It is the living presentation of a very much alive Italian of the fifteenth century, more valuable as a historical document of life than reams of historical research.
Cima da Conegliano has but one picture in the Louvre, but that, says M. Alexandre, is a magnificent one. It represents the Virgin and Child seated upon a throne- chair in front of a tall baldaquin on a balcony with a charming landscape for background, and St. John and Mary Magdalene for attendants. Mary is one of Cima's most charming Madonnas, her round face, of rather a peasant type, full of a sweet maternal expression, her attitude, as she leans over the baby, one of grace and tender solicitude. Jesus has a very natural, childlike pose, resting on his right arm and turning to look at John, who is depicted as a youth many years older. The Magdalene half-kneels at the right, and receives very little attention from either mother or babe. The land- scape, with its wooded cliff at the right, and its low-lying valley stretching to farther hills, is a scene from the Friuli country, often chosen by Venetian painters of this era.
Cima has a certain cleanness, polish, and brilliance that reminds one, as critics have not failed to notice, of Credi, though the former has more richness of colour, as is to be expected of a Venetian, while Lorenzo di Credi has
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PORTRAIT OF A MAN By Messina
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perhaps more nobility of line. Cimia was a pupil of Alvise Vivarini, and we know little more about him.
If not much is known of Cima, still less, from one point of view, can be definitely stated about Giorgione, the supposed author of the Holy Family in this bay of the Grande Galerie. Around no painter's name, probably, has a fiercer fight raged than about this " Great George," of Castel franco, — the golden youth who, according to Va- sari, and to many later critics, influenced all Venetian art, influenced Titian himself to such a degree that from his day on only those paintings that were " Giorgionesque " received full praise and appreciation. He and Titian were both pupils of Giovanni Bellini, and so compelling, it is related, was the young Giorgione's personality and talent that old Giambellini himself made a desperate attempt to remodel his own style after that of his pupil. Titian in his turn was equally impressed with his fellow pupil's genius, and, after leaving Bellini's hottega, took lessons of Giorgione. And Giorgione's fame spread all over Italy and pictures by him were in demand in every wealthy household. Such is the tradition, — if it be no more than that. Since those days works by him were supposed to be in every museum, every private collection in Europe. But finally came destructive as well as re- constructive criticism. One by one the pictures ascribed to the young Venetian have been torn away from him, till now not half a dozen are indisputably his. So little, indeed, is left him that there seems some justice in the questions that naturally arise. From whence come the universal praise and admiration given his name? Why is his influence over Titian and the rest of the Venetians so positively stated? How can one tell, in the dearth of works positively his, what his style really was, or to what degree of excellence he had attained when, at
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only thirty-two, he died? Is it wholly upon the record that Vasari left — Vasari, the notoriously inaccurate? Why is Titian supposed to be indebted to Giorgione in- stead of Giorgione to Titian?
If there seems to be no very definite answer to all these questions, or one that to-morrow may not be overturned, perhaps the most common-sense explanation of the uni- versally conceded debt of Titian to him lies in the dates of the two men's lives. Giorgione died before a single painting can be positively assigned to Titian. For the earliest dated work by the latter are the frescoes of St. Antonio, done in 151 1. And Giorgione died in 15 10. Therefore, all the works attributed to Giorgione were executed before that date. Since, then, there is unques- tionably much in Titian that resembles the style, the colour, the design of these works, it is credible that it was Giorgione who influenced him, rather than he Giorgione. The contemporary estimation in which he was held, Vasari unquestionably voices. Now, at the end of all the debates between critics, after all these centuries, Giorgione is probably best or most generally known by his Madonna at Castelfranco and by the Concert, whether or not by him, at the Pitti. A glowing colour for which the word divine seems not inappropriate, a consummate mastery of line, a musical sense unlike any other painter, a joyous exuberance joined to exquisite tenderness as shown in landscape of fields and trees and water, and a refinement of the sensuous unknown to Titian, these inadequately perhaps characterize one's impression of a work by Giorgione.
Of the Holy Family in this bay which is ascribed to him, a pretty general opinion exists that it is not his, though some critics think it may be a late work which Sebastiano del Piombo finished after Giorgione's death.
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This picture, Mr. Herbert Cook says, " is marked by a lurid splendour of colour and a certain rough grandeur of expression well calculated to jar with any preconceived notion of Giorgionesque sobriety and reserve. Yet here, if anywhere, we get that fuoco Giorgionesco of which Vasari speaks, that intensity of feeling, rendered with a vivacity and power to which the artist could only have attained in his latest days."
The Virgin is seated at the left, a slightly over half- length figure, with Joseph's head and shoulders seen behind her still more at the left. She is in three-quarters position, dressed in a red gown, a blue mantle lined with green and a white drapery over her head and shoulders. On her knee is the baby Christ whom she draws toward her by the fold of muslin about his waist, the ends of which she holds in her left hand. Before them, only head and shoulders appearing, is the donor, a black-bearded man in profile. Beside him, at the right, is St. Sebastian, arrow pierced and tied to the tree behind him. Between this saint and Mary is St. Catherine looking with adora- tion at the Madonna and Child. A red curtain back of Mary and Joseph cuts off the scene that shows at the right beyond the other figures. Mary is a rather full- faced, exquisitely-browed woman, whose mouth falls into Cupid curves, and whose whole blooming beauty is one of richness and splendour. Sebastian's nude torso and beautiful face are equally glorious in colour and model- ling.
Carpaccio, best and most famously known for his series of scenes illustrating St. Ursula's life, is represented at the Louvre by the one picture, St. Etienne Preaching at Jerusalem,. The painter was born in or near Venice, and his last dated work is about the time of Raphael's death, when, presumably, he was far older than the
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young Urbinate. He is thought to have been a pupil of both Giovanni BelHni and Alvise Vivarini, and his work shows their influence. He is the truest, and at the same time the most poetic historian of Venice of the latter end \ of the fifteenth and early sixteenth century. In his can- vases live again the streets, the architecture, the daily life of the Venice of his day. His colouring is the glowing translucent tone that only Venetian painters knew, his compositions are dignified, interesting, and his personages are depicted with a delicate observation and sympathetic rendering that makes a figure by Carpaccio as distinctive and unmistakable as an angel by Fra Angelico.
Not of Venice, however, is the Louvre picture. Stand- ing at the left of a public square, on a pedestal carved with a medallion of the Roman emperor, is the saint preach- ing to an assembly dressed in Eastern costumes. At the right, in the centre of a group of men, a number of women are seated, all gazing at the saint with absorbed, following faces. Back of them are the buildings that make the towji, minarets rising often against the moun- tainous background. The colour is glorious, full of rich, deep tones. It was executed for the Scuola of St. Stefano at Venice, and was one of a series of five pictures illus- trating incidents of the saint's life.
Titian is represented at the Louvre with a long list of pictures, several of which are Titian at his best, and mjany others are very beautiful works. Unlike most of the men of the Renaissance, he seems not to have been a prodigy in his early youth. But if his genius was slow in developing, it was even slower in showing any signs of decay. In full perfection it bloomed, presenting the spectacle of a man past eighty still producing imimortal w;orks. He died of the plague when he was ninety-nine years old, and up to a short time before, his brush had
(3ran&e Galerte 97
been as busy as if the hand that held it knew, but half the century it had helped to mould. The greatest colourist of the world is the title probably oftenest given to him. It is both more and less than his due. He was the greatest Venetian, and the school of Venice stands pre- eminent for its colour. But Veronese, Giorgione, even Correggio at times surpassed him in brilliancy, depth or golden glow. None of these, however, or any other, ever attained to such universal splendour of colour and tone. His extraordinarily high standard, a standard that years did not lower, has never been equalled. On the other hand, the emphasis that has always been laid upon his colour seems to hint a limitation of his powers as draughtsman, composer and master of movement. And it is true that at times his comjpositions, minus their colour-scheme, would seem huddled, and the action inadequate or strained ; that occasionally in his portraits there is a lack of feeling for the bony construction of the cranium, and that the hands are sometimes too pulpy. But this is Titian at his wiorst. At his best he is as great a draughtsman, as perfect a master of composition, and has as exquisite feeling for rhythm and movement as any painter that ever lived. If he lacked certain of the peculiar, personal attributes of such men as Raphael, Leonardo, Michelangelo, Correggio or Velas- quez or Rembrandt, he excelled each one in other respects, and perhaps equalled them all en masse. " Serene gran- deur " seerns indeed to be the distinguishing character- istic of all his work. It is as untroubled as it is brilliant, as graceful as powerful, as poetic as simple, as full of clarity as it is of richness, as sane as it is original.
During his life Titian was the friend of emperor, kings, princes, poets and nobles, and his work was almost entirely done for these mighty patrons. He was invited
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to go to Rome, as a young man, to work for the Popes, but he preferred to stay in his city of Venice, and only made trips from that city in the service of noted prince^ king or emperor.
The most important of his paintings in the Louvre are in the Salon Carre, but there are many extremely interesting ones in this bay of the Grande Galerie. Among them is the Jupiter and Antiope. This is one of the mythologic scenes which Titian, in common with all the Venetians, loved to paint, principally, undoubtedly, because of the opportunity it gave to portray the nude. The Venetians, indeed, painted the nude as no others in Italy ever thought of doing. It was not so much for the sake of line and contour, like the Florentines, nor yet to display wonderful movement and action, like Michelangelo. It was to show the pulsing beauty of flesh, with the warm sun lighting the rounded planes, or soft shadows caressing the curves. It was because the human figure was best adapted to displaying the beauty of paint. In other words, they treated the nude body as painters, pure and simple, revelling in its gleaming flesh, its soft forms, its firm structure, as no other school has ever done. Even the modern French school has never approached it with the singleness of purpose that char- acterized the Venetian at its height. Beauty of tone, of colour, of light and perforce of contour, and all seen and expressed as only a painter could see and express, that was their aim, their entire object.
In this Jupiter and Antiope the landscape proves how peculiarly sensitive Titian was to its pictorial possibili- ties. He and Giorgione are the first to show this feeling for outdoors. Not till Claude Lorrain do we again see such play of atmosphere, such enveloping air, such golden shimmering light. At the foot of a tree, Antiope, half-
6ranbe Galerte 99
sitting, half-lying, is stretched out, the upper part of her body nude. One arm is over her head, and she seems sleeping, a dreamlike smile curving her lips. Jupiter, in the guise of a satyr, is at her feet. He has lifted up a piece of her drapery, and, crouching on elbow, his eyes are devouring the beautiful sight. Over Antiope's head, perched on the tree, a small Cupid is aiming his bow and arrow at the king of the gods. At the left of the tree a young woman with low-cut bodice and bare arms sits listening to another satyr, who, back to, leans on his right hand. Beside them stand a hunter with two dogs in leash, and another, only partly in the picture, blowing a horn. A wood behind this group opens out at the left into a charming landscape of meadow, lake and moun- tain. In the middle distance a hunt is in progress and the dogs in chase. The landscape is full of a golden light that surrounds the figures, softening their outlines, mak- ing the whole thing a veritable idyl. It is injured by fire, by much travelling and by restoration, but it is still Titian in the plenitude of his powers. Antiope is, as one noted critic has said, " modelled with a purity of colour and softness of rounding hardly surpassed in the Parian marbles of the ancients." In 1829 it was trans- ferred to a new canvas.
Exhibiting Titian in a far different manner is the Disciples at Emmaus. In a stately pillared room opening on to a balcony, Jesus sits at table with Qeophas and Luke. The rich damask of the cloth, the servant and the page, as well as the splendid hall, are not such as one associates in thought with the life of the Carpenter of Nazareth. It would have been contrary to the Venetian principles in painting, however, to make these surround- ings of the Master mean or sordid, and in spite of the incongruousness that must be felt, Titian succeeded in
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giving the scene an intimate, almost homely character. Jesus sits facing the spectator, his left hand on the bread, his right lifted in blessing. Qeophas is at the end of the table on the right, his head reverently bent, his hands joined in prayer. At Jesus' right sits Luke in profile, his hands outspread, his body thrown back, his whole ex- pression one of rapt wpnder and amaze. Quite indif- ferent to the meaning of the scene are the servants, standing with sleeves turned up and looking as if wait- ing for orders from Luke, and the page who is behind Luke's chair.
This picture was painted probably about 1547 when Charles V. had called him to Augsburg. It was at Mantua and with the rest of the Gonzaga collection passed into the hands of Charles L, and then, along with others of the Whitehall gems came to the gallery of Louis XIV. It is therefore an example of his work when he was about seventy years old. The sureness of the touch, the masterly chiaroscuro, the ease in com- position, the skill in treatment of damask, silk and stuffs never hint that the hand which held the brush was already older than most painters' when they drop it for ever. The figures are under life-size. The colours are bright, Christ in the conventional red and blue, Qeophas in tan and red, Luke wearing a green coat and a blue and white checked scarf. It is said that Charles I. was model for Luke and Cardinal Ximenes for Cleophas, and that the page is Philip II. The force and brilliance of the composition are more marked than its spirituality. It is a very different conception from Rem- brandt's picture of the same scene, also in the Louvre.
In the Virgin and Child and Several Saints, the Virgin sits at the left, facing the right her head almost in profile. She holds on her lap the infant Jesus, who is
Orange Galerte loi
lying on his back, his feet kicked up, his right hand grasping her veil. At the right stand St. Etienne dressed in blue who offers the Madonna a palm, St. Aimbroise in red, reading from a large book, and St. Maurice in armour and leaning on his lance. Behind is a landscape with deeply clouded sky. The Virgin has a red dress, a blue mantle lined with yellow and a yellow veil. A replica of the picture is in Vienna.
Of the other works of Titian in this section, the Por- trait of Frangois I. was perhaps painted from a medallion. It is a profile view.
The one called simply an Allegory, is supposed to rep- resent Davolos the warrior who is at the right, his hand on the breast of his wife, Mary of Arragon. She is sitting at the left holding a crystal globe in her hands. At the right, opposite her is Cupid, and farther back Hymen and Victory, two young maidens crowned with flower and myrtle. These three are trying to console her for the departure of her husband. It is painted with free, full touch and with rich colour, and is a thoroughly typical work of the great Venetian. The flesh-tones are pure, rich and delicate. The woman's face is as beauti- ful as it is calm and full of a soft harmoniousness. The warrior is splendid and imposing, clad in striking armour.
An Adoration of the Shepherds in this division is by Palma Vecchio, who is called a pupil of Giovanni Bellini and also a Venetian. He was really, however, bom near Bergamo, and Morelli claims that his Bergamese traits are apparent in all his paintings. He has a richness of colour, an amplitude of forms, a suppleness of composi- tion, a large, loose management of drapery that, were it not for the greater magic of the names of Titian and Qiorgione would place him at the height of Venetian masters. His characteristic type of woman was auburn-
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haired and brown-eyed, of almost Junoesque splendour of charms, but interfused as it were with an alluring softness that made the beauty less statuesque and more appealing.
All his happiest attributes are shown in the Adoration. It is glowingly splendid in colour, of vigorous handling, with brilliant lights that suggest Lx)tto's influence. It is altogether one of Palma's most beautiful works and has been assigned, though with no good reason, to Titian. The Virgin is seated before a ruin overlaid with ornamental reliefs, dressed in red and blue, in three-quarters position, her head bent to the right. She leans over, holding the child in his crib before a young shepherd who kneels adoringly with hands clasped on his breast. At the right of the Virgin, between her and the shepherd, sits Joseph, in a chestnut-toned mantle, leaning on a stick and looking attentively at the shepherd. Back of the Virgin, at the left, in a gray, fur-bordered costume is the donor, this time a woman, her hands joined. Over her head in the ruin are seen an ox and ass, and in the middle of the landscape mere shepherds watching a group of angels in the sky, and a cavalier conducted by a soldier appearing round the bend of the road. The light is so arranged that it falls sharply on the faces of the Virgin, the donor, Joseph and Christ's little body but only slightly on the kneeling shepherd lad. The graceful positions of the figures are a trifle too much planned, perhaps, though Joseph has a very natural ease.
Not at the Louvre can Jacopo Robusti, he who is always called Tintoretto, be known, though there are one or two things well worthy of even him on the walls. Tintoretto, the last of the great masters of the Renais- sance was far from being the least. Few can agree
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with Ruskin in ranking him superior to all save Michelangelo, yet at his best it must be acknowledged that only the giant Florentine rivalled him in force, majesty of imagination, in virility, in fertility of inven- tion. The mere name of Tintoretto suggests a veritable passion of power, an unceasing surging demand for ex- pression, a boundless vision that could sweep the earth, or pierce the depths of hell or soar into the fulness of heaven, an illimitable capacity for work and a lightning- like facility of execution. Not less does it connote mar- vellous knowledge of human anatomy, absolute command over every intricate problem of perspective, construction or chiaroscuro, joined to such a feeling for movement, action, as no other painter ever possessed. Nothing was too difficult for his obedient brush. It was a simple matter for him to paint figures floating in the ether, or falling head first like a thunderbolt from the sky, and simple too, to cover yards and yards of canvas, impro- vising as he painted. More than any of the masters of the later Renaissance he was self-taught. The story miay or may not be true that he originally went to work in Titian's studio and that in a few days the painter of Cadore thrust him out front fear of a rival in the boy who could already make such extraordinary sketches. It is at least certain that he wtas with Titian at the most a very short time and from then on worked quite by himself, studying all the works of Titian he could, and making copies of casts of Michelangelo's great figures. It was in the beginning of his career that he wrote on the wall of his room, " // disegno di Michelangelo, il colorito di Tiziano." And at his best in the Ducal Palace, in the Mater Domini, at the Orto, and occasionally in the San Rocco, it is not too much to say that he has painted with a brush as glowing as ever Titian used and drawn
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with a pencil as sure, as vigorous and as full of virile imagination as that of the painter of the Sistine Chapel.
Of the number of sadly inadequate works of Tinto- retto in this bay, the sketch for the Paradise is perhaps the most interesting for, principally, its associations. In 1587 Guariento of Padua's picture of Paradise in the Grand Council Hall of the Ducal Palace, was declared unworthy of its associates and a new decoration was wanted to fill its place. It was to cover the whole side wall which was thirty feet in height by seventy-four in length. Veronese was chosen to paint it with the assist- ance of Bassano. But Veronese, dying before he had even finished his preparatory studies, Tintoretto begged the senators to let him have the work, saying, " Give me Paradise now for I am not sure of it hereafter." He was then either seventy-one or seventy-seven. The sketch for it in the Louvre shows the general disposition and gives some effect of the wonderful aerial perspective which so stamps the huge fresco in Venice. The figures of Christ and the Virgin are full of dignity and nobility and Adam and Eve are wonderfully beautiful. But as a whole it is lacking in unity and coherence.
The Dead Christ with Two Angels is a little canvas that has a pathetic beauty quite without exaggeration or sentimentality. Jesus has apparently just been lifted from the tomb by the two angels, one of whom, standing beside him, still half-holds him in his arms. The other is leaning on the tomb, a flaming torch over his shoulder, his right hand holding his robe to his weeping eyes. These two celestial beings are very lovely in their con- ception and realization. The figure of Jesus, helpless, inert, a dead weight with his dropped head and hanging arms and bent legs, is brought into strong light, em- phasizing the gloom and mystery surrounding him.
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Orange Oalerie 105
There are three pictures by Lotto in this bay of which the St. Jerome in the Desert is one of his very earHest works. The general tone is rather warmi, recalling, says Mr. Berenson, Alvise Vivarini's Resurrection in San Giovanni in Bragora at Venice. There are too, he acknowledges, traces of Bellini in the thin, stiff folds of the saint's draperies and in the rocks of the foreground. But, as indeed even a superficial observer must note, the feeHng and movement of the figure are such as would be characteristic of neither Vivarini nor Bellini. There is an expression, a soul-representation in it foreign to these older Venetian painters. The scene takes place on a rocky towering cliff that shows a glimpse of sea and precipitous shore beyond the trees and rocks that make the foreground. At the foot of one of these huge rocks sits St. Jerome half-nude, a crucifix in one hand, a couple of open books beside him. He is looking neither at them nor at the crucifix. His gaze is bent upon the ground and his white beard rests upon his bare chest. Plunged in meditation, the saint does not see the lion who is coming from behind the rock at the left, nor its companion, St. Anthony. Equally oblivious is he to the horseman in the distance.
Christ and the Adulteress was painted somewhere near 1529, after Lotto's so-called Bergamese period, a period when his art was joyous, glorious, full of a colour as seductive if somewhat less rich than Titian's. Mr. Berenson calls this picture as " full of charity as the Bible itself." It represents Christ standing surrounded by the Pharisees, the accused being directly at his left. Mr. Berenson's remarks are worth quoting because probably no one else has so carefully studied the picture. " The Christ is Lotto's usual type with the forked beard and rather bushy hair. The Adulteress recalls the St.
id6 Ube Utt of tbe Xouvre
Lucy in the Carmine Altar-piece. The Pharisees, al- though bearing a decided resemblance to the corpulent old men often found in Bonifazio, have here an intentional coarseness and vulgarity. . . . The crowd, stretching away into the darkness is painted with a skill in modelling within deep shadows that surpasses even the altar-piece in San Bartolommeo at Bergamo; . . . here the shadow itself is treated atmospherically. The painting of armour here, " that has not the sparkle and iridescence which Titian and Rubens give to metallic surface . . . resembles that of Rembrandt and the Dutch masters." Perhaps one of the most noticeable things about it is the aggressiveness shown by the Jews. They evince not the slightest reverence or respect for Jesus, shaking their hands in his face, jostling against him, suspicious anger and hatred showing in every movement and expression. It is a Lottoesque appreciation of what must have been actuali- ties.
Soft, tender and lovely is the Holy Family, sometimes called the Recognition of the Holy Child. The baby Jesus lies completely nude on a white cloth spread over the grass and flowers under the shade of large trees. He is reaching out his hands to the little St. John who so finely balances him, the latter in his turn pointing out the divine babe to the Virgin. She is half-lying, half- sitting near by and has Hfted her hands in amaze as if she had never before really seen her child, while at the left, somewhat out of the picture, Joseph is rising from his knees also to gaze. On the right is Elizabeth, bending eagerly over the baby and behind her is Joachim lifting his hands wonderingly. Back of St. John three angels dressed in white with " pearly, iridescent wings " that cross, press forward to make their reverence to the child. The Madonna, remarks Mr. Berenson, is the same
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Grange Galetie 107
type as the Cingola picture and as a whole the painting in certain ways suggests Savoldo.
According to Mr. Berenson Lotto for years was paint- ing like an artist of the fifteenth century when already the sixteenth was in full flower. It is in consequence of this early manner of his that his later style seems so mar- vellous a jump. And even in his very earliest work he shows signs of what for the day, was a most peculiar personality. It did not reach triumphant expression, however, till he was past fifty years old. This personality, — this peculiarly Lottoesque donation to the art of the Renaissance, is a subjective way of looking at life and people. Whether he painted an altar-piece or a portrait, it was always his own interpretation of the Scriptures, not a mere relating of some long accepted myth or story; it was always the man as he saw him; and these mar- vellous portraits are evidence that Lotto saw far below the flesh ; it seems, at times, as if he pulled the secrets of the soul too ruthlessly from their hiding. His was a plummet that reached straight and unswervingly to the unworded, almost unthought aspirations, longings and pains of the submerged soul. Titian, continues Mr. Berenson, might have asked his sitter, " Who are you ? What is your station in life ? " Lotto would have more likely questioned, "What sort of a person are you? How do you take life ? " It is this " that makes him pre- eminently a psychologist and distinguishes him from such even of his contemporaries as are most like him; from Diirer, who is near him in depth, and from Cor- reggio who comes close to him in sensitiveness."
Next to Venice there is no better place than the Louvre to see Veronese, — Veronese, who was as little a psy- chologist as Lotto was a painter of pageants. Although always classed among the Venetians, he was neither
io8 Ube Hrt ot tbe Xouvre
born there nor did he go there to live till he had already acquired some considerable prominence as fresco-painter in his own town of Verona. It is to his continued use of fresco-painting when all the Venetians had dropped it for the more pliant oils that is doubtless due much of the transparence and freshness of his colour. In tempera painting it is impossible to overlay, to muddy by re- working. He was the best draughtsman in the Venetian school, for which his early training is largely accountable. His compositions are brilliant masterpieces for the apparent ease in the massing of the immense crowds of figures, for the dignity with which he treated the gor- geously dressed assemblages and (in spite of an astound- ing richness of apparel, a loading of jewels and elaborate architectural ornamentation), for the unerring good taste that marks all these magnificent wall decorations. In colour he was somewhat less rich than Titian and less violent in chiaroscuro than Tintoretto. He has been accused of being a wholly superficial painter, but his Calvary alone at the Louvre would absolve him from that accusation. Nevertheless, it is perfectly true that he best loved to portray the pageant of life. It was in the beauty of colour, of gleaming flesh against satin and velvet, of crowds of courtiers and ladies against the marble of stately hall, with the blue of Venetian sky for background, that he revelled. And no one else has so well expressed the gaiety, the pomp, the splendour of the Renaissance in the queen of the Italian cities.
The Disciples at Emmaus which is in this bay, shows, in the centre of an open porch or gallery a small table at which is seated Jesus blessing the bread. At his right sits a disciple, in profile, gazing with wonder and awe at his master, while another on the opposite side reaches out hi$ hand as if he too, was overcome at the
Orange Galetie 109
sight. Back of them are several servants, both men and women. At the left stands a group which represents the painter's own family. He himself, in black, is behind the disciple who has a bundle knotted on his staff, and his wife, in rich robes of brilliant colour, stands still farther to the left, one child in her arms, three others about her. The painter's brother is against the frame, in front of a pillar. At the right, through an opening between pillars, a view of distant country, with Christ and two disciples walking down the road is seen. In the very foreground in front of the table is the most beautiful bit of the whole picture. Two small girls are on the marble floor playing with a big dog. Their ex- quisite blondness, soft infantile roundness of cheek and arm and charming purity of line and colour make the group a rare gem even for Veronese. They are supposed to be his own children.
The Calvary is one of Veronese's most noted and most moving of pictures. He seldom touches the heart, still less often the deep emotions of the soul. But here, by a daring originality in composition, by a masterly arrange- ment of light and shade, by an unusual simplicity in colour and grouping, he reached an emotional height far beyond his wont. At the left rise the three crosses in a diagonal line that brings the third into the middle plane of the picture, and the first so far forward that the upper part of the cross and figure is cut off by the top of the panel. The central one, on which of course is Jesus, is thus brought into its proper prominence by an unusual arrangement. Mary Magdalene kneels at the foot of the cross, her back to the spectator, though her head is thrown up so that it is brought into profile. Next to her a woman crouches over the form of the Virgin who has sunk back fainting into John's arms. Another tall and
no XTbe art of tbc Xouvre
heavily draped woman stands beside her looking down, her hands clasped at her throat. At the left of this group are two Romans beside the first robber's cross, with the head of a horse appearing between them. Below, in the valley to the right, is a distant view of Jerusalem. The sky above the city and back of the women is bril- liant with angry streaks, while heavy clouds crowd the top of the scene. This makes a wonderfully effective chiaroscuro. The deep shadow enveloping the group at the foot of the cross forms a sombre mass against the flaming sky, while Christ's body, catching the reflection of this sinister lighting, is thrown into sharpened relief against the banking clouds behind him. The effect of this splendidly wrought out scheme is almost overwhelm- ing, and at the same time there is no false note, no theatrical element.
In its own way the Burning of Sodom is almost as effective. In the foreground at the left an angel leads Lot's two daughters from the doomed Sodom. She is between the two girls, clasping the hand of the one on the right who is stooping to lift her gown as she steps over a rock. The other daughter on the left carries a big basket and hastens her steps by the angel's side, a little dog accompanying her. Back of them Lot is being urged on by another angel while still farther in the distance the disobedient wife is seen, already whitening into the shapeless pillar, and beyond, are the flames that sweep the city. The two maidens with the angel form a charming group, the voluminous drapery falling about them almost with a Botticelli sort of rhythm, though their firm, rounded, vigorous young frames, and brilliant, clear flesh, are as far as possible from the thin, swaying, pallid women of the earlier painter. There is an intoxi- cating sense of freedom, of movement, about these has-
Grange ©alette m
tening figures. It is as if the world lay wide and un- trammelled before them and they were fairly flying to reach the vast expanse.
Veronese's two Holy Families at the Louvre are both full of beauty of colour and composition, though it is not in such simple scenes that he is generally at his best. The one here in the Grande Galerie shows the Madonna seated within a stately room, at the left, her face in profile, the child in her arms, Elizabeth standing behind her. The baby is rosy and joyous, his arms and feet flying out in a very ecstasy of motion, though he is sup- posed to be only blessing the nun, who, kissing his hand, kneels before him. By her side is another saint, and back of her, Joseph, who leans over her, resting on his staff. The Madonna is rarely young and slender for Veronese, and has a sweet seriousness and real feeling in her lovely face. The comlposition is dignified and satisfactory.
The three pictures credited to Bonifazio in this section of the gallery are probably not all his.
The Holy Family with Elizabeth and Joseph and other saints, is at least a characteristic example of his earlier style. It is not so glowing in colour as some of his to be seen in Italy, but it has real beauty if not great originality of force. In front of a ruined pillar, overgrown with flowers sits the Madonna in a red dress and white mantle with the naked baby Christ standing upright on her lap, one foot on her knee the other on her wrist. At the left is Elizabeth holding John, who has his crossed reed. In the foreground at the right Joseph, in profile, is resting his chin on his hand that holds his staff. St. Anthony is at the left in hermit robes, reading, and behind him St. Francis stands praying in bent attitude. Beside the
112 TLbc art ot tbc Xottvre
Virgin on the left is the Magdalene offering a vase of perfumes, and behind all, a landscape with ruins.
Bonifazio was a pupil of Palma Vecchio and so much a follower of Titian that the question about more than one painting has been whether he or the man of Cadore was its creator. Charm of colour was his in a high degree. Grace of composition, beauty of line, facility of exe- cution, in fact, a facile brush and a clever head, this was Bonifazio. Withal, he lacked depth of imagination and true warmth of feeling and never really created a single type or even a distinct manner. His usual picture was a fashionably attired assemblage shown in a charming country landscape or under trees, engaged in some sort of " fete champetre"
His pupil, Bassano, is very poorly shown at the Louvre, none of the seven or eight canvases giving much idea of the glowing, jewel-like colouring that fairly thrills with its transcendent brilliancy.
Not much better represented is Paris Bordone, though his Portrait of a Man does perhaps display his ability more fairly. Almost, however, he can be called the painter of one picture, for nothing he ever did begins to compare with his famous Fisherman Presenting the Ring of St. Mark to the Doge. That is so splendid that it does not pale beside Titian or Carpaccio. Bordone was among the Italians called to the court of Frangois II., and it was as a painter of portraits that he was there best known. The portrait in the Louvre is a work of excel- lent handling but of little character. It is supposed to be a likeness of Jeronimo Croft and was painted while the artist was at Augsburg. The man is seated, turned three-quarters to the left, his head almost in full face. Dressed in black, bordered with fur, with a black cap, he has a dark, full beard, slight moustache and dark eyes.
6rant)e Galette 113
His left hand rests on a table at his right, the other ex- tended, holds a letter. A column, bearing a large coat- of-arms is at the left behind him, a curtain at the right. The face is softly, smoothly modelled with fine grada- tions of tone. It has a melancholy aspect, emphasized by the large eyes with their heavy lids and dreamy expression. The accessories in the way of background and objects on the table are somewhat overdone.
Another portrait, that of A Sculptor by Bronzino, is worthy of comment. It is a half-length figure of a youth, hardly more than a boy, standing in three- quarters position facing the left. He holds in his hands a statuette of a nude woman ; and though his left hand is splendidly articulated and is full of really fine feeling, neither that nor the other actually grasps the statuette. The boy is bareheaded with close-cropped dark hair, long, dark eyes far apart, full lips closed in a wistful line. He is in black with a white open-work collar; behind him a green drapery hooked back, showing a bare wall.
Bronzino was an intimate friend of Vasari and imitated Pontormo who was a pupil of Andrea del Sarto. He was a capital portrait-painter, though his colour was not usually equal to his draughtsmanship.
Already these last names hint the end of the great race of painters of Italy. The Decadence had come, and only an occasional genius rose to break the downward race of the art. The Caracci, under the leadership of Lodovico did make a valiant attempt to return to the principles of the great past. They were Bolognese, and their school is generally styled " eclectic." In opposition to the mannerists, the decadents of the time, they tried to inculcate the study and imitation of all the great masters joined to an intelligent observation of nature. There was therefore in their work often to be seen most
"4 Ube Hrt ot tbe Xouvre
flagrant imitation now of this man, now of that. Yet, on the whole, they may be said to have instigated a healthy reactionary movement. Of the three, Lodovico, Agostino and Annibale, the last was by far the most talented. He had real talent that expressed itself in graceful lines, soft harmonies of light and shade and a certain tenderness in modelling that nevertheless did not preclude real and at times decided vigour. He was one of the first to paint landscape as landscape and not as mere accessory for figure studies. He is well represented at the Louvre, and among the best of the canvases are The Sleeping Christ, The Virgin with Cherries and The Dead Christ on the Knees of the Virgin.
In the first of these, behind a table, stands the Ma- donna, only the upper part of her figure being visible. She is leaning forward, one arm about the little Jesus, who, stretched out asleep on the table, has his head on her shoulder. At the end of the table at the left, the small St. John stands, one insistent forefinger cautiously touch- ing the leg of the baby, while his laughing face is turned in profile up to the Madonna. She is looking at him, half-smiling, but with her finger at her lips to enjoin silence. There is a very sympathetic feeling in this picture. St. John's roguish head with its wealth of curls and the tender face of the mother, suggesting per- haps both Correggio and Veronese, belong distinctly to the Bolognese painter.
The second picture recalls again something of the manner of Correggio in chiaroscuro, modelling and types. The Virgin is seated, in full face, the baby Christ standing on her knees, his left arm about her neck, his right holding the cherries stretched out to Joseph, whose large hand is under the tiny one. The man's head is in deep shadow and it throws a shade also over the upper
6ranbe Galerie "5
part of the child's face. There is a sort of conventional naturalism in the mother that is not displeasing though her type is not particularly elevated.
The Dead Christ on the Knees of the Madonna with the two little angels at the right is one of his best works. It has something of the deep feeling of the earlier masters and is remarkably good in line and chiaroscuro.
Guido Reni was a pupil of Caracci and his works successively show the influence of first one master and then another. Now he is extremely Raphaelesque, again he reminds one of Caravaggio, and a third style sug- gests no great master's name, — it is one of pure affec- tation,— figures of wax, with eyes turned theatrically heavenward, and with nothing appealing to either true emotion or the mind. Of this order are the Magdalene and the Ecce Homo of the Louvre.
The St. Sebastian in this bay, is better, and is a figure of careful and beautiful modelling, spiritedly drawn, and with a vigour characteristic of Caravaggio. He is pre- sented in nearly full length leaning against a tree to which he is bound, his hands behind him, his head turned to the left, his eyes lifted to the sky. At the right, below and in deep shadow are seen the executioners, and in the distance beyond, a lake or stream that shimmers brightly out of the surrounding gloom. The head of Sebastian is rarely noble, of a deep, pathetic beauty em- phasized by the strong but luminous shadow that sweeps over the entire right side. Very beautiful too are the chest and shoulders which are thrust forward into intense light.
The St. Cecilia by Domenichino in this bay is by far his best work in the Louvre. It does not, of course, begin to come up to the splendid Jerome of the Vatican, a work which proves that the painter could reach heights beyond
ii6 XTbe Hrt of tbe %o\xvtc
the possibilities of even his masters the Caracci. But it is full of a grace of colour and tone joined to tender- ness of expression. The saint is standing in nearly full face behind a stone balustrade which cuts her off just below the knees. The big bass viol on which she is playing rests on the balustrade where is perched also the small boy angel who serves as music-rack by holding the score on his head. St. Cecilia is singing as well as playing and, with eyes raised heavenward she pays no attention to either music or angel. As was customary when painting the patron saint of music, Domenichino dressed her richly, her red robe with its violet sleeves ornamented with embroidered bands and her broad turban wound with jewels. The picture was extremely popular, and has become world-known through its numer- ous reproductions. Though to-day would not give it the high place it used to occupy, it has a distinctive and delicate charm that will always make it enjoyable.
Another painter who was at first largely influenced by the Caracci and afterward by Caravaggio is Guercino. Later on his manner grew softer, and he imitated the style of Guido Reni. His last period is by far his worst and if he never quite reaches the depths into which Guido plunged it is because of his more clear and transparent colouring, though even the colour finally gets faded and insipid. It was the transparence and purity of his colour joined to a certain grace and correctness of drawing that made him famous for generations. To-day he, like Guido, seems meaningless and at the same time theatric. Of his works in the Louvre only a few even approach his best.
Circe represents a fully clothed young woman stand- ing by a table on which is an open book of geometric diagrams and a vase. She has a most elaborate turban
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(Branbe ©alette 117
on her head ornamented with pearls, and she holds in her hands another vase. Her face is without distinction of any kind.
With the Procession of the Doge, and the Fete of Jeudi Gras at Venice, we come to very different art. They are by Guardi, a follower of Canaletto, whose views of Venice are celebrated for the sparkle and brilliance of their colour. Guardi's works are to-day highly prized and show an iridescence of colour and great facility of execution. Of his pictures in the Louvre it is not neces- sary to particularize many. The two mentioned above are principally remarkable for their truth of architectural detail, for the easy management of crowds of pleasure- seekers and for the scintillating colour that is a part of the inheritance of the Queen of the Adriatic.
Tiepolo, the last of the great Italian painters, is the author of the Last Supper hanging on the north wall of Bay B. It has been said of Tiepolo that had he lived in the time of Veronese he would have rivalled the greatest of the masters of the Renaissance. While all about him the decadence had ceased even to suggest the days of the golden age, he came, and by his individuality, his power, his force, and his colour, made a name for him- self in Italian art that is rivalled only by his predecessors of a more fortunate age.
In looking at the Last Supper here, there remains no doubt that it is the work of a modern rather than of a man of the Renaissance. The freedom of treatment, the actual brush-work, and finally the point of view, which is realistic beyond any of the fifteenth or even sixteenth- century painters, all proclaim it of to-day, in spite of its century and half age. In a sort of gallery, with huge, Ionic pillars of green marble, the table is spread. In the centre, is Christ, dressed in a red robe and blue mantle,
ii8 Ube Hrt of tbe %o\xvvc
— one of the painting's few conventionalities. About him are the disciples, and Tiepolo has not hesitated to place two of them back to the spectator. Christ is blessing the bread and the disciples are in various atti- tudes, not all, it is evident, full of the spirit of adoration. In the foreground a dog chews a bone. The violent action and overexpressive countenances of the disciples, the unnecessary elaboration of the architectural back- ground, are characteristic of Tiepolo, but they are faults of the time rather than inherently his. His influence over French art was prodigious, and may, perhaps, be felt even to-day in some of the French painters.
Caravaggio and Salvator Rosa, though of much earlier time than Tiepolo, are not found till the fourth bay, D, where they hang in company with the Spanish school, which indeed, owes much to their influence.
Caravaggio may be said to occupy a similar position in Rome to that Ribera did a little later in Naples. Both men had similar ideals and aims in art. Superficially, the principal attributes of this end of the sixteenth and early seventeenth-century Italian, are his extraordinary contrasts between his lights and shadows, a rude force in types, in attitudes and expression and in the general lines of his compositions. He lacks unquestionably the highest attributes of a great painter. He is often wholly devoid of beauty, has very slight religious feeling even in his church pictures, is frequently violent, often coarse, and shows no very elevated type in even his most famous pictures. But power, originality in massing, a brilliant if theatric sense of the value of climax, and the way to express it, a poignant, if more physical than mental emotion, and a tremendously dramatic use of chiaroscuro, he shows over and over again. And in the midst of
I
Grange 6alerte 119
inanities and decadence his name must stand out as at least representing personality and originality.
His Death of the Virgin in Bay D is a really superbly realistic scene, painted with a somewhat restrained force, for Caravaggio, and free from exaggeration. The Virgin in a red robe covered with a gray cloak lies on a couch in the centre of a room, one arm flung out straight, the other at her waist. Her bare feet protrude below her draperies. In front of her sits a girl bent over in grief, and behind the bed are the apostles, weeping or gazing sorrowfully at the dead woman. A conventional piece of red drapery is lifted up over the top of the picture. When this canvas was placed in the Chiesa della Scala, in Trastevere in Rome, it was called too realistic and with not enough of ideality in the Virgin's figure.
Very splendid is his Portrait of Alof de Wignacourt, grand master of Malta in 1601. It is puissant, not at all theatric, and painted broadly and freely with the unafraid brush of the daring Italian.
An outcome of the school of Ribera was Salvator Rosa, who has in Bay D one of his most famous Battles. The same intense love of contrasts, exaggeration of action and dramatic feeling that often becomes excessive, are shown in his pictures. He was extremely versatile, painting historical scenes, landscapes, genre subjects or battles, with equal facility. Some of them possess real power, some are scarcely more than stupid academic studies.
In this Battle, suflfused with its lurid, yellow light, the combat rages straight across the foreground. It is a wild melee of horse and man which has no one central climax of action, no one point to arrest the eye. Under rearing, plunging horses, over twisting, screaming, con-
120 UM art ot tbe Xouvre
torted human bodies, the dead and dying are falHng, while the living make a frothing, yelling mass of in- furiated beasts. At the right a ruined Ionic portico forms a sort of rest for the eye before it follows the line of battle in the distance, where whole companies of horsemen are pursued by others to the base of the rocky mountains that loom against the angry sky. At the left, ships are seen in blaze. The whole scene is one of terrible power and devastation, lacking, however, in its indiscriminate conglomeration sufficient focusing to make it a masterly composition.
I
CHAPTER VI.
GRANDE GALERIE — BAY THIRD — ITALIAN DIVISION
The third bay, marked C in the Louvre catalogue, may be called Raphael's room, though a few other painters are also represented.
The Virgin and Child by Perugino is a round panel in which the compositional lines do not well conform to the circular form. Once more, it is not Perugino any- where near at his best. The Madonna, in a red dress and blue mantle lined with green, is seated on a throne- chair in an open balcony holding the child on her lap. At the right is St. Catherine of Alexandria, in a red mantle draped crosswise over a green dress, and carrying a book in her right hand and a feather pen in her left. On the other side is St. Rose, holding a rose branch in her left hand and a vase in her right. Both these saints stand with their heads bent at a very Peruginesque angle, looking at the Madonna and child. On a parapet behind them and thus raised above, are two angels whose wings are outspread and whose hands are met in prayer. There is a sweetness about this tondo that is not cloying though the similarity in the five faces and even in the attitudes suggest lack of invention or carelessness. The child is far from attractive, being tight in handling and ill- favoured in expression.
The St. Sebastian is charming only for its lovely land-
121
122 Ube Hrt of tbe Xouvre
scape and depth of limpid blue sky. Otherwise it is mannered in the extreme, showing Perugino's most glaring faults.
The Apollo and Marsyas in this bay has been credited to Raphael, but Morelli calls it by Perugino, and critics generally agree that it is at least by one of his school. It is an admirable little picture, with great purity of line and transparence of colour. The two figures are nude, and have the perfection of miniatures. Apollo stands at the right, a slender, graceful figure in a position not unlike the Dionysius at Rome. He rests on his right foot and on his tall staff which he holds in his right hand, while his left is on his hip. He has turned his face till it is nearly in profile, looking at Marsyas who sits on a rock at the left, playing on a reed. The latter is wholly absorbed in his pastime and quite unconscious of the high disdain expressed in the face of the golden- haired god. ■ Between the two on the ground are a lyre, a quiver and arrows. A carefully worked-out landscape stretches about them and beyond to distant mountains.
Of all the works credited to Raphael in the Louvre, there are probably only four that are entirely by him. The little St. George and the little St. Michael are two of his very early efforts. There is an archaism about them that is positively felicitous. The crude technique and simple forms seem quite adequate for expressing the old legends that belong to the primitive days of belief. They were both painted for the Duke Guidobaldo of Urbino, somewhere about 1500, making them thus repre- sentative of his tutelage under Timoteo Viti before he was influenced by Perugino. They are hard in outline and singularly deficient in the graceful sweetness char- acteristic of his Peruginesque period.
Grange Galerie 123
In the St. George the scene takes place in a rocky landscape, in the back of which, among cliffs, the prin- cess is seen running fearfully away. In the foreground on a fine white, if decidedly clumsy and rather wooden horse, is the brave knight in full armour. He has broken his spear, but part of it still sticks in the dragon, which, writhing in agony, has reared up on his haunches and appears about to spring at the saint.
The St. Michael shows the angel in rich mail, his golden hair flying under his helmet, his shield of shining white with a red cross on it, his multicoloured wings rising above his head. With his sword in air he has trampled the dragon underfoot. All about are various queer beasts, and at the right at the base of the mountains are contorted demons. The landscape is dark and mena- cing.
The Madonna of the Veil was probably executed by Giulio Romano. In it the Virgin is seen in the midst of Romanesque ruins, on her knees before the sleeping Jesus, just lifting the veil from his little body. Encircled by her left arm the baby Baptist also kneels, adoring.
St. John the Baptist in the Desert is now supposed to be by Piombo from a sketch by Michelangelo. It shows the beautiful youth seated on a tree-trunk with upraised hand.
The St. Marguerite, arising from the dragon which had swallowed her, was painted for Frangois I. and is largely again the work of Romano. It is in a most deplorable state, owing to its transfer from wood to canvas and its consequent necessary repainting.
The very interesting, sensitive Portrait of a Young Man, with its joyous, childlike expression, though long attributed to Raphael is now supposed to be by Bac- chiacca.
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None of these examples whether or not actually by Raphael gives one even a slight idea of the man who was the greatest assimilative mind the world of art has ever known. He was not only the greatest assimilator, he was the quickest. The history of his life between the ages of nineteen and thirty-four may be said to be the history of almost the entire Renaissance of Italy, excepting that phase most characteristic of Venice. From Timoteo Viti to Perugino, to Fra Bartolommeo, to Leonardo, to Michelangeloy to Sebastiano del Piombo, such are the successive stages shown in the work of a man who lived to not half the years attained by any of the masters whose methods he absorbed. It was not only their methods he made his, but their aims, their achievements, their spirit, he grasped at a glance, and understood their very essence as if he had been working for years in the same direction. While grace and beauty are the two attributes with which Raphael's works are most generally stamped, his greatness lies in something beyond mere grace and beauty, beyond his marvellous gift as illus- trator and infinitely beyond his extraordinary powers of assimilation and adaptation. He is the greatest master of composition that European art up to this twentieth century can show. No other man has approached him in his spacing, his arrangement, his management of line and mass, his instinctive perception of the most perfect coordination possible between space and figure. No one else gives us such a feeling of amplitude and air, in his out-of-door scenes, or of vastness of space in his temples and chambers. The art of composition as it is to-day did not exist before Raphael's time. And all that artists have learned since has only emphasized the extent and completeness of his supremacy. In the Louvre there is no opportunity to study him at his highest expression
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in composition. But the Belle Jardiniere is one of the most perfectly balanced, exquisitely massed groups known in all art.
Giulio Romano's Triumph of Titus and Vespasian is in this section. Drawn by four piebald horses is a magnificent chariot in which ride the two emperors. They stand in profile, in full regalia, already crowned with laurel. Over their heads a Victory flies holding two other crowns. Beside the chariot a youth carries a precious vase, and at the horses' heads two men run as ecuries. In front of them far at the right, a soldier pushes before him a female figure whom he is grabbing by the hair. She is supposed to represent the conquered Jtidea. They are all about to pass under an arch whose pillars show at the extreme right. In the distance is a landscape, with a lake and bordering town.
CHAPTER VII.
GRANDE GALERIE — BAYS FOURTH AND FIFTH — SPAN- ISH, GERMAN AND ENGLISH DIVISIONS
The Spanish pictures in the Louvre are inadequate, considering the importance of the school, but there are a few of the more important masters that are well worth exhaustive study.
Of these, Morales's Christ Carrying the Cross is not one, except as it is the only example here of this early Spanish painter. He was the first of the artists of Spain to achieve more than a national fame. It is not known with whom he studied but it is certain that he far surpassed any teacher he may have had. Like most of the Spanish painters his works were strictly religious in character. This was a necessity first because the Church was practically the only patron of the arts, but even more because the rigid arm of the Inquisition allowed them to paint only what the Church declared proper. In his time Morales was titled " The Divine," possibly from his skill in rendering the faces of the Madonna and Christ, but more likely from his extreme finish of detail. He could out-Diirer Diirer in his minute drawing of " hyacinthine locks," and even Diirer could hardly equal him in his power of painting every individual hair of stubbly beards. Besides this microscopic pains- taking he had a very devout piety and a real grandeur of
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expression that made the heads and hands of his Christs and Madonnas far above those of the merely perfunctory religious painter. In the drawing of the figure he is weak and ineffectual. Considering that the Inquisition made it impossible for a painter to study the nude except from drawings or casts it is remarkable that he achieved what he did in this line.
His one picture in the Louvre is a very good example of his work at its best. As the figure is cut off above the knees, and as the huge cross covers up most of the rest of the body, his insecure anatomy is not greatly felt. Standing with the cross clasped close to him, Christ's body is in full face, while the burden has tipped his head till it is in three-quarters view. He is crowned with thorns, and down his face the drops of blood are stream- ing, the agony of both physical and mental suffering showing plainly on his drawn, hopeless countenance. The delicate hands that hold the great arms of the cross are very beautifully rendered but they do not express any pressure. Hands so placed could by no possibility hold their burden. There are dignity, power, beauty and religious fervour in this picture.
From Morales, born in 1509, to Ribera, whose birth was not till 1588, is a long jump. Of the few Spanish painters worth mentioning that come between the two names the Louvre possesses no noticeable work. And Ribera, though born in Spain, went early to Italy and spent almost all his life there. In Italy he went by the title of Lo Spagnoletto. Though, as has been noted, his works are strongly influenced by Caravaggio, some of his paintings have a golden glow and softness, reminding one of Correggio. His works are scattered all over Italy and all through Europe. The Louvre has some that are creditable, though probably not equal to his highest
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achievements. In the Madonna and Child and the Adora- tion of the Shepherds, he presents a side of his art com- paratively little known. Instead of the writhing saints suffering the death agonies of their martyrdom, he has here depicted the mother and child with a tenderness, a sweetness and a real power that proclaim him to be a worthy predecessor of Murillo.
In the Adoration of the Shepherds, the babe is seen lying on a bundle of straw that rests on a rude, wooden cradle. He has turned his face and eyes to look at the two shepherds who kneel at his head, their rough faces full of a wondering, ecstatic piety. On the other side of his crib kneels Mary, her hands met in prayer, her face raised to heaven. Behind her, and looking over her shoulder is the third shepherd, and back of the first two a woman comes bearing a bundle. On the hills in the distance are shepherds with their flocks, and in the sky, far off, an angel announcing the " glad tidings." In the immediate foreground a dead calf lies, the gift of the shepherds. As a composition this is a trifle crowded, but the light is skilfully managed without the too heavy forcing of shadows which was too common with Ribera. The three men are realistically and most sympathetically portrayed and Mary is a wonderfully lovely creation. She is thoroughly Spanish, just as the Italians made their Madonnas Italian, but she has a tender, devout face, not at all the " Mother of Heaven " type, but rather that of a sweet earth girl-mother.
In the Madonna and Child, Mary is lifting her son from his pallet of straw, her own face lifted as if calling down a blessing on the sleeping babe. It is a half-length picture, and has more of the depth of shadow usual to Ribera. The deep tones are used effectively, however, making the light on the child's and on Mary's counte-
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nance all the more telling in its brilliancy. Correggio might own the chubby child without shame, and Murillo has painted far more unsatisfactory Madonnas than this deep-eyed, earnest woman, who seems to feel a presage of future woe.
The intense Caravaggioesque blotches of shadows in the Entombment, proclaim the Italian's dominance over the Spaniard. While there seems to be no logical ex- planation for such tremendous spotting, and while it gives an unreal, rather than dramatic effect to the scene, Ribera has managed his extremes with much skill, and has shown remarkable anatomical knowledge and, more, splendid characterization. Christ is stretched out on the sepulchre, Joseph of Arimathea standing behind him holding his head and shoulders. Next to Joseph come Mary, the Magdalene and Nicodemus, bent over in grief, gazing at the prostrate figure. Of these four figures, only their heads and shoulders show, and of them all Nicodemus, whose face is in sharp profile, alone comes into full light. He has a dignity and self-control that give added power to his fine profile. The others are largely lost in the shadow that makes the background. The Saviour, entirely nude but for a fold of linen over his loins, is a magnificent rendering of a limp, lifeless form. The dead weight of his head and shoulders is admirably indicated, and the drawing of the loose hands, the fallen head wonderfully excellent. The cold black shadows, however, remain to prevent this from being a greater picture.
Zurbaran, who has been called the Caracci of Spain, has a couple of pictures that are interesting and not wholly unworthy of the man who at his best has been considered greater than Murillo. He was greatly appre- ciated by Velasquez, and worked with him on important
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commissions. His admiration for Caracci at times led him into conventionality and a theatric treatment of con- trasts in chiaroscuro, but at times he reaches a height of expression and an ideal treatm^ent of shadow that recalls Rembrandt. At such times, too, his colour has a depth of richness and his tones a luminosity that few painters have ever excelled.
The picture here supposed to represent St. Peter and St. Raymond is wrongly catalogued. It is really St. Bonaventura Presiding at a Chapter of Minor Brothers. The other, named Funeral of a Bishop, is the Funeral of St. Bonaventura, the prelate who died in 1274 in Lyons, where he had gone to open the council called by Gregory X. in an attempt to effect the union of the Greek and the Roman Church. They are both paintings fairly repre- sentative of Zurbaran, though not full of the beauty of tone and depth of clear shadow as are some of his pictures of monks, notably the ones in Munich and the National Gallery. In the first of these Louvre canvases, St. Bonaventura stands before a row of his brothers, exhorting them with great eloquence and with a troubled countenance. Opposite him is seated the Pope. In the funeral scene, Zurbaran introduces not only Pope Gregory X. but also Michael VII., Emperor of the East- ern Empire, Paleologue of the Patriarch of Constanti- nople, and of the Envoys of Scythia. Gregory owed his elevation to the papal throne to the influence of Bona- ventura at the time of the conclave. Paul Lefort places these pictures in the front rank of the painter's works.
The poor selection of Spanish works possessed by the Louvre is never more keenly felt than when its canvases by Velasquez are considered. The little Infanta Mar- garita is the only one which conveys any adequate idea of his genius. The Portrait of Philip IV. is now thought
n
POKTRAIT OF PHII.IP IV. Hy Velasquez
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to be a copy by Mazo of the celebrated one in the Madrid gallery. It shows him standing under a tree in hunting costume. He appears about thirty years old, wears a buff jacket and long gauntlet gloves. Hanging at his side his right hand holds a long gun, his left, only partly seen as he stands facing the right, rests on his hip, against which he holds his hat. A large dog sits by his side. Here the pale face of the king has that pasty white look making the full lips more unnatural in their redness.
The Assemblage of Thirteen People among whom at the left are seen Velasquez and Murillo, noted critics assign to some other painter than Velasquez. The bad composition, soft modelling, dry rendering have always made this seem impossible to be the work of the great Spanish master, he who, born in the same year as Van Dyck and five years after the death of Tintoretto and Correggio, was as little influenced by the decadence that art in Italy had fallen into as he was by Rubens whose friendship he valued highly. Velasquez unquestionably learned much from the Italians, especially during his two prolonged visits in Italy. But he was no more like Cor- reggio or Titian or Tintoretto than he was like Rubens. More than any painter that ever lived Velasquez painted with absolutely no preconceived ideas. He approached each subject, each face, more, each different view of a face, exactly as if he had never seen it before, much less painted it. In other words, no painter ever had so few receipts. He had no " flesh tones," no " shadow colour " of any kind. What tone a face had been one day, that he had faithfully rendered. What tone it appeared the next day, that he would faithfully dis- cover and also faithfully transcribe. If the two results were similar, that was because in actuality they were
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similar, not because he had taken it for granted they would be. It is this intense realism, this candid mind wholly free from preconceived ideas, that helps to make Velasquez so preeminently a man of to-day. Of all the great world painters, he is the one with whom modern art has most in accord. He is, as has been often said, the first real discoverer of light, of atmosphere, of that enveloping air that surrounds every object we see and changes and varies its appearance infinitesimally or tremendously as the conditions may be.
Velasquez is preeminently the painter of men. Princi- pally because, except in royalty, Spanish women were seldom painted. He it is who has made Philip IV. such a living personage, as all the historians in the world could not succeed in doing. Who that has seen that long, pale, brooding face, with its overfull and overripe lips, can ever forget it? No flatterer was Velasquez. He could only paint what his eye saw. But better than flattery he could so absolutely reproduce the living image that in looking at his portraits there are as many opinions as to what the man was as there always are opinions concerning a living personage. In painting the appear- ance, Velasquez painted the soul, too, so far as the soul could look out of the eyes, curve or tighten the lips, pale or flush the cheek, loosen or clench the hand. In battle- scenes, in enormous decorative panels, in historical com- positions, he stands as unrivalled as in portraiture. There is no one like him in painting the human figure singly or in groups, as there is no one like him in rendering the subtility of light and atmosphere. There are others, perhaps, as great. Rembrandt, Titian, Giorgione, Michel- angelo, Raphael, even Rubens and Van Dyck, are on peaks that reach as high, perhaps higher than the summit where Velasquez rests. But he is alone, this Spaniard,
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on his own peak, untouched by the men before him or since.
If the Louvre has so Httle of this Spaniard's works, it has many, and some rarely lovely examples of the art of his one great countryman. This is because Marshal Soult robbed Spain of every canvas he could lay his hands upon, and especially of everything bearing the name of Murillo. No painter, unless it be Raphael, has ever been so popular with the public as Murillo. It has been pointed out, with a certain cynical truth in the statement, that this very popularity is proof enough of his lacking the greatest attributes of a great painter. Yet, of course, it is equally true that what is so univer- sally admired must have much more than the merely ephemeral or false about it. It must be more than simply pleasing, of stronger stuff than simple graceful- ness. Rated even by his most serious detractors, Murillo certainly endures such tests as these. Sometimes, indeed, his Madonnas are dangerously near the wax- doll confection order, too often his angels have the pink and white smoothness of sugar Cupids, frequently his saints are nothing but pleasing lay figures. Nevertheless, considering the enormous quantity of these Madonnas, angels and saints Murillo had to turn out every year, it is only surprising that such failures are not continually recurring, instead of once in awhile. Eliminate all that does not reach his own highest, and the residuum is founc to be, if not the highest in art, at least full of beauty, of power to charm, of nobility and of poetic piety.
Murillo never went to Italy, and he never could have seen many of the great works of Italy or Greece. The influence upon him of the antique was only what came to him sifted through the works of Rubens, Van Dyck, Velasquez or such Italian pictures as his short stay in
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Madrid gave him an opportunity to see. He is a product of Spanish soil far more truly than Velasquez or Ribera. And his chief greatness, as critics have intimated, is, perhaps, his truthful rendering of Spanish life, charac- teristics and people. His Madonnas, saints and angels are all as truly and distinctively Spanish as are his beggar boys. As a religious painter he does not touch the soul as do some few of the early Italians. But he is far over the head of any seventeenth-century Italian, and no one since has approached him. As a technician, he had a facile, flowing touch, a broad, full brush, a colour glowing, roseate, at times degenerating into the pretty, but at its best full of a translucence, a light, an atmosphere, that makes one understand why he has been said to paint as the birds sing. His drawing was not remarkable for power, strength or individuality. Adequate it generally was, and of the kind, so much the worse for its enduring fame, to appeal to the uninstructed. In composition he often was far beyond the merely ex- cellent, showing at times a marvellous fitting of tone, lighting, line and colour, in one grand ensemble.
The Holy Family, in Bay D, is one of Murillo's noted works, and is sometimes called La Vierge de Seville. Mary sits on a rock on the shore, holding on her knees the baby Christ who stands upright, one hand at his mother's neck, the other taking a long reed cross from the little St. John. Elizabeth is kneeling and holds her arms about her boy in his tunic of skins. Above in the clouds in the middle of " exceeding light," God is seen with outspread hands as if in blessing. With him are a number of cherubs in all sorts of difficult, fore- shortened positions. Immediately over the head of Jesus the Holy Spirit in the shape of a dove is hovering. In the direct foreground a lamb is lying, looking up at
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John. Both Mary and Elizabeth are very beautiful types. Mary, in her young perfection, with the soft dark hair that grows so tenderly on her forehead, with her finely curved lips, her exquisite chin and dark, uplifted eyes, is a true Murillo creation. She holds Jesus with an adoring pressure that yet intimates a certain aloofness, as if she dared not bring him closer. Elizabeth is wrinkled, somewhat worn by years, but her noble pro- file is charged with an intense earnestness and reverent gladness that gives it a distinction uncommon among the pictures of the mothers of the Baptist. The two children are lovely in colour and Jesus especially has a firm, perfect little body. But it is the two womien who show the painter at his best.
The Birth of the Virgin was painted about 1655 ^^^ the cathedral at Seville, and is called in Murillo's calido or intermediate manner. To quote Gautier, " In the centre of the composition like a bouquet of flowers lighted by a ray of the sun, the baby Virgin swims, as it were, in a cloud of light. Ah old woman, the Ha as the Spanish call her, raises the child from its cradle with a caressing gesture. In the foreground a girl, clad in a lilac, tender green and straw-coloured robe, leans forward curiously, resting on a beautiful white arm, satin-like in its texture and dimpled at the rosy elbow. But the most marvellous figure in this group is the young angel, modelled, as it seems, from nothing, — a rose-coloured vapour touched with silver. She leans her adorable head, made with three brief brush-strokes, over the Virgin, resting one delicate hand on her breast, the fingers nestling among the folds of her dress as if in the petals of a flower. Above the cradle of the Virgin a hovering glory of angels illumines the room like a glowing smoke. Half-hidden in the shadow of the background the bed
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of the mother may be vaguely distinguished. It is im- possible to imagine anything more fresh, more tender, more lovely than this picture."
The Virgin and Child with Rosary is probably an early work of Murillo, though some have been inclined to doubt whether he ever painted it at all. It is hard and rather unsympathetic in colour, but has in spite of its faults a charm that Murillo always gave to his dark- eyed Madonnas and rosy Christ-babies.
The Miracle of San Diego is also an early work painted for the Convent of San Francisco, along with ten others. The convent was plundered by the French, and this was one that Marshal Soult took for himself. His heirs sold it to the government for 85,500 francs. It has been repainted and restored. The subtitle by which it is known, The Kitchen of the Angels, explains the sort of miracle which it glorifies. More than half of the long low panel is filled with heavenly visitants who are at work getting a feast for the monks. The two largest and most important angels stand talking together in the very centre of the scene. One holds a big stone jug, the other is apparently giving directions. These two are very lovely creations, hardly excelled in delicate beauty and ethereal loveliness by Raphael's angels in Jacob's Vision. Immediately at the left of them is the saint, lifted up in the air by his devout prayers, begging for the food which even now is being prepared for him. At the extreme left another brother opens a door, bringing in two cavaliers. At the right are the rest of the angel cooks, mostly sm;all cherubs. Their absorption and interest in their mundane tasks are both amusing and touching.
The Young Beggar is a ragged boy sitting in a sort of stone loft, lighted by one deep-set window at the left.
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He is in tatters and has just pulled his shirt open while he hunts for fleas. If this is not quite equal to some of Murillo's beggar boys in Munich, the Hghting is re- markably fine. The sunbeam that strays through the window, and falls upon the stretched out boy, is warm', brilliant, sharp.
Two portraits by Goya practically finish the more important of the Spanish pictures. The Portrait of M. de F. Gluillemardet, Ambassador of France to Spain in 1798 shows him seated in profile before a table, turning round, with his right arm thrown across the back of his chair. His face is in three-quarters position his right hand is bent, and rests palm up on his right leg which he has thrown over the other. He wears his official costume of blue, with a sword and a sash of the tri- colour about his waist. On the table behind him is his three-cornered hat with the national colours. The man's eyes are large and he has a frank expression and fine, strong features. The position is extremely natural, caught, it seems as he turned to answer a question. The figure is well drawn, which Goya frequently made no pretence of attempting, and a French critic has said of it that in no other picture have the national colours been so pictorially treated, or made such an integral part of the composition.
The Young Spanish Girl stands in the centre of a land- scape, dressed in black with a black mantle, a knot of rose in her hair. With arms crossed at her waist, she is in three-quarters view, turned toward the right. Her head is thrown proudly back emphasizing still more strongly her extreme height.
In 1799 the painter of these two canvases was made private painter to Charles IV. Though miuch of his life was spent at the court of Spain, he did not hesitate to
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advocate the most revolutionary doctrines, nor to scoff or revile court or king whenever the mood seized him. Most of his work may be called little but illustrations for his democratic and revolutionary beliefs and it has been suggested by Mr. Hamerton that the great French regard for his works, at its last analysis, is more admira- tion for these opinions than for his works themselves. Whether this be true or not he had an immense influence on French art, Delacroix especially falling greatly under his sway. There is no doubt that Goya's draughtsman- ship was frequently outrageous and his colour even worse. He was as reckless and sinful with his brush as he was with his life. But he certainly accomplished some remarkably fine work, clear, fresh, vigorous, original, full of life, power and passion. And since him Spain has had no painter to recall even dimly the halcyon days of her one great art period.
In this same bay are the few English pictures owned by the Louvre. There is scarcely one among them that adequately represents the school, and any extended notice of them is more to call attention to the position their painters really hold in the history of art than to the individual pictures which so poorly represent them here.
Richard Wilson, who may be called the father of English landscape art and, who, though his English public absolutely ignored him, prepared the way for Constable, has one little canvas in Bay D which was acquired in 1895. It is " more fat," says M. Alexandre, '' in exe- cution than the landscapes by Vernet, and has a decided transparence of air and light."
Romney, the impetuous, the fluctuating, the ardent lover, the neglectful husband, the enthusiastic beginner, the dilatory finisher, Romney, who had grace, esprit, a
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true painter's brush, who was without training and who did much bad work and an occasional gem like the Parson's Daughter, has one mediocre portrait, Sir Stanley.
Sir William Beechey, who was a pupil of Reynolds and in his day an eminent portrait-painter, though he never approached his master, has one picture in the Louvre, that, possessed of only fair merit, has a certain sort of unconscious grace. It is a portrait of a Brother and Sister. The two children are in a park, the brother at the left, sitting on the pedestal of a large vase, placing his sister's broad, flower-decked hat on her head. She stands beside him, holding up her white skirt within whose folds she keeps more of the blooms. The boy has turned his face to the left as has the small dog at his feet. He is dressed in garnet, with a wide lace collar. In the distance are a river and clusters of trees, and back of the vase, the conventional red curtain.
The Portrait of a Disabled Sailor, by Raeburn, the Frans Hals of England, is a far better piece of work than any of the pictures so far mentioned. Raeburn can only be seen to advantage in Edinburgh, for he was really a Scotchman, though called English. He was a wonderful manipulator. The freedom, fulness, plastic quality of his brush-work is quite equal to Frans Hals. The canvas here is only an average piece of work for him but even so it is a remarkable portrait, and Chesneau says that it is painted with not only great vigour but shows a fineness in its interpretative quality and a spirit that is rare in any portrait. The heavy, stolid flesh, with its Saxon-toned, flesh browned, reddened, roughened and hardened by the winds and waves, with its red nose showing the effect of gin possibly, as well as the elements, emphasized by the bleared eyes which nevertheless re-
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gard you coolly and sharply, all speak the master-hand that held the brush.
A Portrait of a Woman by Hoppner is clear and pleasing. It shows her dressed in white with a land- scape background. Hoppner was a disciple of Reynolds and a great rival of Lawrence. His portraits of men are frequently wonderful in directness, simplicity and dignity. His women are usually so flattered that they have little individuality or even personality.
The Portrait of a Woman in White by Opie is not a very good specim^en of his style, but has the solidity and truth for which Opie was noted and is painted in a full, large way. If lacking in a certain beauty of finish and refinement, it has a sincerity and unaffectedness that show the brush that painted it to be vigorous and sure. She is sitting in a park, her body turned three-quarters to the left, her face looking to the right. Her white dress has short sleeves and across her breast and about her waist is a piece of blue embroidery. A straw hat lined with mauve-coloured silk is on her brown tresses, with the ribbons flying over her bare shoulders.
Another fair example of its creator's brush is nor- land's Halt. It is of much browner, heavier tone than his finest work, but is a good bit of composition and is well spotted in its colour-scheme. Two travellers have stopped at a thatched inn door. One is still on his white horse, and has taken a bowl from a gay country lass who stands beside him. In front is the horse of the other traveller who has dismounted and is seated on the ground before a low window of a cobbler's shop. He holds a pot of beer in his hand and is talking to the man whose head is seen within the gloom of the shop.
Morland was one of the most popular of English artists. This popularity is largely because of his skill
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as a story-teller. His ability in this direction blinded the eyes of his public to his faults in drawing and his lack of knowledge of anatomy.
The Portrait of Mr. and Mrs. Angerstein by Sir Thomas Lawrence is in the painter's happiest manner and seems to have been painted con amove, which was only seemly, for Mr. Angerstein was one of the men to whom Lawrence was greatly indebted both for patronage and gifts. It represents Mr. Angerstein stand- ing at the left, his face turned to his wife who, seated beside him, is looking and smiling at him. His left hand rests on the back of her chair and they are on a balcony, the wall forming part of the background, trees and a distant landscape the rest. Mr. Angerstein wears a bril- liant scarlet coat and appears about sixty years old. His wife, who was the second Mrs. Angerstein, is in white, the texture of the dress recalling in its handling Ter Borch or Van der Heist.
The cleverness felt in this picture is the chief charac- teristic of this Englishman who had his world at his feet from the time when, a prodigy of five years old, he was already painting portraits for money. Yet he was less great than his country believed him. He had a way of omitting disagreeables, of emphasizing pleasing attri- butes, of giving his sitters an air of courtly grace, while he very seldom bothered his head to suggest what might be below the soft flesh, the easy pose, the graceful car- riage. There are portraits of his, to be sure, that are natural, earnest, unaffected, even virile, direct and con- tained. But most of these date from before he was thirty, before society began to crowd upon him till he had neither time nor chance to hold to sincerity. As a technician he had undoubtedly skill, and executed with more of the
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" know how " than most of his English brethren. At its best his style is that of Reynolds.
A very different personality was John Constable and a very different aim had the man who, though perhaps indebted to Wilson for some of the principles of his art, may in truth be called the founder of modern land- scape art. It has been claimed that it is to Constable that France owes her naturalistic, her realistic, her im- pressionistic schools of painting. Beginning with Dela- croix, the instigator of the so-called romantic movement, France appreciated and applauded the English landscape- painter before his own country had learned to value him. Light, real out-of-doors light, air, the real atmos- phere of woods, of meadows, of ocean side ; colour, real outdoors colour, or at least something vastly nearer it than anything the studio painters had ever expressed with their interminable browns and olives and opaque greens ; movement, the movement of wave, and cloud, — these were the things Constable endeavoured to paint. N|ot till his death did England appreciate him. Un- doubtedly the extravagant claims that have been made concerning his influence over modern, especially French art, are exaggerated. He was no such tremendous inno- vator as has been described. Impetus, however, he cer- tainly did give to the just beginning movement to see things as they are and to paint them as one sees them. It is not at the Louvre where he can be known. The pictures there are all heavy, and lack life and freshness compared to his best work.
The Rainbow is an autumn landscape, with the tower of Salisbury seen among the splendid trees, reddened by the touch of fall. It is a little sketch with a stormy, heavily-clouded sky.
The Bay of Weymouth at the Approach of the Storm,
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is the best of the lot. The sea is tumultuous, yet with a sort of leaden calmness about it. It is the ominous pause just before the storm strikes. The sky is full of rushing, tumbling clouds, pressing down to the tops of the low hills at the right. On the rock-strewn hills is a woman scurrying from the storm, and farther off a shepherd with his dog gathers the flock and drives them into the interior.
Bonington, who is much more of a Frenchman than an Englishman is represented by a number of pictures, all of which, as well as all he left when he died at the age of twenty-seven, are in the nature of studies, rather than finished works. He had undoubted talent, and if he had lived longer would probably have won a high place on the list of fame.
In Frangois I. and the Duchess d'fitampes, the duchess is sitting in a huge, upholstered chair, with her left hand resting on the arm and playing with a hound standing beside her. She wears a yellow silk, square-cut decollete gown with wide lace undersleeves. Her brown hair banded across her forehead, falls down her neck loosely. By her side at the right, stands enormous-nosed Fran- gois, most gorgeously apparelled, and with him Charles v., only less royally arrayed. There is another Frangois by Bonington in a private collection in England which critics accord higher praise than they do to this.
The collection of German pictures in the Louvre is not much more satisfactory than the English or Spanish. Like Spain, Germany has only two giants on her roll of painters, and of these two only one has a fair showing here. Durer, the first German painter worthy the name, was born in 147 1. Before him, one can truly say there was no art in Germany. And with the exception of Holbein it is equally true to say that no other German
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painter has since arisen anywhere near approaching him. In spite of his four years of travel Diirer was always and distinctly German. To us of to-day imbued as we all are, whether consciously or unconsciously, with the Italian ideals of art, Diirer's lack of beauty, his accentua- tion of line, his struggle to express anatomical truths, make him seem at times almost archaic. Yet even the great Venetians had unbounded admiration for and appreciation of his gifts. As he went on, too, some of the angularities of line, the hardness of drapery and the rigidity of form, that were a part of his German train- ing, disappeared. Sidney Colvin, in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, says most admirably of Diirer : " All the qualities of his art, — its combination of the wild and rugged with the homely and tender, its meditative depth, its enigmatic gloom, its sincerity and energy, its iron diligence and discipline, — all these are qualities of the German spirit. . . . He has every gift except the Greek and Italian of beauty and ideal grace. In religious paint- ing he has profound earnestness and humanity and an in- exhaustible dramatic invention; and the accessory land- scape and scenery of his compositions are more richly conceived and better studied than by any painter before him. In portraiture he is equally miaster of the soul and body, rendering every detail of the human superficies with a microscopic fidelity, which nevertheless does not encumber nor overlay the essential and inner character of the person represented."
His two pictures in the Louvre are both portraits, one of a young boy, the other an old man. The latter as- suredly must have been an unusually successful por- trait for even the great Diirer. There is a directness of regard, a light in the eye, a subtle feeling of momentary action in the delicately closed lips, a quick pressure for-
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ward to the head, all suggesting a reproduction of a very live moment; suggesting too, such a vivid sensa- tion of movement, that it seems as if the eyes must actually turn, the head tip back, the mouth open to speak. The portrait is labelled " An Old Man," and the beard that grows from under the chin is white, as well as the stray locks of hair that escape from the close, horned, red cap. But the features, the expression, the light in the eyes, are those of a man hardly middle-aged. Intelligence, quickness, keenness and good humour are mingled in the face. The drawing and modelling are masterly, but it is the personality of the sitter that attracts one most.
No one of the four pictures by Cranach is among that painter's more important works, but the Portrait of John Frederick III. is a very good example of his style. Even better is the Portrait of an Unknown Man that has been said to be Frederick of Saxony, though it is doubtful if it is he. Whoever he is, it is a striking por- trait full of realistic attributes and painted with a faithfulness that presupposes a likeness. He is shown with a broad flat hat ornamented with feathers and jewels and a fur-bordered robe opening over an elaborate sort of shirt. He is turned three-quarters to the right, and has a broad brown beard, and delicately outlined moustache leaving entirely free a Cupid-bow mouth. His sharply-lined eyebrows curve slightly over a pair of sleepy eyes. About his neck is a heavy chain wound four times and ending in a dragon-shaped ornament. This falls over the shirt of puffed white stuff which is trimmed with rose-coloured bands embroidered with pearls in the shape of big S's. The picture is cut off at his waist, allowing only part of his two fat hands to show. On the forefinger of his left hand is a jewelled ring. There is no sign in this fleshy, rather stupid-look-
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ing German gentleman, of the thin forms, and scraggy muscles in which Cranach's nude figures abound. The careful drawing of certain of the features is the more remarkable considering how badly some of the parts go together.
His Venus in a Landscape is one of his characteristic Venus pictures. She is in a garden walking, turned three-quarters to the left, and is nude save for a big red cap on her long blond tresses and a rich collar around her neck. In her hand she carries a gauzy scarf. One of the amusing features of Cranach's Venuses is that they are very often fully arrayed as to head-dress if otherwise quite unadorned! At the left is a clump of trees, and in the distance at the foot of a mountain a village, whose houses are reflected in a river.
Cranach, only a year younger than Diirer, who some- what influenced his style, ranks far below both him and Holbein, principally because he was so much poorer as a draughtsman than either of these two. His portraits are his best works. About all he did there was a certain sinuous grace if not truth of line, an ingenuousness that at times was positive bashfulness, and a kind of sweet- ness that was homely in its intimate expression. Like all the early German painters his idea of beauty of form consisted in what the Italians would have considered most decided examples of malformation. His lanky, thin-hipped, undeveloped, hackHsch sort of women were equally far removed from the corpulent Hausfraus of the Dutch and Flemish painters. Yet there is a charm, a pristine freshness about his Venuses and Eves that give them individuality and real power. His colour was at first very brown and yellow, afterward he secured a more rosy tone. He was the painter of the Reformation, the great friend of Luther and Melanchthon, and was one of
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the two partners of the first printing-press at Wittenberg. He is said to have brought about Luther's marriage to Catherine Bora. He was so rapid a painter, and in the course of his long life produced so much, that he was called on his gravestone, the '' celerrimus pictor."
Holbein, the second of Germany's two giants of the Renaissance, in one respect at least ranks above those who in other ways are far greater than he. Above Titian, above Van Dyck, he stands as a portrait-painter. These two painted men as they behave or as they seem. *' Hol- bein depicts men as they are." He had that rare quality of being able to eliminate himself entirely when he painted a portrait. His likenesses are as diverse as men actually are in outward seeming, and much more, — they are as diverse in what they suggest as to their real characters and lives. Holbein painted ruthlessly, so clearly did he see and portray the soul beneath the mask of flesh. Far above his German contemporaries in his knowledge of anatomy, perspective and modelling, he keeps their scrupulous regard for truth of detail and accessory. But never does this faithful drawing of fur, or brocade or golden ornaments or figured backgrounds make him forget the truth of the thing as a whole. It is an ensemble that Holbein always achieves and an en- semble where the soul of the man or woman portrayed is the central point of focus.
His inability to flatter his sitter was seldom more strikingly displayed than in the Portrait of Anne of Oeves, fourth wife of Henry VHI. Stiff, stolid, square and stupid, seem the most appropriate words to describe the woman depicted. A more right-angled sort of por- trait than this he surely never drew. He painted the portrait, it is said, before Anne became queen, and not long after Cromwell had secured the king's consent to
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the alliance with this Protestant German princess. She is standing in full face, with her hands crossed exactly in front, a little below her waist. On her head is a transparent cap, and over it a head-dress loaded with pearls and cut stones. The two sides of this elaborate head-gear are almost precisely identical in outline, even the thin muslin border falling into mathematical exact- ness of fold. Her dress is of crimson velvet, with enormous draped sleeves and smooth tight skirt, trimmed with bands of gold embroidered with pearls. The square opening at the chest is filled in with folds of linen, over it falling several chains of gold and precious stones. On her fingers are a number of rings, one even surrounding her thumb. The background is green, the flesh-tones somewhat reddish. The colouring of the whole thing, like everything that Holbein touched is full of life and originality. It is painted on parchment affixed to a wooden panel.
The Portrait of Richard Warham, Archbishop of Canterbury is a replica of the one in Lambeth House, which is probably the original work, though this in the Louvre is undoubtedly by Holbein's own hand. It is life- sized and of it Herr Woltmann says : " The grandeur and severeness of conception, the plastic feeling and the whole simplicity cannot be sufficiently admired. . . . Not merely is the head characteristic and full of individuality, but also the hands of the old gentleman which are resting on the gold brocaded cushion." He stands in three- quarters position, facing toward the left, his head pushed a Httle forward, giving the impression of rounded shoul- ders. The close black cap that allows only a line of his gray hair to show below, has ear-flaps meeting the broad fur band that goes about his neck and falls down over his white surplice in front. Behind him on a high
PORTRAIT OF RlfHAKI) WARHAM, ARCHHISHOl' OF ( ANIKKIU'RV
By Holbein
Grange Galerie U9
stand are his mitre and some books and on the other side a gorgeous cross in gold and jewels carried to such a degree of finish as Jan Van Eyck himself would have admired. The background is green.
Holbein painted the Portrait of Nicholas Katzer about 1528. It is one of the best examples of his best manner in the Louvre. The portrait is life-size, half length. He is sitting at a table turning toward the right, the light flowing full over his face, characteristic of Holbein, who loved best to paint faces in clear light. On his head is a full black cap and over his black coat falls a brown outer robe. These open at the neck sufficiently to show a bit of white ruff and the edge of a red waistcoat. His hands, which rest on the table before him, have a poly- hedron in one and a pair of compasses in the other. Lying about are various astronomical instruments of his profession, and on the wall are others. The face is extremely interesting with its large nose, its rather drooping lids, its wide thin mouth, its square chin. If not exactly beautiful it has a strongly intelligent look joined to gentleness of expression. He is the man, who, when the king asked him why he had not learned English during his long stay in England, remarked, " Pardon, your Majesty, how can a man learn English in thirty years ? "
Erasmus is one of Holbein's most celebrated por- traits, partly on account of the subject, partly because of its intimate expression of character and for its sub- tlety of line. The great Dutch thinker is seated in profile, facing the left, writing on a paper something which he is copying from the book held open by his left hand. Dressed in black, with the black cap whose side pieces nearly cover his ears and hair, it is the face and hands alone which convey the tremendous impression
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of personality. The outline of that fine, firm profile is fairly insistent with life, a life that is wholly inner, how- ever, and whose repression is clearly shown in those drawn, cautious lips, in that shaded eye. Almost as full of spirit-portrayal are the smooth, scholarly hands, too delicate and too fond of luxury to be the hands of a martyr, but preeminently the hands of a thinker, a man of deep culture.
The two Biblical pictures of Elsheimer, who was born nearly eighty years after Holbein, are in his usual style, sadly inadequate after such work as the man of Augsburg achieved. They are small canvases, of realistic character and with a warmness in the tone that at times suggests Rembrandt. His colour was of good body and he paid the most careful attention to truth of detail.
The Death of Adonis by Rottenhammer reminds one of Tintoretto in " force, warmth and clearness, but unfor- tunately he adopted," as well, the " Venetian master's arbitrary and confused arrangement of lines." At the left Venus is falling into the arms of a nymph while at her feet supported by another nymph Adonis expires. A more completely robed maiden is seen back to at the right holding before her a covering which she is about to throw over the dead. Above, a Cupid weeps, and another is by Venus, while in the distance three more are seen spearing a boar. The swirl and twist of line, the crowding together of the figures, make a confusion that nevertheless does not wholly obscure the often really beautiful lines of figure and the soft smooth niodelling of the flesh-planes.
A number of Mignon's fruit and flower pieces show that painter's ability as still-life portrayer, but are of little real worth. At his best he approaches Jan David de
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Heem, but is much less warm and clear in colour, far weaker in composition, and often cold and heavy.
Denner's Portrait of a Woman is so painfully finished that one's pleasure is lost in the multiplicity of details and in his evident anxiety to get the exact texture of every hair.
Seybold copied Denner, but had much better colour. The Portrait of Himself, is warm and interesting in tone. The colour-scheme is pleasing with the gray cos- tume, white shirt and green cap.
The Portrait of Marie-Amelie-Christine of Saxony, Queen of Spain, is not one of Raphael Mengs's most successful achievements. Mengs was brought up on Raphael and the ancients. From his earliest childhood he was put at copying till, if he ever had any individu- ality it was copied out of him. Yet so perfect were his drawings, so pleasing his forms compared to the utterly trashy works of his contemporary countrymen, that it is not difficult to understand why he was so greatly admired.
CHAPTER VIII.
GRANDE GALERIE — FLEMISH SCHOOL
The last two sections of the Grande Galerie contain some of the important pictures of the Flemish masters, the larger number of the remainder owned by the Louvre being in the new rooms opened in 1900.
Paul Bril, of whose works the Louvre possesses a number of excellent specimens, lived and worked so long in Rome that he became greatly Italianized. Still, he kept certain Flemish attributes. His realistic method of looking at nature was essentially Flemish, as was his conscientious care in dealing with details. He was noted for intelligent distribution of light, for poetic rendering, and for an effective ensemble that was not too much broken by his worked-out accessories. He has been called the precursor of both Claude Lorrain and Poussin. Both he and his elder brother Matthaus received pensions from Sixtus V. and most of their work is still to be seen in Italy.
Of his works owned by the Louvre, one is a landscape called Diana and Her Nymphs. Bril had a plan for building his landscapes that was evidently one of pre- conceived design. His foregrounds are almost always sunk into a sombre shadow that is brown in tone and decidedly unnatural. Once in the middle distance, his light grows clear, his atmosphere vibrating, his colours
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delightful. The general criticism holds true of this canvas, A winding stream fills the larger part of the foreground, reeds and bushes growing in it at the right and two tall trees at the left. This is all in deep shadow, the more difficult to understand because there seems to be plenty of open space through which the sunlight could easily break. A forest makes the middle foreground at the right and this also is largely in shadow. At the left, how- ever, the light strikes clear and bright. Here a bridge of logs is thrown across the river and over this Diana, her dogs and two of her companions are crossing. Beyond them again, where a charming rolling land of trees, fields and hills stretch to the sky, the atmospheric effect is thoroughly delightful.
Exactly the same distribution of light is shown in The Duck Shooting. At the right two enormous oaks, the branches of which are cut off by the top of the picture, are in a depth of unexplainable shadow. The two hunters on the ground at their base, are of course entirely sub- merged by this darkness. Once beyond this point, how very different the feeling! The pond with its smooth surface scarcely rippled except by the swimming ducks, the massed trees across it in the middle distance, the opening into the fields beyond, the enveloping sky, — all are full of a peaceful light and are as true and natural as they are idyllic. In this as in many of Bril's pictures, the figures are by Annibale Caracci.
The Air and The Earth, by Jan Breughel in this section, show some of that painter's characteristics. He was a contemporary of Bril, and was called Velvet Breu- ghel because he painted flowers that afterward were largely copied on velvet. He had none of the roystering style of his father, Peter, and dealt but little in peasant pictures. He was a celebrated landscape-painter of his
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day, and Rubens frequently employed him to paint land- scapes and flowers in his pictures. He as well as Bril was a strongly Italianized Fleming, and in most of his scenes he introduced Roman ruins or classic build- ings.
The Air shows Urania sitting upon a cloud, nude but for a bit of red drapery. In her left hand she holds a spear and upon her right shoulder perches a white paroquet. By her side a young Love gazes through a glass at Diana and Apollo in their chariot driving through the air. At the right are three little Loves in the middle of a heap of optical instruments, at the left a tree and a deep valley.
The Earth is an opening of a forest where all kinds of animals are seen. At the right, near a tree, in the midst of flowers, is a wolf, in the centre an ox, a turkey-cock and a peacock, at the left, a lion, a tiger, and a horse. In the distance at the right is a pond and at the left Adam and Eve with Gk)d, near the tree of good and evil. Here are all the elements Breughel revelled in. And who shall say the picture is not as full of humour as the more notable peasant scenes of his father?
Entirely different in almost every respect are the paintings of Frans Pourbus, who, living at the same time as Breughel, spent a large part of his life in Paris. His work was chiefly portraiture, though some of his religious scenes are well known and admired. In Paris he painted all the royal family and most of the noted people of the court. They are finished to a high degree, have always much richness of costume, and seem ex- tremely truthful in countenance.
Of the two portraits of Henri IV. by him in the Louvre, the one standing with his hand directly on the table beside him, is to-day regarded as a classic. The
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king is posed squarely in full face, but has turned his head slightly toward his left shoulder. He has a ruff about his neck and the order of the Holy Spirit on a ribbon across his chest. He is in black doublet and hose which contrast with the red and gold covering of the table. Henri IV. is a man of middle age in this portrait and in the furrows of his forehead, in the con- tracted brows, the firm mouth and the straight pose, can be felt something of the nature of Henry of Navarre whose Edict of Nantes is perhaps the best thing that men remember of him.
Equally characteristic and much more splendid is the Portrait of Marie de Medici, Henri's wife. She is seated on a sort of dais covered with red velvet bordered with gold. Her gown is a most magnificent blue robe scattered over with golden fleurs-de-lis and bordered with ermine, the velvet mantle being also enriched with the flower of France, and lined with the royal fur. Pearls and precious stones blaze and bloom about her and if one thinks rather more of the gorgeous costum- ing of this Italian Queen of France than of her high- bred, slender, haughty face, it is not because the painter has slighted the person of the royal sitter but because the clothes were of such vast importance!
Pourbus's Portrait of Guillaume de Vair, guardian of the Seals of France under Louis XIII., is another fine work.
To begin to describe the paintings of Rubens in the Louvre would require a volume in itself. It is only possible to mention a few of the more important ones, or those that are for one reason or another especially char- acteristic of this painter of whom, one is tempted to say, everything was characteristic. For Rubens painted every sort of subject that a painter's brush could choose.
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Biblical, legendary, ancient and modern, historical and mythological subjects; portraits and salon pieces; battles and hunting-scenes; grotesques and landscapes, flower and fruit decorations; nothing was outside the range of his genius. Though he represents the complete fruition of Belgic art, in him too, are seen the germs of its decadence. To a certain extent he may be compared in this way to Michelangelo. Michelangelo's followers and even the men who were working right with him, though they might appreciate his genius, mostly copied his faults, as if the source of his power lay in the exag- gerations of his hand. So with Rubens. His heaped-up mountains of flesh, his tumultuous action and emotion, his surging blood, his grossness of form, his coarseness of suggestion, his disregard of the convenances of paint- ing, his abandonment to the fleshly, the earthly, the spectacular, — all this again, in Rubens even at his worst, and it not infrequently was at his worst, is so charged with the fiery spirit of his brush, so overwhelming in its beauty of colour, so powerful, so much above as it is outside the canons of art, that one forgives the lack of taste, the brutality, the sensuality, in an ecstatic maze at the versatility, the rush, the sweep, the creative fire of his art. But, again, it was just this creative fire that his followers lacked, while his idiosyncrasies and ex- travagances they found easy enough to copy.
Rubens was born in Cologne of Flemish parents and returned to Antwerp when a young boy. He travelled extensively in Italy, in Spain, and England, and was renowned as a courtier, a savant, a diplomat, and as an honourable, upright man, a true and tender husband and father. Besides all his gifts and opportunities, he was a most indefatigable worker. No other painter ever began to leave behind such an enormous amount of work.
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The number of his pictures reaches over fifteen hundred, and though, Hke Raphael, he had a small army of assist- ants constantly at work, the canvases that show only his own hand are enough to outnumber the entire output of the most prolific painters. Fecundity, originality, in- exhaustible fancy, almost unbelievable facility, a com- plete command of every trick of technique, a surety of hand, a certainty of eye, — in all this Rubens has scarcely ever been approached by any artist of any day. And yet it remains true that in religious painting he almost never reached the highest expression, and in portraiture he cannot be named along with Titian, Velasquez or even men of lower rank. Yet, he painted the mighty Descent from the Cross at Antwerp, the St. Ildefonso at Vienna and the portraits of Helena Fourment.
Of the many canvases of his that are in the Grande Galerie, the Kermesse, in Bay F, represents one of the scenes of " low life " that, when he chose, he could revel in with an abandonment unequalled by Steen or Brauwer. A large company of peasants is assembled outdoors in front of an ale-house. A long curving line of them are dancing madly, a lot of others are squatted on the ground drinking with equal fury, while others are engaged in love-making as open as it is indecent. Waagen says " There is in this marvellous picture such a vivid exhi- bition of jovial sensuality and a glow of physical life . . . that every other work of this class must appear tame and heavy in comparison. At the same time the intellect dis- played in the treatment, the richness and brilliance of the colouring, are worthy of the admirable skill and invention displayed in the composition."
Rubens's colour was never more wonderful than in The Flight of Lot. It is also more restrained, more dignified, more imposing in its significance than in most of his
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Scriptural scenes. At the right, an angel, with wings spread is showing Lot the path. Another heavenly gpaide in the centre is hastening the steps of Lot's wife, who is turning toward him, her hands clasped in pleading, her eyes full of tears. A daughter, at the left, a basket full of jewels in her arms, holds the bridle of an ass loaded with precious articles. Behind the ass the second daugh- ter carries on her head a large basket full of fruits. In the sky are four demons armed with thunderbolts which they are showering upon the doomed town.
One of his characteristic pictures of the Madonna is the one called The Virgin, Child Jesus and an Angel in the Middle of a Garland of Flowers. The Madonna, a half-length figure, is holding the child on her knees, while an angel places a crown of flowers on her head. The whole group is encircled with the elaborate wreath of flowers which it is supposed Velvet Breughel painted.
Neefs, who is represented by a number of church interiors was the most celebrated " architectural painter " of Flanders of the seventeenth century, ranking only below De Witte, who came thirty years after him. He was a friend of Velvet Breughel, of Francken, of Teniers and Van Thulden, all of whom at times painted the figures in his compositions.
His View of the Interior of a Cathedral shows his delight in portraying processions and funeral services under the light of torches. Though his chiaroscuro is not equal to that of De Witte he succeeded in achieving an effect that is both realistic and telling.
Among the many animal paintings of Snyders in the Louvre, the Wild Boar Hunt is one of the most amazing. It is in Bay E and differs only in detail from many other boar hunts by him. The same desperate wild animal, the same plucky, furious hounds, some dying.
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some inflicting fearful wounds on their prey, — all is a wild carnage whose outcome is left to the imagination. It is always just before the crisis that Snyder depicts his conflicts, just before the decisive victorious stroke is made by either combatant. It is partly due to his ability to suggest that the worst is yet to come that makes these battles so thrillingly dramatic.
Fyt, the other great animal-painter of Flanders is also well represented at the Louvre. Npthing of its kind could be more perfect than his Game in a Larder. In this crowded canvas he shows what he can do with feathers. These he can paint till one seemingly can fairly pluck them from the limp, lifeless bodies they cover. Heaped on the floor, and piled on a long low bench, are partridge, woodcock, wild duck, tumbled on their heads, their wings spread out, thrown flat on their breasts or half held up, claws in air, with one huge hare hanging against the wall above them, — the mass of feathers and fur is as brilliant as it is realistic. An amusing element is introduced by the cat, who, half-buried among the birds, sits gazing at two marmosets, they in their turn studying her with unafraid interest from their perch on the sill of the partly open window at the left.
Of these two men, it is only during recent years that Fyt has been given his deserved recognition. Snyders has been called the Rubens of the Lower Life. There is the same sweep of brush, the same fulness and amplitude of form, the same splendour of colour, and rush of movement, the same richness of ideas, the same com- mand over materials. He essayed every branch of animal life and was equally successful in all. His lion, bear and boar hunts where dogs are the furious antagonists are so terrific, so full of maddened power, rage and yelping
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victory, that the spectator is fairly carried off his feet by the concentrated power and passion of the scene.
Fyt had less of the terrible, the overpowering, the threatening, but he had more sanity, equal freedom of expression and more truthful realism. Hfe was bolder in his touch and freer. His rendering of fur and feathers is amazingly perfect and his brilliance of light, delicacy of colour and the sincerity of his emphasis often, as has been said, make him surpass even Snyders himself.
When Louis XIV., at sight of some pictures by David Teniers exclaimed disgustedly, ** Tirez de devant moi ces magots," he would have been still more disgusted could he have dreamed that one day a large number of these despised works would be given places of honour in the chief museum of his country. Thirty-three paint- ings by Teniers are in the Louvre and of these many are in the Fleming's best vein. It certainly is a vein, how- ever, that the " grand monarch " who admired above all art the pomposity of Le Brun, could never have learned to appreciate. Gautier says of Teniers : " No one has better painted the outer appearance of Flanders, with its humid sky, softly gray, its fresh verdures, its brick houses, ... its hospitable inns, its thickset peasants . . . and its good, round little women." Teniers not only painted drinkers, smokers, peasant life in all its ramifica- tions, but he also essayed Biblical scenes. In these, like some of the Italians, he made no pretence at historical ac- curacy. His people were straight Flemings, and his cos- tumes " a la mode du XVII^ siecle." Teniers was the friend of princes, was court painter to Archduke Leopold William, Governor of the Spanish Netherlands, and this dignitary made him groom of the chamber and superin- tendent of his picture-gallery. It is to these circum- stances, probably, that Teniers in spite of his paintings
(3tan^e ©alette i6i
of tavern scenes and drinking bouts escapes the oppro- brium that was bestowed upon Brauwer and other painters of " low Hfe."
Most of his works that are not in the Collection La- caze, are to be found in Bay E. The Inn Beside a River is one of these. At the left is the little inn of a story and a half high, and at one corner out-of-doors, a group of peasants sit or stand about a small table. From the door in the end of the house the hostess comes bear- ing a waiter. The shore by the inn slopes down into a river that flows diagonally across, and in it men stand busy with their nets. On the opposite shore on a high, wooded bank, is a castle. In the distance the sun's rays pierce the clouds and strike brilliantly on a point below the castle.
The Temptation of St. Anthony was a favourite subject with Teniers, apparently chiefly because it gave him a chance to depict grimacing beasts and fearsome birds. The aged saint kneels in profile in a cave, before a rock on which is his open book of prayers, a skull, a wooden crucifix and a jug. With one terrible claw clutching the saint's hood which has fallen back, a demon leans over him offering him a glass of wine. The leer on this face under its hat cocked up with a carrot is enough to give one bad dreams for a week. Behind Anthony a hag of a sorceress looks up with a snarling laugh from the parchment she reads, and above are bats, and night-birds and gloom and horror.
The Prodigal Son is merely a Dutch out-of-doors party, except that the girls are rather better dressed and the furnishings of the table more elaborate than usual in Dutch paintings of such occasions.
The Village Fete is another kind of scene which Teniers loved to portray. He was in his element when he
i62 ube Hrt of tbe Xou\>re
could paint a crowded country fair or fete, of dancing, eating, drinking, love-making peasants. This is full of the boisterous noise, rude actions and hearty guffaws which only Jan Steen could more realistically express. But the truth of action, the vigour of movement, the amusing episodes, the freedom of handling and excellent grouping are all found in this as in the Kermesse in Collection Lacaze.
A soft, gray, luminous sky is one of the chief charms of the picture called Works of Mercy, in which an old man is giving bread and milk to a crowd of beggars.
If the Louvre has thirty-three Teniers, it has twenty Champaignes. And vastly different these latter are from the former. Champaigne lived and worked so long in Paris that his pictures are not much like most of his countrymen's. Yet, in spite of the influence of France and Poussin, he has been universally regarded as be- longing to the Low Countries. And indeed he never lost the Fleming's feeling for colour and depth of tone. His work was chiefly portraiture and religious scenes, though he painted some landscapes with real poetic feel- ing. Of these there are two in the Louvre of no common interest. But it is in his portraits that he ranks highest. They are vivid, spirited, and must have been extraordi- narily realistic as likenesses. His touch is free, his draughtsmanship able, his colour brilliantly silvery, pure and transparent except where the shadow-tones have grown too dark owing to an impure medium. Among his works here are some of the very best that he pro- duced.
Very wonderful is the double Portrait of Mother Catherine Agnes Arnaud and Sister Catherine of St. Susan, the latter the painter's daughter. The picture was executed by Champaigne and given to the convent at
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Port Royal in grateful remembrance of what he regarded as the miraculous cure of his daughter in answer to the mother superior's prayers. The canvas shows the nun in the midst of these devotions. Sitting in a wide, low chair with her feet resting on a broad footstool in front of her, is the young daughter in the costume of the nuns of Port Royal. She holds on her lap the little open box of reliquaries, while, with frail, joined hands, she prays for health. In the centre, facing the observer, but on the far side of the young Catherine, kneels the mother superior, her head lifted, her hands met in prayerful pleading. The surrounding room is one of the cells of the convent and the bare gray walls are unbroken except for a large crucifix over the young nun's head and a long Latin inscription at the left in which Cham- paigne expresses his gratitude for the recovery. By the side of his daughter at the right is a chair on which is a book of hours. The colour throughout is quiet, re- strained, a gray harmony. The faces of the two women are remarkable examples of what portraiture can be. That they were likenesses, contemporary criticism makes evident. But that they are much more, the merest tyro must perceive. The pale, wan, yet peaceful face of the girl, the older, fuller, but even more spiritual face of the mother, show an insight, an appreciation of spirit, and a power of communicating this insight to others that has rarely been surpassed.
Another double portrait is the one of Frangois Mansard and Claude Perrault, architects. M. Mansard is at the left of the two, turning slightly to the right, his face in three-quarters view. Perrault faces him but looks toward the spectator, pointing with his right hand to a statue resting on a column behind. Mansard has a dark mous- tache, eyes and hair, Perrault is much fairer. The
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former is dressed in black, Perrault in gray with a white collar. The stone railing on which Mansard's arm rests makes the base-line of the picture so that the two are shown scarcely to their waists. If not so celebrated as the two nuns or the Richelieu, this is among the best of Champaigne's portraits. The background, the statue, the somewhat conventional positions, recall Poussin's influence, but the truth of delineation, the strong in- dividualization, the smiling interest of Perrault suggest even more strongly Champaigne's Flemish birth and training.
His religious pictures, Christ on the Cross, the Dead Christ, the St. Philip, are all Champaigne Poussinized, and though full of dignity and religious feeling, are too thoroughly impregnated with the classic traditions of the French school to add greatly to Champaigne's reputation.
The Portrait of Himself is valuable both as a historical document and as a work of art. The painter is delineated middle-aged, sober, the marks of sorrow on his lined face, his regard self-contained and serious, his eyes shining with a courage that illumines the whole face and makes it both lovable and strong. As a technical achievement it is not far below the Perrault in value.
The four pictures of Meel or Miel, his name being spelled both ways, in Bay E are good examples of his style. The style, however, is that of the decadence. He was born in Antwerp, but went to Rome and studied with Andrea Sacchi. His works display dignity, good draughtsmanship, and a colour which, though rich, is often dark to sombreness.
In the foreground of The Halt, a couple of soldiers are asleep on the ground. In the centre of the grotto, which is the encampment of the company, an officer is
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giving orders to a subordinate. At the right some sol- diers are playing cards, a cavalier feeds his horse and others are about a fire. At the left in the plain are the tents of the camp.
Much more of a decadent, and far more Italianized, is Van der Meulen, who has a long list of pictures at the Louvre. He was one of the painters of the court of Louis XIV. and followed that monarch to battle, reproducing scenes of the campaigns on canvas. In many of his works are found excellent portraits of Louis XIV. and other notable people of the day. His landscapes are often too green, though he had Huysmans to assist him in this part of his labours, and his horses, though fairly drawn are not of sufficient variety in character or action. The best of his canvases in the Louvre are, perhaps, The Entry of Louis XIV. and Marie Theresa into Auras; The View of the Village and Chateau of Dinant, View of the Fort of Luxembourg and a View of Fontainebleau.
In the first of these, from the left over a vast plain, comes a gilded coach drawn by six white horses. Within are the queen and her ladies in waiting. Her pages march alongside and behind are Louis on a white horse and the Dauphin on a sorrel. They precede a cortege of mounted noblemen. At the right, in the foreground, an assemblage of people watch the procession and in the distance the body of the troops is seen. The fortifi- cations of the town make the horizon line.
In both E and F as well as in other rooms of the Louvre, are canvases by Huysmans, he who assisted Van der Meulen in landscape. Huysmans lived at the time of Ruysdael and Wynants. His style reflects some- thing of Rembrandt's influence especially in his chiaros- curo. He had a way of lighting the interior of a wood or a bit of a clearing with a golden tone that is all the
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more telling in comparison with the dark colouring sur- rounding it. His landscapes have real poetic feeling and where they are not spoiled by the dimming of time still show the out-of-door atmosphere that was so admired in his day.
Bay E is mostly given up to works of Jordaens, Van Dyck and Rubens, the rest of their canvases being in the new rooms at the end of the Grande Galerie. When Ru- bens died, Jordaens was universally regarded as the great- est painter left in Flanders. He was then about forty- seven years old, and had not yet decorated the Maison de Bois with his celebrated Apotheosis of the Prince of Orange. Jordaens has rarely had justice done him either by critics or amateurs. Often he has been dis- missed with the summing up that he was little more than an imitator of Rubens. Influenced to a certain extent by the great painter of Antwerp, undoubtedly he was, as was every other painter of that time and land. But he did not become a mere replica of Rubens. He is indeed seen to be more and more unlike him the more they are studied together. To begin with, Jordaens is more truly Flemish. And it does not take long to see what Alexandre points out, that he was more real than Rubens. Rubens produced the visions of his mind to a much greater extent than he copied the views of his optic nerve. Even when he painted actual, every-day scenes or portraits, they had first been passed through the golden alembic of his brain till they were trans- formed into something more brilliant, more intense, more glorious than ever mortal eyes had seen. With Jordaens, on the contrary, his passion for the real, the actual, the present, allowed no such liberty. To paint things exactly as they existed was to him the height of achieve- ment. He would make them more real, if possible, rather
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than idealize them out of nature. It is this very absorp- tion in the present, the existing, that has caused the slur of " vulgar " to be thrown at Jordaens. To our time and race, those bulging, heavy women, those pompous, over- fed burghers may indeed seem common, vulgar. But they were the people of Jordaens's day and race and in their very truth to nature were neither coarse nor com- mon. Another point of difference between Rubens and Jordaens is their colour-scheme. Rubens's palette was silvery gray, delicate, fresh; Jordaens's hot, brown, and somewhat heavy. Yet vigour, truth, richness and power it had to a tremendous degree. In drawing he was more truthful, more normal, in composition more restrained but not less felicitous, in modelling of flesh and form as masterly. It is indeed, as Alexandre again says, not so much below Rubens that he should be placed. If not quite on the line of Rubens's pinnacle, he is at least on the same plateau with him, overlooking a vast plain of artists who have been more widely praised.
Jordaens was not so successful in his religious scenes as in his mythologic, historic or portrait pieces. The Four Evangelists, however, is less a religious scene than it is a portrait group of one very young and three elderly men. The one denominated John is in the centre of the four, all of whom are very earnestly and reverently studying an open book on a table at the left. His white robe is so full as to be almost cumbersome and covers him so completely that his head and hands alone are exposed. H]e stands in profile, his head bent over, read- ing, his left hand holding the drapery at his neck, his right crossing it and resting against his chin. These hands are nervous, sensitive, complementing well the impressible, finely drawn face, with its waving dark hair. At the right is Matthew, who is about to write in a book
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wjiich he holds before him, evidently copying from the one on the table. He is grizzled, gray, but not so old, apparently, as Mark and Luke who are looking over the shoulders of the other two. The hands of all four Evangelists are full of character and very expressive. They are however, somewhat too prominent and similarly placed. The heads are vigorous, firmly drawn and modelled.
Under titles such as A Family Repast, Concert after Meals etc., scenes similar to the one called here The King Drinks are among the most characteristic of Jor- daens. He was never so happy as when he could crowd about a table as many people as the canvas could hold giving variety to the scenes both by the difference of the attitudes and the ages of the company. All sorts and conditions of men, too, he loved to bring together. This one shows his usual method and is an average example, not one of his finest works. There are ten people and one dog about this family board. Among them are an old man and an old woman, a middle-aged man and his slightly younger wife, two maidens, two youths and a child. And it is not too much to say that Jordaens's brush has expressed wonderfully the soft pliability of youthful roundness, the firmer, harder planes of middle life and again the wrinkled parchment-like flesh of old age. His colour is equally successful in differentiating, his chiaroscuro is splendidly managed. At one end of the table sits he of the family who bears the crown upon his head. He is back to a window so that his face is in shadow, the light striking, however, against his hand holding the goblet from which he is drinking. Behind him stands a young boy pouring wine into the glass of an elderly man at the right of him with the crown. In the foreground, and thus sitting back to the spectator.
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is the young girl of the party. She has turned her head to look over her right shoulder, however, so that her face comes into three-quarters view, catching a charming play of light on forehead, cheek and nose. Opposite her is the fool, in cap and bells, grinning, as he rests one hand on the hostess's shoulder and offers her a goblet with the other. This woman is richly dressed and looks at the man at the head of the table with a brilliant smile. Beside her is the small child, next the grandmother, and finally at the end of the table a young man with wide open mouth repeating the note he has just struck from the tuning-fork in his hand. Back of him the head and raised arms of a serving lass are seen, and in the imme- diate foreground standing beside the maiden, is a dog. All is jollity, glee, all apparently are joining in the song raised by the youth. There is also much charm to be found: note the delightful curves of the girl turning round; much vigour and strength: see the firm hand holding the tuning-fork or the grandmother's splendidly drawn face; much amplitude and fulness of design, of massing and of colour.
The Infancy of Jupiter shows Jordaens with a very different subject. At the left a satyr sits laughing and trying to attract the attention of the small Jupiter who sits weeping at the foot of a pear-tree. In the middle of the composition a nude woman is curled up milking a goat. She has turned her smiling face to the baby god, as if assuring him his dinner would soon come. It was in such mythologic scenes that Jordaens fairly revelled. Never was his brush more virile, his colours more bril- liant, his composition more telling.
Of the five canvases in Bay F by Van Dyck, the Chil- dren of Charles I. is one of the best known. The little Prince of Wales, afterward Charles II., stands at the left
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with crossed feet, leaning against the base of a pillar, his left hand holding the right of the tiny Duke of York, James II. to be. The third of the trio is the Princess Mary, afterward wife of William of Orange. At the ex- treme left, beside the heir apparent sits a shaggy dog, soberness and importance shining from his intent eye. The Prince of Wales is in a yellow satin suit with wide lace collar and cuffs, a rich belt about his waist. The other two are in full white satin gowns made with the high waist, low neck, wide sleeves and long stiff-spread- ing skirt so indissolubly associated with these children of the unhappy Charles. Back of the three hangs a golden brocade, and at the far right a view of a garden. Van Dyck painted so many portraits of these royal babies that they are to be found all over Europe. Never more delight- ful than when he depicted children, he was perhaps at his best in these portrait groups of the children of the king who so admired the Flemish painter.
The Portrait of the Duke of Richmond is another noted canvas. The very embodiment of slender grace is the youthful duke, with his full bloused shirt, his crimson satin breeches, his blond curls falling on to his shoulders, his long, delicate face with the half-vacuous, half-won- dering expression. High breeding, that subtle exhalation of the exquisite in life which Van Dyck better than any other could express, speaks from every long curve of the slender body and hands, from the carefully tended curls, from the bloom of the pure complexion.
Not only could Van Dyck paint the luxurious life, but he could and did live it. However much his and Rubens's surroundings or their work resemble each other, the men themselves were totally unlike. In spite of the princely magnificence in which Rubens always lived, in spite of the voluptuousness felt in many of his paintings, he himself
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was most abstemious, with none of the vices too common at that or any age to men in his position. Van Dyck, on the contrary, though perhaps first getting his taste for luxury while he was a pupil of Rubens, carried his extravagant expenditures into every phase of life. When, at forty-four years of age, death finally overtook him, he had thrown away youth, health and wealth in a mad rush for pleasures that once snatched, were only cast away for others, newer and more exciting. Even in his early days when he had only just reached Italy, he spent so lavishly and lived so recklessly that the Italians called him '' il pittore cavalier esc o/' It is as a portrait-painter that Van Dyck is known at his best. Though he painted some beautiful religious pictures and some noteworthy historical scenes, it is not in these that his genius finds full expression. As a delineator of the cavaliers, the nobles, the princes, the high-bred men and women of his time, he stands almost unsurpassed. Only Titian can excel him in this branch and he not often. His rendering of flesh, the grace, the delicacy, the fineness of contour, the atmosphere of high breeding with which he surrounds his sitters, these are characteristic of Van Dyck more than of any other painter. As has been often said he lacked the imagination, the unlimited fecundity of ideas, the originality of Rubens, but he was a better draughtsman, a truer colourist and a finer naturalist. In the opinion of the greatest critics. Van Dyck occupies a place in the annals of art quite by himself. They do not allow him to stand with the most mighty of the art giants. Neither can they relegate him to the second rank. Quite by himself, then, he stands, with the eyes of the world following him perhaps even more than they follow his leaders.
CHAPTER IX.
SALLE VAN DYCK AND GALERIE RUBENS — ROOMS XVII. AND XVIIL FLEMISH SCHOOL
The new Van Dyck and Rubens rooms lead out from the Grande Galerie. On each side of the Galerie Rubens are the so-called cabinets where are to be found the larg- est number of Dutch and Flemish pictures owned by the Louvre.
One of Champaigne's most celebrated portraits, that of Cardinal Richelieu, is in the Salle Van Dyck. He painted the prelate-statesman a number of times, but this, with the exception perhaps of that wonderful three heads in one in the National Gallery, is the greatest of all. He stands in full cardinal's dress, the brilliant red satin robes falling about him in tremendous amplitude. The white lace undersleeves and short overskirt by their very whiteness only make more intense this piercing red. The lights that strike the edge of the folds, the deep tones of the under pleats, the shimmering of the surface of the satin are remarkable brush-work. But it is in the hands and face of the cardinal that Champaigne^s genius for characterization displays itself so perfectly. There is perhaps a trifle less suavity in the aristocratic features than is felt in the portrait in the National Gallery. But the watchful regard of the eyes, the self-contained ex- pression of the none too thin lips, the smooth expanse of
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the wide, high brow, as untroubled as it is unlined, and finally the wonderful hands, which, in the nervous move- ment, the eager grasp, the plausible gesture, reveal most plainly of all the tension of mind, — this is Champaigne at his height of expression.
In the Van Dyck room a number of the paintings by Rubens were once a part of the Medici series which he painted for the Luxembourg. Of these are the Portrait of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, father of Marie de Medici, the Portrait of the Queen's Mother, and a Por- trait of Marie de Medici herself.
The Portrait of Baron Henri de Vicq, ambassador from the Low Countries to the court of France, is one of Ru- bens's masterly works. It exhibits the baron almost in full face, with close-cut moustache and beard, already gray. Otherwise in black, he wears about his neck the full- pleated ruff of the day. Behind him hangs a red curtain. The penetrating eye, the firm facial muscles, the full brow, the courtly air, all bespeak the diplomat, the man of the world. It is painted with a fulness of colour, a limpidity of stroke, characteristic of this painter whose first strokes were also his last.
The Tourney in Front of the Moat of a Chateau, shows six cavaliers in full armour, fighting two by two before the moat. Two pages at the left are holding the extra lances and picking up the broken ones. Two heralds at the right sound their horns and on the same side, occupying the second plane, is the fortified chateau sur- rounded by water, leading across which is a bridge to the square tower where floats the standard. In the distance at the left are a river and fields with trees. The sun is sinking and the whole scene is flooded in a warm golden tone that is translucent in its richness, full of an atmospheric quality a modern impressionist often fails
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to get. Hiere Rubens appears as a really great land- scape painter.
Most of the best Van Dycks are in this room, and if all are not the very greatest of his achievements, there are many splendid examples of his wonderful skill.
The Virgin and Child has been said to be a portrait group as well as a religious painting. David is supposed to represent the painter's father, Mary his mother, the Magdalene his mistress and St. John himself. If the others are no more literal transcriptions than John is of Van Dyck, they are by no means impeccable likenesses. In the John, to be sure, may be detected certain character- istics of Van Dyck, — the broad brow, the deep, full eye, the delicate chin, — but of actual portraiture there is comparatively little.
Mary sits at the left, holding upon her lap the child Jesus who is supporting himself in his standing position by a firm grasp of his mother's veil and shoulder. The baby is in profile, the mother turned three-quarters, both facing the group at the right. Of this group Mary Mag- dalene, in the foreground, is bending over in adoration, holding her white drapery half across her breast. Behind her are King David, with a golden crown on his gray hair, and John the Baptist, in skins, leaning on his staff. Back of all the sunset sky throws its glow across the scene. Mary, clad in a red robe, blue mantle and a yellow veil, is older than the Italians usually depicted her, but she is a very beautiful if somewhat Flemish type. There is a dignity, a poise, a nobility about her lifted face that Van Dyck has only rarely succeeded in equalling. The exquisite colour of the brow, cheek and chin where the light strikes full, exhales a purity and charm that are still more intensified by the soft fairness of the baby's flesh. The chubbiness of his short body, again, is more
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Dutch than ItaHan. But his face, with its baby profile half lost in the shadow, his fine, golden hair, the light caressing the rounded cheek, the tenderness of his grasp on his mother, the intensity of his regard as he gazes at the Magdalene, so baby-like, and yet so mysterious in its significance, this is all marvellous painting for any school or any time. The voluptuous, radiant face of the Magdalene is swept with an expression of pain, of sor- row that somehow enhances her beauty and sanctifies her charms. King David's lined, aging countenance, and the youthful face of John, are as satisfactory in their own way. The colour of the whole picture is glowing, deep, rich, the touch fairly free, broad, the composition better massed than Van Dyck always succeeded in accomplish- ing. The canvas was in the collection of Louis XIV. In 1 7 10 it was at Versailles and in 1747 was placed in the Galerie d'Apollon.
Of the Equestrian Portrait of Frangois de Moncade, Waagen says " Composition, drawing, light, depth and transparence of a warm colour, touch firm and spiritual, all contribute to make this equestrian portrait the most beautiful which Van Dyck has painted, and I do not hesi- tate to declare it one of the most beautiful that exists." He is mounted on a white horse, turned three-quarters to the right, his head bare, in armour, with a large white collar. In his right hand he carries the commander's baton, and about his left arm is attached a red scarf. Behind him is a landscape background.
The Portrait of Charles-Louis, Elector Palatine of Bavaria with his Brother Robert who was later made Duke of Cumberland by Charles I., is not so masterly an accomplishment as the Moncade likeness, but it has much spirit and character. The two brothers stand side by side, Robert in full face, Charles in three-quarters.
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Robert is in armour without gloves, a guipure collar fall- ing over his cuirass. His left hand rests upon the guard of his sword, his right holds a baton. Charles has his left hand upon his side, his right on his cuirass. In the background at the right, is a wall, at the left a red and black curtain, in the centre a view of a landscape.
Van Dyck's greatest picture in the Louvre is un- questionably the Portrait of Charles I., King of England, as it is also one of the greatest that he ever painted. M. Alexandre calls it " a veritable bouquet of flowers," in its arrangement of colours. The king stands on a rise of ground, slightly at the left of the picture, his body in profile, his head turned toward his left shoulder, till it is in three-quarters view. His right hand is stretched out, resting upon a tall cane, his left, holding a glove, he has placed upon his hip. Behind him at the left, a man, said to be the Marquis of Hamilton, holds the king's horse, which, only half-entering the picture is nervously pawing the ground. Farther back in the centre, a page has his Majesty's cloak on his arm. A big tree at the right spreads its branches over the group and a bit of sea at the left ends against a line of hills at the horizon.
The marquis, the horse, the page, are all royal adjuncts of a royal portrait. Not a false note, in arrangement, harmony of line and colour, in treatment of subsidiaries, in subtlety of values can be found. Van Dyck was always at his best in portraits of " high life," and here he fairly outdid himself. No placard could make this kingly figure more definitely royal. The bared heads of his two attend- ants, his own big hat with its drooping plume, his white satin short coat, his red velvet trousers and buff leather hunting-boots, even the sword with its decorated shoul- der-belt, — none of these kingly appurtenances are needed for label. Charles the First stands depicted with a
PORTRAIT OF CHARLES I. By Van Dyck
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penetrative skill scarcely ever attained by pen or brush. Noble grace, royal charm, kingly fascination, — these words seem only half to express the personality of the sovereign who could do all things well except to rule. Much more than this has Van Dyck expressed in this portrait. In the long, delicate face with its dreamy, mournful eyes, its sensitive lips, its wealth of curls, its bloom, that, so exquisite, seems already half evanescent, is felt a prescience of impending doom, — and as one looks one never wonders at the loyalty the very name of Stuart could evoke, a loyalty that frailty, incapacity, even ingratitude and lack of honour hardly ever weak- ened.
As a piece of technique this is Van Dyck at his height. Ease of handling, an outline as correct as it is full of grace, colour as transparent and pure as it is brilliant, modelling as inevitable, as sure as it is telling, every- thing here proclaims the prince of the palette.
The Virgin with the Donors is one of Van Dyck's best pictures of the Madonna. He showed her younger here than on the other canvas in this room, and her face is tender and beautiful as is the chubby babe holding his hand to the man kneeling before him. This kneeling man and wife are wonderfully expressive as portraits, and charming too are the couple of little angels who hold the flowers above their heads.
Van Dyck's Portrait of Himself in the Louvre is one of many which he painted. Here he appears already thin and somewhat worn, with a hint of fast living shining from his weary eyes. None the less it is a beautiful face with its slight moustache and soft, light curling hair, its clear-cut nose and rather ineffectual chin.
Twenty-one of the pictures which Rubens painted for Marie de' Medici now line the sides of the Rubens gallery.
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For the first time since they were taken from the Luxem- bourg for whose decoration they were planned, can they be seen as Rubens intended. Begun in 1620, they were finished in Httle over two years. With the exception of the actual portraits in this series, comparatively little of the painting is by Rubens's hand. He got permission from Marie de' Medici to execute the series in his own studio in Antwerp. Here he was surrounded by a regular school of young artists who worked under his guidance with such absorption that they may be said to have out- Rubensed Rubens. The general designs, the colour- schemes were unquestionably the master's own. As has been remarked it was not possible for even a talented pupil to reproduce the genius of Rubens himself. It was his exaggerations which they could most easily grasp and copy. Consequently this series of paintings, great as it is in parts, is, as a whole, an exhibition of Rubens's art at its most depraved state. Flamboyantly gorgeous, meretriciously ornate, vulgarly brilliant in colour, and equally vulgar in form, they display even worse taste in their conglomeration of the mythologic, the sacred and the historic. The introduction of pagan deities and nude nymphs. Loves and naiads holding trains, rowing boats, observing marriage ceremonies of prince and princess accurately arrayed in full court costume of the time of Louis XIII. is certainly a degradation of the very principles of art. And yet it remains true, that, con- sidering the limitations under which the decorations were made, the execrable taste of the time, and especially Marie de' Medici's demand for a magnificence commen- surate with her own exalted ideas of her position, con- sidering, in fact, what it was which Rubens attempted to do it must be acknowledged that they are more than
Salle Wan B^cft ant) Valerie IRubens 179
successful. They are truly extraordinary in the gorgeous- ness as a whole and in the unity of their great diversity.
Of the entire series the best are, The Birth of Louis XIII. , where the queen is shown in the purity and beauty of first motherhood with a tenderness and penetration that possibly may have been wasted on this Italian sovereign; The Landing of the Queen at Marseilles where objection can scarcely be made to the naiads who have drawn her boat to shore, for they are three of the most exquisite creations of the painter's mythologic brush; The Happiness of the Regency, which was painted after Rubens reached Paris to superintend the placing of the others of the series, and is thus more nearly by his own hand. It is one of his charming impro- visations, dashed off as only Rubens could dash off a sketch, full of life, colour and freedom.
The Marriage at Florence showing Marie being wedded by proxy to the French king is another success- ful one, the only solecism being that of the half-naked boy bearing a torch and carrying the queen's train. Rubens himself was in Florence at the time of this mar- riage and it is executed with a fulness of detail and a scru- pulous fidelity that show how perfectly his memory served him.
Of the whole line, however, it is the Coronation at St. Denis that is universally regarded as being not only the best of the series, but one of the really fine compositions of Rubens's life. It represents the interior of the cathe- dral with the queen kneeling at the foot of the altar, before the cardinals and their assisting clergy. She is in a gorgeous state robe of blue embroidered with lilies and lined with ermine. Beside her stands the Dauphin, afterward Louis XIII., while above in a balcony, Henri IV. watches the scene. Her retinue of women is behind
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her and in the tribunes and farther back are members of the court. Above, two allegorical figures bear palm branches and scatter flowers and gold pieces. The splendour of the scene, the brilliant colours of the court and coronation costume, the masterly grouping, the focusing of interest upon the queen, while at the same time denying neither place nor importance to those about, the freedom, the grand sweep of the brush-strokes, all this in Rubens goes without saying. But the dignity, the queenly quality, the spirit of the kneeling sovereign, are more intangible elements and here they are more in evidence than in most of the Medici series. It is as if Rubens felt that for the moment, as Cardinal de Joyeuse places the crown of France upon her head she is trans- formed into a higher, nobler nature. It is just this that he has succeeded so well in expressing that it requires no stretch of imagination to see it in the face of the kneeling woman.
The others of the huge, gold-bordered pictures need no description. They help to give completeness to the decorative scheme and in parts have both beauty and power; but in general they are as overloaded as they are gaudy in design and execution.
CHAPTER X.
SALLES XIX. TO XXXVI. — FLEMISH SCHOOL
The small rooms on either side of the Galerie Rubens contain the larger number of the Dutch and Flemish pictures owned by the Louvre. Among them are many that formed part of the Collection Lacaze. Though the two schools are hung together, it will be easier, perhaps, to discuss them separately.
To continue, therefore, with the works of the painters of Flanders, in Room XX. is the one so-called Van Eyck owned by the museum. Whether the Chancellor Rollin Kneeling before the Virgin actually is a Van Eyck, has been doubted. One reason for this question is that it lacks the deep purple reds that were usual to that painter. It is at any rate of his school and has many of his char- acteristics.
The Virgin is seen sitting at the right in a balcony or gallery opening at the back and sides through arches supported by delicate pillars. She is clad in a long full red robe of many folds with borders of gold embroidery in which are traced words from the Scriptures, and on her knee is the nude baby Christ, whose wooden, old- looking body is the poorest piece of work in the picture. He holds a crystal globe surmounted by a cross in his left hand, while with the other he is blessing the kneeling chancellor. Poised above the Virgin's shoulder, with
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a jewel-studded golden crown in her hands is a blue- robed angel whose varicoloured wings rise above her in graceful curves. The donor, Chancellor Rollin, kneels opposite this group before a prie-dieu on which is an open Bible. Beyond, through the open arches, a wide- reaching landscape of plains, river, bridge, houses and trees is seen.
The microscopical elaboration of detail in this vista is duplicated by the careful rendering of the tiled floor of the gallery, by the worked-out cornice and capitals, by the brocade robe of the chancellor — with every golden flower marked with exactness against the brown ground — by Mary's yellow tresses where the individual hairs can almost be counted. Everywhere is shown this con- sideration for infinitesimal detail. It is one of the marks of the real greatness of the painter that in spite of it, the picture keeps a wholeness, a unity. This is partly done by a fine use of colour, and also by Van Eyck's in- stinctive conception of the laws of perspective. It is the gradations of colour and tone in the landscape that save it from being a conglomeration of myriads of spots. To this exquisite colour-sense. Van Eyck joined a deep religious sentiment and a strong feeling for charac- terization. The chancellor is as remarkable a portrait as Pinturicchio's Alexander VI. in the Vatican. The attitudes are not dissimilar, and the flatly joined prayer- folded hands are almost identical in placing and in delicacy of construction. This donor's face, however, with its so evident wig, shows a very different character from that of the Roman pontiff. The smooth, enamel-like surface of its modelling is as fresh and clear as if painted yesterday. There is a solidity and massiveness of figure under the rich robe that proves the excellent draughtsman Van Eyck could be, — this in spite of the wooden baby,
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as out of proportion in size as it is in parts. Mary has the long face with the extremely high forehead of the early Flemings, and, except for a sweet earnestness and her golden hair is quite without beauty.
Jan van Eyck, the first of the Flemish painters to achieve a world-wide reputation has been credited with being the inventor of painting in oil. Though this is not strictly true he did at least perfect certain methods of working with this medium. It is due to his discovery that tempera painting became more and more infrequent. And it is undoubtedly true that the Italian painters owed their knowledge of the new process to him. Comparing Van Eyck's work with that of Gentile da Fabriano, who was a contemporary, the Fleming's is seen to have much more reality, more truth of construction and infinite more love of detail. And yet the detail in Van Eyck's work distracts the eye from the main point much less than does that of Fabriano's.
In the same room are two pictures by Roger van der Weyden, up to 1846 known as Roger of Bruges. He resembles both Hubert and Jan van Eyck, and has been supposed to be a pupil of the younger brother, but this is probably untrue. Doctor Waagen says of him that his " too exclusive aim at truth led Roger van der Weyden occasionally to represent the tasteless and the disagreeable. Thus, his nude is meagre, his fingers too long, his feet, especially in his earlier works, ill-formed." In colouring he is better. Though he does not rise to the richness and intensity of Van Eyck, he has a great deal of brilliancy and strength. His flesh-tones w'ere at first mellow and golden, later they became colder. His influence, and thus through him, the influence of the Van Eycks, spread all over Germany, and the strictly realistic type that prevailed there may be traced directly
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to his teachings. None of his best-known works are at the Louvre.
The Virgin and Child is a small picture with gold background. It represents the Virg^ on a sort of ledge- like seat in a niche squarely framed with simple gold moulding. She is offering her breast to the child whom she holds on her left knee. He is not exactly seated on this knee, however, and the actual construction of his little naked body is hardly more successful. Neither is his face a type of childish beaut>\ Nevertheless there are an earnestness and sincerity of purpose ver\' appar- ent in the careful rendering. Mary's face is much more lovely. The broad forehead, eyes wide apart, delicate nose and tender mouth are typically Flemish, yet they seem to prefigure the Fra Lippo type of Italy. The body is much poorer in construction than the head. The shoul- ders are far too narrow, the hand too long and illy joined, Acre is in fact, no perceptible body imder the long red robe. It is not strange that the baby does not sit on her knees, for there are really no knees to hold him!
The Descent from the Cross is a more important, but in some respects an even more archaic work than the other. In front of the cross Mary sits holding on her knees the figure of her son, who is nude save for a bit of drapery about his loins. Beside her kneels St. John, drawing a piece of drapery imder the head of his dead master. Mary Magdalene kneels at the left, farther back. Beyond lie Jerusalem, a hill, a lakp and distant moun- tains. Mar}- is distinctly the best figure of the group. Though she has no shoulders under her blue robes, nor very little shape of any kind. Van der Weyden suc- ceeded in getting a face that is remarkably expressive and well drawn. There is a real tenderness, a restrained sorrow about her drooped lids and trembling mouth that
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remains in the mind long after the more evident grief of the Magdalene or that of John has been forgotten, Mary Magdalene, by false perspective, though supposed to be farther back in the plane of the picture than is the Virgin, is brought into the immediate foreground. Her brilliant red dress and yellow sleeves, green cloak and white draped cap, make her all the more prominent. John has an air of deep solicitude and sympathy touch- ingly hinted at in the way his eyes linger on the Virgin. The dead Qirist is of course a marvel of ill-drawing, and as in the German and early Italian Pietas, his emaciation, and all the terrible insignia of his suflFering are insisted upon with a total disr^;ard of truth of construction or perspective.
Van der Weyden is supposed to be the teacher of Hans Memling, or Memlinc, as it was probably spelled in his day. He is the great glory of the school of Bruges and it is there he must be seen really to be known. His highest triumphs are in religious paintings, though some of his portraits do not lack strength or individuality. He had a grace, an expressiveness, and a sweetness of ren- dering women's faces never equalled in the early Flemish school. His landscapes too, were not only minute, truthful and real, but they were treated as the setting for his figures and scenes in a way none of his contemporaries achieved. "His Virgins," says one critic, "are not simply the real and mundane portraits of the ladies of his time — they embody purit}- of expression, celestial sim- plicit>', peace and an ineflFable charm." If not among his finest works the pictures by Memlinc in the Louvre are sufiiciently good to g^ve a fair idea of this painter's style. All, with the exception of one, are in Salle XX.
The Mystic Marriage of St. Catherine was painted about 1475. It is a diptych and though for k>iig the leaves
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were apart, it has now been reunited. On the dexter leaf the Virgin is shown seated in a meadow with the child Jesus on her lap surrounded by six saints, three on each side, and in the sky far above are three angels playing on flutes. Behind the Virgin is a bank with a trellis of roses, and on each side is a symmetrical sort of arbour of trees, opening in the centre to display a distant land- scape of widening stream and low banks and, against the horizon, a high peaked mountain. The Virgin is clad in blue and sits with eyes downcast holding the child in her hands. He has turned toward the left and is reach- ing down to place a ring on the finger of St. Catherine, who is seated at the feet of the Virgin in the left of the immediate foreground, arrayed in a ricli golden brocade gown with red velvet waist. Her left hand rests on an open book on her knees and from under her full draperies appear the wheel and the sword. Opposite her kneels St. Barbara, in red, holding a book. At the Virgin's left, behind St. Barbara, are St. Margaret with the head of the dragon at her knees and St. Lucy bearing a dish con- taining two eyes. Facing these are St. Agnes with her lamb and St. Cecilia with her little organ. These four saints are dressed in the brilliant clear colours usual to the early religious painters, and they still retain their original freshness of tone. The three angels in the sky are delicately drawn and really seem to float in the ether. All of the saints are diflFerentiated by subtle changes of expression that give to each a decided and charming individuality. With no attempt at shadow, their faces and forms are yet carefully modelled, and in spite of certain hesitances and inaccuracies present an appear- ance of reality. The Virgin and child are no less success- ful. Better anatomically than in either Van der Weyden's or Van Eyck's pictures is the little nude Jesus, and there
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is a sweet maternity and yet a cloistral virginity about the girl-mother that neither of the other men so well expressed. The composition is somewhat formal but is naturally composed.
On the other leaf is the Portrait of the Donor of the Picture, John du Celier, who was one of the guild of Merchant Grocers, at that time a very rich guild in Bruges. He is in a robe lined with fur and kneels on the ground, his hands met in prayer. His patron saint, John the Baptist, is behind him, one hand on the merchant's shoulder, the other pointing to the Son. The foreground is a field where wild flowers and plants are growing in profusion. A winding stream in front of a band of trees separates this scene from the ones in the back- ground. These are incidents from the lives of St. George and St. John and have become greatly obliterated from the ravages of time.
The two shutters, St. John the Baptist, and Mary Magdalene, had once a centre portion whose very subject is forgotten. They were in Prince Lucien Bonaparte's collection and afterward were owned by William II. of Holland. The two here are the fronts of the complete shutters, sawn apart no one knows when. The Louvre bought them in 1851 for eleven thousand seven hundred and twenty-eight francs. The backs of the shutters repre- sented Saints Stephen and Christopher. Of the ones in the Louvre, the St. John is on the dexter panel. Gad in a camel's skin, he stands in a meadow that slopes back and upwards to a river with high banks on which is a palace where Herodias's daughter is dancing and where in the courtyard St. John is beheaded. At the foot of the hill is John baptizing Jesus, and again he is shown pointing out the master to the disciples. This placing in the background of different scenes occurring at dif-
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ferent times was characteristic of Memlinc as of the early Italians.
On the opposite panel, Mary Magdalene stands also in a landscape. She is dressed in a brocaded gown of red and gold with a mantle of violet. In her right hand she carries a pot of ointment. Behind in the distance, she is seen wiping her Lord's feet in Simon's house, again she is watching the raising of Lazarus, and once more she appears under some trees kneeling at the feet of the risen Saviour. Still farther back on the side of a moun- tain is the entrance to a cave, and above it two angels carry the saint to heaven. In each of these panels the foreground is full of flowering shrubs and plants. Both are wonderfully finished and the character cf both heads is vividly depicted. St. John has a strength, a ruggedness, and a strained expression that tells of his strenuous life, and in Mary Magdalene both softness and intelligence appear in her really beautiful countenance.
Whereas Memlinc may be called the last of the pure Gothic painters, to adopt M. Alexandre's title for the earliest Flemish painters, Quentin Matsys, says M. Alex- andre again, is the first of the great moderns. " He was the rising, as Rubens was the setting sun of Antwerp." Already in his works can be seen the i^ifluence of the Italians, though it is not known if he ever visited Italy. This Italian influence is not always present, however, for at times he is as truly Gothic as Memlinc himself. Generally, the two influences are fused in a whole where neither can be separated from the other. He stands as it were midway between Van Eyck and Rubens. In his compositions are signs of the floridity, richness and magnificence that make those of the later master such glowing splendours of art. Where Matsys acquired the training that made him the artist he became, is not
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definitely known. It is at least certain that he did not in six months turn from a blacksmith to an accomplished painter, all for love of an artist's daughter whose father had sworn that she should marry only a man of his own profession.
The two pictures by Matsys in Salle XX. are of very unequal merit. In the portrait-genre piece The Banker and His Wife, he is not far from his best. Sitting side by side behind a counter, are the banker and his wife, he counting and weighing his coins, she turning over the leaves of an illuminated book, but pausing for a moment's look at her husband's employment. Behind them are two shelves, holding a glass bottle, an orange, a pair of scales, books and papers. Before them, besides the gold pieces, are an open, silk purse filled with pearls, a line of rings run on a roll of paper, and a small round mirror in which is reflected a wiindow, the head and shoulders of a man reading by it, and through the window trees and a tower. All these accessories are done with the painstaking, accurate brush of the Low Countries. But how admirably they keep their place ! It is only by close scrutiny that they can be noticed or enumerated. The whole attention is riveted exactly where it was intended it should be, — directly upon the man and woman them- selves. The man has a big full-rolled cap with a cape hanging from it, and a blue coat with fur about the neck and cuffs. His whole mind is absorbed in count- ing and weighing his treasure, and the skilful, slender fingers seem made for the careful task. His face is strongly marked and lined, his eyes deep set, his nose long and high in bone, his mouth fully curved but firm. It is not the miser who is here portrayed, but the success- ful, cautious business man, and it is evident that it is as capital a likeness as it is a capitally drawn visage. His
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wife, who sits close by on his left, is a quiet, placid, lady- like soul, viewing the pieces of money with not too great an interest. She is much more attracted by missals than by shining doubloons. Her dress is red and the cover of the counter is green, the colours of the picture therefore bright, pictorial. But it is his characterization of the two people and the freedom of his drawing and excel- lence of modelling that make this what it is, a really splendid group.
The Blessing Christ, is far less satisfactory. There is nothing about it that marks it as anything but a very mediocre work.
In Room XXI. both Peter Breughel, the elder, and Velvet Breughel his son have examples of their works. Velvet Breughel as well has several in Room XXXV. Peter Breughel was very unlike his son both in his man- ner of working and in the subjects he chose to portray. Though he studied in Italy, he was never Italianized, and as a Flemish painter he stands quite apart as truly as Jan Steen does among the Dutch. Not so great a humourist, he was a true observer, a wise thinker, a brilliant raconteur, a keen satirist. If at times in his tran- scriptions of peasant life he was both rude and even vulgar, he redeems those faults by a spirit, a life, vigour of thought and an intense reality.
The Reunion of the Mendicants has been called by Mantz " a veritable chef-d'oeuvre." It shows a party of five cripples in a garden marching painfully along on their crutches. They are dressed in ridiculous costumes ornamented with foxtails and with hats in the form of mitres. At the back is a wall of bricks. These cripples are vividly portrayed, not a disagreeable spared, and yet the picture is amusing rather than repulsive.
The Parable of the Blind is one of his more serious
THE BANKER AND HIS WIFE I>y Matsys
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and stronger works. For it is not alone with mirth that this painter dwells. Alexandre's description of it is so striking that it is worth giving entire. After stating that it is a repetition in oil of one in tempera at the Naples museum, he goes on : '' The amplitude of the design, and of the movement of that line of blind men, who, holding each by the other^ seem about to fall into the ditch yawn- ing at the feet of the first one of the queue, the extraor- dinary conception of those heads with the non-seeing eyes, so real and so dreadful; the beauty of the harmo- nious colouring with its greens, grays, browns and reds ; the magnificent landscape, so powerful, so immense, so full of unexpected detail ; this it is that makes one realize how great he was as man and painter."
In Salle XXXV. Snyders has a picture far removed from the tremendous battles and conflicts he so often painted. Even in this, however, which is named Dogs in a Larder, the two snarling dogs and the glaring cat in the background give an intensity and a passion that proclaim it truly a Snyders. Standing on his hind legs with his forepaws on a small square table, the dog at the left is devouring one of the pieces of meat that forms part of the pile of legs of mutton, asparagus and artichokes. In the centre, half under the table, another dog has his forefeet on a bone, which he guards with an angry show of teeth from the third canine. This last is at the right, legs far apart, head down, as near to the coveted morsel as he dare venture. His raised upper lip, the gleam in his furtive eye, the whole snarling, sneaking brute is expressed with a snap and vigour till one expects actually to hear the vicious barks. Through an open door at the left, a cat is seen curled up on the table. Her own evident fright, detestation and spite fairly send sparks from the starting eyes.
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Older by a quarter of a century than Snyders was Adriaen Brauwer, who can be claimed by both Dutch and Flemish schools. He studied under Hals at Haarlem, but afterward worked mostly in Antwerp. He has been reviled as being a worse toper than his worst pictures indicated. There is comparatively little known about him even yet, but enough to indicate that this tale is a gross exaggeration. Certainly he was a great friend of Rubens and Rembrandt, both of whom owned paint- ings by him and esteemed them highly. Rubens, it has been pointed out, was too correct in his own life to have been intimate with the carouser Brauwer has been con- sidered. Waagen says of his pictures that " they display a singular power of keeping, a delicate and harmonious colouring, which inclines to the cool shade, an admirable individuality, and a sfumato of surface in which he is un- excelled." The Louvre had nothing worth calling his till the Collection Lacaze came to it. There are several panels in that that show him somewhere near his best. Probably the most generally known is the one called The Smoker in Salle XXXIV. This originally formed part of a series of five pictures, called The Five Senses.
It is merely the head and bust of- a man, including, however, his right and part of his left hand. Grasping a bottle of liquor in both hands along with his clay pipe which is still smoking, this rough-looking individual is portrayed with wide-open eyes and stretched, cavern-like mouth out of which are issuing clouds of smoke. His bushy, tousled hair hangs over his face and on to his shoulders, his collar is careless, the general air is that of a roisterer. And that is undoubtedly just what Brauwer intended him to appear. It is quite impossible to look at the silly, distorted face without laughing, even if the observer is a teetotaler or belongs to an anti-
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smokers' league. And like everything Brauwer touched, there are individuality, expression, intense life, and a masterly brush shown over every inch of the picture.
Brauwer is much less well known than Teniers and left far fewer works behind him. But competent critics acknowledge him a greater master in the same field. The Operation, in the same room as The Smoker is an- other most characteristic, realistic work, in which he shows that broad, full hand that learned its lesson well under the instruction of Frans Hals.
The Duo in the next room, by Teniers, is a delightful bit, simple as it is amusing, full of reality and life as it is of observation. At the left an old man seated on a wooden chair is vigorously playing a violin, while by his side, filling the right of the picture sits his wife, holding a sheet of music in her hands and singing bravely the while she watches her lord and master. The man wears a red velvet jacket and gray trousers, a blue hat with a long, slender plume, and the gaiety of his clothes is emphasized by his own lively expression and the energy with which he marks time with his left foot which is rest- ing, toes up, on the stool before him. His wife has a blue dress and a white cap. Perhaps the first impression at seeing this bit of genre, is an amused surprise that this hard-working old couple have either leisure or taste for the fine arts!
Among others by Van der Meulen in Room XXXVII., is The View of Dinant. Though it is called the siege and taking of Dinant, there is so little sign of hostility on the part of the amiable-looking cavalcade advancing toward it, or of active preparations of defence by the walled town that it is difficult to associate battle or bom- bardment with the scene. The colouring is warm and harmonious if darkened. At the left in the foreground
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is a company of mounted officers, the central one of whom is supposed to be the Marquis de Rochefort. They are at the end of a long line of troops, the first of which, winding down the hills and across the plain, have almost reached the town on the Meuse. Above the village is the castle, high on a precipitous clifif, and below the river runs diagonally across the picture. The rocky region, with its sparse vegetation, the opposite shore with its admirable distance, the scattered habitations, all are rendered with a realistic if conventional touch.
. CHAPTER XIL
SALLES XIX. TO XXXVI. — DUTCH SCHOOL
In Salle XXXIV. are two portraits of women by Jan van Ravestein, the Dutch painter, who, with the exception of Hals and Rembrandt was scarcely ever equalled as a portrait-painter in his country. There is a largeness, a truth, a brilliancy and a style to this man's work that, though not seen at the Louvre anywhere near at their height, are at least intimated in these Dutch women. It is in the Hague where he is best represented with his great corporation pictures as well as with his splendid portraits of men. He has not quite the dash, surety and ease of brush-work that distinguish Hals, but his tech- nique is free, full and certain and his colour is equal to Hals at his best. He reminds one, perhaps, of Van Dyck, both in brush-work and in colour.
These two excellent portraits would attract far more attention were they not so near the famous Bohemian Girl of Frans Hals. This picture widely as it is known and admired, critics generally regard as not one of his very greatest works. It has nevertheless, some of the most noted and fascinating characteristics of Hals. The broad freedom of the brush-work, the way he has ex- pressed the gay insouciance of the smiling face, — its abandonment to untrammelled jollity, with a sort of whole-hearted ignoring of any unpleasant consequences,
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— the art that can so paint a smile that it does not grow wearisome, all this and more are in this gipsy maiden who looks out so gaily from the rough tangle of her shadowing hair. It is a picture that makes the most fastidious smile in sympathy and puts one at once so in tune with the universe that almost one is ready to smile good-naturedly with her at the whole huge joke of living.
The other Portrait of a Woman by Hals in the same room is very different both in character and technique. She is of the bourgeois class, and is represented stand- ing turned toward the left, her hands crossed at her waist. Her close-fitting cap, deep plain collar and cuffs are white, her dress a sombre black. Though lacking some of the brilliant colouring and esprit of his most successful canvases, this has a truth, a sobriety, and a fine sense of values that would make a triumph for any man who had not achieved so much more.
Of yet another calibre is the Portraits of the Van Beresteyn Family, in Salle XXH. This is a picture of father, mother, six children and two nurses. They are seated under the branches of a tree in the midst of an indeterminate landscape. Hals paid as little attention to that as he did to the compositional lines of this picture as a whole. At the extreme left paterfamilias sits cross- legged on a slight hillock, his left arm thrown around his wife's shoulder. She is sitting a little lower down on the ground beside him, and behind her stands one of the nurses pulling some cherries from the branch over her head for the small boy next his mother. His smiling profile, as he raises his hands in anticipation, is charm- ingly frank and boyish. Slightly below him a small daughter kneels with her mother's arm about her waist, while she reaches up a bunch of flowers to her father.
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This gfoup has a certain continuity of interest that, if loosely, still does hold it together. At the right on the same plane, is the other nurse, one small child in her arms and clasping the wrist of another standing beside her. In front of them a third tiny maiden is sitting flat on the ground picking flowers, while the fourth infant looks out from behind the nurse. As a composition this picture has little or no merit. As a portrait group of ten people it is a marvellous production. With the exception of the father and mother, every face is smiling, each countenance fairly bubbling over with mirth. The elder ones too, if more sedate, express an equal pleasure. The picture was painted before 1630 and is consequently considered to be in his first manner. He has paid great attention to the rich brocades, silks, velvets and laces that clothe these patrician sitters of his, but glowing as are the colours and highly wrought as are the stuffs and laces, they never obtrude to the detriment or eclipse of the speaking faces. The painting has been badly re- stored, the child on the far right seeming to be almost entirely by another hand.
The separate portraits of Nicholas Van Beresteyn and his wife represent Hals at an even higher plane than does the family group. They stand in their respective frames facing each other. Nicholas is turned toward the right, his wife to the left. Frau Van Beresteyn has her right hand resting on the top of a carved chair, the other hanging closed by her side. The husband's left hand which holds his hat rests on a table before him, his right is doubled up against his hip. They are in gala attire, with wonderful ruches edged with pointed lace, and deep plaited musHn cuffs elaborately trimmed with lace. Frau Van Beresteyn has a splendid cap that encircles her head with its lace border sticking out like an aureole. Both
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are in rich brocades, the wife with a deep embroidered stomacher. The drawing of their hands, the modelling of the flesh, the individuality of the faces, the clear transparence of the " carnations," the mastery of the technicalities of robes and stuffs, — all this makes a re- markable pair of portraits.
The lack of compositional unity apparent in the family group of the Van Beresteyns was a characteristic failing of Frans Hals. It is only as a portrait-painter that he can rank among the great painters of the world. In this line, even if he rests content with portraying simply what he saw on the surface, and thus proves himself to possess less imagination, less depth than Rembrandt; if he has on the whole a less brilliant, scintillating palette than Velasquez, or even than Rubens or Van Dyck, — in his own way, within his own self-imposed limitations, he is as great as any painter that ever lived, in certain ways greater. No other man ever so completely revelled in painting as painting. No one else ever expressed such a joy in brush-work that he made the mere manipulation of pigments a great art. It is perhaps this manipulation that differentiates Hals from all other painters. In breadth, in freedom, in dash, in surety, in fulness, in plastic power, in any one of these attributes he has been equalled, perhaps excelled. But no one has had all of them developed to such a tremendous height as he had them. And, as critics have not failed to point out, he copied nobody's method. He was influenced neither by his contemporaries nor by the men of the past. Besides the technical wonders his brush achieved, its greatest marvel is its perfect adaptability to the subjects he depicted. Those beaming, buxom Dutch girls, those smil- ing, well-nourished, care-free matrons, those joking, laughing, broad-faced cavaliers, or tavern-keepers, —
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what other touch, what other brush ever half so well ex- pressed them? Frans Hals painted in a flat, unforced light, choosing neither a shadow-lurking studio, nor the outdoor glare for his sitters. He is thus less concerned with atmosphere or artificially lighted surroundings than he is with local colour and values. And no one has ever had a keener sense of values or expressed them with freer, flatter tones. In the beginning his colour was some- what brown in the flesh-tones. In the height of his powers it was clear, brilliant, pulsating; in his old age it grew much grayer till finally it became almost monochromatic. But even at the very end of his long life he never lost his wonderful sense of values.
Not much younger than Hals was Poelenburgh whose pictures in Salle XXII. show him to have been in his own way also an originator. He was a great favourite with Charles I. of England, and if his technique suggests in its finish Dou or Metsu, his colour-scheme was dif- ferent and he may be said to have originated his own style. He chiefly painted landscapes in which he placed charming little nude figures of nymphs, fauns, Cupids and the like. His flesh-tones are somewhat purplish, but they have the exquisite finish and delicate modelling of the contemporary school of Dutch painters.
In The Bathers are three women preparing for their bath in the river which flows at the right under a wooden bridge. At the left cattle are grazing in the field, and on the horizon breaks a line of mountains. The women are carefully drawn and modelled with a finish like enamel, that nevertheless gives a charming if rather unreal effect to the flesh.
In the View of Mt. Palatine and the Temple of Minerva, Poelenburgh had a chance to make his usual ruins historically and geographically accurate, A herds-
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man, his very presence emphasizing the age-long wreck of the palace of the emperors, is in the centre of the picture, with his dog. He is talking with a peasant woman, while on the plains the cattle graze. At the right upon the mountain are the imperial ruins. Finish, joined to a certain sort of logical truth is perhaps the strongest characteristic of this little picture.
In the same room are several paintings by Gerard Hon- thorst, who, unlike most of the Dutch school was strongly influenced by Italian art, especially by Caravaggio. The intensity of his shadows and the sharpness of his lights led to his being called Gherardo delle Notte. Most of his work is too ostensible, too made, too forced in its scheme of chiaroscuro. He delighted in having only candle-rays for the light of a whole composition. By this method one small spot would shine with a brilliancy greatly exag- gerated by the depth of the shadows about. The works of his in the Louvre are not remarkable though they show his usual tendencies.
In Robert of Bavaria the prince is bareheaded, turned three-quarters to his right. The wide guipure collar, the green sash, and the sword are as carefully painted as is the face. It was regarded as a fine portrait in its day, but it is a mediocre work.
The Man with the Lute is decidedly better. In style of subject this somewhat suggests Hals, though Hals never dealt in such cold, deep shadows. The player is shown seated before a table, the lute resting upon it and in his arms. He has lifted his head and is smiling, and, apparently, singing, with grimaces that divide his merry countenance into wrinkles. Before him on the table is a huge beer-mug, and the whole air of the picture is convivial and rollicking to the last degree. It has less of the artificial effect of lighting than m<any of Honthorst's.
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Jan van Goyen died the same year as Honthorst, 1656. He was one of the earliest of Dutch landscape and marine painters, and was one of the very first to give to the sky a real place of importance in a picture. His skies were always remarkably in accord with his fields, his canals, his seas, and they were always full of light, with big fleecy clouds, through which shone gleams of the sun or bits of the blue. The banks of canals or shores of rivers are his usual subjects, and the scenes of his which are in Salle XXHI. are fairly representative.
Salles XXXI. and XXXH. are called Rembrandt rooms and are full of gems by this greatest of Dutch masters. In calling Rembrandt that, all critics agree. The term however does not in the least define or limit his genius, and it is just this definition and limitation about which students, painters and critics have widely disagreed. Rembrandt, the marvellous technician, yet often the slovenly workman ; the greatest realist of his own or any time, yet one of the idealistic dreamers of the world; Rembrandt, the unflattering, argus-eyed portrait-painter; Rembrandt, the mystic ; Rembrandt the Lutheran ; Rem- brandt, the religious painter par excellence since Fra Angelico ; Rembrandt, the portrayer of the common, the unlovely ; Rembrandt, who made flesh look as if it were only a golden reflection of the impenetrable shadows that nearly submerged it; Rembrandt, who painted flesh as glowing, pulsing, rich, as even Rubens of Van Dyck; Rembrandt, whose compositions were unformed, ill- balanced; Rembrandt who balanced, massed, combined his portrait groups into compositions unexcelled by Raphael himself; Rembrandt, whose brush-work is thick, rough, heavy, muddy ; Rembrandt, whose surface is as thin, as smooth, as polished, as free, as supple as Velas- queu; above all and always Rembrandt the thinker, the
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originator, the free man, dependent on no one before or beside him, thinking his own thoughts, and expressing them in his own way, and leaving to posterity a mass of works enough for three hfetimes. And among these are masterpieces such as no one else has equalled, master- pieces that the whole western world agrees in calling among the few great treasures of art of all time.
The Home of the Carpenter was painted about 1640. It shows the carpenter back to in his shirt-sleeves by the open window at the right working at his planing-board. In front, at the right of him, but still at the left of the centre of the picture sits the mother holding the little naked baby to whom she offers her breast. At her right is the grandmother, who has paused reading from the big book in her lap to lift the covering from the child's face The whole light of the picture is concen- trated upon the child and the mother's breast save where it rests upon the floor in front in the shape of a square made by the reflection of the open window. By this arrangement the father, the grandmother and the mother's face are thrown into a half-light. But all the rest of the room, where a large mantel-place fills one side and various pieces of furniture and utensils other parts, is submerged in a deep brooding shadow.
It is a bit out of the life of a simple Dutch family here, such as Rembrandt must have seen daily about him. The mother is lovely only by her care and tenderness, the child is a round Dutch baby. Yet so full of feeling, so rich in tone, so wonderful in lighting is this little scene that almost it seems as if no one else ever painted so beautiful a Holy Family.
In this salle are two canvases, each called The Phil- osopher in Meditation. They are very similar in treat- ment, and were painted about four years apart. In one
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canvas the old man, wrapped in his fur coat and huge cap sits by the window in the vaulted room alone, plunged into the deep thought apparently quite apart from the books lying on the table before him. In the other picture, the dreaming scholar is not alone. Several women are about, though in the gloom of the vaulted chamber they are of little importance. These two scenes are among the first examples of Rembrandt's work in chiaroscuro, when the subtility of light and shade plays so important a part in his pictures. The colours of the two are grayish, almost monochromatic.
The Angel Raphael Quitting Tobias is no less remark- able for its chiaroscuro, and it has much more variety of colour. Gathered on the porch of a house are Tobias and his family, while immediately above them at the right of the picture, the angel is just rising into the heavens. Tobias himself is prostrate on the lowest step, his son on his knees beside him. Behind them on the step above, the son's wife stands with prayer-met hands, her face lifted in wonder to the departing heavenly visi- tant. Leaning against her, with her head on her shoulder is the wife of Tobias, overcome both at the apparition and at her own lack of faith. Between the two groups is a dog, his attitude one of crouching fear.
The light is concentrated about the figure of Raphael. With extended arms, wings and legs he is shown in a foreshortened back view. If the spread feet suggest a little the feeling of swimming in the ether, rather than flying, and if they are a little awkward and ugly in their lines, the wonderful illumination of the whole figure, the beautiful tones of the feathery wings, the brilliant white tunic, and the glory of the heavens into which he will shortly vanish at once make up for any such shortcom- ings. Almost all the rest of the picture is enveloped in a
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rich shadow scarcely lifted except where the radiance from above strikes Tobias's bent head and neck ancj parts of the face and breast of the son's wife. This is quite sufficient, however, to hold the connection between the upper and lower part of the composition. And the effect of this lighting is wonderful in its depth of expres- sion. Nothing more reverent, more impressive could be imagined than Tobias as he rests on hands and knees. The light that strikes his fine old head is like a spiritual radiance from within that answers to the celestial beams from above. Complete faith, humble gratitude, soul- exaltation, all are expressed by this wonderful manage- ment and focusing of light. Almost as telling is the light that strikes upon the son's wife. The mysticism, the ideality, the real religion of Rembrandt's art Is here given expression, if not so fully and so freely, yet almost as beautifully as in the Good Samaritan which is near by. This was painted about 1648 and is Rembrandt in his full power. At the entrance of an inn whose windowed wall extends more than half across the whole of the canvas, a boy servant holds the bridle of the horse from which the sick man has been taken. Two other servants bear the weak traveller between them.. On the steps, in fuller light, stands the Samaritan waiting for his guest and looking at him with sorrow and pity, and behind him, a trifle higher on the step in the shadow, is his good wife. From the window of the tavern several heads are peer- ing, and below a couple of horses are tied. The day is dying, the light from the twilight-filled sky only touches here and there the group about the sick man, now em- phasizing the line of a shoulder, here throwing a face into half-light, now touching the bandage about the ill one's head, anon hitting his thin knees, softly rounding the flank of one of the horses and striking more broadly
CHRIST AT EMMAUS By Rembrandt
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the lower angle of the tavern wall, and finally resting squarely over the upper part of the Samaritan's figure. The rest of the scene is enveloped in the darkness of the oncoming night, full of the rich, dark harmonies Rembrandt alone knew how to express. Here once more the art so peculiarly Rembrandt's own is wonderfully adapted to the subject treated. Nothing else, no other way of painting, assuredly, would have so visualized, and so intensified the reality and the beauty of the old story. Pathos, tenderness, subdued strength, the mystery and beauty of goodness all seem a part of this subtle, caress- ing shadow of the sinking day.
This same mystery of darkness plays an important part in Christ at Emmaus. In a shadowy room the two disciples sit in profile facing each other at the ends of the small white-covered table. With them is the Master, so sitting that he is in full face, with the table in front of him, a disciple on each side. His hands break the bread while his eyes are raised to heaven asking the blessing. And it seems as if it was only at that instant that his two followers had realized who he was. The one at the left who has turned till he is nearly back to, joins his hands in prayer, the other has started back in astonishment and is gazing eagerly at the guest, as if not yet quite certain of his identity. A servant at his side is placing a dish upon his shoulder. He, apparently sees nothing to startle him, though his face like the others is lighted by the strange effulgence that plays behind and about the Saviour of men.
Fromentin says of this composition, so small in size, so rough in execution, that no other painter has ever imagined the Christ like this, — with the marks of tor- ture still showing on his darkened lips, the great, deep, wide-open eyes lifted heavenward, the halo, a phosphores-
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cent envelop that submerges himi in glory, and his face bearing the inexpHcable look of a living, breathing human being, who has passed through death; with his bearing so impossible to describe and more so to copy, with the entire feeling of the face where there is yet scarcely a defined feature, — these are the things which no art recalls and which no one before Rembrandt and no one after has expressed so marvellously.
The Portrait of an Old Man, painted about 1638 is an interesting study, if far below the compositions de- scribed above. He is represented in full face enveloped in a big cloak, his head bare and almost bald, with a long beard, and graying moustache.
Of the four Portraits of Rembrandt at the Louvre, three show himi as a young man. They are all painted in three-quarters view, the earlier three on oval canvases. The one without a cap shows him with his bushy, curly hair thick about his head, wearing a violet velvet cloak draped with a golden chain set with pearls. There are already some of the familiar wrinkles in his forehead be- tween his eyes, but they are the sort that come from close and sustained thought rather than from worry or trouble. His eyes are bright, his face is full and round, everything bespeaks the man of youth, of love, of good fortune, — the rich clothes and jewels no more than the easy pose, the comfortable, happy expression, the light in the eye, the eager mouth.
In the other two he has a velvet cap ornamented with a golden chain, other gold chains about his neck, and frankness, good humour, happiness still radiate from the face, that, though far too heavy and loosely modelled ever to be beautiful, has a mobility, a life, an intelligence, that make it wonderfully interesting. Rembrandt's hand was perhaps not at the height of its power when he painted
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these three. Any one of them, nevertheless, easily ranks among the great portraits of the world.
The fourth was done when he was old, poor, dis- regarded by the very public that had once adored him, pressed by difficulties on every side. Yet it is not hard to trace in this portrait the indomitable energy, the uncom- plaining spirit, the steady purpose, the love of art that re- mained with him up to the last gloomy year of his life. It was painted the year before the famous Syndics, in 1660. It has not the glowing colour of that masterpiece, nor the haunting, mysterious shadows of transcendent lights of many of his earlier works. It is somewhat murky, this painting of the old man in his white cap that, looking like a night-hood, ill assorts v/ith the long fur- bordered robe hanging loosely about his figure. In his left hand he holds his palette and brushes, in his right his maulstick. He is standing in three-quarters view, facing toward his left, before a canvas on an easel. Gone are the gold chains, the velvet caps, the pearl earrings, the rich surroundings of his earlier years. The plain walls of a bare room are his only background, and in the uncompromising flatness of the rather dull tones, the too heavy brush-work, one seems to read the rebuffs that made this royal good fellow of 1634, an old, tired man, with the homely, hanging double chin, the wrinkled, heavy skin, the short, scant hair. But still the mouth presses firmly together, still the eyes look* out squarely, surely, and still shines the unbroken spirit of the man who kept free and young in the love of his life, — his art.
One of Rembrandt's pupils was Adriaen van Ostade, whose effects of chiaroscuro gained for him the title of " the little Rembrandt." He painted generally the extremely ugly. His tavern scenes, his drinking and smoking men, even his home interiors, show the Dutch
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^
peasaht in his homeliest, most awkward, rudest aspect. Yet so glowing is the colour, so marvellous the arrange- ment of light and shade, that in spite of the gaucheries of form, the clumsiness of action, they are in their own way really beautiful. His brother Isaack was his pupil and in the beginning copied his style of painting. Soon he dropped that to paint landscape in which he achieved decided success. Though he has a brownness of shadow, his scenes are remarkably fresh, breezy and brilliant. He has a keen observation and rejoices in depicting the picturesque details of his tavern-yards, his river-banks, his frozen canals. Both of these brothers are well repre- sented at the Louvre, pictures by them being in Salles XXIV., XXV., XXXL, XXXHL, and XXXIV.
Among the most noted by the older man is the family group of himself, his wife, his six children and his brother Isaack and his wife. It is one of his largest can- vases, measuring thirty-two inches in length by twenty- eight in height. As a portrait group the figures are combined skilfully enough so that the lines are pleasing if not distinguished, the massing easy if not striking. The extreme elongation of the group gave Ostade a superb chance to paint the varying tones of black gar- ments and white caps and collars. These blacks have been called among the most wonderful renderings known of this most difficult colour. Ostade himself, a middle-aged man, in big soft black hat, knee-breeches, low ties and a wide white collar sits at the left holding on his knee the chubby hand of his wife who sits beside him. Her mouth is a bit open and her face is turned to her husband. The little gesture of her left hand indicates the conver- sation she is carrying on with her good man, who, though he is assuredly listening, is looking out and away. Five small girls of varying age are grouped in a more or less
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broken line extending from the mother's knee almost to the right of the picture. Their positions are all natural, easy and full of childlike vivacity. A little behind the group, in the centre, stand Isaack and his wife side by side. Back of his father's chair and at the left is the boy of the family, smiling and holding his gloves in one hand. All these personages are in black except the two smallest children in front, one of whom has a maroon dress, the other a gray. It is a free, realistic, lifelike group and would do honour to the greatest painter. The flesh-tones are clear and living, the modelling supple and simple, the draperies wonderful creations of tone.
The Fish Market is another celebrated scene by Ostade. Sitting at his counter in nearly full face, the old merchant lifts with one hand the fish he has been cleaning and looks up as if he regarded some possible purchaser. He is in a cool, even light that does not, to be sure, suggest out-of-doors though the booth is open. Behind him are other booths and a crowd of people under the shadows of the projecting roofs, and farther beyond still, the sun- light of real outdoors. The management of the shadow, the softness and graded tones of its mass, the light back of it emphasizing its own luminosity, show the influence of Rembrandt. The drawing, modelling and colour of the old fish-seller are all more than admirable, as is the atmosphere of the whole thing, with its warm, golden light, and its humid shadow.
Still another is The Reader. Out of an open window above which a grape-vine falls down in two graceful sprays, leans the jolly old man who has apparently stopped reading to answer the call of some one below. His right hand still holds the paper, his left his glasses. On his head is his soft black hat, behind him the deep
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shadow": that allows no details of the room to be seen. His wrinkled, fat, coarse face is wreathed in a kindly smile. The green overcoat and undersleeves of maroon make a fine bit of colour, and the lighting of the face and hands and their relation to the white paper show splendid feeling for colour.
Perhaps the best of Isaack van Ostade's works in the Louvre are his Frozen Canals, though his Halts before Taverns and his Winter Scene are all good. The Frozen Canal in Room XXIV. shows a high bank with naked trees and old thatched cottages rising out of the wide frozen canal, a strip of lower shore cutting diagonally across as foreground. Near this shore a man and woman come skating rapidly and behind them are a dog and a small boy doubled up with the cold. At the left another small child pushes herself along on a sled and at the right two boys have stopped while one tightens his straps. On the shore at the left of the picture two other children push to the canal a sled bearing two of their companions, and up on the bank a peasant drives an old gray horse hitched to a truck. In the distance are boats and ships in the ice, other skaters, and farther off mills and roofs of the village. This is a striking winter scene of Holland, full of truth, life and action and fairly pervaded with the cold whiteness of the ice and snow.
Van der Heist, who in the judgment of his fellow countrymen was considered almost equal to Rembrandt as a portrait-painter is only meagrely represented at the Louvre. In his day his clear, bright, sharp portraits with their admirable construction, definite portraiture and elaboration of detail were given highest praise. To-day his colour seems hard and somewhat artificial and his dislike to use chiaroscuro or to make one part of his
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pictures more predominant than another, all militate against his being considered a real master.
His Judging of the Archery Prize is a small repro- duction of the larger one at Amsterdam. Sitting around a table covered with a gaily striped cloth are four of the chiefs of the archery companies of Amsterdam. They are looking at the rich prizes in gold and silver and evidently are discussing their merits. Behind them at the left a serving-woman carries a huge drinking-horn ornamented with silver trimmings. At the right, again, in the hall beyond, three young men are seen standing, holding their bows and arrows and watching the group about the table. A huge slate with the score upon it rests against the leg of the table almost in the centre of the picture. At the left is a spaniel. These figures are splendidly and finely drawn, each one admirably posed, the action of the heads and bodies being in absolute accord. The colour is clear and brilliant, if somewhat sharp.
In his Portrait of a Man, Van der Heist shows his mastery of line, of contour, along with his remarkable power as a discriminating delineator of feature, position and character. The man is standing with his left hand spread out on his coat just below his neck. He is in full face, bareheaded, wears a turned-down collar of lace tied with cords ending in two tassels, and is dressed in black with open sleeves showing the full white shirt- sleeves beneath.
In the same room with many of Rembrandt's great works are the little genre pieces of Gerard Dou, who it is claimed was a pupil of the great man. From Rembrandt he undoubtedly acquired his knowledge of the value of chiaroscuro and how to employ it. From him, too, he perhaps learned the art of composition which in his own way he interpreted as wonderfully as his master. But
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essentially, no two painters were ever more diametrically opposed in most of their expressions. Besides the mere matter of large or tiny pictures, of splashing, broad, or infinitesimal brush-work, of disregard of accessories, or of microscopical attention to the most insignificant details, besides such superficialities of differences, it is the under- lying aim of the two men that is so dissimilar. With Rembrandt it is always the thought, the emotion behind his faces, below the scenes. Very different is it with Dou and with the Dutch school of which he is a leading representative. It is never the soul-thought, the hidden spirituality or the real nature underneath the common- place exterior with which he is concerned. If he paints a buxom Dutch maiden on her way from market with a fowl slung over one arm and a milk-can over the other, he paints her just as he saw her, and as undoubtedly she would wish to be seen. If she had been neglected by her lover only the day before it was not Don's business to proclaim her sorrow to the world. The Dutch maiden you may be sure would have kept it quite hidden behind her frank pleasant eyes. Dou, then, confined himself to painting the homeliest of daily scenes such as the merest observer was familiar with. But he so filled them with colour, light, fine composition, and extreme finish, as only, begging pardon of Mr. Van Dyke and others, as only an artist, not an artisan could do. It is this ex- treme love of the minute things in his picture, this lavish care bestowed upon the feathers of a dead bird, the high light in a brass firkin, the shine in a flask of water, where, too, each of these articles is itself scarcely an inch high, that has helped to make critics belittle Dou's art. Poet, he may not have been, yet whose canvases tell more truly their tale, if it is a simple one ? Whose transcripts of the daily life of the humble or middle class are truer or
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more perfect in their own way ? If Dou has never pene- trated into the ecstasies or agonies of the human soul, is it not also the province of art to show the beauty, the colour, the charm of the daily, the usual, the ordinary? And that Dou has done with no uncertain brush. From his tiny porcelain-like finished canvases one learns that in the midst of fearful wars of Church and state, at a time when Spanish persecutions and Louis XIV. abso- lutism were contending for the life and soul of the whole Dutch country, the simple joys of quiet home life still flourished in the dyke-built land, and virtue, integrity and a quiet courage were not difficult to find. Or at least Dou found them. Even in burgher Holland it must have required some selection, for a painter to have always read so honourable a tale. Perhaps, then, after all, he had a bit of the poet's insight that can see the true, the simple.
The Dropsical Woman was painted in 1633 when Dou was fifty years old. It is universally considered one of his masterpieces. Even his detractors have granted to this a certain sentiment and feeling which they claim is " unusual " for the painter. It is larger than many of Dou's works and must have taken him long to paint, judging from the stories which credit him with spending five days on a lady's hand and three on an inch-high broomstick. The picture represents the interior of a handsome room lighted through the tiny panes of a high Gothic window, which is at the left of the picture and by a small round one immediately above it. Here, in front of the window-settle the sick woman lies back in her big chair, too ill so much as to look at her young daughter who kneels before her clasping her loosely hang- ing hand. Behind the mother is an elderly serving- woman leaning over her with a spoon in her hand.
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More at the right of the picture, beside and in front of his patient, stands the doctor, in a brave purple silk robe, looking at a round glass flask of medicine. He is in profile, facing the window, so that he is mostly in full light. The shadow behind him and back in the distance of the room is wonderfully atmospheric in its gradations of tone and no less masterly is the management of the heavy shadows in the folds of his rich robe. Every piece of furniture, every bit of carving, the thick bro- caded portiere that is looped up in front of the scene, the simple one drawn back on its rod at the window, the reading-desk with its big Bible, the hanging brass chandelier, catching the light on its polished sides, — every bit of the surroundings of the scene is carried to the extreme point of finish Dou alone could accomplish. Yet the minuteness of execution does not take away from the pathos of that group whose centre is the sick mother. Surely here is story enough for even a Preraphaelite, though dealing with the sorrows of daily life would probably not interest those who see poetry and feeling only in the myths of the past.
At the Grocery is one of Dou's smaller pictures, meas- uring fourteen inches in height by ten and a half in width. Considering the size of this panel it is amazing to see how much is within it. The picture is bounded by the lines of the big open window which has a wide curve at the top like a Romanesque arch. Running diagonally backward from its wide sill is the counter at the right of which is the mistress of the shop. Opposite her are two customers and in the background among the shadows a boy is seen carrying a jar before him. Of the two customers the one in front is an old woman sitting at the counter reckoning the amount of the various pieces of silver spread out before her, and the other is
THIi DROPSICAL WOMAN Hy (ierard Don
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a gay young girl in kerchief and cap. She has drawn her left hand through the handle of her big basket and leans slightly on it as she looks up smiling at the shop- keeper who is weighing her purchase on the scales she holds. On the window-ledge before these are a bunch of carrots, some onions, and a large earthen jar, and on the side of the opening above hangs a basket of eggs. Behind are well-filled shelves and farther back various grocery belongings appear dimly among the shadows. Here, the finish of workmanship, the polish, the atten- tion to every scrap of detail is carried to its limit. But, once more, the people are what really hold the attention. Especially does the eye linger on the fresh young maid, at whom the awkward boy is gazing so furtively.
The Girl with a Fowl is again framed by the wide- arched window. " Prosaic and trivial " this, as well as many other transcripts of daily life, has been called. It shows Don's consummate mastery of line, colour and an indefinable charm that in spite of its ordinary subject continues to attract the connoisseur, the amateur and the public. Standing behind the sill of the arched window, a young servant-maid leans forward to hang a rooster on a nail outside, her other hand resting upon a big copper basket. Beside her a tipped-up silver coffee-pot is airing next to a heavy candlestick, above which is a bird-cage attached to the side of the window. The piquant- faced curly-haired girl might be the same but now buying of the grocer-lady. There is a hint of wistfulness in her bright eyes and perhaps she is thinking of the dull grocer laddie. But with no less care than he gave to her fair face, Dou has painted the brilliant-hued cock, the shining bit of copper, the silver coffee-pot, the cage and the candlestick. Each has its own beauty of colour, and form, its exact value; and everywhere is that in-
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sistence upon actuality, truth. The panel is only eight by ten inches and is dated 1650.
Like Dou, Ferdinand Bol was also a pupil of Rem- brandt, and a very famous one. At his best he was so much like the greater man, that his works have often been taken for Rembrandt's. Later in life however, he became sadly Italianized and Rubensized, and lost much of the beauty of tone and luminosity of shadow which had been so characteristic of him. His best portraits have life, dignity, poise, insight. He shows himself master of his material and uses it with the freedom and ease of a man to whom it is merely valuable as a medium for express- ing ideas.
The Mathematician by him in Salle XXXL, is one of his finest portraits. Sitting sidewise with his right arm resting upon the stone balustrade the professor holds before him in his left hand a copper rule with which he points to a geometrical figure drawn upon the board behind him. He has turned his face over his left shoul- der till, in three-quarters view, it is gazing straight out at you, to whom, apparently he is explaining the problem. It is a face as full of character as it is of technical beauties. The firm mouth, the finely-lined nose, the clear, question- ing eyes, the full broad forehead, all speak the man of logical mind, of an unruffled, contemplative nature. The fulness about the chin and the rather delicate hand hint a certain fondness of the good things of life. Soft, waving hair falls about the neck on to the broad white collar and on his head is a black skull-cap at an angle suggestive of " bonhomie/' The total relations between the flesh, the gray hair, the white collar and the black robe are wonderfully fine. Not less so is the shadow on the left side of the face, breaking as it does into reflected light by the eye and deepening again under the nose.
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The hand is modelled with a surety and a simplicity that bespeak ease of draughtsmanship. The whole pose is as natural, as dignified and as inevitable as if the professor had been suddenly surprised elucidating a problem in his own class-room.
The Portrait of a Man is another excellent work. He is standing on a balcony leaning with his left arm upon the railing which is behind him. This brings him into a three-quarters position facing toward the right. The light comes from the left, throwing the right side of his face, his white collar and both hands into strong relief. Dressed in black, the cuffs and collar alone breaking the sombreness, the man's face is almost Spanish in its con- tour. Of a rather long type, high bridged and long nose, large, full-lidded eyes, finely curved mouth which the small moustache does not hide, his hair waving over his high forehead and about his ears, this unknown gentle- man has a serious, intent aspect that proclaims this a capital portrait.
Less like Bol but more, in a way, like Dou are the five pictures by Ter Borch in these Dutch rooms. It is only, however, in their carefulness of finish that they remind one of the latter, for Ter Borch was as original and had as distinctive a style as any man of the Dutch school. No rowdy parties, no brawling tavern-scenes, no questionable company appear in the scenes of this gentle- man painter. They all breathe the air of gentle breeding, sometimes, one is tempted to feel, almost to inanity. His brush, like Don's, but very differently, is always depicting the simplest of scenes and he is especially happy in suggesting the varying shades of even commonplace expression. In fact it is the commonplaces of eminently correct society that all of Ter Borch's panels portray. And it is the minute variations of expression of this great
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respectability that he delineates best of all. A half smile, a tentative glance of curiosity, a fleeting look of incredu- lity, a questioning lift of eyebrows, a quiescent pause where the expression is absolutely blank, this is what Ter Borch can do better than anybody else and with the simplest means. His marvellous draughtsmanship is apparently so little allied to art, to study, to effort, that it is as difficult to try to copy one of his figures as it is to copy life itself. His colour was restrained but full of fine gradations, his sense of values and of con- trast both equally strong. He was one of the greatest of Holland's painters and in his own line does not fall far below Hals or even Rembrandt.
In The Concert, in Salle XXVI., the young girl so often seen in Ter Borch's pictures is the central object of interest. She sits in profile, by a table with a gay cover, facing toward the left. Her blond head with its full, childlike forehead, its small chin, its yellow curls tied with black velvet ribbons, her white satin skirt fall- ing in folds that catch and reflect the lights and shades so entrancingly, all are familiar to us, but yet, as ever with Ter Borch, all is new. She is sitting with downcast eyes, singing from the sheet of music held in her left hand, while with the right she beats time. Standing on the other side of the table in full face is another girl playing upon a guitar. She is dressed in gray with a white chemisette. At the right just behind the first girl's chair, a page enters the room bearing a salver. He is not hurrying, and the smile on his lips and the retrospective expression in his eyes give the reason. He is decidedly interested in the concert. Behind all is a tapestry hanging which sinks dimly into the back- ground without, however, the depth of shadow which Dou would have thrown upon it.
Salles fff* to fffM* 219
It is a characteristic bit by Ter Borch, — a simple, un- pretentious scene with few accessories and none of Dou's insistence upon detail. There is too, far less evident delight in brush-work, per se. Ter Borch uses his brush as a tool, not as an object in itself. As brush-work how- ever, it is supple, full, fat, broad and inclusive, delicate and fine, with exquisite accents and subtle touches, so subtle that they are noticed only after careful examination. It is reality that concerns Ter Borch, and reality is what he expresses.
The Music Lesson is another variation of a subject which was a favourite with him. Seated with his elbow resting on a table covered with a red cloth, the young musician is playing on a guitar to his fair pupil who stands in front of him at the right, holding an open book. She is listening while he sings, and somehow there is a suggestion that this white-satin gowned, blond young woman, has more ability to listen than to execute. At all events a bored expression hovers on the musician's face and it does not appear that he will be sorry to be interrupted by the summons of the servant who has just opened the door in the background. He is extremely well dressed, this nonchalant teacher, with his big Spanish riding-boots and spurs, his wide-brimmed hat on the floor beside him, his waving black hair, his gray cuffs and collar, his baggy trousers. The girl, too, is more than richly robed. There is a magnificence about the folds of her bordered satin gown, the lace in the sleeves, the necklace, that speak wealth and leisure. It is a leisure that perhaps tends to somnolence, as exemplified in her own heavy-lidded eyes and in the little dog curled up asleep on the chair behind her.
Besides the charming colours of the picture, with the soft sheen of the satin, the more vivid note struck by the
220 ube Hrt ot tbe Xott\>te
table-cover, this counterbalanced by the black suit of the musician; besides the absolute justness of the values, with the exact and actual relation between flesh and stuffs, stuffs and furniture, furniture and walls; besides the solidity and strength of drawing, with such feeling of bone and muscle and form beneath those velvets and satins ; besides the excellence of composition with the inevitableness of position and placing; besides, finally, the actuality and individuality of the man and girl, there is something else that is even less often in even the works of the greatest masters. It is the unconscious reality of the picture as a whole, if it may be so expressed, and it is this appearance of actuality in all Ter Borch's scenes that makes them so remarkable.
One of the very best of his works to be seen anywhere, is in Salle XXIX., called An Officer Offering Money to a Young Girl. It gives the interior of a room, where, beside a table covered with red, sits a young girl hold- ing a glass decanter on one knee from which she is about to fill the wine-glass in her other hand. She has been interrupted by the Dutch officer who sits at her left slightly in front. He is reaching out his fat open hand, in which are several pieces of money. It is this movement which has made the girl stop a moment, and she is gazing down at that '* unctuous palm " quite obliv- ious of anything else. The officer meanwhile is looking at her with a roll of his eyes over his fat cheeks that suggests anything or nothing as one may please to interpret. Equally enigmatic is the quiet, downward look of the girl. It is not at all certain what that blond head is thinking. In fact the countenances are as doubtfully definite as they would be in real life. The modelling of these two figures is beyond praise. The solid bulk of the soldier is no more marvellous than the construction of
AN OFFICER OFFERINC; MONEY TO A YOUNG GIKL By Ter Borch
SallcB fff^ to fffOT- 221
those pudgy hands, they no more perfect than the silken folds of the white satin gown, the fluffy fur about the yellow jacket or the very droop of those hiding eye- lids of that little blond head.
Fourteen pictures by Wouverman and ten by Jardin are found in these Dutch rooms. Though modern taste has relegated these two most popular painters of their day to nearly complete oblivion, they really deserve neither such total ignoring nor the sweeping condemna- tion bestowed upon them by Ruskin. They were both men of decided parts, who drew with a correct and facile pencil, whose colour was generally pleasing and whose figures had individuality and not seldom distinction. Wouverman especially was a tremendous worker, Smith in his " Catalogue Raisonne " crediting him with between seven and eight hundred pictures. They both painted all sorts of subjects, Wouverman particularly being equally at home in any scene from a cavalry charge to a picnic group of ladies and cavaliers. He delighted in filling his compositions with horses, and generally the highest light in them falls upon a white horse. It is a sign of his ingenuity and of a certain sort of fecundity, that he almost never has duplicated a single picture. Even the white horses are never the same. In spite of many ex- cellencies neither he nor Jardin had the ability or the charna of either of the Ostades.
Among Wouverman's more important works in the Louvre may be mentioned The Fat Ox, The Stag Hunt, and The Cavalry Charge that is in Salle XXVIII.
In the first of these the ox is being led by two butchers along a road bordered by an old city wall. The huge animal is ornamented with wreaths and bears on his back two great glasses. Leading the procession are a man who plays a tambourine and some children. At the
222 ube Hrt ot tbe Xouvrc
right are more peasants and other spectators, among them a cavalier holding his son on the saddle before him. This picture is painted in the silvery gray tones Wouver- man affected toward his later years.
The Charlatans at the Fair by Jardin is a representa- tive work. Standing on a platform made by boards rest- ing on barrels, the quack is in profile haranguing the crowd before him. At his side on a table is his big open box of drugs and sitting on the platform with his legs crossed and a mask on his face, a harlequin sings to his guitar. Behind the quack, peering through a crack in some curtains Punchinello^s face is seen leering. Among the listening crowd are a peasant woman with a baby on her back, a donkey pannier-laden, on the top of which sits a boy, a man with a great cloak drawn about him and various others. It is a composition which on the whole justifies Alexandre's remarks that both Wouver- man and Jardin were painters of neither the real Dutch nor yet of the Italian schools. They followed what happened to be the fashion of the time and had really few ideas and less originality in expressing them.
A much greater man than either was Aelbert Cuyp of Dordrecht, who has six panels in these rooms. Fro- mentin places him in the " first rank," though below not only Rembrandt, of course, but also Ruysdael and Potter. He has been called the " Dutch Oaude," and it is the won- derful atmospheric splendour that fills his canvases that has given him the greatest renown. He did not confine himself to landscape, however, portraiture, still life, flowers, the sea, cattle, horses and interiors were frequent subjects for his facile brush. He was at his best, never- theless, in landscape, in which he always placed both people and animals. His colour, especially when he portrays the hazy mist that rises over sun-bathed fields,
Salles fflf . to f f f Df. 223
or the golden pathway across a meadow at midday, or again when the cool glimmer of the moon strikes the silent river or cuts athwart a bank, then, his colour is fairly pulsating with an effulgence that only Claude before him approached and which only the modern im- pressionists have excelled.
One of his best works here is the landscape in Salle XXX. At the right in the foreground a herd of cows graze in a field. At the left, some children, seated near a dog, listen to a shepherd blowing on a reed. In the middle distance is a river, and on the banks opposite the mills and houses and the tower-clock of Dordrecht. At the right upon a mountainside a flock of sheep and three shepherds.
The Marine is not one of his best, but the Departure for the Promenade is a noted example. Two mounted cavaliers are at the left in front of the walls of a house. A servant is handing one of them his stirrup, the other is ready to ride off. There is much bright colour here, with the horsemen in red and gold and black and gold, the servant with his green coat and the bay and dapple gray horses. Two dogs are at the left of the group, one lying down, heedless of those about, the other standing watching. The light is brilliant over this foreground group, and the middle distance is full of soft haze. The horses, as was apt to be the case with Cuyp are rather too large-headed for their round bodies.
Unlike most Dutchmen of his time, Cuyp did not care for extreme finish or polished brush-work. He painted broadly and freely and, like Rembrandt, one part at least of his picture is generally lost. Rembrandt loses it in shadow, Cuyp lets it disappear in the blaze of the sun.
Though Fromentin places Cuyp on a lower plane than
224 Ube art ot tbe Xouiore
Paul Potter, there are few of Potter's actual works that are equal to the better examples of Cuyp's talent. Paul Potter is to be judged rather by his promise than by his performance. A recognized painter when only fifteen, he died of the wasting disease he had fought from boy- hood at the age of twenty-nine. He was almost entirely self-taught, and seems to have been little influenced by the great men of his or any time. If he had lived he undoubtedly would have accomplished greater things in his chosen line than even the famous Bull at The Hague. Most of his paintings that are scattered among the European museums, are, in comparison with this Bull, tentative, unskilled, uncertain, not much more than studies. In them is seen almost nothing but his picayun- ish habit of emphasizing detail, drawing with pains- taking care every branch, twig and even the separate leaves in foliage, outlining the feathers of a hen or duck, laying the fur upon his cattle as it were hair by hair.
One of his pictures at the Louvre is of far greater interest than most of these studies. It is called Horses before a Thatched Cottage and is in Salle XXVI. A twilight sky full of soft clouds and the last gleams of departing day; a low field with a river in front, the houses of the distant village cutting against the horizon ; in front the end of a thatched cottage with its chimney, and before it two farm-horses standing with heads down waiting for their evening meal; coming toward them the farm-boy bearing a pail of water, and beside him a dog stopping to bark at something in the distance; this is the picture which Fromentin regards as one of the most perfect examples of Potter's work at its highest genius. And assuredly it is not only a marvellously truthful portrayal of the two old farm-horses, drawn, modelled, constructed with so exact a knowledge, so
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Sallcs ffff. to f f fWir. "5
just a brush, but it has almost as much of the mystery, the beauty, the pathos of the peasants' Hfe and the dying day as a scene by Millet. The tone of the luminous sky, the silhouette of the farmer are as full of charm as they are of scrupulous truth. As for the beasts, they are as remarkable bits of fidelity as is the great bull himself, with much more of poetry and suggestion. One can feel their tired, gasping breathing, one can see the tense muscles, the strained haunches, the dragging feet. All is there, as a poet sees it, and it is like an epitome of the peasant's life.
The Prairie, says Fromentin, is either very good or very bad as one regards it as the work of a scholar or of a master. Signs there are in the reddish beast standing in the cool of the early morning, of the Bull that was to come, but the surety, the vigour, the wonderful life are lacking.
Salle XXV. holds a number of pictures by Ruysdael, generally considered Holland's greatest landscape-painter. From the point of view of modern art his canvases are too dull in key and somewhat heavy. But he had a poetic mind that loved best the sombre, the sorrowful, and to express it his palette needed little but browns and grays and darkening greens. " He transported humanity to the heart of the hills that it might be still and reflect ; and he allowed no gay colour, sunlight or blue sky to distract the attention." He never could paint figures, and Berchem, Van de Velde, Wouverman and Lingel- bach used to put the figures into his scenes for him.
The Thicket, in Salle XXV. has the effect of being higher in its general key than usual with Ruysdael. In the middle of the foreground is a cluster of trees and bushes, shaken and tumbled and bent by a fierce wind, its shadow thrown far in front of it. This thicket makes
226 Zbc art ot tbe 3Lout>re
a sort of point which cuts triangular-wise into a road- way coming from behind it and thus separated into two arms. These two arms and the unbroken line beyond it are in brighter sunlight than Ruysdael often achieved. Up the right path a man and three dogs are walking and beyond at the left the village spires and roofs are seen. The sky is heavy with clouds, but is broken open in wide patches, letting the sun through. It is a very beautiful scene, and the massing of the shadow in front with the light in the distance gives a perspective as full of charm as it is of distance. The sky is sympathetic, arched, full, and the mournful note that as usual is never lacking, has almost lost its plaint in the general brightness that sur^ charges so much of sky and plain.
Ruysdael's Tempest in the same room has been con- sidered by so just a critic as Michelet, as the greatest gem in all the Louvre. The general feeling to-day, how- ever, is that the lashing waves are sadly deficient in colour, the barks that are scudding under bare poles equally wrongly monochromatic, and in fact the entire modern view of what colour is is entirely lacking here. Yet it is nevertheless a real tempest. The feeling of the angry sea, the heave and throb of the big waves, the anger of the tumultuous clouds piled in serried ranks, the depth of the shadow flung remorselessly upon all the sea except where a ray of light brightens a bit of the foreground at the right and makes one slender line in front of the horizon, — everything adds to the remorse- lessness of the waves and sky. At the extreme right where the thatched cottage and its orchard are only separated by a fence of piles from the advancing tide, the shadow that envelopes this helpless piece of land is again used with telling effect. It is as if it would cover with its darkness the ruin that certainly soon must
Sallcs fff. to fffM. "7
come. Almost one waits to see the huge ships flung pell- mell on to this unprotected point. Almost one sees a fearful wave advancing to overwhelm it.
The Ray of Sunlight is more of a classic sort of scene. There is here a sort of mixture of Holland and Norway, in its mountains and castle-crowned hills. It is the illu- mination on the distant hills and across the river that is so entrancing, joined to the wonderful gray sky, that throws from its cloud-filled arc only this one gleam.
Eight paintings by Gabriel Metsu give a good oppor- tunity to study this Dutchman who was a pupil of Dou and who was undoubtedly influenced by Rembrandt. He was on the whole more like Ter Borch than any other, but at the same time he was quite himself and as a whole deals with simpler and rather more elemental states than Ter Borch.
The Vegetable Market in Amsterdam is considered one of his best works as it is one of the least characteristic. He did not often depict outdoors nor the peasant life, preferring the drawing-rooms of the opulent. In this one nevertheless he has succeeded as admirably as would have Steen himself. Squatted about their piles of vege- tables the merchants harangue their customers or sell their wares. At the left one fat woman, seated before her carrots and turnips is repelling indignantly the accu- sations of another woman, who, with arms akimbo, stands facing her, evidently treating her to decided vigour of language and look. Near by a young gallant in a red suit tucks his plumed hat under his arm and leans forward to banter the girl in yellow who walks sedately along, her brass kettle slung over her arm. In front of her a hen huddles on the ground and on top of a wicker cage is a rooster. A dog by the young girl's side is view- ing this gay cock with a questioning face, much to
228 UM Hrt of tbe %o\xvxc
the latter's disturbance. Behind these are other men and women engaged in buying and selling. The market-street runs along a canal and on this is a sailboat and across on the other bank a row of houses. At the left, with its branches almost filling the entire upper part of the picture is a wide-spreading tree whose shadow largely dominates the scene. It gives a vigorous effect to the view and makes the aerial perspective of which Metsu was gen- erally master, more than usually telling as a compositional unit. Like most of the Dutch painters Metsu knew how to paint dogs, and neither Landseer nor Decamps has succeeded in depicting more truly dog nature than he has in this mildly inquiring spaniel who stands with feet well planted, quite ready, should occasion oi fun decide, to frighten that rooster out of his gaily painted feathers.
There is another even more amusing Httle beast in The Young Woman and the Officer, which, by the way, is a remarkably fine example of Metsu in his best known field. This scrap of a long-eared canine stands at the left, his four tiny paws far apart, his inquisitive head poked far forward, barking a surprised disapproval of this visitor to his mistress. He plays the fussy duenna to perfection, and the two young people pay as much attention to his objections as is customary in such cases. The richly dressed young woman is sitting turning toward the right, looking up smilingly at an officer who stands before her, his hat in his right hand, his left resting easily on a table beside himi. Back of the hostess's chair is a young page, bearing a basket of fruit. Dressed in a black velvet overgown with petticoat of white satin and guimpe, fichu, and big bonnet of white muslin, the young woman sits bolt upright, one hand on her knee the other holding a tall wine-glass. The formality of her attitude is counter- balanced by the coquettish tip of her blond head and her
Salles f Iff ♦ to f f f M. 229
smiling lips and eyes. The officer appears fully conscious of both her charms and her delicate reserves. Complete and most graceful homage and respect are in the slight forward bend of his well-knit figure, in the instinctive gesture of his hand holding his hat, and in his inclined head and lowered eyes. His finely curved lips smile with undisguised tenderness, but the innate good taste and good breeding of the man are even more apparent.
The chiaroscuro of this little scene is remarkably effective. The shadowed background against which the blacker velvet of the girl's dress and her brilliant white kerchief come out so brilliantly suggest somewhat the spotting of Rembrandt. Like Rembrandt too are the spots of high light on the white neck and nose of the dog, on the necktie and full cuff of the gallant, and on the edge of the page's salver. Equally noticeable, but more entirely his own is the feeling of restraint in the picture. It is not only the well-indicated reserve and good taste of the two young people, it is shown as well in the sober- ness and delicacy of colouring, in the unforced yet telling scheme of chiaroscuro.
In The Cook, the subject of the picture is seated by a table on which is a dead hare and a wooden basket, peeling an apple from the tray full which rests on a big basket before her. A close white cap and kerchief and white undersleeves make strong notes of contrast against her somewhat toil-worn skin. There is a hint of weari- ness in the slight strain of the figure and in the eyes, and Metsu cleverly indicates that this is no model posing but a real working woman, a bit tired with her daily round of duties. Metsu paints less accessories than Dou, and in this case he has only represented the necessary ad- juncts of the present task of his cook. The surety of drawing, the fineness of characterization, the exactness
230 Ube art of tbe %o\xvxc
of handling, the splendid rendering of stuffs, wooden utensils, fur of the hare, the table-cover, all do not detract in their perfection, from the simple intent of the picture as a whole.
The two pictures by Pieter de Hooch in Salle XXX. are all the Louvre owns by this celebrated Dutchman, who was influenced greatly by Rembrandt, though it is not known with whom he studied. This influence of Rembrandt, too, is shown in a rather unexpected way. In the works of both it is light that plays such an impor- tant part. But Rembrandt uses his brilliant, forced spotting to illumine a face, to make an expression telling, to lift the veil of the soul. Technically, too, he employs it especially to give more depth, richness and intensity to his shadows. With half-tones, also, he has little to do. De Hooch, on the contrary, employs light for light's sake. It is never his object to treat it as subservient to face or form. He loves it for itself and especially as it patterns itself on bare walls or through half-open windows. He loves eagerly too, the intermediate gradations of it, from the scarcely shaded reflections through the softened dimmer tones of inner rooms down to the darkened re- cesses of half-hidden corners. It is to be doubted if Rembrandt ever portrayed real sunlight. De Hooch, on the other hand, used all the notes and tones of shadow, half-light and clear reflection, merely to make more dazzling his final outpouring of sunlight. It is as a painter of interiors that De Hooch is largely known, though his courtyards and gardens are equally success- ful if less numerous. And these interiors are really interiors, not pictures of people within certain rooms. The people are there to be sure, a few at a time. But they are placed generally some distance away from the immediate foreground. Almost always there is a wide
Salles f1[f. to ffflDir. 231
strip of tiled floor or brick yard with absolutely nothing on it except the pattern of the light that falls from a high window or through an open door. T|hen, instead of following the example of most of the Dutch painters who threw their strongest light upon their group in the foreground and massed behind them the clustering shadows of a room beyond, De Hooch again pursued an almost opposite course. His first room is in a half-light that in corners grows into deep if translucent shadow. Back of this another room opens and that, being so much nearer the court or yard is in higher light. Opening out of that comes perhaps the court itself where the undiluted sunshine plays gaily. The skill such treatment requires it is not necessary to dwell upon. In his own line there never was a more masterly technician.
The Cottage Interior shows excellently De Hooch's usual method of dealing with light. In this case the principal figures are more in the foreground than usual, but to make up for that there is a wide, unbroken floor- ing between them and the third figure. It represents a room where soft shadows lie, though at the back is an open door with windows above and at the side. Another door swings open at a right angle to this central one, showing the first steps of a flight of narrow stairs and a part of a high leaded window. The first door opens into a walled court beyond which still another door leads into a low shed, whose unwindowed interior makes a dark oblong that repeats the dark tones of the immediate foreground. Above the walls of the court a bit of the bright sky makes a triangle of colour seen through the windows of the large room. In the first room, in the right-hand corner, a woman sits before a low table on which is a big hooped bowl or tub. She is pausing in her work to look at a tiny girl who, in a white ruff and cap,
«3a Ubc art of tbe Xouvtc
stands beside her holding a plaything. The only real glints of light that actually filter into this rather dim apartment are those that strike the mother's cap and kerchief, the top of her right hand, a spot on the hoops of the basin, and the child's cap and ruff. Nowhere else except through a crack in the door does the sunlight steal in. The third figure of the scene is a woman shown walking toward the shed in the court. Her light blue hood and kerchief contrast with her dark skirt which breaks what would be otherwise a rather monotonously lighted distance.
Perhaps, next to the delight this charming management of light gives to the spectator, comes the appreciation of this scene in its household aspects. The composition breathes a spirit of tranquil happiness, of a placid life that somehow penetrates more and more the longer it is studied. And gradually is forgotten the technique, the mastery of material, and all that skilful adjusting and arranging of light becomes only a part of the real thing, which is to give just this feeling of domestic sweetness and placid calm.
In the Card Party, called often merely A Dutch In- terior, Pieter de Hooch has chosen more aristocratic sur- roundings and personages than is his general custom. Also he has employed almost not at all his way of showing open rooms beyond the first. The only suggestion of an outlet is the narrow doorway behind the page, which gives but an edge of window and floor of the apartment behind him. At the back, through a high window a bit of sky and tree-top can be seen, but take it altogether there is much more uniformity of light here than is often found in a De Hooch.
At the left, before an open fire under a sort of porch- like mantel of rich marble columns, sits a young girl
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showing her hand of cards to the gentleman standing behind her, holding a glass of wine, and evidently direct- ing her play. These two are in full Hght, a cross-light, indeed, made by window and dancing fire-flames. Her scarlet waist, lace kerchief, and yellow silk skirt mass brilliantly against the darkened corner of the room behind her, and her laughing face with its bright eyes and shining teeth adds to the effect. The man with whom she is playing is at the other side of the table and is thrown into deep shadow by the columns of the fireplace. Behind is a window dimly seen through its drawn curtain, and farther along at the right, under windows that are open, stand a young man and woman whispering together, their hands clasped. The light falls over their heads so that they are in shadow, as well as the page bearing the bottle of wine at their left. Between these and the card-player, stretches the tiled floor of yellow and gray and black porcelains, in a checkered pattern which De Hooch has used most effectively to show the broken lights. Here, as ever, it is light that the painter was enraptured with and he makes the spectator as enraptured as himself, which is proof sufficient of his success.
Of Vermeer, the Louvre only possesses the Lace Maker in Salle XXIX. Vermeer was as original as De Hooch, as full of a charming reserve as Ter Borch. He was a painter of enigmatical, smiling women, generally gentle- women, of quiet, reposeful motions. His palette is brighter, lighter and more penetrating than either of the other two. He especially loved yellow, soft blues and delicate greens. The little Lacemaker is a sympathetic and interesting bit but hardly sufficient to show his style or capabilities. The figure is capitally drawn, the hands especially well characterized, the face full of suggestion and charm.
234 Ube Htt ot tbe Xouvre
Seven or eight pictures by Adriaen Van de Velde in these Dutch rooms show him worthy of the fame he is accorded. He painted all sorts of subjects, but is best known by his landscape and cattle scenes. Some of these latter are quite equal to Paul Potter's. Among the painters of landscape he is one of the few who could paint figures, and Wynants, Ruysdael, Hobbema and Van der Heyden often got him to put figures into their pictures.
The Beach at Scheveningen is one of his best works at the Louvre. Alexandre calls it " one of our Dutch jewels." It was bought by Louis XVL who had a passion for Dutch paintings as his ancestors had for Italian.
On the shore is the Prince of Orange in his coach drawn by six little white horses, the members of his suite following. At the right are a fisherman carrying a net, a man and woman talking, and a boat drawn up on the sand. Behind the dunes rise two clock-towers and in the distance appears a coach with two horses. The gray shore, the men in their blue suits, the dogs, the *' plein d'air," the whole vivid life of the long beach is here so clearly, so justly shown, that a certain monotonous grayness of colour is scarcely felt. The horses are admirably drawn, though their heads are a trifle small. But their attitudes are diverse and full of movement and spirit and their colour against the gray sands makes a fine " spotting."
Early morning is the time represented in Landscape and Cattle in Salle XXX., and though Van de Velde did not choose the colours to express this time of day that either Corot or the latter-day impressionists would have employed, he has nevertheless succeeded in giving the effect of the new-risen sun with no uncertain touch. Most of the picture is in cool tones, rather mono- chromatic in their lack of variety. Only here and
Salles f Iff . to f f flDIF- 235
there do the gHnts of the sun gild the marsh or out- Hne a branch or strike more fully on the back of some of the animals. The sky shows purple and red through the clouds that bank midway in its arch, and this sky fills more than two-thirds of the entire canvas, or wooden panel, as is not only this but many of the Dutch pictures. At the left on a hillock are a weather- beaten tree, a low hut, some horses, goats, sheep and cattle. Just below these animals on a point extending into the water sit a fisherman with rod and line and another peasant leaning on his elbows. Still farther to the left are one of the cattle lying down and a goat. All these are in the demi-tone of the half-shadow. Filling the centre of the picture are more animals, some standing on the grassy marsh edge, others wading in the water. In the distance, a line of land with trees and houses and another herd at the water's edge.
The Woman at Her Toilet in Salle XXVIII. by Frans van Mieris the elder, is one of several by him owned by the Louvre. He is called " the elder ** because his son and grandson were both followers of him. In his style of painting he was largely influenced by Dou with whom he studied. HJs work is dry, minute and over-elaborate, he has little invention and less imagination. Though painting before the decadence had reached full swing, he nevertheless is to be ranked among the men who had lost the great Dutch spirit. As an imitator he was more or less successful and he was extremely popular during his life.
In the Woman at Her Toilet, a richly dressed dame stands before a table on which is a large mirror, ar- ranging her hair. At the right a negress carries a ewer and a basin, and an open door shows a side of a portico with columns.
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There is no hint of the decadence in the work of Jan Steen who has three paintings in the Louvre. Of these three the Flemish Fete in an Inn is an uproarious scene in a huge tavern. Long tables run down one side at which men and women sit drinking, while a dance is going on behind, and at one side a drunken woman is being pulled up-stairs by two men. Everywhere are to be seen indiscriminate embracing and the effects of over- imbibing. It is not an elevating scene, not a moral scene, not even a respectable scene. But it is consummate art. The drawings of the figures, the composition of the groups, the joining of the many adverse groups into one complete whole are the work of a man who has scarcely an equal as a master of composition. It Is not strange that some most eminent critics have claimed that Raphael himself never surpassed him in this power of making a picture.
By far the best of his pictures here is the Bad Com- pany. Again, it is not a scene to elevate thought, morals, or spirit, unless it can be used as a fearful warning! It is the interior evidently of some sort of tavern or house of ill-fame. Wholly overcome by the wine he has been drinking, a gay cavalier is doubled over in his chair, one arm hanging limp between his knees, his head dropped on to the knee of the young girl sitting in a chair facing him. The girl, whose knee makes his pillow sits very stiff and straight, a tall glass of liquor still in her hand, a drunken imbecility on her face. Behind these two are two women. The one on the left is back to, busily en- gaged rifling the pockets of the young gallant and hand- ing the contents over to the old hag who stands behind the girl's chair, the young fellow's rapier alert in her hands, and his cloak over her shoulder. The grin of delighted expectation on her face is wonderfully expressed. Back
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in the shadow a musician is playing and another old villain is smoking, while both keep their eyes on the comedy going on in front.
The satirical glee of this picture is something extraor- dinary. It is in looking at a canvas like this that one understands why this Dutch painter has been likened to Moliere, why he has been called the greatest wit, the greatest comique and the greatest satirist in painting. Hogarth is the painter nearest akin to him but Hogarth is not so subtle, nor so ingenious as Steen. Hogarth moral- izes, Steen lets his spectators do their own moralizing. As a technician, when he chooses, he is equally unap- proachable. What could be more absolutely true to inert life than that limp gallant with his weight so solidly thrown upon the knees of the girl? Did ever a hand hang just so loose, so fallen, except in somnolent life itself? Equally remarkable is the girl's figure with its unconscious, braced knees, its stiff pressure combined with its mental abandonment. The relation between these two and those behind and the two men farther back, is no less vividly actual. Looking at it all, it is easy to realize, as has been said so many times, that Steen occupies a place quite alone, not only in Dutch, but in all art.
He studied with Van Goyen and Adriaen van Ostade and the influence of both men can be seen in his work. His biographers have called him a rake and a drunkard, but it is pretty well established now that his reputation was largely made by the pictures he painted. The fact that he left behind him a most appalling number of paintings did not until comparatively lately count as evi- dence in his favour. Certainly a wholly dissipated indi- vidual could not have accomplished a tenth part of them.
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Almost as unrivalled in his own chosen field as Steen in his, is Hondecoeter, who also has three pictures in these rooms. No one else has ever devoted himself so wholly or so successfully to portraying the feathered tribe as this man, who, like De Hooch was born in Utrecht, only six years after him.
His Two Eagles in a Poultry Yard is precisely what the title calls it. The poultry-yard is in a country-side which is traversed by a river. At the right an eagle has grabbed a hen in his claws and is flying off with him, while in the centre of the scene another is capturing a cock. Running about in fearful distress are pigeons and hens, trying to save themselves from what they believe is to be total slaughter. In the distance is a ruined chateau and at the right a village. Though Hondecoeter can only be seen to advantage at The Hague or in Amster- dam, this, like the other two here show how wonderfully he could depict the life, the colour, the vivacity, the plumage of these animals.
Quite a different talent still had Van der Heyden, who is sometimes called the Gerard Dou of architecture. He painted the old Dutch streets and squares with a fidelity and scrupulous attention to detail that make his works valuable as historical documents. Many of the buildings and places he depicted so lovingly no longer exist at all and can only be known through his panels. Though his particular care for the shape of the bricks, the paving- stones, the panes in the windows becomes at times decidedly amusing, on the whole it does not spoil the effect of the picture as a compositional unit. He never could paint trees well and his figures were mostly put in by Adriaen Van de Velde, who was his great friend. His achievements in perspective show him to have been
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a thoroughly trained draughtsman and he had beside a fine feeling for values and for atmosphere.
The Village on the Banks of a Canal, in Salle XXIX., has a diagonal line, but very well broken, of pathway and buildings that reaches from the right side of the picture to the left in the far distance. Filling what makes a lower left-hand square is the canal. The straggling line of houses, churches and trees forms an interesting and di- versified mass against the sky, and the quiet of its almost deserted path is supplemented by the square-bowed Dutch fishing-boats in the canal, their squat heaviness suggesting only a slow and torpid existence. The effect of light is well studied, if it is rather cold and thin, and the picture has merits in composition and in a feeling of sober earnestness.
Two pictures by Hobbema are in Salle XXVI. He has been continually compared to Ruysdael but he really does not greatly resemble him. He was a good deal younger than Ruysdael and was undoubtedly influenced by him. It is only within a few years that his canvases have been greatly appreciated and most of his work is owned in England who was the first to value him at his true worth. It has been often said that Ruysdael, Wynants and Hobbema were the forerunners of Constable and the English landscape school as Constable was of Rousseau, Diaz and the French of that day. At least it is true that these painters of the seventeenth century did what no others had so far done: painted landscape as landscape and for its own sake, not as background for figures. And they did get a remarkable atmospheric feeling in their scenes, and their skies had depth, expanse, vastness and luminosity as well as splendid aerial perspective. Their trees, rocks, mountains and waterfalls too, showed care- ful drawing and exact delineation. Their trees bent with
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the storm, one sees and feels the toss of their branches, the scattering of their leaves, the sharp tension of their withstanding trunks. Equally successful are they in show- ing the rush and power of waves and waterfalls. In fact the motion of outdoors life they portrayed with facility and power. And if their sunlight was not real sunlight, at least their values were both just and sure. Ruysdael was far more of a poet than Hobbema, but Hobbema was a much better painter.
In The Landscape a curving roadway is at the right, a tranquil brook flows across the foreground, and winds among the trees that mass in the centre and at the left into a forest. This is the picture, with the addition of a high, arching sky cloud-strewn, yet full of light. Shadow and sunlight flash over the road, the brook, the trees, now sharpening a trunk, now silvering a bunch of foliage, now streaking widely the distant plain, anon submerging in mystery the recesses of the woods. The light is thus seen to be not centralized nor specially focalized; it is somewhat spotty and scattered. Yet it does give the eflfect of outdoors. This too, in spite of certain brownness and grayness of colouring.
The Water-Mill was a subject Hobbema often painted. In this one he gives with photographic clearness and in- sistence of detail the big wheel, the sheds, the bare logs, the bridge, the quiet water, the bordering trees. It is the luminous sky which saves the scene from being common- place. The two trees in the foreground also are marvels of careful draughtsmanship. Even better in effect are those silhouetted against the sky in the middle distance.
There is one beautiful little picture in Salle XXXIII. by Maes, who was a pupil of Rembrandt, and who did not lose his individuality even in such close proximity to the great man. His most important work was done
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very early, his later years showing the decadence that settled upon all the painters of Antwerp at that time. Though he wias a very popular portrait-painter, he is at his best in genre subjects such as the Blessing here. If this is the work of a boy only sixteen years old as is claimed, it is a remarkable performance. The picture is on wood, only twenty-two inches high by sixteen wide, and represents an old woman sitting alone before her midday meal, silently asking a blessing. The lighting is simple and most effective, the colour tender. But it is the religious fervour, the deep feeling in the old peasant's face, the inward and real piety expressed in the fragile body before her lonely meal, the expression of the whole quiet scene that makes this seem like an early Millet.
The Singing Lesson and the Lesson on the Bass Viol by Casper Netscher in Salle XXIX., are fair examples of this pupil of Ter Borch. Like his master Netscher painted scenes taken from the gentle life of Holland. He has a certain sort of delicate charm, that nevertheless does not make him anywhere near the equal of his master. A rather laborious style in composition, a sufficiently accurate hand in drawing, a trained taste in lighting, a decent sort of sobriety are all to be found in Netscher's works as well as a true Dutch ability in the correct rendering of silks, satins, velvets, utensils and the like. No one can paint white satin with greater brilliance, luminosity, sheen and reflection than he. He fairly revels in the line of a satin fold that catches the light on its curve, and then melts into the shadow that still reflects some of the mellow sheen of its lights. There is a rich- ness, a play of tones to his brush then that he never gets anywhere else.
The Singing Lesson is just such a subject as Ter Borch or Metsu would have chosen, but both of these
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men v/ould have expressed it in a simpler way. The three figures are naturally placed, if in a too evident tri- angle, the drawing is admirable (notice how the weight of the girl rests upon her chair), the focusing of light on the central figure is full and free of spots, and finally the interest is well sustained and well led up to. It is the overdone, or oversized details that help to make it so far below Ter Borch. The large statue of the wrestlers placed directly behind the group in the niche in the wall, the voluminous heavily brocaded table-cover, the too big and too prominent canister with its bottles and grape leaves, and finally the triangular space at the left of the background opening into the Italian sort of land- scape, — all these things distract the eye and lower the value of the picture. But the white satin gown of the girl sitting down is beautiful enough to excuse a thousand faults. Its stretch across her knees, the soft wide shadow below, the little glints and gleams on her lap and down over the deeper folds on the side, the brilliancy as it falls straight from her left knee, the feel of its shimmering surface, all this Netscher knew how to express better than almost any one.
The Lesson on the Bass Viol has not so much objec- tionable detail, and in it again is a delectable white satin gown. In the middle of the picture sits the young blonde girl playing upon the big viol. She has just turned her head to the left to look at a piece of music which her teacher behind her is showing. At the right a charming boy page holds a violin and waits with very reverent air. This child's face is the best thing in the picture, even better for once than the white satin gown. The childlike interest in his eyes, watching so intently, the unconscious forward thrust of his head, his almost open lips, the awk-
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ward and boyish pose, this is better work than Netscher usually accomplished.
The pictures of Van der Werff in these rooms do not require extended description. He was the greatest ex- emplar of the Italianate-decadence of Dutch art, and in his own day was greatly admired and his works eagerly bought by prince and merchant. His drawing was supple, clear and at times distinguished. His draperies were pliant, graceful, perfectly drawn and modelled. His modelling in general was solid yet delicate, but extremely hard. His flesh was like marble or plaster in substance and was cold and unsympathetic in colour. He spent most of his time painting nymphs, goddesses and Scrip- tural scenes and assiduously imitated the decadent Ital- ians. The Dancing Nymph, in Salle XXVHI. is a fair average as well as the group of half-length figures in Salle XXXIV.
With the name of Huysum, the middle of the eight- eenth century is reached, when Dutch art, like Italian, is so far below its Renaissance level that its very heights would seem like the deep valleys of that happier day. In his own way, however, Huysum was a remarkable painter and is still deserving of consideration. He was the great- est fruit and flower painter of his age, and even now his pictures are regarded as wonderful examples of an un- usual sort of skill. With the taste characteristic of his time, he loved best a perfect melange of flowers and fruit. Roses of all kinds, tulips, jonquils, pinks, hyacinths, lilies, every sort of bloom he would put into his vase of Grecian shape resting on the marble table. Curiously enough, though it was as a flower and fruit-painter that he made his reputation and money, he never ceased longing to be a landscape-painter and it is said of him that he was always going into the country there to paint with pains-
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taking care the little scenes that remind one of Poelen burg though his sylvan figures are clumsy and heavy. The fruit and flower pieces in the Louvre scarcely require description. The four landscapes show his minute care and somewhat leaden brush.
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CHAPTER XII.
SALON CARRE
The Salon Carre marked Room IV. on the plan, con- tains the chief gems of the Italian paintings owned by the Louvre, as well as a few examples of other schools.
Of all the famous pictures hung in this famous room none, probably, is better known or has been more praised than the Mona Lisa, La Gioconda, of Leonardo da Vinci. From the time of Vasari to the present century language has been exhausted in efforts to find new panegyrics for this creation. No praise has been too great, no adoration too excessive, no amazement at its perfection too over- wrought. The portrait is so universally and thoroughly known that description seems quite unnecessary. Yet, when Vasari's glowing words are recalled, extolling its marvellous bloom of colour, its palpitating flesh, its limpid eye, its cheeks of rose, its lips of carnation, its exquisite eyebrows and eyelashes, its hands of pearl, its landscape background as real as nature herself, the first look at the picture must surely be disappointing. For the rose, the carnation, the bloom of the lovely face have gone. The greens and browns of the trees, the soft azure of the sky, the sparkling tones of the winding stream have all turned to a blue-green background that makes still whiter the white chalky face and emphasizes the disappearance of the brows and eyelashes over which Vasari raves. And
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yet, after the first surprised look, the spell of the picture steals over you as it stole over Vasari, as it has over every one who has looked at it for four hundred years. Those soft, melting eyes see as far into the soul's myster- ies as they did when Frangois I. bought it for three thou- sand golden crowns from its reluctant painter. That full, broad brow, that noble neck, that firm white bosom, those perfect hands so temptingly beautiful in line and curve — all these are the same even if the glory of the colour has departed. And beyond these, dominating every one as it dominates the portrait itself, is that subtle, tantaliz- ing, inscrutable, untranslatable smile, surely never more full of meaning, never more elusive, never more appeal- ing or more repelling, more lovable or more malicious, more full of pure amusement or more cynical, — what- ever ones point of view, — four hundred years ago than it is to-day.
The portrait is of the wife of Francesco del Giocondo and for over four years Leonardo kept the picture with him, working on it as he chose or could get his model, and calling it unfinished even when Frangois I. per- suaded him to part with it.
The Virgin, St. Anne and the Child Jesus by Leonardo is supposed to be one of the pictures the painter took with him to France when he entered the French king's service. It found its way back to Italy afterward, how- ever, and did not reappear in France till bought by Riche- lieu. There is some doubt as to whether the picture is entirely by Da Vinci, in spite of the Leonardesque type of face of Mary and Anne. Mary is shown sitting in her mother's lap, while Jesus who is in her arms plays with a lamb. Anne is scarcely older than Mary in ap- pearance and the two faces are both rarely beautiful.
There are still critics who doubt whether the Concert
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is a genuine work by Giorgione, but Morelli, Berenson, and several other authorities declare unreservedly that it is not only by the man of Castel franco but that it is one of his most beautiful works. It has undoubtedly been much repainted and has suffered greatly in consequence. But the glow of the poetic landscape, the splendour of the figures of the two nude women, the magnificent lines of the composition, the idyllic character of the whole scene, and above all the feeling of musical pause that pervades it, — these incline critics to credit it to Giorgione.
In the foreground on a sloping rise of meadow sit two young men close together. The one on the left dressed in a green tunic with red sleeves, showing a bit of white linen gathered about his neck, and a red cap on his luxuriant curls, holds a lute in his arms. He has just struck or is about to strike a chord, as is indicated by the position of his right hand. Meanwhile he has turned to speak with his companion, a bushy-haired youth, and the movement has thrown the two faces into a deep shadow that breaks into light only on the white about their necks and on the hand poised above the strings. The enveloping tone over these two makes all the more effective the golden light that plays about the woman sitting back to, in front of them. She holds a flute in her hand which she evidently waits to sound till the men have finished their conversation. The lines of this sensuous figure have a curve, a rhythm and a wonderful sweep that balance with the lines of the composition in a way pecul- iarly Giorgionesque. More lovely still is the second woman who stands at the left resting her left hand on the edge of a stone fountain while, with only a slight twist of the torso, she reaches her right arm across to fill a pitcher with the water. Her head is in profile
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and soft shadows slumber about her eyes and under her chin, and are augmented by the shadow of the arm over the chest and thigh. A piece of drapery falls from her left hip over the leg and around the other leg from the knee down. The lines of the folds are themselves part of the untranslatable, but exquisitely joyous, poetic charm of the whole canvas. At the right, lower dov/n, coming from the deep shadow of thick trees, a shepherd leads his flock. The distance gives a stretch of plain, a castle, a bending tree, a light-broken sky.
Of all the many Entombments of the Italian painters of the Renaissance, none equals the one by Titian hanging in this Salon Carre, in depth and intensity of expression, in grandeur of line, in the superbness of its massing and wonder of its chiaroscuro. Its colour has unfortunately darkened and faded but it is still impressive even in its present state. It must have been a marvel for even Titian's brush when it left his studio.
Occupying the very centre of the picture is the dead body of Christ, borne in the arms of Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea. Assisting them, placed between, but on the other side of his master, is John the disciple, and at the left stands the m'other, supported by Mary Magdalene. At the right is the open sepulchre and be- hind a mass of dense, shadowed woods and a frowning sky broken by lurid streaks of light. Such is the general scheme of composition. Not largely different from the conventionally prescribed plan of treatment of the subject, but so vivified, so realized by the mind of the genius that executed it, that the very theme itself seems never to have been expressed in paint before.
The light is so arranged that it falls on the lower part of the body of Jesus, and on his arms, leaving his face and torso in deep shade. Nicodemus, as he stands
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back to lifting the shoulders of the Saviour, is in light, his head and neck, however, enveloped in the shadow that covers his burden. John's face, raised and gazing at Mary is thrown into relief, the shadow sweeping over him from his neck down. A half-light breaks over Joseph's head, which is in profile, and grows stronger on his bent right arm as he lifts the helpless limbs of the inert form. Again, the light intensifies over the figures of the two women standing beside and slightly behind him. It is to this distribution and massing of light that much of the wonderful impressiveness of the picture is due. Nothing, for instance, could equal the effect pro- duced by the deep shadow that shrouds the head and torso of Christ. Beneath the gloom imagination can read its own story, see the features it has dreamed of, feel the power and beauty of the dead face as no brush could portray it. If the face is left thus indeterminate, the arms are treated far differently. With them Titian ventured fully to express his own thought. On those beautiful, helpless, inert hands and arms he focused the whole force of the light. On their contour and line, on their rounded form he lavished all the knowledge, all the power, all the poetry that lay within the heart of his amazing genius. In those maimed, dead arms all the history, the whole life of the Crucified One can be felt. Not less wonderful in their own way are the loving bearers and the women. The subordination of Nicodemus and Joseph, in spite of their necessary prominence in the part they take, to the beloved disciple and to the mother of their Lord, is another evidence of Titian's unerring sense of the dramatic unities. It was his sense too, of the eternal verities, that made him treat John's face as he did. Thrown into the light, and immediately over the dead Redeemer, it might easily have become the
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secondary point of interest in the picture. Had he not been looking directly at Mary instead of at Jesus, one's graze would have lingered on his sensitive, poetic face, till the part Mary bears in the tragedy would have half lost its meaning. As it is ones eye at once follows his anguished regard, and rests immediately upon the stricken mother in the Magdalene's care. It is a mar- vellous stroke that thus connects and solidifies the compo- sition, making it not only so technically perfect, but so transcendent in its soul qualities.
Of a very different order is the Alfonso of Ferrara and Laura Dianti. This is supposed to be an actual por- trait group of these two people, though in past times it has been given other names. Laura Dianti was a peasant girl who was first mistress and then wife of the Duke of Ferrara, and the man whose head is seen dimly in the shadow bears a strong resemblance to other pictures of Alfonso by Titian. Behind a stone table, of which only an edge appears, the young woman is standing, her body in front view, her face turned to the left, gazing into a looking-glass held up by a dark-bearded man standing behind her. In his other hand is a round mirror which he holds back of her head. Her left hand rests on a glass on the table, her right lifts a long tress of the curly golden hair that has fallen over her shoulder. She has a very low-cut chemisette with big, loose, wide hanging sleeves coming from under the arm-straps of her dark peasant bodice that fits close over her full green velvet skirt. Her large, brilliant eyes, straight nose, curved red lips, softly moulded chin and rippling golden hair are all distinctly Titanesque. It is so purely the type of woman he so often portrayed that its absolute fidelity as a likeness may be questioned. Those wide, languorous shoulders with the bones so thoroughly bedded under the soft flesh, the
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rather short neck, the round but not small arm, — Titian of Cadore has painted these over and over. It is his feminine ideal as distinctly as the Gioconda is Leonardo's. And if one judges that the type lacks something in mental equipment, it lacks nothing in the physical, however dif- ferent may be ones opinion as to what constitutes a beau- tiful woman. The adorable curve of those shoulders, the colour of those Cupid-bow lips, the melting brilliancy of those large eyes, the intense femininity of that low, broad brow, the entrancing lights and undulations of that golden hair, — it is woman, woman incarnate.
As painting it is masterly. In spite of darkening due to time there is still enough of the original tone left to show what it must have been originally. The scheme of chiaroscuro is particularly effective, with the hair and hand so cleverly arranged to break up the expanse of light on the chest, and thus throw the face into stronger prominence. For its own sake, too, this shadow that balances that on her left cheek, chin and neck, is a charm- ing thought. Titian revelled in painting soft white linen closely gathered over full soft shoulders, emphasizing the delicate contrasts of flesh and linen as only he could do it, and here he has displayed his power to its utmost.
If the Alfonso and Laura is very unlike the great En- tombment, as unlike in treatment as it is in subject, very different from either is The Man with the Glove. This is a half-length portrait of a young man standing with shoulders square across, his head turned a little to the right, his eyes looking still farther in that direction. His left arm rests on a block of stone, the gloved hand falling loosely and holding his other glove, while with his right he grasps his belt in front. Nothing could be simpler. Bareheaded, dressed in black, with the coat open from the neck in a narrow triangle to the waist and showing
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a white gathered shirt, crossed by a coral chain, with ruffled white lace at the wrists, the portrait is painted without accessories, with nothing to detract from the w;onder of that quiet face and hands.
There is none of the subtlety, none of the enigma, none of the seductiveness here that is felt so strongly in Mona Lisa. Neither is there any intense psychologic moment suggested, such as one is so often conscious of in a great Lotto portrait. It is merely a representation of a youth, scarcely out of boyhood, with the soft, early down on his upper lip, his large eyes calmly regardful, his whole expression one of quiet contemplation. What it is that makes it such a marvel of portraiture is hard to define, though the most uncritical observer has felt its power. It is more than its draughtsmanship, though Michelangelo never showed firnuer construction; it is something besides colour, though its sombre harmony of rich and mellow tones has a depth and solidity great for even Titian to achieve; it is not alone its admirable composition, though the balance of the hands and the placing in the canvas so that one scarcely realizes that one has not seen the entire figure, mark it with a distinction worthy of Raphael ; it is not even its arrangement of light and shade, though Leonardo could not have handled the chiaroscuro more effectively; neither is it the assur- ance it gives that it must have been a speaking likeness, — though in that last popular phrase there is a hint of the truth. There is more than all these. Somehow, in those limpid, sober, questioning eyes Titian has shown the spirit that looked out from their depths; shown it with a truer, juster insight than this most objective of painters often succeeded in doing. In the smooth oval of the cheek, in the wide, firm brow, in the steady lips that could so easily be tremulous, in that sinuous, nervous.
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beautiful hand so bent that three fingers are not seen at all, above all, perhaps, in that hand, he has portrayed a real personality, with a vigour, a life and a depth of truth that few painters have equalled, perhaps none surpassed.
One of the greatest portraits that Raphael ever painted hangs in the Salon Carre. This is Baldassare Casti- glione, and as a portrait is ranked next to his mighty Leo now at the Pitti. It is a half-length figure, turned three- quarters to the left, his face and eyes somewhat more to the right. He wears a broad black hat and his cloak is a combination of black and gray, opening to show a white ruffled shirt. Only a bit of the clasped hands is dis- played. The background is gray and the effect of the whole picture is a symphony of gray tones where the highest lights are on the face and shirt and the darkest darks on the hat and cloak. There is no touch here that is not Raphael's own, and the result is a masterly char- acterization in which every detail but adds to the per- fection of the whole. The face is modelled with a large, free touch, the tones having a sort of opalescent feeling about them, as if the flesh caught some of the reflections of the gray background and full, gray, shimmering sleeves. It is an active, open countenance, the large, observing eyes both gentle and keen, the lips close and firmly curved, the nose not too fine, but far from coarse.
The picture was first on wood and has since been trans- ferred to canvas. In the seventeenth century it was in a Dutchman's collection, afterward it was in Madrid, where probably Rubens copied it. Rembrandt had earlier made a water-colour sketch of it. Cardinal Mazarin finally bought it and his heir sold it to Louis XIV. It is in fair condition but has become probably grayer than it was originally.
Raphael's Madonna called La Belle Jardiniere, which is
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in this roomt, he is supposed to have painted toward the last of his stay in Florence. It is therefore an example of the time when he had begun to abandon his Perugi- nesque traditions and had already been influenced by Fra Bartolommeo and Leonardo. Next to the Sistine and the Gran Duca Madonna and the Madonna of the Chair, this is probably his most popular as well as really most beautiful Madonna. It is supposed to be entirely his own work with the exception of a little of the blue drapery which, Vasari states, Ridolfo Ghirlandajo completed for him.
The shape of the panel is oblong with a circular top. In the centre of a placid landscape where a horizon line of mountains rises from a lake, with a village massing against the hills, sits the Madonna in a flower-bespattered field, resting apparently on a rock. She has been reading, but the book has dropped into her lap and she leans over the little Jesus who stands by her. One of his tiny hands he has put on her knee, pointing with the other to the small Baptist who is kneeling at the right, his tall, cross-tipped reed over his right shoulder, his eyes fixed longingly on the smiling Jesus. Mary is dressed in a low-cut, red gown edged with black velvet ribbon, the sleeveless bodice drawn over undersleeves of yellow. About her right shoulder and coming around behind her is a gauzy head-dress, whose ends float down over her bare neck. She is a typical Raphael type, blonde, of rather full figure, with a sweet contemplative expression that, if it lacks the grandeur of the Sistine or even the depth of tenderness of the Gran Duca or the Madonna of the Chair, is equally far from the wooden insipidity that unfor- tunately characterizes many of Raphael's earlier Madon- nas. The little leaning figure of Jesus is exquisitely pure in modelling and contour, and his lifted face with its
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laughing lips, its eager, baby eyes, has rarely been ex- celled by any painter of the Renaissance.
As has been often said, it is as a composition, how- ever, that this picture is greatest. The way the group fills the landscape, the splendid spacing, the balance of lines, the total absence of both crowding and of empty holes, all show Raphael's genius. It is seldom that a group placed in the foreground of a wide landscape is so marvellously handled in its relation to the landscape.
The large St. Michael, also in this room and catalogued as a Raphael, is almost wholly Giulio Romano's work. The angel stands poised on the devil's prostrate shoul- der, arms, draperies, hair, wings, leg, all out in air as if he had swooped through space straight on to his victim. It is supposed to have been painted for Leo X., who presented it to Frangois I.
The only two paintings by Correggio owned by the Louvre hang in this Salon Carre. Both are gems, and if one never saw another work of the man of Modena, they would be sufficient to give a just idea of this ex- quisite colourist, he who had too, a charm, a persuasion, a mystery and a mastery of chiaroscuro possessed by none other unless by Rembrandt.
In everything that Correggio did is shown an abandon of joy that permeates the observer like the smile of an archangel. He peopled his paintings with seraphs, cheru- bim and heavenly hosts, or with Cupids, gods and god- desses, surcharging them all with a " light that never was on sea or land," drenching them in a colour that is a very perfume of ecstasy. That is Correggio. And with it all he was a master of realism, painting with a very passion of truth that sometimes led him into an ugliness of foreshortened line that only his all-pervading, un- drownable charm of colour and light makes excusable.
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It is Ludwig Tieck who says " Let no one say he has seen Italy, let no one think he has learnt the lofty secrets of art, till he has seen thee and thy cathedral, O ! Parma ! " There is where Correggio is in all his glory, and indeed it is undoubtedly true that there alone can he be seen in his full expression. Yet, the charm, the joy in glowing, sunlit flesh, the sweet secrets of the mystery of soft rich shadows, the abandonment to the allurement of the spiritually sensuous can be felt in many of Correggio's panel pieces. Not far below his highest level is the Jupiter and Antiope in the Salon Carre, which indeed is one of the most beautiful pictures in the world. " Per- haps " says M. Alexandre " the most perfect bit of paint- ing that exists."
Lying against a bank under a group of shaded trees, is Antiope, and at her side facing her, the winged Cupid, his head on his arms, he as well as the nymph apparently fast asleep. Within the shadow of the trees is Jupiter in the guise of satyr. He is leaning over the sleeping girl and has just lifted the blue drapery which had covered her body. The whole of her beautiful nude figure is thus completely exposed. As she lies her knees are slightly drawn up, her left arm extended with loosely dropped hand, her right thrown over her head which is bent far back, bringing her chin up into a sharply fore- shortened position. The figure is uncomfortably placed, and the position of the neck, the thighs and the legs, and even the head, is distinctly awkward. As has been noted it is characteristic of the painter of Parma fre- quently to show this disregard of the beauty of line. No one is greater than he as a draughtsman, but he is so absorbed in his wonderful effects of chiaroscuro, he so revels in depicting his sun-kissed flesh that, though never drawing falsely, the necessity for beauty of line as well
Jl'riTKK AM) ANiiori-: hy Correggit)
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as of colour, light and shade, seems not always to impress him.
It is safe to assert that amidst all the treasures that line the wall of the Salon Carre not one is more com- pelling, more striking than this. As one enters the room it is as if the whole light of the apartment drew together and threw all its brilliancy, all its clarity and transparence upon this one canvas. Such is the effect of the glowing palpitating form of the sleeping nymph. No perceptible brush-work mars what has never been surpassed as a painting of living, breathing, pulsing flesh, suffused with a golden light beyond an alchemist's dream. Scarcely less entrancing is the rosy Cupid, curled up in complacent slumber over the results of his labour. For it is he who has brought Jupiter there. All this glorious brilliance of whitest flesh is in sharp contrast to the dark tones of the satyr, his natural colour intensified by the shadow of the trees. Still it is a royal head on the misshapen body, and its ambrosial curls and Greek purity of profile bespeak the royal lover.
Correggio is supposed to have painted the Mystic Marriage of St. Catherine of Alexandria, which hangs on the same side of the room as the Antiope, in 1522, and Vasari states it was done on the occasion of the marriage of the painter's sister Catherine.
Seated at the left, a three-quarter-length figure, is the Virgin, holding on her lap the child Jesus. Both are in profile, facing the right. Opposite them is St. Catherine whose right hand rests in the Virgin's left, her betrothal- finger being at the same time grasped by the baby Christ. Behind St. Catherine St. Sebastian is seen leaning over her, smiling, the arrow of his martyrdom pressed against his chest. In the charming landscape background are two scenes from the martyrdom of the two saints, a
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conventional rendering that, by their perspective and low tones Correggio keeps very unobtrusively back from the principal group in the foreground. The Madonna is dressed in the typical red and blue, St. Catherine in a soft, rich brocade.
The colour in this picture is a dream of golden, light- illumined flesh, entrancingly heightened by the soft, luminous shadows that play over cheek and neck, and sweep down about the draperies and out over the distant trees. Not less exquisite are the forms themselves. The Madonna, whose face is as pure as it is femininely charm- ing; the baby, whose rounded, perfect little body is in exact keeping with the curly hair and baby face with its surprised sort of childish regard; St. Catherine, whose beautiful hand matches the high-bred, gentle lines of her earnest, lovely countenance ; St. Sebastian, whose Cupid-like head and waving locks make his arrow seem, as Gautier observes, more the sign of the god of love than of his own martyrdom ; — in each and all is that glorious, pulsing charm of sun-swept flesh, of perfect modelling, of beauty of form and line and contour that is so pe- culiarly Correggio's owti.
The marvellous joining of the three hands in the centre of the composition has often been extolled. It is doubtful if ever a group of hands was more perfectly, more picturesquely rendered, and nowhere in all the history of art, surely, are any more beautiful ones seen. The supple form, the white softness, the aristocratic lines of Catherine's delicate hand are counterbalanced and complemented by the dimpled baby curves of the little hand over it.
Tintoretto's Susannah at the Bath, is only a '' morceau " by the great Venetian, but it shows his skill in portraying the nude. The figure of Susannah, in its fulness of curve
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and richness of tint, is a forerunner of the women of Rubens. It represents the girl sitting at the left before a cluster of bushes, turned three-quarters to the right. One serving-woman stands combing her hair, and another is kneeling and dressing her feet. At the right is a pool of water where birds and reptiles bathe, and in the dis- tance behind is a table, introduced with total disregard of the possibilities of the place, at which the two old men are sitting and staring.
Unlike Tintoretto, Veronese is splendidly represented at the Louvre, and in the Salon Carre are several of his most noted pictures. The immense canvas of the Marriage Feast at Cana, was one of Napoleon's war trophies. When, in 1815 most of his artistic spoils were returned to their previous owners, the officers of the Louvre persuaded the Austrians that to move once more this vast expanse of canvas would probably ruin it for ever. In recompense they took Le Brun's Descent of the Holy Spirit, now in the academy at Venice. It was an exchange at which the gods of art must have smiled in derision or glee, as they favoured the French or Italian powers.
The scene takes place in a balcony or gallery open to the sky, with clusters of marble pillars on each side indi- cating the palace of which it is a part. From right to left across the centre of the composition runs a marble balus- trade, which separates a higher balcony from the one in front. The table forms three sides of a parallelogram and is placed so that it borders the three sides of the gal- lery, leaving an open square in the centre of the com- position. With his head coming against the balustrade, Jesus sits facing the spectator, occupying the central seat at the table. At his right is Mary, and about him are the disciples. This little company, however, is almost over-
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looked in the crowd of people who fill all sides of the table as well as the open space in front, not to mention the many servants and attendants who throng the upper bal- cony, looking down upon the scene below. The assem- blage are all in the costumes of Veronese's time, and, as usual with this painter, the title of the picture has practi- cally nothing to do with it. The comparative unimpor- tance of Jesus is not even lessened by any emphasis laid upon the miracle he is supposed to be enacting. At the right corner of the table a servant pours wine from one jug to another and a man sitting back to is watching him with some interest, while another looks attentively at a filled wine-glass which he holds in his hand. Otherwise the entire company are engaged in talking among them- selves, listening to the music or speaking to the servitors. It is necessary therefore to eliminate all consideration of the picture as a religious painting to appreciate it at its true value.
As a magnificent decoration, as a most splendid repre- sentation of a splendid feast in royally splendid surround- ings, as a picture of Venetian life in the height of her glory, as an admirably massed, wonderfully balanced, in every respect superbly composed picture, it takes its proper rank as one of the greatest paintings of the Renaissance or of any time. The life, the movement, the individuality, the enveloping atmosphere, the transparent silver tone of its colour, the variety in pose, features and expression in these hundred life-sized figures, the gor- geousness of the stuffs, the skill displayed in indicating textures, the nobility of the architectural surroundings, — these are the things which help to make the work all the more of a marvel When one remembers that Veronese completed it in fifteen months.
There are many famous portraits among the guests.
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At the left end of the table are Alfonso d'Avalos, and the Marquis du Guast, beside whom a negro stands offering wine. At the side of the marquis a young woman behind whom is a clown, is supposed to be Eleanor of Austria, Queen of France. Next is Frangois himself and then comes Mary of England in a yellow robe, and next but one, picking her teeth, is Vittoria Colonna. Farther back is seen the Emperor of the Turks, Solyman I. Veronese is the musician playing on a viol and dressed in white. Behind him Tintoretto accompanies, Titian plays on a bass viol and Bassano on a flute. The picture is thirty feet long by twenty high and was painted originally for the refectory of San Giorgio Maggiore.
Veronese's Holy Family in this room shows the Ma- donna seated on a low throne in front of a hanging cur- tain of rich golden brocade. She supports with both hands the nude baby Christ who stands on her lap, leaning to the right toward St. Benedict who kneels at the side of the throne. St. Catherine of Alexandria stands behind presenting him to the Mother and Child. At the left St. George, in full armour, is hastening towjard the throne, one foot already on its base. The colour of the rich dra- peries, the folds of the silks and satins are so masterly here that the eye lingers over them perhaps too long to do full justice to the splendid modelling of face and figure, to the grace of Catherine, the winsome charm of the Madonna or the sturdy earnestness of St. Benedict.
The Repast at the House of Simon is another enor- mous canvas by Veronese and faces the great Marriage of Cana. It is less beautiful than that but has many of the striking characteristics of Veronese at his best.
Barocci, a man of indubitable talent, of immense fa- cility, and of real enthusiasm, has a Virgin in Glory in the Salon Carre that, tliough not so exquisite a canvas as his
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Annunciation in Rome, sufficiently shows his love of rosy flesh, of curving contour, and of the forced lighting and profound shadows he employed so assiduously in his attempt to make of himself another Correggio. The Virgin is seated on clouds, holding on her lap the baby Jesus who is extending a palm to St. Lucy kneeling below at the right. Over the Virgin two angels bear a crown which they are about to place on her head, and above this is the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove. Behind St. Lucy stands another angel bearing on a plate the eyes that the martyr gave up for love of her Lord, and at the left St. Anthony sits reading. In the distance are the walls of a city.
The Dead Girist on the Knees of the Virgin by Ca- racci is one of his best works. It has something of the deep feeling of the earlier masters and is remarkably good in line and chiaroscuro.
Guido Reni has several pictures in this golden room of the Louvre, but they make slight impression compared to the great works that are all about them. Dejanira and the Centaur Nessus is mannered and overdone, with what M. Alexandre calls " a cold romanticism," but it has a certain seductive charm of colour and real vigour of action. Dejanira is standing upon the Centaur, who is trotting toward the left. In the distance at the right Hercules is seen shooting an arrow after them.
Only one painting by Rubens is given place in the Salon Carre, but the Portrait of Helen Fourment and Two of Her Children is quite enough to show the consummate master this Fleming was. Rubens is never more tender, more brilliant, more exquisite, never does he paint so con amore as when his brush portrays his young wife, Helen. In this one he has added two of their children, Francis
r OK HELKN FOURMKNT AND TWO OK HER CHII.DKEN
Hy Kubens
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and Clara. The picture is as full of grace and freshness as it is of brilliant purity of colour.
The young mother is seated in a big chair, facing the left, turned so that her face and bust are in three-quarters view. She is dressed in white, with a big hat that droops long plumes over her blond hair. On her knees she holds the little Francis, whose hands play with her corsage, while he looks over his shoulder at the spectator. He is a delightful morsel of mankind in his fine gray suit with velvet cap and curling hair, big, wondering eyes that recall his mother's, and curving baby lips. Standing on the other side of her mother's knees is Qara, her brown dress partly covered by her white apron which she is lifting with both hands. On the arm of the chair are placed two little hands of a child not otherwise seen. The sweep of line in this composition does not lack the movement, the life that Rubens always attained. But there is a placidity, a comfortableness, a sort of homelike ease here that he does not so often get. It is a domestic idyl, full of clarity of colour, of charm of feeling.
The chief Velasquez gem which the Louvre owns is the Infanta Margarita which is in this room. It is the only one in the museum that conveys any adequate impres- sion of the master's genius. The picture is a half-length of the four-year-old baby, standing almost in full face, her right hand resting on a big chair, only partly within the painting, her left at her side holding a flower. She is dressed in a grayish white gown, trimmed with black lace, a gold chain about her neck and another falling over her shoulders. Her soft fair hair, brushed till it is like a blond veil about her shoulders, is tied over her right temple with a rose-coloured bow. This halo of hair with its delicate tones and reflections is one of the great charms of the picture as it must have been of the baby princess.
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Her complexion is of the pallor associated with the royal house of Spain, but* it is here like the bloom of a pearl rather than the dead white tone of the Philip IV. por- traits. Her big blue eyes that look out so wonderingly and yet so calmly, the stateliness of the child's pose make one feel in that little figure as Gautier did, " The conscious dignity of her position; it is a little daughter, but it is a daughter of the king who will one day be queen." Over her head in large gold letters are the words " LTn- fanta Marguerit." The canvas was painted after Velas- quez's second return from Italy and follows the one in Vienna.
After all these great men comes Rembrandt, also with only a single canvas to show his own greatness. But, as with Rubens it is enough. No one save a master of masters could ever have painted the Portrait of Hen- drickje Stoffels. This likeness of the faithful maiden servitor of the difficult latter years of his life, is justly regarded as not only one of the greatest treasures of this gallery, but as one of the great pictures of the world. Rembrandt himself did not often surpass it.
Dressed in richest fur-bordered cloak that falls away from her throat and shows the transparent muslin chemisette gathered over her breast, with her soft curly hair falling in ringlets over her ears, with a green velvet cap, red-knotted on each side, big pearl earrings and a pearl brooch at her bodice, and bracelets on her left arm, Hendrickje is as charmingly gowned as she is lovable in expression. Big dark eyes looking out tenderly and brightly, mobile, curved lips, and delicate chin, the whole air of this maid who perhaps did become Rembrandt's wife, is that of trusting sweetness, joined to a gentle re- pose that only emphasizes the general intelligence of the countenance. She is sitting nearly full face and the light
rORTHAIT OF HENDRICKJE STOFFELS My Rembraiult
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strikes her clear and brilliantly, the softness of the shadow under her chin growing darker till it is lost in the rich deep tone of the cloak that melts into the darker back- ground.
The picture was probably painted about 1652, at a period when Rembrandt's flesh-tones had taken on that golden hue which generally is regarded as most charac- teristic, but which during his earlier years was preceded by a brilliancy of colour as vivid as Velasquez's or Van Dyck's. If this warm, molten tone is less like living flesh, it is none the less marvellously beautiful. Here in Hendrickje it is as if the deep shadows clustering behind her had but just vanished from across her face, their transit turning the fair flesh into a sympathetic mellow- ness. On every inch of this canvas is felt a penetrating insight, a submerging of technique, an absorption in pure soul-rendering such as even Rembrandt's greatest works do not always show. It is as if the realist and the idealist, as Fromentin calls him, had here met in an accord so perfect that brush and mind and spirit are joined in a wfedlock that produced almpst unconsciously this exquisite portrait.
CHAPTER XIII.
LES PETITES SALLES FRAN^AISES — ROOMS IX.^ X., XI,, XII.^ XIII. — ITALIAN AND FRENCH SCHOOLS
The Petites Salles Frangaises lead out of the long gallery from Bay D and, as their name indicates are small rooms mostly containing French pictures. In Room IX., however, are a number of late Italian works, few of which are of any great interest. On the plan the rooms are numbered IX., X., XL, XII. and XIII.
In Room IX. which is nearest the Grande Galerie, are pictures by Cantarini, Giordano, Maratta, Giulio Romano, Qarofalo and Salvator Rosa. Of these very few are worthy special notice.
Maratta's Portrait of Maria Maddalena Rospigliosi is one of the very best examples of this Roman painter who was a member of the school that formed itself about Caravaggio. It is a half-length portrait and shows the princess standing in full face, her right hand, which holds a fan, resting on a table beside her. She is dressed in black, with full double-puffed sleeves of white, her neck and shoulders bare. The careful workmanship displayed in the rendering of the delicate lace that so elaborately trims her dress is more than equalled technically by the handling shown in the face and neck. The face itself is far from beautiful but it possesses a dignity and poise that make it interesting.
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Mars and Venus by Luca Giordano, called Luca la Presto because of his extraordinary rapidity of execution, is a not very good canvas by this man who, had he half tried might have been one of the great modern masters. He was possessed of tremendous ability but seemed to care for nothing but to dash through a picture, getting a certain daring, brilliant effect, wholly superficial, and thus ruining what might have been great beauty, dramatic action and rich colouring. Charles II. invited him to Spain and he did a large number of wprks in the Escorial. He belongs to the Neapolitan school, and died in Naples in 1705.
The picture represents Venus nude, stretched out, half- sitting, half-reclining on a couch, looking over her shoul- der at Mars, who, in armour, is standing behind her pointing out Vulcan at his forge in the distance. Two women servants are at the right of Venus, one of whom seems urging her to dress. In the foreground are two delicious little Loves, one holding on to a large dog, the other fallen over asleep, his head on his arms.
Of the early French pictures that fill the rest of the Petites Salles, those by Vouet, Clouet and Le Sueur are the most important. It is well to mention, however, the name of Jean Cousin, who has been called the founder of the French school. He lived during the reigns of Henri XL, Henri III., and Charles IX. and was the author of a book " on the proportions of the human body." His principal work is The Last Judgment in Salle IX. It is much mixed up and shows little real taste or talent.
In the same room are two portraits by Frangois Clouet, painter in ordinary to Frangois I. One is Charles IX., represented standing, the other Elizabeth of Austria. They have a certain fineness of type and elegance of line,
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and in the elaboration of costume show Clouet's "taste for the picturesque."
Salle XII. is given up to the series of pictures by Le Sueur illustrating the life of St. Bruno. They were ordered by the monks of the Carthusians in 1645, ^^ memory of St. Bruno himself who wlas the founder of their order. Le Sueur was helped in the work by many of his pupils and also by his brother-in-law Gousse. The pictures were in place in the little cloister in about three years, arranged under arches that were separated by Doric pilasters. Between each painting the history of the saint was written in Latin verse by Jarry. In 1776 they were presented to the king, and in the year 10 they Were open to the public in the Palace of Versailles. The following year they were taken to the Luxembourg, and finally, in 1848, after being restored, they were put into the Louvre.
Le Sueur was contemporary with Le Brun and for years there was great rivalry between them, though so far as the public was concerned it was only Le Brun who received its laudations. It was not till the commission came for the St. Bruno pictures that Le Sueur received any sort of recognition. He painted with a soft, earnest feeling that has given him the title, '' faute de mieux " as Mr. Brownell says, of the "French Raphael." All the French critics are inclined to grant Le Sueur a far higher place than they accord Le Brun. But Anglo-Saxons feel his supremacy less keenly. Brownell expresses the general opinion, perhaps a trifle sharply, when he says " He had a great deal of very exquisite feeling for what is refined and elevated, but clearly it is a moral rather than an aesthetic delicacy that he exhibits, and aesthetically he exercises his sweeter and more sympathetic sensibility within the same rigid limits which circumscribe that of
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Le Brun. He has, indeed, less invention, less imagination, less sense of composition, less wealth of detail, less elabo- rateness, no greater concentration or sense of effect ; and though his colour is more agreeable, perhaps, in hue, it gets its tone through the absence of variety rather than through juxtapositions and balances."
The first of the St. Bruno series shows the saint listen- ing to the sermon of Raymond Diocres. It is the interior of a church and at the right Raymond, who was canon of Notre Dame, is preaching. At the left the congre- gation are sitting, Bruno standing among them. He is dressed in blue with a yellow cloak, and holds a book under his arm. At the foot of the pulpit a young clerk records the words of the young preacher. One of the most notable bits of individuality is the kneeling woman in the middle of the crowd, whose ecstasy as she listens is clearly and even spiritually indicated. There is real absorption shown in her posture; her head is turned backwards, and a most tender expression is in her profile. Bruno also shows, says M. Charles Blanc, in the calmness of his attitude and the serenity of his face, the disinter- ested and tolerant spirit. The whole composition is full of individual characterization and breathes a spirit of earnestness. The preacher has a vigorous, intense per- sonality, which his gestures intensify without exaggera- tion.
This same preacher is on his death-bed in the next picture of the series. He is lying on the bed at the right, his face turned to the cross which is held out to him by a priest accompanied by two deacons. An old man is showing great fear as he watches the coming of the end. In the foreground St. Bruno is on his knees, praying, and at the left on the floor are the preparations
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for the funeral. Above the head of the dying man is a demon.
The third is Raymond Diocres Rising from His Coffin to pronounce his own condemnation. The officiating priests are covered with fear and confusion and one boy in the choir has, in his terror, dropped his book. St. Bruno is back to Raymond, his hands joined in fervour. It was, according to the traditions of the order, only after the death of Raymond that Bruno's conversion took place. So that it is with the fourth of the series that his religious life really begins.
In this fourth he is seen on his knees in an ecstasy before a cross, his head turned in profile to the left. He is in a long robe, not yet that of his order. Through a wiindow two men are observed burying the corpse of the doctor. The figure of Bruno has real expression and the whole picture, painted almost in monotone, has a quiet, religious tone.
The fifth, St. Bruno Explaining the Faith to his pupils in the school at Reims, is not very unlike the first. Bruno is in the pulpit, pointing heavenward. The scene has a certain delicacy of treatment, a tranquillity of chiaroscuro and a colour admirably adapted to the subject. In all his interiors of this series, Le Sueur uses the Doric order of architecture. Charles Blanc says it is as if, in por- traying this life of renunciation, he did not wish to have the efflorescence of the Corinthian order to interfere with the simplicity and quietness of his subject.
In the picture showing St. Bruno lying upon a bed with three angels appearing to him, both the winged ap- paritions and the saint are painted with great tenderness and are imbued with an ecstatic mystery.
In the Journey to Chartreuse Le Sueur has drawn the horses bearing the saint and his companions with much
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ability, though possibly not quite so remarkably as Blanc affirms.
So they go on, with a certain far-off remembrance of Raphael, but without his dignity of figures, his mar- vellous massing in composition, or, in fine, — his original- ity and mastery. One of the best of all is that showing Pope Victor III. confirming the order of the Carthusians. It is the interior of a temple, in which the Pope is sitting on an elevated throne surrounded by his cardinals, one of whom, standing, is reading the statutes of the new order. Blanc again points out that here, with good knowledge of his subjects, Le Sueur has not painted the thin, self-denying cadaverous priests of the rigid monas- tic life. Instead, these princes of the Roman Church have an amplitude and vigour of flesh and form, well suited to the world of Rome where they ruled.
In Bruno Refusing the Archiepiscopal Mitre Offered by Pope Urban II. there are depth of colour and good chiaroscuro.
Room XIII. has Le Sueur's mural pictures which he executed for the ceilings of Hotel Lambert, at the time that Le Brun was also working there. These are myth- ologic subjects which have a certain sweetness and grace if no very great authority. The colouring is agreeable if far from enchanting, and the forms are well-drawn if without great force. The Cabinet of the Muses was What the room, was called where he painted, and it was there that Voltaire lived from 1745 to 1749. There are less restraint and perhaps less timidity in these decorations than in his religious scenes.
CHAPTER XIV.
SALLE MOLLIEN — ROOM XIV. — FRENCH SCHOOL
With the exception of the few early men of the school that are to be found in the Petites Salles Frangaises, the Louvre's collection of French pictures commences with Room XIV. called often Salle MoUien. French painting practically did not begin till the seventeenth century. And for long it was little but an imitation of Italian art for which Frangois I. is principally responsible. His admira- tion for everything Italian, and his bringing to Paris of all the Italian artists whom he could persuade to leave their native land, set the taste in France for a century, and undoubtedly prevented an earlier flowering of French art, per se.
Vouet, who was the teacher of Le Brun, was much esteemed in both France and England and was court painter for Louis XIII. His style is a copy of the Italian, and his pictures " are rather dull in sentiment, heavy in painting and demonstrative in design." The Presentation in the Temple which is in this room, Waagen calls " careful in execution, with ideal heads after the style of Guido on forms far more awkward and less expressive."
Nearly forty canvases by Poussin hang in Salle Mol- lien. Though the Anglo-Saxon mind can rarely agree with the extreme admiration bestowed upon Poussin by his countrymen, every critic must acknowledge his pre-
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eminence in certain important respects, and give him a place quite by himself as far away from the strict academic school of Le Brun as he was from that of Boucher. He was a classic of the classicists, though we of to-day may smile at some of the anachronisms of his works. He was a scholar, a thinker, an idealist of a rather bounded type. He was not spontaneous, his love of order and of well-managed and abundant line made him too careful, too studied, too cold. His gestures were seldom satis- factory though his forms were noble. He studied the antique, not nature, for his figures, and thus it is that more freedom, more truth, more esprit appear in his land- scapes, which he did take directly from nature, than in his figures. In them his colour was often pleasing, some- times luminous, sometimes softly golden, his eflfects of perspective generally excellent, his values true. If there lacked the dream-loveliness of a Lorrain, there were in them a solidity, a dignity and a repose of their own. In general it can be said without exaggeration that Pous- sin's works wiere literary achievements of the brush. The story, the moral, the historical accuracy (so far as the time knew it), the orderly and proper arrangement of cause and effect, the value of climax, the subservience of parts to the whole, the importance of dramatic action are the things that were Poussin's first care. It has been said of him that he was afraid to let his brush revel in colour for fear the import of his pictures might be lost. In his classical mind colour was on the whole an unim- portant adjunct of the art of painting.
His works include almost every kind of subject and the Louvre possesses examples of his religious, historical and mythological paintings as well as fables, bacchanals, por- traits, and landscapes.
The Rape of the Sabines takes place in a large square
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at the back of which is a temple, on the right a number of buildings. On a sort of platform at the left Romulus, accompanied by two Romans, is giving the signal for the attack. His left arm is raised high waving his red cloak. He is in profile, but his fine torso, which is carefully and accurately modelled, is turned nearly three-quarters toward the spectator. Below on the ground at his feet stand two lictors, their excited gestures and eagerness of mien accentuating the intensity of the moment. The scene in the square itself is a well-thought out, studiously arranged pandemonium. Partly because thus scholarly in its construction, it lacks any real, pervading, over- powering horror. The Roman soldiers are attacking women with staves, dragging them from other soldiers, snatching them from their mothers' arms, hauling them to their saddles. Before Romulus one mother kneels, anguished entreaty in her begging hands, terror in her piercing eyes. In the foreground at the left a soldier is striding off carrying a daughter of the Sabines. Both arms being thus more than employed he can only yell while she pulls with all her might at his thick curling hair. In the centre a Sabine is fleeing, robes streaming in the wind, while the maiden following is seized by a Roman soldier. At the extreme right an old mother on the ground is trying to cover and protect her daughter from a Roman who grabs the girl with one hand and pushes back the mother with the other.
The Holy Family on the south wall has one of the really lovely landscapes that Poussin often painted. Be- hind the pyramidal group of the family, a quiet river twists its way into a softly tinted country stretching out into a distance gradually lost among low mountains gently silhouetted against the sky. If the dwellings and build- ings that interrupt the masses of trees and break the
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plains, suggest rather a Romian or Greek scene than Palestine, Poussin has only followed the steps of the great Italians before him. The gradations of tone in this whole vista are a triumph of artistic expression.
At the left, Mary, in a blue robe not overburdened with folds of drapery, is seated holding the child Jesus on her knees. He is leaning forward to caress the small St. John in the arms of Elizabeth. She is on her kneeSf her brown robes relieved by the white head-dress. Her face is in profile and age has not greatly marred the fine lines of brow, nose and chin. Behind the group in the centre stands Joseph, his head and eyes slightly inclined, his hands joined in prayer. He is dressed in the conven- tional red. In fact, if Poussin's red and blue robes which fill so many of his pictures could be eliminated, or at least toned down, he would stand a much better chance of being appreciated at his true worth.
The Vision of St. Paul was painted for the Abbe Scarron, and is a subject which Poussin executed three times. It is a small panel, measuring only eighteen inches by thirteen. The one in the Louvre is a replica of his first attempt. St. Paul is being rapidly borne aloft, by three large winged angels. One, holding his left hand, is behind him, and rises over his body, her right hand pointing heavenward. The head of another below her is in shadow under the saint's arm. She clasps one leg of St. Paul and seems with the third really to be bearing his weight. This last angel placed lower than any of the others, is more strongly centred in the light than even St. Paul. Beneath the group are the steps of a large classic building on the topmost of which is a book, and over it resting on the portal of the open door, a naked sword which reflects some of the light focused on the figures above.
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There is not enough concentration of interest here. The arms and legs are all too prominent, giving a forked sort of appearance to die whole picture. In spite of very- real beauties, even in spite of the exquisite figure of the angel on the left, the first impression is of a super- fluity of flying legs and waving arms.
Time Rescuing Truth from the Attacks of Envy and Discord, Poussin painted to show his contempt for Vouet and the other French painters.
Poussin, after a youth of great hardship and poverty, went to Rome where he lived for most of the rest of his life. In 1640 Richelieu called him to Paris where he was made painter in ordinary to the king, given apartments at the Louvre and showered with presents and plaudits. Hlis supremacy over Vouet and the other French artists led to serious disagreements, and after only twenty-one months in the capital, Poussin, much hurt in his self- esteem by the adverse criticisms of Vouet and his fol- lowers, returned once more to Rome, never to leave it again. This picture was painted for Cardinal Richelieu for a ceiling decoration and was, as it were, his final shot at his antagonists in the French city.
The painting is round, the figures are all of life-size and the scene represents the clouds of the heavens seen through a quatrefoil of architectural form. Here in the sky the figure of Time bears up Truth, carrying her to Paradise. A cherub floats on his back near by, holding Time's sickle and a serpent in the shape of a huge circlet. Below, sitting on the architectural framework, are Envy on the right. Anger, or Discord, on the left. Time's body is somewhat dark in line and he is represented as an old but still wonderfully vigorous man. His drapery which falls only about the lower part of his torso, is blue, and the rapidity of his flight has thrown it far off
TIME RESCUING TRUTH FROM THE ATTACKS OF ENVV AND DISCORD
liy Poussin
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his legs. His wide wings are in brown and gray tones. Truth, lying in Timie's arms, is a beautiful golden-haired nude woman, with flesh of much lighter tone than Time. Her face is turned in profile, her arms are raised as if welcoming the approach to Eternity. The light falls strongly on both Truth and the charming little cherub, while Time is thrown mostly into shadow. The clouds about them are of a gray-green colour, though imme- diately below Time's feet is an opening very bright and gleaming. The figure of Discord on the left shows her largely enveloped in a mantle that leaves her right shoul- der bare. She is sitting with one leg drawn sharply up till the knee is greatly foreshortened, the other stretched out resting on the edge of the framework. Her head is thrown back, bringing her features into a profile sadly marred by the rancour with which she gazes after Truth, but still showing beauty. The foreshortening of this figure and of Envy is almost as perfect as Michelangelo could have accomplished. Indeed the two figures sug- gest that master. Discord clasps a torch in her upraised right hand and a poignard in her left, with which she had evidently struck at Truth just too late to reach her. She is a brunette in colouring and wears blue-green and red garments. On the right is Envy, doubled up in a very frenzy and wound about with serpents whose fangs are poisoning her. Her left shoulder from which the green drapery has fallen catches the light and her face is fairly livid.
In this composition are all the attributes so often claimed for Poussin but not so often justified in his works. Real depth of imagination, poetic conception, magnificent drawing, a composition free from superfluous accessories, no exaggeration in gesture, pose or draperies, and a colour that harmonizes with the thought expressed.
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It is a very great work and alone would be enough to make Poussin's name revered as one of the great men of all time.
In the colour of the Bacchanals Poussin showed the influence of Titian. The one on the north wall he painted for Richelieu before he departed for Rome. In the immediate foreground a nude Bacchante is lying out upon a bit of red drapery, her head thrown back in profile, asleep, a tiny baby, Bacchus-crowned, lying across her, also asleep. At the left another small boy is drinking out of a basin held by a satyr sitting with knees under him. A second satyr leans over and half holds the child up, while behind the two another Bacchante in a blue peplum rests against a staff, watching. At the extreme left, two more babies are standing hugging and kissing each other. The scene is laid in a kind of arbour with glimpses on each side of hills, trees, country and cloud-filled skies.
A group of five cherubs makes the Concert. They are playing and singing in the midst of a rather simple and sombre landscape. The leader of the band stands in front, legs planted firmly and widely apart, a laurel wreath in both extended hands. Behind him sitting on the ground are three others. One, on the left, in profile, has his right hand raised as if marking time for the other two sitting in front of him singing. One of these holds the sheet of music, while the other looks over his shoul- der. Between the first and these two stands a fourth playing a big bass viol. There is a gaiety, spontaneity, abandon, and light-heartedness about this equal to Rubens, with a refinement Rubens never had. The colour, too, is warm and glowing.
The Four Seasons, are scenes taken from Biblical history and were done late in life. They are not up to
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his highest level, though French critics have praised parts of them greatly.
Like Poussin, Claude Gellee, who is best known by the name Claude Lorrain, spent most of his artistic life in Italy. He was a Frenchman by little more than birth. It was Italy that he loved, painted and chose for home. Unlike Poussin, it was not the antique that he worshipped but the panorama of nature herself. At his time French landscape art was a thing scarcely out of its swaddling- clothes, if indeed it can be said to have existed at all. He is not the follower nor yet the founder of any school. His poetic renderings of Italian country and seas are the transcripts of his own dreams. He had no one before him to suggest such renderings and no imitators could re- produce his style without possessing his mind and im- agination. So penetrated by individuality is every tone of this golden singer that to copy is to leave out all that made the works the exquisite songs they are. Though Lorrain studied nature directly and spent hours memoriz- ing every passing atmospheric change, he cannot be called a literal translator of nature's moods. Whatever he saw he saw through the golden haze of his own imagination and as such gave it to the world. He seldom makes an exact portrayal of any definite place, though he has done so with the Campo Vaccino, the heights of Tivoli and a few others. But generally he put in bits from various places, regardless of their geographical position. He could not paint figures well and used to say that he sold his land- scapes and gave aw&y the figures in them. Till Ruskin's day Claude's name was synonymous for all that was perfect in landscape art. It is safe to say that now, only so few years after his arraignment by this English man- of-letters, Claude's real and undying genius is as thor- oughly, if more judiciously admired than ever. This lack
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of appreciation on Ruskin's part is one of the many rea- sons why he was far from being the art critic that he considered himself.
There are sixteen paintings by Claude in this room, of which the most beautiful, perhaps, is the Landing of Cleopatra at Tarsus. This is in splendid preservation, and is rightly considered one of his chefs-d'oeuvre. At the left the huge treasure-filled barks of Cleopatra are at anchor near the shore at the right. Cleopatra has just landed from one of the small boats and is stepping up the royally wide entrance to the palace-like portal. Sur- rounded with attendants, she is holding out her hand in greeting to Mark Antony who is awaiting her on the landing. Another marble palace is slightly behind this, and that too is lapped at its foundations by the waves that, as they ripple and break, are bathed in the glory of the sun only just risen. The distance is the glowing east, and the wonder of the whole picture is not in these carefully posed, stiff, unnatural figures, nor in the classic lines of architecture, nor even in the mighty barks that form so admirable a dark mass against the sky. Not in these, but in the molten haze that shimmers over the blue waves broken into silver under the sun's rays, in the shining of the enfolding atmosphere, in the golden poesie that, much more than temple, bark or queen recalls the days that poets sing.
Far different in subject is the Village Dance. In the centre a number of villagers are dancing in the shadow of spreading trees. A hunting-party has just arrived and one of the gay men has taken a village maid by the hand to join in the festivities. M. Emile Michel thinks it is perhaps a souvenir of Qaude's birthplace.
The figures in Samuel Anointing David King of Israel, are placed under a Doric portico, which was an
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anachronism as common to the learned Poussin as to illiterate Qaude. Time and unfortunate restoration have greatly injured this, but there is a tender mellow light that swims over the whole canvas, and the middle distance with its luminous, delicate gradations, is beautiful.
Ulysses Restoring Chryseis to Her Father was painted for the Due de Liancourt and used to hang in his beauti- ful chateau. It is somewhat hurt by time but is still lovely. The sky is golden, with the sun not far above the horizon, and almost in front of it is the bark of the warrior, blurring with its own dark mass and shadow the golden pathway thrown across the dancing waves. But the edges of the gently ruffled waves still catch the shimmer and cut the darker blue sharply. At the left the enormous pile of princely buildings rises in half- light, and at the top of a stairway of most royal gran- deur, Chryseis is presented to her waiting father by Ulysses. The immediate foreground is the beach that bounds the harbour and here sailors are unloading small boats, bringing cattle to land on heavy scow-like barges, while merchants and others stand talking. Other barks are seen in the harbour, and as always there is the soft middle plane and faintly hazy distance where sea and sky meet.
Campo Vaccino is a picture of the forum with people scattered here and there. This shows something of Claude's effulgence of colour and luminosity of sky, but there is a certain studied effect in the whole scene.
Claude has many so-called Seaports in the Louvre, sometimes with the sun sinking, sometimes rising, now bursting through a cloud, anon veiled by a vaporous haze. But at whatever time or state of day there is always the shimmering golden atmosphere, the sun-kissed
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waves, the translucent sky. It is sufficient, perhaps, to describe one to give a fair idea of all.
A Seaport at Sunsei, shows numerous groups of people on the sandy beach of the harbour. At the left some travellers are seated on a pile of baggage, one playing a guitar. Below, two noblemen are talking with a turbaned Turk, and in the centre a chevalier is drawing his sword in an attempt to separate a couple of fighting sailors. Small boats are drawn up on the shore and beyond in the harbour huge vessels mass themselves dark against the sky. At the left are a temple and lines of palatial build- ings. More boats, big and little, float on the golden-tinted waves of the harbour, and at the right in the distance a bulky tower, its heaviness half-obscured in the shimmer- ing haze of the setting sun, looms above the horizon line. Soft clouds melt into the arching sky, and the whole is like a day's dream.
There is no poet's day-dreaming in the pictures by the brothers Le Nain, a number of whose works are in Salle XIV. It is impossible to distinguish the style of these three brothers or properly to individuaHze their personalities. They were among the earliest of the academicians and were more influenced by the Dutch or Flemish than by the Italians. Their flesh-tones are dull, rather gray, with a greenish tone, their brush- work is tight, their people have a sad, drawn expression recalling the mournfulness of the visages of the Dutch Madonnas. Their drawing, if not impeccable is at least solid, and rather convincing. Their heads are particularly careful in construction, but their hands, though character- istic frequently lack definiteness of structure.
The Apparition of St. Scholastica to St. Benedict by Le Sueur, once in the Salon Carre, shows the saint kneeling in his white robes, his hands outspread, his face
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lifted in profile, the light from the heavens streaming upon his face. He is in the midst of an indefinite rocky land- scape and before him sweeps down the celestial group of his vision. St. Scholastica, her hands crossed on her breast, is draped in blue. Three little angels look out from behind her robes and two young maidens are at her right, almost touching the ground with their feet. At her left are St. Peter and St. Paul, Peter in front with outspread arms regarding St. Benedict, Paul behind pointing to the heavens from which the light streams. There is beauty of expression here and real character drawing. As a composition it is not so good. The colour is pleasing, and as a whole it is full of a reality of religious fervour.
Nineteen pictures by Le Brun hang in this salle. Le Brun was the court painter of Louis XIV. He was also director of the Gobelins where not only tapestries but furniture, jewelry, mosaics, marquetry and bronzes were designed. It is really all his work that is now called Louis Quatorze. He was one of the founders of the Royal Academy, in 1648, and was given one grade after another in that celebrated company. Le Brun has been denominated the " Louis XIV. in art," and a critic has remarked "That Le Brun's work looks to us as if he never could have begun to paint without putting on the biggest of wigs." He had very little real feeling and has been called the chief of the theatrical school of his time. The influence of Annibale Caracci is seen in his strongly contrasted groups, attitudes, draperies, in his forced tones, and in an ever noticeable grandiose manner. In all his works there is a pomposity that his marvellous fecundity, his really noble conceptions do not condone. His was not the art to express the inner, deeper emotions. He was at his best when he could indicate feeling by more or less
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violent contraction of muscles, by strong movements of arms, hands, heads or body, by marked gestures and atti- tudes. All his characteristics are found in his scenes from the life of Alexander. This series of pictures was supposed to be a sort of allegorical history of the triumphs of Louis XIV. himself, and was painted directly under the eyes of the king. After the fire of 1661 he restored the gallery of the Louvre and his painting of Apollo on the ceiling gave to it the name of Galerie d'Apollon. Le Brun exercised so strong an influence over the artists of his time that it can be said without exaggeration that Pierre Mignard and Vouet were the only two who did not come completely under his sway.
The Martyrdom of St. Etienne and the Holy Family, called The Blessing, have noble characterizations of face and scholarly drawing. In the latter especially there is for him an unusual grace and delicacy of sentiment.
In the Passage of the Granicus Alexander has crossed the river, his battalions are partly over and partly in the middle of the stream. Battle-axes and spears are flashing and crashing on all sides, standards are flying and every- where are extreme movement, noise, and warfare. Alex- ander is in the centre of the melee, his white plume flying victoriously in the air. His sword is drawn in one hand his shield is in the other, his horse is already trampling on the white horse of his enemy. Behind the king, Qytus, armed with a battle-axe parries the thrust that Spithri- dates tries to give Alexander. A trumpeter behind blows upon his instrument and orders forward the army who at the left are crossing the flood. At the right are the cavalry with their standards flying.
In the Entrance of Alexander into Babylon the con- queror is standing in profile in his gold and ivory chariot, drawn by elephants. By his side his slaves bear
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a huge, elaborately carved vase and before them, directing, is a mounted captain. Behind and around him his officers ride, the steps of temples and palaces are crowded with watchers and at the extreme left a family are crouched watching the conquering king.
There is some of the pompous grandeur of Le Brun to be found in the works of Rigaud, who was a boy when Le Brun was at the height of his fame ; but at his best Rigaud had perhaps fewer faults than almost any other painter of his time, and in his more intimate portraits like those of his wife and mother we find him remarkably free from the academical restraints and conventions that governed so largely most of his day. In the seventeenth century the French were too near the end of the Italian Renaissance to feel the decadence in Guido, the Caracci, Caravaggio. It was consequently natural that the French painters of that day, who, with few exceptions lived as much as possible in Italy, should fashion them- selves on this lowered model. Rigaud was remarkably free from " that domination of misunderstood precedent which was the bane of all the arts in his time and coun- try." This may be largely laid to his admiration of Van Dyck and his endeavour to make his portraits partake somewhat of the attributes of the great Fleming, but even of this man his imitation was never slavish. His heads are marked by strong individuality, his hands no less. His pictures lose the stiff, set, angular lines of his contemporaries, his lace ruffles fall in some disorder, his scarfs and draperies are blown by a contrary wind, there is a feeling of freedom, perhaps almost of license in the very accessories of his portraits. In Rigaud's time histori- cal painting was considered the art par excellence and it was only by Le Brun's advice, who saw the marked bent of Rigaud's talent that the latter did not devote himself
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wholly t}o that so-ca,lled more aristocratic branch of art.
Of the pictures by him in the Louvre the canvas bear- ing the Portraits of His Mother in this room is the most charming. The two heads are painted facing each other, the left in exact profile, the right turned so that a bit of the right cheek is seen. Both have a white fichu, a black waist, earrings and a violet velvet cap. There are a sober earnestness and yet a decided savoir-faire about the head that give a very attractive and decidedly French indi- viduality to them. They are painted with a freedom, a fineness and a surety that recall Van Dyck, possibly, but it is nevertheless wholly Rigaud. The face has an aquiline nose, a noble forehead, a firm yet tender mouth and a steadfast eye. It is altogether one of Rigaud's greatest works.
Better known, perhaps, but far inferior in artistic value, is his Portrait of Louis XIV., painted in 1701. The king stands with his right hand on his sceptre which he rests on an ottoman beside him, his left on his hip. His left foot is advanced with the mincing, pointed toe as if he were about to step into a minuet. The high red-heeled shoes, the stupidly statuesque legs and the long folds of the voluminous draperies, are all so bad that one can only marvel at the taste of a time that admired them. Spread- ing about him in deep folds is the enormous blue velvet robe with its ermine lining, and its golden embroidered fleurs-de-lis. Back of him are the red curtains fairly rampant in their folds and creases and back of them the inevitable pillars. The head, with its overpowering wig of curls that fall over his shoulders, is well painted and it is evident that Rigaud was not afraid to put down exactly what he found in the person of his royal sitter. If at that day it was called grandeur, dignity and most royal poise,
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now it looks very like pomposity, strut and most egre- gious self-esteem.
The Portrait of Bossuet is much better, and in spite of the conventional background, and the usual heavy robes and laces of the prelate, there is very wonderful delinea- tion in that thin-lipped, keen-eyed, strong-chinned, ascetic- browed statesman-churchman-poet. It is supposed that only the face is wholly the work of Rigaud.
CHAPTER XV.
SALLE DARU — FRENCH SCHOOL — ROOM XVI.
Salle Daru numbered XVT. on the plan, contains French paintings of the eighteenth century. The begin- ning of this century found art at a low ebb in France. All artists except Le Moine and De Troy and a few portrait- painters, were living in great poverty. Everybody was sick of historical painting yet nobody ventured to express preference for anything else. No painter dared go con- trary to the traditions of Le Brun. It was not till Watteau calmly cut his own path far away from the boun- daries of the Grand Monarch's domain that French art found itself started on a highway all its own.
The two Coypels, father and son, who both have pic- tures in Salle Daru, were samples of this pseudo-classic, weakly imitative art. Antoine was first painter to the king and director to the Royal Academy. In his works at Versailles he evinces an ability in composition, in ex- pression and in arrangement of line decidedly beyond anything shown in his easel-pictures at the Louvre. Susannah and the Elders and Esther in the presence of Ahasuerus, are the best examples here, and they have much theatrical arrangement and overdone action.
His son Charles Antoine was his most noted pupil, but he too made no impression on the art of his time. His Perseus Delivering Andromeda is conventional, unin- spired, forced.
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A long list of works by Desportes hang in this room and show that he, the first great animal-painter of France was very little influenced by the strictures of the school of Le Brun. In spite of his unlikeness to the Grand Mon- arch's chief painter, he was a favourite with Louis XIV., and used to attend him often on his hunting expeditions. The king gave him a pension and lodged him at the Louvre. When any rare animals arrived Desportes was called upon to paint their portraits. His pictures of the hunting-dogs of Louis, placed in decidedly effective land- scapes, are really wonderful and show a marvellous study of life. It is only in their surroundings and arrangements and certain manipulations that they seem to be influenced by the classicism of the day. His colour was fresh and transparent, and he was a no mean portrait-painter as is proved by his Chasseur and the Portrait of Himself at the Louvre. But it is in his dogs that he is greatest. They are marvels of exact and most sympathetic observa- tion. Their nervous little bodies are rendered with a truth and spirit that show how thoroughly he had watched and studied their movements and their features. Their big, pleading eyes, eager, sensitive noses, their excited ears, their whole palpitating, mobile bodies, find a quick appreciation and understanding in the brush of this painter, who was himself a hunter. His birds, rabbits, foxes and horses are scarcely less extraordinary in their truth to nature. In still-life also, in painting the grape, the peach, all fruits, there is perhaps no one but Giardin in the French school of this century that could approach him.
Diana and Blond two pack-hounds of Louis XIV., show the dogs starting a covey of pheasants. One of these has risen into the air and is flying oflF, two others are in the grass just in front of Diana's guarding paws. Behind
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her half-crouches Blond, head projected, tail straight out, the tassel-end as stiff as a pump-handle, her eyes staring in an intensity of excitement that makes her whole lovely, soft body one quiver. Diana is flat on the ground full of an equal if more repressed excitement. Her eyes, in their sharpened gleam, seem as if they would force them- selves out of that intelligent, dark-spotted face.
Bonne, Nonne and Ponne is a similar scene. Again the dogs have found the hidden red partridges. The two birds are at the right behind some high mullion and grass, and before them, filling the centre and left of the picture, are the three black and white hounds, in positions as various as they are graceful and dramatic. The one in the foreground is crawling along almost on her stomach, her nose lifted, sniffing, her eye earnest but cautious. Behind her one with many black spots as well as a black head and saddle-like smooch, stands upright, her left fore- paw lifted in a very agony of excitement. The beautiful sparkling eye and eager mouth and nose are almost human in expression. Nearer still to the birds is the third who has evidently stopped just in time to prevent falling over the treasure. She is turned around as if she had suddenly twisted herself on to her haunches, her head toward the prey, her tongue protruding, her eyes staring.
The Portrait of a Hunter, which critics pronounce a really magnificent work for that or any time, represents a man in a gray peruke, dressed in a violet suit, white cravat and gray gaiters, seated upon a stone, turned three-quarters to the right. He holds upon his knee his ferret, one greyhound is at his side, another behind him.
In the Portrait of Himself, Desportes is seated under a tree, leaning slightly backward, his body stretched out and turned so it is in nearly full face. By his side,
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looking up with pathetic and infinite affection, is a dog, over whom Desportes has placed his left hand. And what a firm, fine, sensitive hand it is ! Carefully but spiritedly drawn, full of a nervous but restrained feeling, one needs only to look at it to know the character of this animal lover and this really estimable man. His right hand is held out grasping a gun. The game they have captured, a rabbit, a duck, some pheasant, quail and other birds, is heaped at the dog's feet. At the left of the pic- ture, three-quarters back to, is a slender, graceful grey- hound, who also is turning his affectionate face toward his master. Desportes is clad in regular hunting-costume, a gray cloak, violet breeches, blue waistcoat and leather gaiters. A soft white cravat is about his neck, and the full white shirt-sleeves show below the coat. The land- scape background is not disagreeably conventional in its sloping, hilly distance.
The First Chapter of the Order of the Holy Ghost by De Troy is almost equal to his great Plague at Marseilles. There are here both energy and dignity. Charles Blanc says that in all French painting it is difficult to find a picture more "corsee'/ more " male'' or more " Here." Within the church of the convent of the " Grands- Augus- tins," is the king, seated on the right on a throne, in three-quarters view. He is receiving as new chevaliers of the order, Henri de Bourbon and Due de Mentpensier, who are kneeling, and Henri d'Orleans, who is leaning over with his hand on his breast. About the king are the grand officers of the throne, and in the tribunes are the ladies of the court assisting at the ceremony. Behind the throne is a green drapery with the Holy Spirit flying in an aureole of gold.
Rigaud said of the painter of that picture that if his capacity for work had equalled his genius, the art of
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painting had never known a greater illustration. He could paint flesh delicately, stuffs with reality and pre- cision and heads and hands with expressiveness.
A great rival of De Troy in the early years of the eighteenth century was Frangois le Moine, of whom it has been said that no one ever came up to. him in the freshness of his brush and the lightness of his touch. He is claimed to be the inventor of the ''rayon rose/' which became such a characteristic of his pupil Watteau. His " air of ease," the apparent lack of effort in his works, and his pleasing, gay colour gave him great vogue.
Juno, Iris and Flora in this room shows these char- acteristics accompanied by that pretty surface modelling which rarely fails to attract us in his drawings and which in spite of the injuries of time or the rough mercies of cleansing and restoring, still interests us in his mural works.
With Watteau, whose famous Embarkation for the Isle of Cythera, hangs on the north wall of this room, we come to the great French genius of this age. Like so many artists, Watteau became a painter in spite of the incredible hardship and poverty that would have soon discouraged a less talented nature. His wonderful draughtsmanship he learned quite by himself, working late into the night after a long day in a sort of atelier where portraits or religious scenes were turned out by the gross for provincial dealers. A few years later he was employed by Claude Audran, custodian of the Lux- embourg, so getting a chance to see Rubens's Medici paintings as well as works of some of the great Italians. He was undoubtedly influenced by Rubens, by Titian and Veronese, but he was always himself and copied no one. He was a most admirable draughtsman, his little figures stand as firmly on their feet, have as truly felt,
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without the least bit of obstreperous, anatomy, as any giant figures of the greatest masters of any day. Always sick and suffering, and of an unfailing self-severity, Watteau shows his own poverty and ill-health in his pictures as little as Stevenson does his in his romances. All are suffused with a sort of shimmering, golden-silver gaiety. They depict a realm of phantasy, of poetry, of love. Yet the people in them are to a certain extent the people of the time. Their prototypes were the ladies and nobles of that airy, flowery, dancing age, they who were so buoyantly gay, so full of a thistle- down lightness that for awhile their feet never felt the crumbling of the ruins beneath them. Watteau loved the shimmering of striped satins and gay figured silks, but as much he loved the soft cool tones of the sylvan glades, the spring laden trees that made such exquisite settings for his fairylike love-scenes. If his art has been called trivial, unreal and shallow, it has neverthe- less a reality of its own, and a charm, a spontaneity, and a rare golden grace, that in comparison make many more sober and more noble works seem bereft of some- thing both vital and alluring. He created, one may fairly say, an age. At his advent painting had become merely a tool for the Grand Monarch's display. Historical paintings, allegorical or symbolical scenes, apotheoses of that strutting piece of royalty were simply ways of ex- tolling the person, face or fame of the vainest of human beings. No wonder art had reached a point where all initiative, all originality was gone. Into such a condition did Watteau come and for him the condition apparently did not exist. It was as if he had never heard what was the " correct " manner of displaying his art. He was in the truest if not the most subHme sense, original and untrammelled, cutting a path for the first time for himself
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and leaving such a shining track behind him that many were the lesser minds that knew no better than to follow close after, never thinking that in such blind following they were going directly contrary to his very principles of self-expression. De Goncourt says that all the painters of the eighteenth century with the exception of Chardin, partook something of Watteau. He dominated them ail, says the French critic. Not alone the servile imitators, Lancret, and Pater, but Boucher, Van Loo, Ollivier, Fra- gonard, all followed him.
The Embarkation for Cythera is a sketch of the finished picture nowi in Berlin. It is universally con- sidered Watteau's greatest achievement. This sketch, if less perfect than the completed picture, has possibly an even greater charm in its beauty of suggestion and in its spontaneous gaiety. The scene represents a knoll on the bank of a golden stream, whose soft shores stretch out in the distance till lost in the glowing suffusement of distant colour. On the right, under noble trees is a party of lovers, who are preparing to follow their com- panions down to the shore where lies at anchor the ship of love's dream. Farther at the right is a statue of Venus about which two small Cupids are playing. More of these Cupids are everywhere, now helping an " amorous swain " to persuade his lady-love to accom- pany him on the wonder-boat, and now assisting the loving couples to embark. But most of them swarm around the bark itself. Some are pulling up the sails, some weighing anchor, and a whole garland of them are in the air as high as the topmast, swinging about in a revel of joy and grace. These Cupids perhaps suggest Rubens at his very best. But they have an infantile and yet a fairylike charm that Rubens scarcely approached. They are neither angels nor Cupids. They are angel-
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cupids. If they have an esprit, a fairylike vivacity hardly compatible with baby angels, they have at the same time too refined a delicacy, too tender a spiritu- ality to be Cupids, per se. They are the quintessence of Watteau's art. In them is seen perhaps more plainly than anywhere else, how the alembic of his brush changed all it touched into something more glow- ing, more exquisite, more sweetly languorous, or more daintily gay, than ever brush did before or since. They are indeed the very spirits of the art that Watteau made the art of the eighteenth century.
Hardly less charming and tender than these dancing, flying spirits are the lovers who people the scene. The beautiful soft satins and velvets, the lovely forms, the graceful groupings, all show, individually and collectively, not alone Watteau's idyllic sweetness and power to tell a fairy-tale, but equally well his unerring draughtsman- ship, ability as a composer and his marvellous eye for colour. It is this last which is the all-pervading and ever-remaining attribute of the picture as a whole, and which, even more than all the rest makes it one of the loveliest pictures in the world. It is as impossible ade- quately to describe the golden glow that suffuses the whole surface as it is to bring by words before ones eyes the gradations in Titian's flesh-tones. In its own way it is as great a marvel of the brush. It is this golden play of colours that puts the whole scene into the realm of phantasy, into the land of dreams. Nowhere else is all nature so surcharged with this palpitating, shimmer- ing, silver-golden haze that wraps about every object and claims it for its own.
As has been stated there was one painter who was as little influenced by Watteau as was he by the classic school of painting. This was Qiardii), as great a man
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in his own way as Watteau in his and representing not all the art of France of the eighteenth century. Lady Dilke has admirably said, " He was not so much an eighteenth-century French artist as a French artist of pure race and type." Unlike all the rest of the men of that century he does not show in his work the in- fluence of the fashions, the style, the modishness of the day. He portrays not pomp, vanity and fashionable court life, or its imitations. He loves better the simplicity of quiet home life, the charm of domestic joys. Chardin, says one critic, " is as natural as a Dutchman, and as modern as Vollon." If he were only painting still life, he somehow always got the human, natural note. " Everything that he touched he touched with feeling as profound as it was personal." His work in pastel is as distinguished as that in oil. In his later years when his eyes were failing he used that medium a great deal.
There are a number of his works in Salle XVL, the most popular of which is probably The Blessing. It is the interior of a simple, homely dining-room. Standing over the table covered with one of the white cloths that Chardin could paint so deliciously, is the mother, wearing a soft, full-toned brown waist, a blue apron, a white gathered cap. About to serve the soup, she pauses to hear the grace of the little girl seated at the right of the table in a small chair. She is turned almost in pro- file, and with her eyes fixed on her mother, has her tiny hands clasped in prayer. Her dress is white, a cap of rose on her head. Behind the table on a high chair is a smaller child, her white cap gathered up with a blue ribbon, only the tips of her fingers appear over the edge of the table while she listens to the prayer of her sister. This is one of Chardin's miost popular works and it shows his charm of colour, composition and
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simplicity of style. Everything in it is painted with the great care and extreme fidelity he gave all his works.
The Housekeeper is even more Dutch-like in its treat- ment of detail. A servant-maid stands in nearly full face, leaning against a dresser with her arm resting upon some loaves of bread deposited upon the table. In her right hand, dropped at her side, she holds a big napkin by its corners out of which is sticking a leg of mutton. Her cap and waist are white, her skirt striped. On the ground at her feet are two big, dark glass bottles, and at her left is an open door where a yellow-gowned maid is seen in profile. A huge cask with spigot and tub under it is just within the door. There is a half-merry, half- wistful expression on the square-faced rather Dutch- looking maid. The position, solidity of figure, and the fresh, unmixed handling of colour all help to make this a delightful bit of genre.
In the Busy Mother are more of Chardin's marvellous tones of white. The mother, seated in profile, with her high-heeled slippers straight out in front of her, is ex- amining a piece of embroidery, one end of which is still held by the small daughter who is standing farther back in the room, in three-quarters view. The mother's huge apron which almost entirely covers her is white as is also her hood-like cap with its deep cape. The sleeves of her dress beneath show yellow stripes on a white ground. The daughter is in white, too, even to the white cap on her youthful head. At the left in front, are a small chest and a pug-dog. In front of the mother is the big winder laden with the woollen yarn, behind is a folding green screen. The same tender sentiment, care for slightest detail, charm of soft, mellow tones, natural grace and ease of workmanship are seen in this as in the Blessing. No less commendable is his insistence of light in exactly
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the right place. " To strike true, was " for Qiardin, " the fulfilment of his highest ambition."
Three pictures by Nattier in this salle show an entirely different sort of art. Instead of homely simplicity there is royal luxuriance; in place of the tender poems of domestic life there is the coquetry of princess and court; in lieu of truth of colour and form, there are manu- factured prettiness and unreal flesh. In fact Nattier belongs as truly to the age he painted as does Chardin to all humanity. As such he is worthy of some study, though the cult Nattier that is of recent growth is a diffi- cult thing to understand. Nolhac says that what excuses Nattier's worst faults are " qualities of seduction, of charm, of the lightness of touch and sweetness of enveloppe," All royalty, or at least all feminine royalty sat to him over and over again. It was doubtless a great delight to find that no matter how scurvily nature had treated their royal persons, Nattier's canvases would portray them as their hearts desired. The homeliest, dowdiest royal scion became under his brush a nymph, a goddess or Muse, with lines of exquisite curves and eyes of lustrous softness. If all his fair dames looked a good deal as if their complexions had been supplied by nature en gros, it was nevertheless too charming a con- coction to bemoan its lack of variety. Arsene Alexandre says of his pictures, that they are " all, of course, as false, as theatrical as one can well imagine, and yet somehow, entirely unaffected and broadly simple." And at least it is true that his eye for harmony was remarkably acute, and his colours are never overstrong or garish. Softest silks and satins, laces, embroideries, furs, those are what he loves. He was in all ways a typical Frenchman, with a lightness, a sureness of touch, a coquetry and always a feminine grace. He did not and apparently never tried
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to portray character or to go beneath the smooth surface. The portraits have, largely in consequence, an artificial air and between them all there is a great similarity. His princesses are so much alike that it is often difficult to decide who is who. Of all his many portraits the Louvre possesses very few.
The Magdalene which is in this room, shows her sitting in a grotto through whose circular opening at the right, a view of hills, cataract and houses is seen. Leaning her blond head on her left hand, the elbow resting on a rock beside her, she holds a book in her lap. Her sandalled feet are stretched straight out in front of her showing beneath more abundant drapery than most of Nattier's symbolical portraits. She is dressed in white silk.
Because of no allegorical significance his Portrait of Adelaide, daughter of Louis XV. is a more satisfactory canvas. She is dressed in blue velvet and sable and has " a touch of dignified formality." The flesh-tones are sweetly soft, but the portrait really has a character of its own.
The Three Graces by Natoire who was a pupil of Le Moine is a fair example of his style. His drawing was always bad and his chief work was done as decorator. The Graces are in rather unusual positions. One, lying out at full length a little on her left side has raised her- self somewhat by leaning her left arm on the bent knee of her sister who is sitting at her head almost in profile. The third is lower down and rests back to, only the upper part of her shoulders and arm showing, her head turned in profile looking at the others. The three are lifting a part of the garland of blooms which a small Cupid at the left is holding as he flies toward them. The composition and placing are pleasing and well balanced.
Tocque, son-in-law of Nattier, studied with Rigaud.
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His first success was with the Portrait of the Dauphin, Son of Louis XV., which is now in this room. It was painted by the king's order and displays him standing in his study, in a red suit with white waistcoat embroidered with gold and with the Order of the Holy Spirit. He is turned three-quarters to the right, and wears a powdered wig. About him are globes and geographical charts. The picture as a whole reflects something of the colour of Largilliere.
Marie Leczinska, Queen of France whom Nattier painted so often, is a full length portrait. The hands and drapery are especially good here, and are full of movement. She is standing in a large hall, her body turned lightly to the left her head in full face. Her dress is decollete, over her shoulders is the royal velvet mantle embroidered with the fleurs-de-lis of France and lined with ermine which she is holding back with her hand. At her left on a bracket is seen the crown, resting on a blue cushion.
Diana at the Bath, by Boucher is one of that painter's most important and beautiful works. At the foot of a high bank Diana, with her crescent over her brow, sits on a lot of drapery holding a string of pearls, one leg thrown lazily over the other, her head turned in profile to a companion who is seated below her, leaning over on her hands, her legs drawn up. The two are almost nude and there is a pastoral, almost virginal charm about the picture rarely duplicated in his work. At Diana's left by her bow are a string of birds and a rabbit and at the pool at the left of the picture a couple of dogs are drinking. The flesh-tones show Boucher at his best, with none of the coarsening, deep rose-colour which designing so much for tapestry and his own careless- ness afterward so often produced. The figure of Diana
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is exquisite in its modelling, the firm, delicate lines wholly lacking that sensuality felt in most of his female figures. The whole thing is an idyl quite in keeping with the character of the goddess. It has been said that this figure of Diana and some others that Boucher painted at this period of his career, in the suppleness of their limbs, and beautiful curves of body, suggest a prototype of the Odalisque by Ingres.
Boucher was as celebrated for his Cupids as for his nymphs and goddesses, and some of these baby gods are very marvels of infantile grace and spirit. In The Target are a number of the little fellows in all sorts of positions. Three are on the ground with their quivers of arrows, one tipping up a big jar of water, while above in the air more of them are holding up a target which has a heart placed in the middle of it. Still higher in air another small baby lifts two wreaths of laurel far over his head.
Boucher was above all things else a decorator. Every- thing he did had this decorative quality, though toward the end of his life he lost even the ability to decorate well. He has been considered the most immoral, posi- tively scandalous painter, accused of using his brush only to taint the very eyes of the young. The truth is that he was as Mantz quotes from Emerson, " a represen- tative man." If ever a painter expressed the very essence of the spirit of his times it was Boucher. The days of the Grand Monarch had gone and all France was revelling in the freedom, the charm, the gaiety of the new reign that sought first, last and always, pleasure. Inconstancy, immorality, a light disregard of the claims of virtue and honour, a joy in all sorts of questionable love-affairs, a frank abandon to the pleasures of the senses, that was the actual state of the society in which Boucher found
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himself. If his canvases reflect the spirit of these days, it is not to be wondered at. And on the whole, he has not made them more debased than they were. Says M. Michel, however, " Boucher represents but one side of his epoch. He does not equal Watteau nor Chardin. He is exclusively and par excellence the painter of Louis XV. and of the Pompadour." M. Michel also says that up to his time France had never seen the feminine form so marvellously portrayed. He painted Venus, the Graces, Psyche, Diana, all or any of the goddesses simply to show the exquisite lines and curves and modelling, and the ravishing colour and poses of woman. It is love, sensual, fleshly, physical love that his brush is ever busy depicting. But at least it is seldom brutal or disgusting. Over the frankest and most undisguised of love-scenes there is a gay lightness, and a soft beauty of colour that redeems them from the charge of grossness. This, how- ever, is Boucher in his early life and at his best. Long before his career was ended his works showed a degra- dation of taste, a bad colour, poor design and futile expression.
Between Boucher, the representative of the day of frivolous sensuality and David, the leader of the reign of the coldly classic, came Greuze, who also represents a distinct epoch in French art and life. It is this perhaps that has preserved him to posterity as much as the pretty porcelain tones of his young girls and children. He seems to have had no example to follow except his own desires. He turned as naturally to scenes of bourgeois life and to the painting of young girls as Boucher turned to lawless nymphs and satyrs or Watteau to fetes gal- lantes. And because of his subjects he became the rage of his time. Innocence, purity, all the homely virtues were found in his works. If to-day it all seems mostly
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a pose, and always artificial, it is only necessary to re- member that life was all artificial then, and the aristo- cratic attention and care for the humble class the most artificial of all. Till the Revolution Greuze kept his popu- larity, but after that was over the taste for his pictures was gone and though he worked till he was past eighty, he died poor, neglected, destitute. When Napoleon heard of his death he is reported to have exclaimed, " Dead ! Poor and neglected ! Why did he not speak ? I would have gladly given him a pitcher of Sevres filled with gold for every copy ever made of his Broken Pitcher ! "
This Broken Pitcher hangs in Salle XVI. and is prob- ably the most popular and best known of all his works. It is not, however, on nearly so high a plane as his portrait of Fabre Eglantine or the portrait of himself. Nevertheless, it has in abundance the characteristics that go to make it one of his most pleasing pictures of bud- ding girlhood. The maiden stands facing the spectator, on her arm the jug with its broken side, both dimpled hands holding up her apron which is full of flowers. She is dressed in white with a gauzy scarf tied loosely about her bare neck and so falling that it does not at all cover the bust from which also the corsage has slipped. Her soft chestnut hair is parted in the middle and wound about with a violet ribbon tying a bunch of blossoms over her ear. Behind her at the right is the fountain against which she has evidently broken her pitcher. She is demure, rather than penitent, wondering dreamily how the accident happened rather than bemoaning her mis- hap. The bloom of her face, the lustrousness of her eyes, the Cupid-bow curves to the soft red lips, all are part of the charms which Greuze threw over his pictures of young maidenhood.
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The Milkmaid, hanging as pendant to this, might almost be the same girl a few years older. She stands by her brown basket-laden ho**se one arm thrown over his neck and the other holding a tin dipper and the cloak which is slipping down. She has tipped her head coquettishly to one side and looks out from under her white cap with a bewitching gentleness. The white dress has much of the dirty gray tone Greuze could not help getting, and the drawing, especially of the left hand and arm is, as often, not impeccable. But charm it has of the kind that makes one understand how it has retained its popularity for a century and a half.
Another well-known canvas is his Study of a Young Girl's Head. She has the usual open chemisette which allows one breast to be seen. Her head is turned to her left in three-quarters view, and is slightly lifted while her eyes are raised heavenward. Her mouth is partly open, giving a glimpse of a row of white teeth. Here are the soft translucent colouring, the exquisite blending of hair against the temples, the swimming azure eyes, the fresh, dewy lips, the little chin that Greuze so loved to paint. Though she is evidently in sorrow, with the tears half-falling from her suffused eyes, it is a very fetching sort of weeping. It does not make the eyelids nor the nose red, and on the whole it seems more becoming than smiling. And perhaps this very thing is as good an example as any to show how even in his best works, Greuze was far from dealing with truth and reality.
The Village Bride is one of the pictures Diderot's pen raved about in a kind of frenzy that seems positively funny to us to-day. We are much more conscious of the faults which De Goncourt summarizes as " inhar- monious colours, discord of tones, glittering of lights.'' Greuze is never worse than in large compositions such
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as this one, The Paternal Curse and the Punished Son. This too, in spite of the fact that he had a real deftness in massing his subjects, and always succeeded in keeping a central unity that added greatly to the dramatic interest. Nevertheless, it is in these scenes that his hardness of drapery, his blackness and opaqueness of shadow, his ineffectual drawing, his continual use of a type instead of individuals, and above all his mawkish sentimentality, his theatricalness and his commonplaceness are always most in evidence.
The Music Lesson and The Sacrifice of the High Priest Coresus to Save Callirhoe, by Fragonard, both hang in this room. Of these the Music Lesson is much the better. At a harpsichord seated in profile is a young, light-haired girl with piquant, retrousse nose, dressed in a robe of blue satin, and playing from a sheet of music before her. Leaning toward her, face to the spectator, with one hand on the back of her chair and the other on the music page, is the young music-teacher, dressed in black even to the black cap on his head. His gaze is bent on her hands while hers is strictly on the music. There is a subtle, indefinable air of romance about the two as charming as it is indefinite. On a chair in front where lie some music and a mandolin is also a big-eyed pussy. This is one of the delightfully simple, natural subjects full of ingenuous coquetry that Fragonard so often painted. Simple, light in subject and in the manner of treatment, it has a grace and quiet charm of its own.
Much more elaborate, not to say theatric is the his- torical composition. On the steps of an altar, between heavy pillars, Callirhoe, breast and arms bare, has fallen among her white draperies, overcome with the terrible strain. The priest who will save her because of his love for her, stands at her head and has just thrust the dagger
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into his heart. A crowd of affrighted women are at the left and behind them are aged priests. Above, among the clouds of incense fly two symbolical figures. Callirhoe is very beautiful, if her utter collapse seems a trifle forced. The young priest is equally beautiful, and even more theatric in his pose. The critics of the time when the picture was exposed at Fragonard's first salon, com- plained that he lacked masculinity. It was his first bow to the French public after his return from Rome, and even at that day the cry of too much theatricalness was made. Still, as a composition it has power, the focusing of the light is penetrating and thrilling and the colour vivid, if theatrically realistic.
Jean Fragonard, who was a pupil of Boucher, was lighter, daintier, more exquisite than his master. H<e painted every kind of subject, religious, historic, mytho- logic, domestic scenes, pastorals, decorations, country scenes, vignettes, and he did them in every known medium. M. Blanc says that in Fragonard one can see the follies and elegancies of Watteau, the loves and de- baucheries of Boucher, the honest simplicity of Chardin, the morality of Greuze, and that indeed he is an epitome of his entire century " for, his first works are dedicated to love and his last to his country." He painted only when he felt inspired. He held a brush it is said before he could draw a line, and took the " Grand Prix de Peinture " before he was admitted to the academy courses of instruction. His portraits are a good deal in the man- ner of Tiepolo, the one Italian painter whom he passion- ately admired. He painted flesh with an exquisite value, though he was very often careless as to the rendering of form. With Natoire, Van Loo and Boucher, Fra- gonard's work shows tremendous inequality. Sometimes it is magnificently finished, perfect and charming. Then
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it is slight, unfinished, ineffectual. There is with all of them, apparently, a total lack of conscientiousness. If they chose they could draw with great distinction, if they did not choose they did not even try. The result is that in almost all they did is found a spontaneity and a certain quality of life. Fragonard's pencil is always spirited if it is often slovenly. De Goncourt says that Fragonard's painting is a dream, the dream of a man asleep in a box at the opera.
Charles Andre Van Loo who was contemporary with Boucher has several canvases in this room. Of them all the Halt is the only one of real merit, though the Portrait of Marie Leczinska was a great success in its day.
The Halt was painted for the private apartments at Fontainebleau in 1737 and it has both charm and origi- nality. In it a company of gallants and ladies have rested for a repast under the trees during a hunt. Spread out on the ground in the centre of the composition is the luncheon, and surrounding it are the young nobles and ladies in the gayest of gay apparel. A little at the left one maiden is being served and entertained by a youthful chevalier who sits at her right. Others are talking with or helping others, while at the right with legs stretched out straight before him oblivious of every one else is a young man who is reaching for a bottle of wine. Coupled beside him are two well-drawn dogs. A richly capari- soned mule is being groomed by a huntsman, and other horses are beyond the feast. Everywhere is indicated a gallant homage toward the young damsels of the party. The colouring is pleasant, arrangement and composition good, the green of the landscape a trifle blue, but the effect of light and the luminosity of the whole agreeable.
Van Loo really had more solid attributes than Boucher. Both he and his brother Jean-Baptist, showed traces in
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their work and characters of the Dutch blood which they inherited from their grandfather. Charles Andre, or Carle as he was called, was always successful. He had much more facility and fire than the other members of the family, three or four of whom were also painters. In spite of his popularity, when the pseudo-classic revival was in full swing, he instead of Boucher was held prin- cipally responsible for the bad taste and ** extravagance " of the followers of these two. '* * Vanloter ' in those days was the synonym for careless drawing and riotous colour." Nevertheless Carle at times painted with great verve and if he had not chosen to confine his attention mostly to " serious " subjects, he might have been a vivid if not poetic portrayer of the life of his own times.
The Louvre has works by the three Vernets who were grandfather, son, and grandson. Even the grandfather, Claude- Joseph was the son of a painter so that the line of artists in the family was unbroken for four genera- tions. Claude, besides his great seaports that are all in the Musee de Marine, has a good many canvases in Salle XVI. He may be considered to have made a real advance and innovation in art. He studied directly from nature, and though many of his canvases seem now to have been painted by receipt, he did at least make a valiant attempt to copy what he actually saw. He has been called the pre- cursor of the English romantic school, and it has even been said his influence can be felt in Corot. It was in his later years that the commission to paint all the seaports of France was given him by the Marquis de Marigny who was the director of fine arts. These immense canvases do not greatly add to his fame. His best work was done when he was still in Italy and before the demand for his pictures had become so great that he was forced in his attempt to supply that demand into doing very inferior
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work. Lady Dilke says of him that " He had just that touch of scenic manner which pleased his public, and in spite of his theatrical planes and theatrical illumination and other conventions which are now out of date, there is an element of healthy strength in his work which shows much honest observation of nature." Nevertheless, he did not see landscape at all as modems do, and to our mind Poussin was a truer interpreter.
Most of David's works are in Salle VIIL, but a few are to be found here, among them the sketch for the Oath of the Horatii, a composition that was ordered by Louis XVL in 1784 and was the painting that gave him the supremacy in the art of France. Belisarius Asking Alms for the victims of the plague, was the picture that made him " agree " of the Academy, though the one in this room is a replica of the original.
David was Boucher's nephew and it was David who really swept away the immorality, indecency and care- lessness of Boucher and Van Loo. He and his followers confined art to the few and educated. They insisted upon great culture and study and barred to the approach of art all except those willing to conform to its rules and worthy to represent them. While therefore it gained in some respects, it lost heavily in others. " Outline, draw- ing and composition were the chief characteristics of the classic school." Colour was of slight consequence and was just as good if entirely of a neutral tone. There was no real painting of landscape allowed, and some went so far as to detach figures from the background simply by flat tones. Emotion, even ideally spiritual emotion, was entirely ignored. " It is the body without action, the human frame simply clothed with flesh, contours in majestic lines." Never "based on nature," it excluded "all individuality, all development, all novelty."
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David himself was a sculptor-painter rather than a painter. His figures have fine contour and exact anatomy, suggesting studies, however, from the antique rather than from living beings, smooth, even modelling with the coldness and hardness of marble, flesh that one could chisel, but not press, colour as far removed from the pulsing tones of the human body as black from white. In his compositions he is never influenced by Christianity. All his subjects are taken from Greek or Roman history. In general it may be said that it is only in his portraits that David shows any real humanity in type, character or expression.
Peace Restoring Abundance by Madame Vigee-Le Bnm was the work by which she was received into the Acad- emy. It shows the figure of Abundance gently led for- ward by the more ample and majestic form of Peace. Abundance is a charming blond maiden with a piquant face, turned in profile up to Peace who is looking down at her. Her golden hair is bound about with flowers, her white robe with its yellow over-robe has slipped partly off leaving her neck and left breast and arm bare. In her outstretched right hand she holds a bunch of wheat and bluets. With the other she has tipped up a horn of plenty out of which fruit and flowers are pouring. Peace, whose blue mantle is flying behind her as if the wind had caught and shaken it, is dressed in lilac. She is crowned with laurel, and in her right hand, resting on the shoulder of Abundance, is a laurel sprig with berries. In this picture it is easy to see the faults of the age, but it has nevertheless a freshness and softness of colour and a careful handling of stuffs.
Madame Vigee-Le Brun was all her life feted, petted, admired. She was beautiful, intelligent, charming. At fifteen she painted admirable portraits and at twenty-
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eight she was received into the Academy. She studied with Doyen, Greuze and Vernet. In her colour there is something of the soft bloom and delicate tones and affected prettiness of Greuze, but she uses them, one is tempted to say, more legitimately. She lacks force, power, — in a word, virility. But there is such an undoubted charm to her works, and so much transparent and fresh colour, that her pedantry, her entire absorption in the eighteenth-century principles of art, her overattention to costumes, stuffs and classical lines, are forgotten in ad- miration of the very real beauties which her canvases show.
CHAPTER XVI.
SALLES HENRI II. AND DES SEPT CHEMINEES — ROOMS II. AND III. — FRENCH SCHOOL
These two rooms contain French pictures of the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth century. Salle Henri H. is badly lighted and even the important pictures, of which there are few, cannot be well seen.
In Salle des Sept Cheminees are most of the more noted works of David. Of these the Coronation of Napoleon is generally considered his masterpiece, There are real force in the lines, character and reality in the faces, which are all excellent portraits, and even the colouring in parts is magnificent. The Coronation was at Notre Dame on December 2, 1804.
David chose the instant when Napoleon, taking the crown from the Due de Berg, who presented it on a velvet cushion, was about placing it on the head of the empress. She kneels at his feet clad in a white robe and crimson and gold mantle, her immense train lifted by the maids of honour, behind her. All the people present are, as has been stated, portraits, and David himself is seen on a platform sketching at a small table. The emperor is in the robes of state, with a laurel wreath on his brow. He stands with arms upraised, in profile, holding the crown, and it is a really wonderful likeness. The em- press is also in profile, as she kneels with clasped hands
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and bent head. Behind the two, Pope Pius VII. is seated, his fingers Hfted in blessing. He is a striking figure, and his face is full of intense life. About him are the clergy, beside him Cardinal Fesch. At the left of the emperor stand a crowd of notables and dignitaries and behind and at his side his brothers and sisters. Back upon the platform are other dignitaries and in a tribune above the empress at the left, the mother of the emperor with her suite.
As an historical picture it is really great. It has a shimmering, effective light, a noble colouring. The white robes and deep-toned crimsons and reds of mantles with the golden embroideries are as a critic has well said fairly " organ-like " in their tonal effect. When it was finished Napoleon went to David's studio and with the empress and suite walked up and down before it for half an hour. Then, turning to the painter, and lifting his hat in his theatrical style, he said " C'est hien, tres bien; David, je vons salue."
The Rape of the Sabines is an earlier canvas and it is interesting to see how very differently David and Poussin have treated the same subject. David's is as classical, much better massed with no bad spotting, and no distribution of climax. The eye is carried at once to the centre of interest and is led gradually and by proper methods from point to point. It produces a really strong impression, even if individual positions are forced and blatantly posed.
Romulus stands in the centre, in profile, his shield on his arm, his right arm raised, poising his spear against Titus Tatius who is parrying the attack on the left of the picture. He holds his sword down, his right arm with its shield raised high. Between these two springs the wife of Romulus, Hersilca, with her arms outspread.
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Niear her many mothers are on their knees protecting their children, and behind them stands a woman on a pedestal holding her child aloft in her arms. The background is filled with the two armies. At the right are the Roman standards, and everywhere horses rear and plunge and over all is a feeling of rushing combat, hurt, however, by the posing attitudes of the principals in front. Some of the women express real despair, but the men are softened almost to the point of losing their sex. Romulus looks like a woman and Titus moves like one. The action is poor, they appear merely posing for their picture. The colouring is less unsatisfactory than in some of David's classical pictures.
Leonidas at the Pass of the Thermopylae is one of the series intended to decorate the Louvre, their sub- jects furnishing historical parallels to Napoleon's great- ness.
The Portrait of Pope Pius VII. is a vigorous likeness and shows David's talent in this direction. He is seated on a large chair turned three-quarters to the left, holding a letter in his hand.
The Portrait of David as a youth is only a sketch. He is sitting in full face, holding his palette in his left hand, a brush in his right, and is apparently looking in a glass. He wears a gray redingote with large red collar and cuffs and white cravat. For David this is roughly executed but it has reality and even charm in the wistful eyes and rather mournful mouth.
The Portrait of Madame Recamier, left incomplete by David, was afterward finished by a pupil of his. The noted beauty is sitting with her feet straight out in front, face turned three-quarters to the spectator, her hair tied up on the top of her head. She is dressed in white in a gown as simple as her surroundings and in spite of a cer-
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tain rigidity and an entire absence of the feeling of actual flesh, it is rarely beautiful painting. There are a severity of design and a total lack of ornament in the surroundings in the room, the background being an absolutely plain surface, unbroken except for a tall bronze lamp at the head of the couch. Madame Recamier herself liked the picture so little after David had it well started that she refused to sit any more.
Madame Vigee-Le Brun has two portraits in Salle III., one of herself with her daughter on her knees and the other of Madame Mole Raymond, an actress of the Comedie-Frangaise. This latter is one of the most pop- ular as it is also one of the very best of the painter's portraits. It is often called The Girl with the MuflF. One of the objections that M. Fillet urges against this popular approval is that it is too full of motion properly to fulfil the requirements of a portrait. He claims that in its overgreat animation it loses the dignity and poise and serenity necessary to keep a portrait from annoying and finally tiring the spectator. And indeed there seems almost enough action in the figure of this young girl to carry her right out of the picture. She is apparently walking forward with a briskness that sends her long curling hair and scarf flying out in streamers behind her. Her figure is in profile but she has turned her face till it is three-quarters full. It is a rather wide, short face, with large eyes far apart and a laughing mouth exposing her white teeth. One suspects that were it not for the witchery of Madame Le Brun's brush, Madame Raymond would not seem quite the beautiful creature she does. The huge muflF which has given its name to the picture she is holding up with both hands buried in its depths. Her dress is violet, her hat and waist blue, the fichu over her shoulders white. The big hat with its side caught up
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by a rosette, and the flying feather add to the coquetry of the picture. Madame Le Brun has used her brush here with a full, firm and yet soft stroke. There is a certain lack of freedom but there is a decided and most fetching " go " to the whole thing.
In this room as well as in Salle VIII. are a number of paintings by Prud'hon, the man who was scorned by David as being hardly better than Boucher and who to us of to-day represents the true classic spirit to an extent undreamed of by the founder of the pseudo-classic school of the end of the eighteenth century. It was not till he was well on in middle life however, that his public began to appreciate the gaiety and delicacy of his choice spirit. He really was the first painter since the Rococo days to feel at all the beauty of colour, and his pencil besides was as true, as firm, as sure as David's own and had a life, a grace, an esprit that that cold, stiff copyist never began to acquire. Two influences show themselves strongest in Prud'hon's life and work. Always he was greatly influenced by women, first by his mother, then by the woman he so unhappily married and finally by Mile. Mayer, " his best-loved " pupil, who became the mother to his neglected children and the guide and inspiration of his life, to whose de- votion and intelligence he owed really most of the late applause and appreciation of his work. In his art it was Leonardo to whom he was most indebted. He used to say that this wizard of the Renaissance was his adored, his master, his everything in one and he com- pared Raphael to him much to the Urbinate's disadvan- tage. Prud'hon's women have the mysterious, veiled smile, the dreamy, inscrutable eyes, the alluring not-to-be- tabulated womanly charm that, recalling as they do the great Italian have become so impregnated with the talent
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of Prud'hon that they are no longer Italian, but thor- oughly French. There is a coquetry, a bewitching aban- donment in all his pictures of women, and almost always too, there is a half-suggested melancholy, something indeed that has been felt by many critics in all of Prud'hon's works, in spite of their gaiety, delight and witchery.
In the Portrait of Madame Jarre in Salle III., there are almost all these attributes though she is not the most distinguished of his feminine portraits. She is painted on an oval canvas, seated turning three-quarters to the right, but with her face in full view. Her large dark eyes look out from under level brows, above which the full waved hair is parted in the middle. The mouth is exquisitely drawn, the curves not quite ending in a smile. She is dressed in a white empire gown, banded with gold, across her shoulders a red shawl and in her hair a wreath of daisies and wheat.
Justice and Vengeance Pursuing Crime, was ordered for the Palais de Justice and kept there till the time of the Restoration when it was sent to the Louvre. Prud'hon made a number of sketches for this and all of them differ from the completed work. It is said he finished this last in six months. It is universally regarded as one of the very great pictures of French art, and French critics have not hesitated to call it one of the chief gems of all art. Here is, at all events, the veritable sub- limation of the classic. A humanizing yet idealizing process seems to envelop this whole picture, so that the subject, which might have been chosen by David or by Ingres, becomes, under Prud'hon's magic brush a most powerfully dramatic tragedy that grips the consciousness of all time.
The scene takes place in a wild, rugged spot, with
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huge rocks piling high against the dark clouds through which the moon breaks pallidly. This cold clarity lights into broad masses the figures of the composition. On the ground, flung over backwards on to a rock, his arms far outstretched, as if they had been grasping to save the fall, is the nude body of a murdered youth, called generally Abel. His strongly foreshortened head, upper part of chest and part of the arms are in the shadow cast by the murderer who is just springing away from his fatal deed. Contrasting with this lowered tone, which, unfortunately has blackened with time, is the brilliant if cold light that throws the rest of the beautiful torso into strong relief. Cain, the perpetrator, has pulled his tunic about him, still clutching the bloody knife as if ready to plunge it once more. His terrible face, already dis- torted by fear as well as passion, turns toward his victim seeking absolute assurance of his death. This figure is as dreadful as the victim is beautiful. As unseen by the murderer as by the dead, are the two figures above who sweep with noiseless but irresistible swiftness from the right out of the celestial regions. Vengeance and Jus- tice come together, their wings reaching far beyond their heads and shoulders, their garments streaxning behind in the rapidity of their approach. Vengeance carries a flaming torch in her left hand while with the other she seems about to seize the shoulder of the man below. Her face is turned toward her companion. Jus- tice, who is gazing with implacable eyes at the murderer. In her right hand she grasps a short sword and in her left are the scales of judgment. These figures are conceived and executed in the very spirit of the great Greeks, a spirit nevertheless infused with an individuality, a modernity, so to speak, that makes them real and con- vincing beyond the dreams of the school that paraded
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classicism as its one aim and object. Prud'hon did not often paint such gruesome subjects. He preferred the idylHc to the epic or the tragic. The gay, the froHcsome, the dainty, the elusive, the feminine, — these were what mostly appealed to his imagination. But in this masterly composition he has achieved heights of sombre grandeur, of power, of virility, of stern nobility, while never losing the instinctive charm that pervades all his works. It is a lasting monument to the genius of the man who worked outside his own era, who was wholly uninfluenced by even the greatest of those of differing minds, quite as incapable of copying as he was of actually changing his point of view.
More near to Prud'hon's heart is the Transportation of Psyche by the Zephyrs to Cupid's Realm. All his life he was enraptured with the story of the beautiful love of Cupid, and innumerable are the pictures and sketches he made of incidents of her life. This one in the Louvre is the best known and one of the most perfect of all his works.
Psyche, still asleep, with a smile on her lips over the pleasure of her dreaming, is being borne through the air by Zephyr and three genii. She is half-lying, half-sitting on their arms and shoulders, every curve of her beautiful body full of a subtle charm, modelled with a warmth, a nuance that only Correggio, it seems, could have excelled. Her head has fallen back on to her left shoulder, her left arm half-framing the tender, sleeping face. The utter relaxation of sleep is expressed in every part of the body. She rests wholly and inevitably upon her con- veyers. Of these, Zephyr, who is mostly carrying her, is a slender long-limbed boy, with petal-like wings and an elfin profile. A genii's head comes out from under Psyche's knees, another is in the shadow behind the
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elbow he holds, the third is on the other side of the body, only her face showing above the flying violet veils. Clouds are beneath them, and still lower a daisy- studded field, and above at the left a glimpse of sky, rocks and vines. The management of the chiaroscuro in this picture is Correggioesque in its admirable bal- ance of parts, its luminous lights, its effective, dramatic shadows, that never approach the theatric. Most of Psyche's body is in the light, though both legs and face are in the half-shadow that forms so entrancing a part of the picture.
It is a fairylike dream, showing a spontaneity, fer- tility of imagination, perfection of technique, feeling for chiaroscuro that place it among the very best of Prud'hon's works. The entire scheme of colouring, which . is almost monochromatic in its varying tones of black to white, is relieved by the yellow drapery beneath the maiden, the violet clouds of soft veiling flying about her, the blue wings of Zephyr, and the restrained green of the fields beneath.
Looking at the paintings by Gerard in the Salle des Sept Cheminees, it is hard to understand how he could ever have been called the " Painter of Kings and the King of Painters." The first of these titles he earned by being court painter first to NIapoleon and then to Louis XVIIL, and by the number of princes, nobles and other great of the land who sat to him for their portraits. Though he was regarded as a very wonderful portrait- painter in his day, the second part of the eulogium was doubtless due not so much to his works as to his personal appearance. The Baron Frangois-Pascal Simon Gerard had an appearance so superior, so marked, so distin- guished, that nothing was felt to be impossible for such a personality. This estimate, however, was not fulfilled by
TKA.N:5l'OKTATION OF rSYCHK HV THE ZEl'HVKS TO CUI'ID'S REALM
By Prud'hon
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his works. He was a pupil of David and counted himself a member of the strictly classic school. His classical and historical compositions nevertheless are very mediocre attainments and it is only as a portrait-painter that he can receive any decided praise. Even here the encomiums lavished upon him in his own time seem overdone, and among the three hundred likenesses that he left only those executed before 1800 are greatly commendable.
The Psyche Receiving the Kisses of Cupid was at the time of its production given immense praise, but in reality it is hard, dry, academic and lifeless, sur- charged with a sickly sentimentality and affectation. It shows the god of love bending over his sweetheart imprinting his first kiss on her brow.
In the Portrait of Isabey and His Daughter there is something more of the really estimable qualities of the painter. The two figures are standing in a hall at the right of the foot of a flight of stairs and at the right beyond them a passage is seen with a dog just entering the doorway leading into it. M. Isabey has a black velvet jacket and breeches of brown, the big boots tied on below the knees with long ribbon bows. In his left hand he holds his hat and gloves, in his right his tiny daughter's hand. She is in a long white Empire gown and seems to have paused a moment in their walk, her father turning his face in the direction her eyes are looking, as if to ascertain the cause of the delay. This is in the main a creditable work, though for our day his brush seems to lack freedom and mobility.
Gros, the painter of Bonaparte in the Pest House at Jaffa which hangs in Room III., was, like Gerard, a pupil of David. But, though all his life he claimed to belong to that coldly classic school, he may be called with perfect truth an involuntary reactionist against it. He always
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felt that his great scenes of contemporary life were not up to the demands of the highest art. Even when he was painting his Napoleonic pictures and when the French public were at his feet, when he was chosen by the emperor for special decoration, when he was a member of the Institute, when he was made baron because of his artistic achievements, even then he appears never to have lost his self-distrust. And finally when David was in exile and Gros had his classes, the banished painter sent a reproachful cry to his old pupil. "You owe us the Death of Themistocles," cried he who could see no art possible in pictures of modern life. And so greatly did Gros, in spite of his fifty years feel the necessity for com- plying, that he set about some classical subjects at once. When, on their exhibition, they were sharply condem.ned, all the more because the romantic school was beginning to show its influence, the timid, self-distrustful Gros moaned that it was a bitter thing to have outlived one's life. And forthwith, the man who had been a nation's favourite, who had won nearly all the prizes life could give, drowned himself in the Seine.
The Jaffa picture is the first of the great scenes that made his fame. It displays the interior of a highly deco- rated mosque, surrounded by a vast court, which has been converted by the French into a hospital. In the middle of the improvised asylum Bonaparte stands, followed by his generals Berthier, Bessieres, and Daure and the head physician Desgenette. Bonaparte is touching the cancer exposed on a sailor, who, half-naked stands before him. This royal touch is supposed to cure the terrible malady, and Gros has given Napoleon a benignity, a fatherliness and a nobility of expression only heightened by the youthfulness of the face. All about are terrible scenes of suffering, things it appears impossible to paint an4
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keep within the bonds of legitimate art. One man is under the surgeon's knife, another has died in the arms of an assistant. There seems nothing spared that would make the horror worse. And yet, strange to say, it neither repels nor affronts. Nothing could be more marked than the vital contrast between Napoleon and his staff, breathing a very exuberance of health and vigour, and the pallid, wasted and drawn faces and figures about. It is perhaps this very contrast that saves the artistic unities. There is at any rate no loath- ing, no disgust possible in looking at this masterly work. Truth, reality, dramatic effect, joined to vigorous action and most excellent colour are the things that must strike every one. In studying this it is easy to see how, in spite of himself, as it were, Gros forms the connecting link between the classic school and that of the succeeding romantic.
The Portrait of Napoleon at A'rcole Gros painted through the intervention of Josephine, who persuaded Napoleon to sit to the painter for a very short time each day. It represents the general young, intense, full of fire and passion and absorption. He is placed in profile, his left arm crossing his chest, bearing a standard whose colours are flying forward in the wind. His head is turned looking over his left shoulder bringing it into three-quarters view. It is a most striking delineation.
The Raft of the Medusa hangs in Salle des Sept Chemi- nees and is the work by which Gericault is world-known. Gericault may be called the actual beginner of the romantic school, though he lived only in the period of the rule of classicism, dying before Delacroix really was acknowledged head of the new departure. He was a ptipil of Guerin, the devoted admirer and pupil of David. So little impressed was this cold classicist with his pupil's
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talents that he advised him to give up art entirely. It was a grave fault he considered that even in copying casts the young man could " not help giving expression and dramatic action " to everything he drew. Expression and dramatic action ! Could anything be worse from the point of view of a David? Besides his love for intense moments of life he had a great fondness for horses, and his studies and pictures of them are most excellent. Rosa Bonheur, years afterward, acknowledged her in- debtedness to him. His first exhibited work was at the Salon of 1812, a portrait of M. Dieudonne as a chasseur charging. When David saw that spirited bit of realism he was as amazed as he was disgusted. " Where does it come from ? " he asked indignantly. " I do not know that touch." To his mind there was altogether too much life in it for it to be art and he advised Gericault to abandon a field he had no chance of ever occupying. Nothing dis- mayed by his cold reception, in 18 14 he was again repre- sented by the scene from the retreat from Moscow. There were great power and original feeling in the snow-cov- ered field where the grenadier was leading the worn-out horse of a wounded soldier. In 18 17 he went for two years to Italy and during the time studied largely Michel- angelo. In this he both gained and lost. Gained in dramatic intensity, in virility, in concentrated power. But unquestionably he lost in colour. Naturally of a sombre nature he instinctively chose the darker moments of life as the subjects for his brush, and from now on he began to express these tragedies in dark, monochromatic tones. He himself scorned his former " rose tones." Later, when he went to England, he saw that colour was after all an integral adjunct of art and it is probable if his short life had been prolonged he would have left even more wonder- ful works than now bear his name.
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It was after his return from Italy that he exhibited his Raft of the Medusa, over which he had studied for three years. It was based on the wreck of the frigate Medusa, which on June 17, 1816, set out for St. Louis, Senegal, to carry the governor and many members of families of that colony. The raft that was constructed to hold one hun- dred and nineteen of the wrecked passengers was de- serted by the boats which were to have towed it, and after twelve days of agony fifteen only survived and were at last, with their dead and dying, picked up by the Argos. The moment chosen by Gericault was when, in the dis- tance, a sail is seen far against the horizon.
The loosely put together raft fills almost the whole of the canvas. Beyond it and behind it huge waves pitch mountain-high against the sky, but the whole tone and colouring of this sea has been submerged in a sort of dirty brown colour that takes away from its reality as well as from its value as a dramatic adjunct. Mounted on a barrel on the forward part of the raft, an almost nude negro is waving a signal to the tiny speck that shows dimly against the lighter horizon. He is supported by a man standing below, grasping his legs. Leaning against the barrel, another also waves a cloth. A num- ber by the sail still have enough life to raise themselves with some degree of vigour and one man stretches out his arm excitedly toward the distance while he is appar- ently encouraging his companions beside him. A few others in the centre drag themselves weakly to their knees, their failing strength making a last desperate attempt to revive. At their feet lie others, dead, or too unconscious to notice the new hope of their companions. A father sits in the stern in an anguish beyond words or sight to disperse, holding against him the lifeless body of his son. In front, caught by his legs, a figure is
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thrown backward into the sea, the upper part covered with a drapery. It was for this splendidly foreshortened figure that Delacroix posed. The general colour of the picture is dull, deeply sombre and without great depth of colour in that sombreness. It is only in its intensity of dramatic action, its grandly composed masses, its fine individual rendering of form, face and expression, in its appeal to the emotions, in a word, that it is so great. Gericault had so strong a sense of the limitations and requirements of art that frightful as the scene is, it is not repulsive. The approaching vessel has taken away from the stagnant despair and the ray of hope thus thrown upon the scene makes it possible to look at the picture without too great horror.
The painting was not well received and it found no purchaser. Gericault then took it with him to England where it created a great sensation, and brought him a good deal of money. On his return he painted the Epsom Races which was one of the things he had greatly enjoyed in England and which gave him a fine chance to depict his favourite animal in its most intense moment of life.
This Epsom Race is in the same room and shows four horses of as many shades of colour on a mad run, mounted by their jockeys, each one urging his animal to its utmost speed. The landscape is almost a blank, the sky heavily clouded. Clement calls its treatment dry, but Gericault has probably never excelled the horses in any of his many studies of them. The first two are almost neck and neck, the head of the third comes to the second's haunches, and the fourth is only a neck behind. Motion, a very crisis of motion is the dominating thought. The straining necks, the excited, open mouths, the flying hoofs add to the intensity of a dramatic moment that,
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with none of the agony of the Medusa, holds one almost equally spellbound.
Paul Delaroche's Young Martyr hangs in Salle II., and though it is largely its literary quality that has made it so popular, there is undoubtedly a poignancy to the pale, floating face in the green water, that partly atones for its evident theatricalness. She floats there with her hands folded softly, her sweet, pure face turned out toward her left shoulder. Above her face is the halo, which seems a bit of unnecessary unreality. The river is bearing her past the huge towering cliff, at the foot of which is seen the prow of a Roman boat tied to a post. Above, on a spur of the cliff two men gaze affrighted at the vision of the lovely girl. They and the rocks are in deep shadow massed against the moonlit sky. It is this silver gleam that strikes the slight body and throws it out into pallid relief.
Paul Delaroche was a pupil of Gros, and therefore was never deeply imbued with classicism, yet neither did he ever revolt from the school. All his life he was a strad- dler, trying to adopt the principles of both the romanticists and the classicists. He chose historical painting as his usual means of expression, putting himself in this way out of the preempted ground of either school. His chief idea was to show an agreeable, sparkling, highly seasoned, bituminous art of painting. And his scheme worked well during his whole life. He was popular, idolized, indeed, and overwhelmed with orders at the very time when Delacroix was scorned, reviled and ignored. " Colour and spirit of events had no power over his imagination, he only apprehended them with a cool understanding and put them laboriously together."
Salle II. has three pictures by Decamps, he who has been called the father of the French school of modern im-
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pressionism. He and Delacroix are also regarded as being the originators of the Oriental school of the nine- teenth century. These two men and Horace Vernet began to exhibit Oriental scenes at about the same time. They all made trips to the East, but before Decamps had ever been there he had already shown an Oriental sub- ject in his Turk in Cashmere Robe, Decamps early achieved great popularity. He had never had much instruction and his draughtsmanship was often decidedly defective, but somehow his work struck the public favourably and so long as he chose he kept this public his own. It is greatly to his honour that in his later years he voluntarily abandoned the field w'here he was so certain of success and began a rigid discipline that, had he lived would have made him far greater as painter than he ever had been. But in Fontainebleau, where he had retired to work and study, he was one day while riding thrown against a tree, and in August, i860, he died.
He was considered a wonderful realist in his time, but he actually almost never absolutely reproduced any- thing he saw. He had a remarkable talent for giving the impression of what he had seen, and besides this he had a fine feeling for composition and for the ethics of picture-making, if one can so designate it. His skies, with their piling cloud, his trees with their bare arms, the movement of light and shadow, — all these were kept in accordance with the movement of the figures in the scene. There is always a homogeneity, a wholeness about the most insignificant of his canvases. He felt the effect of sunlight very strongly, and in his golden-toned landscapes he made tremendous efforts to reproduce the atmospheric conditions he so adored. Unfortunately he never succeeded in capturing the real sunlight. His
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very attempts toward this were wrong. He intensified his shadows till they became huge cavernous blotches, thmking thus to show by their contrast the brilliance of the light. He did not see, what Marilhat had begun to notice, that the clearer and more intense the sunlight the more luminous the shadow. In this respect, as M. Mantz has pointed out, he belongs rather to the Dutch school, his works showing a strong similarity in method to De Hooch and to Rembrandt, the latter, of whom, indeed, he admired as the greatest master of all time.
The sketch for The Caravan in Room H., is a poem, a poem that remains almost as subtle, as vivid, as full of tonal effects in one of the rich carbon photographs as in the picture itself, — which is a very good proof that even the blackening of Decamps's forced shadows has not spoiled the poetic effect of his pictures or hidden his real value as a great painter. From the left, across the sands of the desert comes a file of camels, mounted or laden, going toward the little lake in the centre where already some are drinking. Not far away filling the centre and right of the middle distance a softly shaded mosque, showing the golden tones of the setting sun, cuts fine square lines against the suffused sky. The fore- ground is dark again, as are the camels, though here and there a rider or flank of one of the beasts is thrown into brilliance. The unfinished state of this sketch, with the rather indeterminate lines of the camels, on the whole add to its charm.
A Bulldog and a Scotch Terrier, in the same room, shows the English canine at the left, lying down with nose between his paws, his eyes widely watchful, his whole air if not pugilistic, at least such as would warn the trespasser to look out. Standing by his side in profile, is tlie Scotchman. A muzzle covers his longer nose.
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and a sort of harness is hitched on to his collar and goes around his body. Apparently wholly unconcerned and regardless, there is a sharp sidewise look in his eye that perhaps accounts for his muzzle. The two dogs are both wonders of expressive dogdom.
Even more truly than Decamps was Diaz one of the famous men of the so-called Barbizon school, this name, in its narrowest and earliest meaning, indicating a number of painters who had left the city and taken up their abode for part or all of the year in the forest of Fontainebleau. Diaz was one of the first of this band and it is his pictures of this grand old forest that have given him his greatest fame. His attempts at figure- painting were in the pseudo-classic style and like the No Entrance and Fairy with Pearls both of which are in Salle Henri H., are little more than weak imitations of Prud'hon. His later years were given entirely to the painting of landscape, or, more definitely " treescapes," and it is in these that he shows himself the poet who has something to say that no one else has said before. His was the gold-tipped brush that caressed with Midas- touch the path through the heart of the forest, the huge trunks of oak, and sycamore, the swaying slender birches, and filled these hidden forest glades with a shimmering golden haze that threw its tone over gipsies or dryads or Orientals or peasants, with impartial lustre. It is always summer in the depths of these forest glades, and the quivering dancing sunlight that turns the trunks almost to gold is a hot, pulsing light, full of the fiery southern breath that on the bare plain would be fairly intolerable. Piercing through the thick canopies of packed leaves and twisted branches, it loses its blasting heat and only warms, lights, glorifies. That seems to be its province in all of Diaz's greatest pictures. The
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densest wood, the dimmest glen, the heaviest branches, the most gnarled and bent of tree-trunks, all are transformed, transmuted, with this golden aroma of dazzling sunlight.
These are the attributes of his greatest works, and one can see in his Birch-Tree Study in this room how he revelled over the great trunk, his " stem picture " as he used to call each new canvas, how he loved it, caressing it with his shimmering sunlight, studying it, brightening it. Over and over again he painted almost the same trees, the same glen, ever trying to approach nearer his poet's vision.
In The Bohemians the idea is the same as in the one in the Boston Art Museum, but it is carried out dif- ferently. In the Boston picture the train of gipsies, in spite of their great number, is only, in a way, a part of the whole landscape and it is evident at once that the pic- ture is not so much of them as of the glowing, sun- kissed forest. In the Louvre version, the gipsies are the principal thing. At the back the boughs of the forest frame a large bit of the sky. A tall gipsy maiden with a basket on her head, silhouettes against this open square. Ahead of her come the others of the band, down to the clearing in front. A woman and child sit at the left, another young girl stands beside her with outstretched arms, by her side a man helps a girl over the brook, and behind these come others down the woodland path. The golden light is sifted on to the group, the effect of the whole is rnolten, glowing.
With the Execution without Judgment by Regnault, which is in the same room, we come to the work of a man whose life might have extended into this twentieth century, but who, instead, gave that life to his country when it had but just begun. Regnault was the idolized of France, and even to-day more than thirty years after,
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Frenchmen speak of him with a living sorrow as if he had died but yesterday. He can be called the last great representative of the romantic school of which Dela- croix was the founder. What he would have been, can only be surmised. But at twenty-seven he was already, to quote Miss Kingsley, " original as a thinker, magnifi- cent and daring as a draughtsman, superb as a colourist." He took the Prix de Rome when only twenty-three and it was while still " pensionnaire " that, in spite of his immunity from obligation to serve, he hastened home from Morocco to join the artists' battalion in the fatal war of 1870.
The Execution without Judgment has been called a symphony in red, — and it is in reds that vary from the pale rose-reds of the Moor's gown to the purplish red of the pool of blood under his victim. Standing on the marble steps of the Abencerrages of the Alhambra, is the immensely tall and muscular Moor, wiping with perfect nonchalance the blood from his yataghan. His half-closed eyes glance with a sort of lazy curiosity at his bloody work, and his whole body is held quietly at ease, no sign of tension or of disorder in his pose or ex- pression. Below him on the steps in a heap just as he has fallen, lies the headless trunk of his prey, and, a step lower, is the fearful head with its bulging eyes from which the terror still glares. Connecting head and body are the dripping pools of blood.
So realistically horrible is this picture that women have fainted on seeing it. The colour-scheme is rich, vivid, the composition masterly, the drawing superb. Whether such a subject belongs properly to the domain of art, or if belonging can by its subject take high rank, is a question perhaps, for individualistic answer. At least it is the sort of subject Regnault revelled in.
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EXECUTION WITHOUT JUDGMENT By Kegnault
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Though a wonderful portrait-painter, his forceful, puis- sant, tumultuous nature expressed itself with a perfect fever of abandonment in scenes of carnage, of riotous contortions, of sinister meaning, of all things out of the commonplace.
The Interment at Ornans by Courbet was given to the Louvre by the artist's sister after his death. At the time of its first exhibition it raised a tremendous storm of opposition. It was claimed that it ridiculed a solemn occasion, that it was a sort of comic opera on themes best expressed by a dirge. Low, vulgar and disgusting were the epithets oftenest hurled at it. To-day this all seems strange enough. The funeral service of which this is a picture, impresses us as a very real transcript of every-day, country life, painted with a truth to ensemble and detail. With no rude irreverence or frivol- ity, it has also no mawkish sentimentality or forcing of solemnity. Actually the people represented were por- traits of real people of Ornans, Courbet's native town which he always loved to paint. And they are most excellent portraits as well.
In the very centre of the foreground the farther half of the open grave is shown. At the end kneels the grave- digger in his shirt sleeves, looking up at the priest who, with his assistants and acolytes stands a little at the left of the grave. Behind them four pall-bearers carry the draped bier. At the right are the friends and relatives, three men and a dog standing first and behind them a number of weeping peasant women. At the extreme right, the woman holding a child by the hand is Courbet's mother.
CHAPTER XVII.
SALLE DES ETATS — ROOM VIII. — FRENCH SCHOOL
The Salle des Etats, Room VIII. on the plan, opens at one end into the Grande Galerie and at the other into Salle Denon. It contains French pictures mostly of the second and third quarters of the nineteenth century, and, with the Thomy-Thiery collection includes most of the greatest gems of French art owned by the Louvre.
Rather out of its element in this modern collection is David's classic work, the Oath of the Horatii. At the left the three brothers stand with extended arms before their father receiving their swords from his hand, promis- ing by the act everlasting vengeance upon the Curatii. At the right sits their sister, who, betrothed as she is to one of the enemy, leans over in an agony of grief upon Sabina wife of the eldest brother. The mother holds in her arms her two little children. The action is calculated and wholly unspontaneous. The work was done with the assistance of Drouais.
Prud'hon's Portrait of Baron Denon is evidence that though he can be called a portrayer of women rather than of men, he yet could paint men with an insight that was especially noticeable when his subjects were men of genuine feeling and artistic sensibility. This is one of these. It is a portrait that France has seldom sur- passed. The old Director General of Fine Arts is dressed
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in his Academician garments, the Russian Order of St. Anne about his neck. His short gray hair, soft and fine, and grown far back on his head, stands up as if the activity of the brain under it would not allow it to lie flat and smooth. The forehead is monumental in its width and breadth. The eyes, far apart, but not wide open, the large, firmly cut nose, the fine line of the closely shut mouth, the square, cleft chin, with the slight extra flesh beneath, — every point of this intense personality is felt, but as a whole rather than as countable attributes. The head is in three-quarters position, turned toward his left shoulder. A decided but very luminous shadow falls on the right side of his face, breaking into a light across the eye and cheek-bone. The rest of the face is mostly in full clear light. And it is as fresh, as mobile, as free in its brush-work, and as fascinating in its planes as a face by Correggio, he who was, next to Leonardo, Prud'hon's great admiration.
Napoleon at Eylau, by Gros, hangs on the east wall. It was after the exhibition of this immense canvas, with its figures of more than life-size that Napoleon took the cross from his own breast and gave it to the painter.
Napoleon, in a gray satin pelisse, bordered with fur, is mounted on a light bay horse, viewing with his gen- erals the terrible scene of destruction after the battle. The ground is covered with snow, and in the background, where before the lines of French troops the prisoners of war pass in review, is the village of Eylau in flames. Before it, what seem to be at first glance natural mounds of drifted snow, turn out to be heaps of dead bodies over which the snow has fallen. Napoleon's face and attitude are very expressive. The reins are dropped in one hand and the other is lifted with a gesture full of distress, as he contemplates the gruesome plain. By
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his side are Soult, Davoust, Murat, Berthier, Bessieres and Caulaincourt. Before them the wounded, dying and dead. One poor fellow is clasping the emperor's knee begging his blessing. One is being raised by an aide. One young " chasseur *' helps to set the leg of a wounded soldier under the direction of Percy, the surgeon-general. Even in his agony, the soldier raises himself to salute his chief. French surgeons are among the enemy also, bandaging, giving water. Beyond, a little farther back, a cannonier lies dead across his gun. Farther still two chasseurs of the Guard places upon one of their horses a badly wounded grenadier.
Again as in the Jaffa painting is the strong contrast between the living and dying, between bounding, perfect health and gray pallidness and waning strength. And even more than in the other do we feel the pathos, the pain, the pity of it all. Death in its full grimness is there in plenty, yet once more the master-brush has made a great tragedy that stirs the deeps of emotion, and again one finds that it is not in any way beyond the limits of true art. By its treatment, by the power- ful imagination combined with the sanity and instinctive clarity of its painter, it impresses itself indelibly upon the memory.
The Apotheosis of Homer, by Ingres, shows the blind bard seated on the top of a wide flight of stairs at the entrance to a Greek temple. Standing at his right is the winged figure of the Muse who, descending from the sky holds the palm and laurel wreath in her hands. Homer is partly draped in a robe that falls away leaving his chest and right arm bare. His left hand is grasping his staff which he has brought close up before him. Ranged on each side of the steps is the company of poets > writers, painters, sculptors and musicians of all time.
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Those of the oldest of the Greek days are nearer his level, those of later at the lower sides. At his feet are the two daughters, for so has Ingres personified his Iliad and Odyssey, Odyssey at the right holding the oar of the long voyages of the son of Laertes across her knee, Iliad on the left, with her arms crossed about her knees, her head turned mournfully outward.
Among the great ones surrounding Homer, are Apelles, clasping the hand of Raphael standing behind him, Phidias with his mallet, Herodotus offering incense, Virgil and Socrates. Below, on each side, are those of later days, and of Ingres 's own time. There are Dante and Shakespeare, Poussin and Gluck, Racine and Boileau, Fenelon and La Fontaine. And these moderns are won- derfully characterized. Each head is living, full of force and personality. No less excellent in their own way are the ideal heads of the Greeks and Romans above them. In this work Ingres joined to the strict classicism shown in the lines and general style, a feeling for beauty and an expression of individuality that makes it an exponent of the very highest of the classic school. It does, as has been often said, suggest Raphael in its scheme and even in its execution. One may well think that only he who had spent untold hours absorbing the very spirit of the Parnassus and the School of Athens, could ever have produced this modernized Greek epic. Yet a copy of Raphael it most certainly is not. And all times, all schools of all shades of belief must acknowledge it as a work of talent that, if below the par of genius, is at least w,orthy of a high place on the list of fame.
Ingres studied with David and throughout his long life upheld the school of his master. He was a rampant, unyielding classicist, putting his entire efforts into pro- ducing a beauty of form, a delicacy and truth of line, a
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simplicity that was a perfection of modelling. He was the one great exponent of the classic school during the years when Delacroix was triumphantly at the head of the new romantic movement, and though the age was realistically romantic, and had mostly outgrown the cold marbleness of David and his school, yet, so persistent, so firm, so unyielding was he in his own way, and so fault- lessly did he carry out his ideas, that he succeeded in winning from the nation as much honour and appreciation as was given to his bitter rival, Delacroix. Unquestion- ably he did achieve a purity, a rarely perfect if purely intellectual beauty that in spite of its total lack of appeal to the emotions, in spite of its almost total ignoring of the power and beauty of colour, did win, and wins to-day, the admiration and respect even of those who radically disagree with him as to what constitutes the art of painting. There are many amusing stories told illustrat- ing his intense aversion to any kind of art or artist who did not follow his lines of thought. On taking his pupils through the Rubens Gallery he would say, " Salute him, my children, but do not look at him."
In this Salle des Etats, Ary Scheffer has three paint- ings, which give a fair sample of his work at its best and at its worst. In the Death of Gericault, he struck a higher note than ever before or after. There are real feeling, power and pathos in the scene that shows the great painter with his two friends. Colonel Brodebout and Dedreux Dorcy behind his bed. There is even some attempt at colour here, and, small as is the canvas, marks Scheffer's greatest achievement.
The Temptation of Christ is a work much better known from its innumerable reproductions. The devil, with the usual darkness of colouring and of the conven- tional figure since Milton's poem, stands near the summit
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of the mountain showing Christ the distant cities that lie below. Jesus, in the clinging robes Scheffer loved, stands rebuking the evil one and points dramatically to the sky. This is as conventional as it was popular, and has little to recommend it except the story-telling quality, which, to be sure, is positively blatant.
Though Ary Scheffer is always included in the French school, it is only by virtue of his long residence and train- ing in Paris. His mother was Dutch and his father was German, and he himself was born in Dordrecht. A pupil of Guerin he was left by that strict Academician to follow pretty much his own bent. This bent was an effort to combine the attributes of the waning classic school with those of the romantic. Like many another with two masters he fell between two stools. In spite of the great popularity won by his works for so many years, they are mostly a blending of sentiment often bordering on sentimentality, of a sweet beauty that is next door to the lachrymose, a tenderness that is positively unprincipled in its weakness, a purity of line with a total lack of accent or power, and, joined at times to a poetic conception, an absolute blindness to colour. In fact Ary Scheffer's pictures must be regarded as something existing entirely out of the realms of colour. One wonders what he ever put on his palette. If there were any rich, glowing or subtle tones, they stayed there. Never by any chance did they get placed upon his canvas.
Only a year younger than Scheffer was Corot, who has two of his most beautiful canvases in this room, but looking at the paintings of the two, it seems as if an eter- nity must separate them. In the beginning of Corot's artistic career, however, there was not so strong a dif- ference between them. When, at the age of twenty-six the draper's clerk persuaded his father to let him take up
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art as a profession, he produced, under the instruction of Michallon, Roman ruins, Greek temples or modern Italian landscape with a scrupulous fidelity to actuality, with a brush that drew exactly and vividly if somewhat angularly the scene before him. It was the influence of the classic school that shows most in these early paintings. HJe developed his own particular talent late in life, and it is undoubtedly due to the perpetual youth of his mind and spirit that at forty, after fourteen years of continuous practice in all the traditions of the classic school, he could so change, vivify and wholly transform his style. If in Corot's later pictures he has been accused of a lack of strict drawing, the lack, such as it is, is not due to any ignorance on his part, but to deliberate intention. With his depth of knowledge he could afford to neglect what to lesser minds and a more superficially trained brush would have seemed overimportant. Corot knew and it is certainly largely owing to his long academic train- ing that he could allow himself liberties, that he could play with nature, and become such a part of her, that those of any poetic instinct must see that truth and fidelity are always present in the least as in the great- est of his works.
It has been claimed that his pictures all look alike. This is really not much more than saying that his brush-work becomes after awhile, familiar, or at the most that he loved chiefly two parts of the day, the dawn and twilight, and repeated them in his canvases many times. The middle of the day he did not care to paint. " One sees too much," he declared. And that is the real reason for the superficial observer's claim of the similarity between Corot's paintings. One never does see too much. Veiled with the dawn's vapours, only sug- gested in the tremulous mist of earliest spring, softly
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submerged under the translucent shadows of the twilight, only half exposed in the pearly light of the new-risen moon, — these are the moods of nature and the times of day and season Corot best loved. This is all the similarity between them. Any one who knows his pic- tures well, knows best the variety, the individuality and the surprises that fill them. Silvery green is Cbrot's palette, on first examination. A myriad other as ex- quisite tones are found with closer study. The soft grays, the violets, the clear cool browns, the luminous whites, the silvered yellows, — those are the tones his lovers have found in profusion, and they make a gamut as varied as it is delicate, as penetrative as it is subtle, as true as it is poetic. It is this last quality that fills every canvas of Corot's later years. Each scene is an idyl, each canvas a painted poem, — or better still a tone-poem. Corot loved music as deeply as he did painting and his works have suggested musical comparisons to many, partly because they seem almost as intangibly plastic as this least plastic of all the arts. Colour-harmonies they truly are, with a weaving melody sung by the misty, tremulous vapours of dawn, by Spring, with her violets and greens that smooch the tips of the budding trees, by the brooks scarce murmuring under the twilight's last caress, by the nymphs and dryads dancing in limpid moonlight. It is always a song that has just begun that Corot's brush has caught, and so exquisite, so full of sug- gestion is it that the listener is inspired too and fain goes on to the end of the strain, as if he too were poet-singer. Technically, besides Corot's great attributes as a colourist, he ranks at the very highest for his wonderful feeling for values. No one else has ever expressed more perfect concord between sky and foliage, foliage and trunk, trunk and lake or stream. In, through, behind the woods
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of Corot you can wander, over the lake you can sail, on its banks with the nymphs you too could dance. No other shade or tone could express so perfectly the atmos- phere that makes the tips of the greenest twigs blend and yet separate themselves from the softened sky that is behind and over them.
Most of Corot's later years were spent with the men he loved so greatly in the forest of Fontainebleau, and he is always spoken of as one of the Barbizon school of painters.
The View of the Forum, and that of the Colosseum, were among his earliest paintings and hung in his studio till his death. He always cared greatly for them, regard- ing them with the affection a parent has for his first- born, and at his death he left them to the government. They are, of course, in his early manner, and, compared with the landscapes other Frenchmen were painting at that time, were of unusual interest and charm. Compared with his own later works, however, they seem academic, hard and needlessly literal.
The picture called simply a Landscape might be titled A Lake where Morning Bathes. Filling the middle plane, and reaching back on one side to a point of tree-bowered land, and on the other to a horizon of a soft misty forest, lies this lake. It is so luminous where the light of the morning spreads over it, so full of mysterious tender shadow where the trees are mirrored, that it is like a soft harmony heard from the wood-wind of an orchestra, — subtle, deep, caressing, with a tinge of melancholy that is half-ecstatic. The big tree on the right that throws its branches far over the pictured space breaks the extent of sky with its feathery twigs and heavier masses of leaves, and its trunks make vigorous accents and balance the dark foreground of the bank. At the
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left of this tree is another, which is hardly more than a single weather-bent stalk. Here and there along its naked length bunches ol budding twigs still are sprouting, and a peasant is standing on tiptoes to reach one of the lower ones of these blossom excrescences. The light that flickers between the branches of the large tree sweeps down her arm and shoulder and touches both her petticoat and the cluster she is plucking. At the base of the stump are two children, one picking delicate flowers from the ground, the other holding up her arms for the prize her mother is securing. From the extreme right under the willow, — if it is a willow — an older peasant is advancing, her sunbonnet just catching the light that sifts through. Soft and tender as this picture is, and full of the evanescent aroma of early spring and early morn- ing, there is a vigorous note struck in this bit of peas- ant life thus introduced. It is as if Corot had said, " See ! Here is fairy-land all about you. You need not be poets nor fays to see it. The very peasants are part of it. It is their very reality, and they can always dwell within it."
One of the best known and best loved of Corot's works is the other landscape called sometimes A Morn- ing and sometimes the Dance of the Nymphs. Here is not only fairy-land but the inhabitants thereof besides. And it is a land and people you are quite sure dear old Pere Corot actually knew. How else could he have painted those dancing nymphs, those laughing fauns and satyrs, those dryads, with the abandon that shows such absolute knowledge behind? It is all so real, so spon- taneous, so possible, that you are quite sure you could see those very selfsame elves in that very selfsame glen if only you might get there early enough in the morning. Was ever such a delicately frolicsome scene depicted
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before? Can a more spiritual gaiety be imagined than fills this dell where the trees mass soft against the sky of dawn, where the brooding light rests across the opening in front of the tree-made bower, where the fields beyond are all sufifused in a bath of new-risen sun? And did ever mortal imagine before the very essence of the spirit oif dance? Do those flying feet of the woodland folk touch the ground at all? Were ever butterflies above the roses more full of sprit and spring? Was ever seen a more abandonment of joy than in those laughing fauns ? Yet all this gaiety, this f rolicsomeness, this quin- tessence of laughter is veiled, etherealized, spiritualized, — what you will — till it becomes as intangible as it is joyous, as evanescent as it is penetrating, as dreamlike as it is real — a poet's Land o' Smiles where mortals cannot tread, but, seeing, can love and believe in all the more.
Delaroche's Princes in the Tower in this room is one of that painter's best-known works. It is supposed to represent the moment before the doomed boys' assassina- tion. The great carved bed of Edward is shown in one of the rooms of the Tower. Sitting by its side, on the top of a high bench, the young Richard rests his richly illuminated book on the knees of his brother Edward, who is seated on the bed and leans upon his brother's shoulder. A small dog near the foot of the bed has turned toward the door on the other side of which the assassins are already heard. Richard has stopped his reading and is looking that way too, his very evident though silent dread plain on his face. But Edward is too ill and too indifferent even to lift his eyes from their , sombre downward gaze. The velvet suits of the boys-'' emphasize their pallor and their wretched plight. Thi tells the story so frankly and so fully that the pub^'
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in general has always adored it. It is safe to say that it is its literary quality which is mostly responsible for its chief encomiums.
The fame of the works of Eugene Delacroix, seven of which are in this salle, rests upon something very dif- ferent. John La Farge places this chief of the romantic school of France " alone of all the painters of the nine- teenth century in the line of high expression which runs from Giotto to Puvis de Chavannes." This painter- critic says further that with Puvis de Chavannes " he is the only one of the French painters who has any claim to connection with the great mural painters of the past." He continues, " It is to the eternal disgrace of the govern- ment and official influences that this one most important exemplar of decorative art had so little opportunity to illustrate his nation by monumental work." His ceiling in the Galerie d'Apollon of the Louvre is one of the great achievements of any age and makes the designs of Le Brun that surround it look more pompous, theat- rical, unreal and overelaborate than ever. There is a most wonderful movement and swing to those celestial horses, unexcelled by the work of any modern or any ancient time. Far ahead of all his contemporaries in colour, a remarkable master in line, in massing, in all that goes to make a superb composition, his " arrangement " is as little evident as in a Rubens.
Delacroix, though so bitterly reviled by the classicists, had really the deepest love and reverence for the great ancients. Had they but realized it, he never transgressed the laws of true classicism. Indeed he carried them out more strictly and more wonderfully than did any of those labelled " classic." Delacroix saw plainly that those who merely copied the works of the ancients were going contrary to the entire spirit of those who had created
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them. They had been original, free, spontaneous, living. That was what he also wished to be and what in a superla- tive degree he was.
He was the first great French composer. His massing, spotting, harmony of line and space, the entire extraordi- nary ensemble, with its inevitable climacteric centre, its gradations that lead as inevitable to that focus, — all these proclaim him a master of masters. Even his de- tractors were forced to compare him with Raphael and with Rubens. If he has the balance, the compositional unity of Raphael, he has combined with it the energy, fire, dramatic sense and colour of Rubens. A poet, a decorator, a colourist — those are the three names he has been truly given, and he is no greater as one than as the other. Besides all this he was never the exaggerator, the poseur, the extremist that the school who claimed him as master often afterward became.
The Bark of Dante on the north wall of the Salle des Etats, his first exhibited picture, was shown in the Salon of 1822. The story goes that, being terribly poor at the time, he sent the picture with no frame except a rude affair made of four lathes over which he had sprinkled yellow paint. When, on the opening day he hastened to see whether it had been accepted, he could find it nowhere. Suddenly, just as in despair he was about giving up the search, he discovered it in a fine frame in a place of honour in the Salon Carre. It was Baron Gros, who, in spite of his academic predilections, recognizing the genius of this new painter, had had the picture suitably framed and hung. And then Delacroix, in palpitating eagerness and gratitude went to the big man's studio where he was greeted cordially and told to "come to us. We will teach you to draw." Gros also said that the Bark was " Rubens reformed." But at Delacroix's
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next departure even the tolerant Gros was scandalized, and from that time began the war that waged about Delacroix so long as he lived.
The colouring of this Bark of Dante is largely account- able for its partial acceptance by the classicists. In a dim, sombre light, the open boat is being propelled by Charon through the waves. He is shown at the stern, his body nude save for a scarf that goes about the upper part of his shoulders and thighs. He stands back to, legs far apart, his whole bent body concentrated upon the huge oar which he is pushing in front of him. At the other end are Virgil and Dante, the former placid, calm, unmoved, while Dante, with both hands outspread, is starting back in terror at the awful sights about them. Clinging to both sides of the boat, whirled away by the waves, torn off by the frantic arms or feet of their companions, are the lost souls that the Styx devours. These figures are marvellous examples of draughtsmanship, full of an emotional intensity that contracts their muscles, agonizes their features, contorts their limbs. The modelling of the flesh is no less astonishing, and the whole picture is a creation genius alone, at any age, could have produced. And its painter was only twenty-four.
The Massacre of Chios was exhibited in 1824. A group of the captured men, women and children are huddled together in the foreground, waiting in terror, in stoical indifference, or in fury for what shall be their final disposition by the Turks. At the right, a Turk on a rearing horse has bound a beautiful nude Greek girl to the back of the plunging animal. Her arms are flung above her head in pleading fright, but the rider pays no attention except to cut down with his scimiter the Greek who throws himself against the horse in a futile attempt at rescue. In front of this group sits an
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elderly woman in the costume of the country, her head turned toward her left shoulder, her eyes wide in anguish, but with no sound commg from her hopeless lips. Lean- ing against her, thrown flat on her back, with her arms bound behind her and the clothing gone from the upper part of her body, is a young mother, who lies watching in a very torture of helplessness the little naked babe crawling up her breast. At the left of these in front, a man and woman sit close together against a rock. Both are absolutely quiet, in a despair that is emphasized with every curve of the supple figures, and accented by the staring, non-seeing eyes of the man. Another man and his sweetheart are clasped in each other's arms. By the side of his father a boy kneels and begs in terrible fear. Over all is the brilliant, palpitating light, the strong, puls- ing colour, the juxtaposition of vividly apposite tones.
It took Delacroix two years to paint this picture, and then, at the end, when it was already hung in the Salon, he repainted almost every bit of it, intensifying, clarifying, strengthening, changing his colours till they hummed with a radiance he had never dreamed of before. It was due entirely to the works of an Englishman that he made such a radical innovation. Just as his picture was carried to the gallery, he had a chance to see two canvases by Constable which had been brought over from England. The Briton's palette was a revelation to the French- man. After a rapid, eager, wholesale study in which he appears to have actually swallowed the entire method of the foreigner, he betook himself to his own canvas, got permission from the authorities, and in a few days had completely transformed it. If a certain rigidity of tone might before have saved it in the opinion of the classicists, it stood no longer any such chance.
It was with this picture that Delacroix began what was
MASSACRE OF CHIOS »^ By Delacroix
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an entirely new departure for French art. All the present-day attempts at colour-effects, the impressionists themselves, owe their freedom and their brilliancy to this impetus which Delacroix gave to this side of French art. In his day, his vibratory, rich and sometimes start- ling colour was condemned as one of his worst faults. Quietness carried to sculptured rigidity in action, quiet- ness, carried to monochromatic tones in colour, quietness, carried to architectural solidity in grouping, quietness, carried to meaningless vacuity in expression, — that was the sign manual of the art as Delacroix found it. Little wonder that such a stultification of academic rules and principles found a rampant rebel in this Prince of Emo- tion, this warrior in action, this " Orlando Furioso of colourists."
The Twenty-eighth of July, 1830, was one of the two political pictures Delacroix ever painted. And this, with its enormous " heroine of the barricade," is really an alle- gory. In her half-naked state, with her Phrygian cap, she but symbolizes Liberty, — Liberty for the state, for the people, for art. It was exhibited in 183 1, and, already obnoxious by its implied meaning to the government, was purchased by the direction of the Beaux Arts, and turned face against the wall.
After this Delacroix made his journey to Morocco, and there gathered new feeling for colour, new and wpnderful ideas of sunlight, gleaming sands, golden days, blue waters and marvellous Oriental people. All his life he drew from his memory of these Arabian- Nights days, and made his pictures full of the pulsing life of the Orient.
Women of Algiers in their Apartment has been com- pared to an open jewel-box, so gleaming, transparent, varied, rich, almost intoxicating is its colour. When it was
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exhibited he was accused by the critics of having copied Veronese. In a room of the harem whose walls are tiled with faience, whose floors of marquetry are partly cov- ered with the soft rugs on which they lie, are three women, " half-recHning," says a critic, "... doing nothing, hardly holding their narghiles in their non- chalant fingers, present no prevalence of life and thought, more than flowers or jewels, and so leave the play of colour undominated by any intellectual interest. , He has pushed to their maximum of splendour, but has brought to a repose by a perfect equilibrium of in- tensities, the great brilliancy, opulence and fulness of colour of the accessories, — stuflFs, and faience and walls of wonderful combinations. He has made use of complementary contrasts and harmonies of tints, and of blacks and whites as amalgams, so to speak."
His Entry of the Crusaders into Constantinople re- sembles, says Muther, "an old, delicately tinted carpet, full of powerful, tranquil harmony." In its scheme of colour, in action, it is as full of motion, and emotion, as are all of Delacroix's pictures. Like all of his composi- tions, too, the tone suits the subject. It is a glorious sight to Christian eyes to see this stronghold of the Sultan cap- tured by Christians, and this feeling is emphasized in the golden tone of the canvas. The very air scintil- lates as if the oxygen were transmuted gold.
On the same wall hangs Decamps's On the Towpath. With the western sky all aglow with the setting sun, the foreground of this picture except as spots or edges catch the rays, is in heavy shadow. The canal runs straight across, and splashing through the water come the four tow-horses. Only the first two are wholly in the picture, and they fill the centre of the composition. Behind them at the extreme right are seen the heads of
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the following two. Mounted squarely sidewise, as if sitting on a bench, with both feet hanging straight over the left of the white horse, is the driver, a deep silhou- ette against the glowing sky. High in air he holds his whip, preparatory to using it to urge the horses forward. Absolutely anatomically correct the great animals un- doubtedly are not, yet surely no photograph ever pre- sented a more vivid picture of seeming truth. The heavy muscles, the strain on the big necks, the pull and pressure everywhere, seem not only real but exact. At the left in the middle distance is a slender tree, near by a peasant driving a flock of geese and at the right are an inn or dwelling and other peasants at the door. All are dark against the luminous sky.
Another " stem-picture " is Diaz's Under the Trees, which is only a sketch. In it again, are the big, lapping, spreading branches, the depths of forest behind, the glinting light, and over all the shimmer no one has ever painted so well as he.
Hippolyte Flandrin has three canvases in this salle. The one called simply Figure Study is well known by reproductions. It represents the nude figure of a young man seated in profile on a rock at the edge of the sea. His knees are drawn up, his head bent upon them, while his arms are brought around, his left hand clasping the wrist of his right in front. His profile is lost in shadow, only the cheek, ear and hair being in full view. The drawing of this figure is as beautiful as it is marvellously true. There is a very fine feeling shown for form and contour and the modelling while full is not overdone.
The Portrait of a Young Girl is neither so well done nor so well known. The maiden is seated in profile, the picture cut just below the waist, and only partly showing the crossed arms and hands, one of which holds a closed
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book. A soft shadow submerges the delicate profile, her curling hair is bound with a black velvet band and wound into a large knot at the base of her neck. The waist of white muslin is slightly open exposing the soft lines of throat and neck. The modelling is exquisite, the drawing pure and fine.
Flandrin was a pupil of Ingres and carried out in his works the principles of his master with a faithfulness and sincerity, that, if proving he was not highly endowed with originality, at least proclaimed him a remarkably perfect draughtsman, a lover of pure line and contour, a zealous and most conscientious worker. As a rule he paid no more attention to colour than did any of the classic school. He became a very noted religious painter and was the first since Le Sueur to show true spiritual feeling in his works. If they are little more than assimilations of the fifteenth-century Italians, they are full of real feeling, and have a purity of line and form not often seen. His one specialty outside of these religious paintings may be said to be the portraiture of young girls. No resemblance can be found in these gentle, pensive, nun-like maidens to the coquettish, roguish, sentimental creations of Greuze, that other French painter of maidenhood.
Two great canvases by Constant Troyon hang on opposite sides of this Salle des Etats. Until the open- ing of the Thomy-Thi6ry collection these were the only Troyons the Louvre owned.
Oxen Going to Work is the name of the picture by which Troyon is probably best known throughout the Western world. Probably, too, he never surpassed this during all the years of his artistic life. One is inclined to go still farther and say that probably, also, no one else has ever surpassed it. Whether one speaks of the broad
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extent of fields smoking under the early rays of the sun, of the glowing, sun-bathed sky, of the heavy, patient oxen, — of any part or of the whole of this composition, only superlatives rise to the lips.
Over a rough roadway, through a deeply furrowed field where vegetation is scarce and where heather and grass grow in hummocks, advancing straight toward the spectator come the six huge oxen with their driver. Yoked two by two, the three couples follow one after another, the first two close together, the third farther behind and a trifle at the right of the first group. At the left walks the driver with his long sharp prod, and at the moment he is looking over his shoulder at the two loitering behind. On each side stretch the wide fields, sloping gently upward to the horizon-line that is blurred with low clustering trees. At the left are more cattle with their drivers and over all the glowing early morning sky. It is this feeling of the morning, the light of it, the freshness, the haze, that is perhaps the most wonderful effect of the picture. You catch the very breath of those early breezes that are hardly more than vapours. You feel the exhilaration of the air that comes like a soft puff from the awakening sky. You are enveloped in that wonderful tenderness of colouring of the world not yet wholly unveiled by the inquisitive sun. In fact you are bodily as well as mentally taken into the very atmosphere, into the very spot itself. It is as if a great window had suddenly been opened out of a stifling room, and through it out in the open, nature is at her morning bath. As for the oxen themselves, though mostly felt as merely a part of all this wakening world, they are fully as marvellous in their own way. Great, plodding, patient beasts, you feel and see the tramp of their heavy feet. You smell the sweetness of their
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steaming breaths, you feel the ponderous weight of the mighty flanks. Thrown against the sky, they are in a shadow as luminous almost as light itself. One of the minor though delightful details is the way Troyon indi- cated the high lights where their horns or backs .or legs catch the unbroken rays of the sun.
Troyon has been called a painter pure and simple, indicating that he was no poet. Yet here, surely is poetry. Poetry of the early morning, poetry of the plodding beasts, poetry of the mist and haze. It is modern, intensely modern, and as real as day and night, but none the less is it full of a poetry that is as beautiful as it is vigorous.
If this picture palpitates with the colour, the light, the freshness of morning, The Return to the Farm exhales the calm, the softness, perhaps the heaviness of the dying day. Only the yapping dog and the hastening feet of the home-going animals give a certain vivifying note to the silence that otherwise broods over the scene. The sky is full of clouds, the trees that mass at the turn of the road are already catching the gloom of the coming twilight, the shadows of the herd stretch long across the roadway, and the sheep and cows themselves are fairly bathed in the last effulgence of the dropping sun.
Ten or a dozen sheep are at the right in the immediate foreground. Their sharp little hoofs beat a quick tattoo on the hard road, and they are jostling one another in their eagerness for home. At the left, in the centre of the picture, two cows advance, and they too, hurry their steps. Farther still to the left more of them have stopped to wander down the bank for a last nibble, and two have gone into a pool for a drink. Behind the flock trots a little ass, like the rear-guard of a procession, and ahead of all, running and barking and full of the importance
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of his position is the dog who apparently feels that the whole care of the journey rests upon him. This picture was first exhibited in 1859, and in 1865, after his death, was given by Troyon's mother to the government.
Troyon, like Dupre and Diaz as well as others was first in the painting department of a porcelain factory, and it took him many years to outgrow entirely the habits there formed. In 1847 he went to Holland and it is due to the influence of Rembrandt and Van Cuyp that his work became so much stronger and more real. After that he was in Barbizon with Rousseau and the others of the outdoor painters and gradually his pictures grew to be the brilliant, truthful transcriptions of nature that they were. As a painter of cattle in landscape of which they are an integral part, he has never had a rival. On the other hand too, his - landscapes themselves were always as important, as truth-telling, as beautiful, as his animals. He had a much less difficult time than many of his contemporaries, achieving earlier than most a popular success. He received the decoration of Cheva- lier of the Legion of Honour in 1849, the same year it was given to Daubigny, and from that date he could almost treble the prices for his works. His education, save in his own art was very slight, almost rudimentary.
Wholly different was the education of the peasant and the painter of peasants, Jean Frangois Millet, four of whose canvases hang in this room. For though Millet was not only the son but the grandson of Normandy peas- ants, he inherited nevertheless artistic and intellectual g^fts from his forbears. When, at the age of eighteen he went to Cherbourg to study painting, he could already read his Bible and Virgil in Latin. And during his several years there he spent his nights studying Homer and Shakespeare, Milton and Scott, Goethe and Byron,
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Victor Hugo and Chateaubriand. During all his life Millet was a great reader, and his sympathy and under- standing of the peasant's Ufe was founded not only on personal experience but on his wide humanitarian studies. By dint of tremendous family sacrifices Millet finally went to Paris where he entered the studio of Delaroche. A more uncongenial pair could scarcely be imagined. Millet at best was never teachable and under the man who was posing as the great pacificator between the romantic and classic schools he became even less so. Delaroche for his part acknowledged the talent of the country boy, but did not try to do much for him. It was not till Millet got into the Louvre and studied the great men there on the walls, that his spirit found what seemed worthy of copying. Now began the years of poverty and struggle that lasted almost as long as Millet lived. He took to making little pictures after the style of Boucher, finding that that was the only kind of art he could persuade the public to buy. Then he painted portraits for five and ten francs apiece or little genre subjects for as much as twenty, or sign-boards, or any- thing he could find to do. Until after his first wife died, which was in 1844, Millet's colouring was marked with purity and clarity and his flesh-tones were soft, glowing and full of brilliance. Diaz, Rousseau and Jacque saw his talent and loved the man and from then on began the friendship that lasted throughout their lives. In these years he was called the " Master of the Nude," and his little figures were full of charm and grace and colour, as unlike as possible the Millet known to-day. It was a curious accident that finally forced him out of this line of work. One day he overheard some one say while looking at a pastel of a woman bathing, that it was by that " fellow named Millet who always paints
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naked women." That was enough. The pure-minded peasant from that time entirely renounced the style and subjects which were beginning to bring him both recogni- tion and a fairly good living. He began at once to paint only what he had always longed to paint — scenes of peasant life. His second wife, the brave Catherine Le Marie knew the hardships that were probably in store, but she was willing to face them.
The year 1848, with two or three children and almost no commissions was a terrible strain on husband and wife. Once the whole family lived for two weeks on less than six dollars which he had earned painting a sign-board. Finally when the Revolution broke out, dis- gusted with the life, worn out with the city noise, sham and frauds, he and Jacque agreed to go to Barbizon for the summer. Before the end of the month they were there and Millet had rented the little house which was to be his home for the rest of his life. Rousseau was already settled near by and so began the colony that has since become so famous under the name of the Barbizon school. In the dull little plain that stretched from the Fontainebleau forest to Chailly, the tiny town where Barbizon folks went to get married or buried, the peas- ants were at work all the year round, and here was where Millet found the subjects for his cycle of peasant life.
His own life was hard and difficult enough. Purchasers for the first ten years were almost a minus quantity. If it had not been for the generosity of his artist friends Millet would many times have been in even more des- perate straits than he was. In 1855, under the guise of a rich American Rousseau bought his Paysan Greflfant, and Corot and Diaz were always ready with a helping hand for the man they loved and whose talent they revered. His Angelus was finished in 1859, but it was
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months before it sold for a small fraction of what less than fifteen years after it brought the first purchaser. And in that same year the Salon refused La Mort et la Bucheron, which was founded on a La Fontaine fable. This was a crushing blow to Millet for he felt keenly that it was aimed directly at himself as a man. He was being called at this time a revolutionist, a demagogue, a St. Simonist, and his glorious Gleaners was declared a pro- mulgation of most seditionary messages. It is amazing to reflect that it was the subjects Millet chose that kept him from being either a popular or an academic success. If he had but returned to his nymphs, nudes and alle- gories he could have had fame, commissions, riches. It is a debt that posterity can never repay that he was not to be beguiled by any promise of material prosperity to resign his chosen work. And finally, when in 1864 his Bergere was exhibited, he found himself at length, pop- ular. For three years the dire extremity that Millet had so often known was a thing of the past. In 1868 he won the cross of the Legion of Honour and in '70 was made one of the jurors of the Salon. And then the state gave him a commission for a series of historical paint- ings for the Pantheon. But the order came too late. Only the preliminary studies were completed when, January 20, 1875, this great poet of peasant life passed away.
Of his works in the Louvre, the Gleaners is by far the greatest as it is one of the greatest that he ever painted. Against the horizon at the right are the roofs of a little hamlet among the trees ; at the left, two mammoth stacks of grain. Between these two extremes come the grain-cart and horses, the workers cutting and stacking the full harvest and the overseer on horseback ordering the work. In the immediate foreground are three peasant
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women picking from the barren, stubble-field the scat- tering blades the reapers have left behind. Over all is the atmosphere of a hot, cloudless August day. This is the outline of the picture that raised such a storm of abuse on its exhibition. Why ? It represents in simplest, most unexaggerated manner a scene as common in the French fields as harvesting itself. It is as unadorned and direct as a fable of La Fontaine, but quite without its moral. At least its author does not insist upon the moral. That is left for the observer himself to apply. And this is undoubtedly the real reason for the vitupera- tions. The spectator, be he ever so careless or callous can scarcely help feeling the inner significance of the picture. The rough field in front, where the broken, un- reaped blades of grain are so few, so mean; the bent, toil-worn figures of the three women with their piteously scanty bundles of the precious spears in their jealous hands; the hot, scorching sun over their heads; and behind, the heaped-up riches of the owner of the soil. That is all. But could the pathetic, insecure, toilsome, hungering life of the peasant be more poignantly ex- pressed? Or could any words heighten the description of the difference between their life and that of the rich husbandman behind them? And yet it is not too much to say as has indeed often been said, that Millet had no intention in painting this or any other picture actually to draw a moral or preach a sermon, or even to emphasize the inequality between the poor labourer and the landowner. He was too true an artist so to mis- use his brush. His whole heart and soul and his entire artistic consciousness were bound up in the life of the plains about him. Pictures, pictures everywhere, his poet's eyes saw, and saw so simply that it almost
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seems as if he never had to make that choice and selection which is generally the first effort of the artistic mind.
In the Gleaners there is a vividness, a luminosity, a most marvellous atmospheric effect that fairly envelops the spectator as well as the scene. It ranks, perhaps, after his Angelus and the Sower, lacking as it does a certain mystic austerity so strongly possessed by those two works, but its wonderful clarity, its feeling of " plein air" its pathos and significance, make it a great poem of the peasant life.
In Spring, a grass-grown roadway through an apple- orchard in bloom leads to a village at the back whose thatched roofs show among the trees. A storm has been drenching the country, but already the rainbow shines over the clouds, and the freshness of the water- soaked earth and dripping trees fills the canvas. The whole picture breathes an air of pulsing spring to which the soft, clear colours add a delicate force. The general tones are a dark gray, light green and brown, with here and there reds, whites and yellows and a bit of blue in the frock of the man under the apple-tree at the end of the path. It is thickly and heavily painted and is quite without the brilliance of a Monet. But it has a feel- ing of the spirit of spring itself.
The Church of Greville was bought by the state after his death in its present unfinished condition. The quaint old church with is square low tower and over- hanging roof, is built upon a cliff. In the distance is a glimpse of the sea and in front on the path going by the church are a man and two sheep. About the clock-tower myriads of birds are flying. The gray stones of the church set the general scheme of colour. This is varied by the thin greens about the path and in the trees showing over the roofs of the village behind.
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The Bathers are two women, one of whom, seated upon a hillock is helping her companion to go into the water. This was painted by Millet when he was still the "painter of nude women," and has the fresh colour and grace of that period.
Rousseau, the first of the painters to go to Barbizon, has five canvases in this room. Of these, the Opening in the Forest at Fontainebleau, is one of his greatest works and is in a more completely finished condition than usual with him. It shows his love of differentiating the details of a landscape and is a wonderful example of his power to do this without sacrificing in the least the homogeneity and effect of it as a whole. The foreground, with its weeds, rocks, twigs and bushes is carefully and conscientiously worked out, yet the eye does not linger over it too long. It is carried at once to the centre of interest, — the cows grazing and drinking in and near the shallow pools of the sun-bathed marsh. Old moss-grown oaks make a frame for this scene, their branches inter- locking thickly overhead. The sky, dropping down to a low horizon-line, marked by soft masses of low trees and hills, is suffused with the glory of the setting sun still partly visible over the low hills at the left. From there, the fields all in their sunset dress stretch forward to where one lone tree breaks the opening made by the framing oaks. This tree stands almost in a pool, and its old bent trunk sweeps over far to the right, its full plume of foliage catching some of the light of the sky, thus making a satisfying break between the heavy darkness of the oaks on each side and the brightness of the sky and fields beyond. Beneath the branches the cows are grazing and beyond, nearer the horizon is a larger herd. The picture is one of the great masterpieces of the French school of landscape-painting, and is full of vigour
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yet, like most of Rousseau's, is wonderfully serene. The richness of the colouring, the fineness of composition, the splendid balance of the whole, are characteristic of Rousseau at his best.
The Marsh shows a wide, flat district half-inundated with pools and rivulets. At the right in the middle distance a thin line of firs stretches nearly to the centre of the picture. Behind them, and reaching all the way across the horizon are the snow-capped Pyrenees half- lost in the clouds. The centre of the composition, and of the interest, is the herd of cattle drinking the water of the pools or wading knee-deep through them. Dark brown, light cream and spotted animals, they are painted as Rousseau always painted them, vigorously, surely, living embodiments of the solidity, strength and stupidity of their race. The sky of this painting is possibly a little leaden, but as a whole there is exquisite feeling es- pecially in the distance of the vast expanse reaching to the mountains. The canvas was bought by the govern- ment in 1 88 1 for I29,cxx) francs.
In The Storm, a wide flat plain stretches out to a low hill rising above the centre of the horizon-line. On the crest of the hill are three windmills and at the foot a stream spreads from one side of the picture to the other. In the foreground is nothing but the arid, flat plain, the grasses and rushes already bending under the oncoming storm. The sky is crowded with dark menacing clouds and everywhere are the force and power of the tempest about to break.
Along the River is exactly what its title designates. A river opens out almost unbroken to the horizon-line, only low points of land covered with trees or bushes sepa^ rating it from the sky. In the foreground it flows into a sort of double inlet or bay bordered with trees and
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shrubs yellowed by the sun. A skiff is pulled up to a point of land breaking one of these indentations and a fisherman sits within it arranging his tackle. The sky is misty.
Rousseau has been called the father of modern French landscape art. Yet for almost all his life he was com- bated, scorned or ignored. From 1836 till 1848, he was denied admittance to the Salon for what was regarded as his unauthorized style of painting, and even after the Revolution of 1849 when the jury of the Salon was chosen from among the artists themselves, though he was at first loudly acclaimed as the greatest landscape- painter living, things continued to go badly with him. So far as his treatment at the Salon is concerned, he never received the honours that, in the judgment of the first critics of to-day he should have had. He was finally made Chevalier of the Legion of Honour, but that was as high a rank as was ever accorded him. And for years the classic hostility was so great that he was never either decorated nor half-decently hung at the Salon. It is an indication of a curious state of art in France when even to-day the adherents of what must still be called the classic school are so bitter against all those whose ideas of art, of beauty, and of the way of rendering nature do not agree with theirs. So taken for granted is this condition of affairs that it occasioned no surprise when, only a few years ago, two of the most famous of France's painters declared that if they had the chance to-day they would never allow a Millet or a Rousseau to be exhibited in the Salon. Such is the antagonism between the two so-called " schools."
But with Rousseau it was not only the Salon that used him hardly. Dealers were even worse in their treatment of him for nearly all his life. Men whom Rousseau made
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wealthy returned to him a mere fraction of the money his works brought them. And while they were growing rich the tormented painter was struggling along under big debts, an insane wife and his own incompetency in business affairs. By fits and starts, to be sure, he man- aged to down the demon of poverty, and it was during one of these breathing spaces that he impersonated the rich American and bought the picture from the starving Millet for four thousand francs. These two men were always close friends and it was in the arms of the painter of the Angelus that Rousseau died.
Rousseau is noted not only for his direct return to nature, but for his wonderful knowledge of all sorts of vegetations. It was not enough for him to represent any kind of a tree or a vague order of underbrush. He worked over every trunk, every branch, almost every leaf, till the absolute portrait of each was obtained. The rocks, the bushes, the flowers, the weeds, the grass, he differentiated them all and gave to all the exact forms, lines and colours that Mother Nature herself had be- stowed upon them. Yet, in spite of such a display of knowledge and such an amount of painstaking detail, Rousseau did not lose his ensemble. Almost never did the minute care or attention to the most luxuriant of foregrounds, middle distances or backgrounds spoil the effect of the picture as a whole.
Even with the bitter disappointments that came to both Millet and Rousseau, they made no attempt to wage war against their enemies. All they asked was a chance to work as seemed best to them, in peace and quiet, with decent remuneration and appreciation. No such attitude was taken by Courbet, whose motto, " Paint only what you see " became the motto for the impressionists. Courbet was as great an iconoclast in his line as was
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ever Martin Luther in his. In politics a Republican, he got embroiled in all sorts of political troubles and finally in 1 87 1, charged with being wholly responsible for the demolition of the Vendome Column, he was arrested and fined for its entire cost of restoration, some four hundred thousand francs. He died across the border in Switzer- land, a ruined and most unhappy artist. Yet, if ever art needed the virile force, the unblinded eyes, the unafraid brush, the whole point of view of this unquenchable, masculine nature, it was when he came upon the scene, and stigmatized the ]&cole des Beaux Arts, and its classi- cal traditions as pure and unmitigated rubbish. It is to his aggressiveness that much of the freedom of French art is to-day due. As has been said, his method was very different from that of most of the Barbizon men. He was determined to convince the world that the world was all wrong and he waged an unceasing, blatant war- fare that, if proving himself egoist of egoists, did much to teach the younger generation that each artist must see for himself, by himself.
In the Salle des Etats, his Wounded Man is one of his famous canvases. Here his overwhite flesh shows to advantage and adds to the gruesomeness and actuality of the injured man.
The two pictures of Deer, in their forest homes are full of Courbet's love of primeval nature. One can almost smell the bark and turf. As critics have said, however, Courbet is not greatest in his outdoor scenes, because in spite of a very real portrait of nature in her world- dress, he has forgotten the veil of atmosphere that she always throws between herself and her most ardent lover. What Corot felt most and is always telling, Courbet never saw and as little felt. Nevertheless these woodland depths
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have a freshness, a verve, a veritable shout of youth and spring.
Until the gift of the Thomy-Thiery collection the Louvre had a very inadequate representation of Daubigny in the two canvases in the Salle des Etats. Daubigny, who began by painting classical figure subjects might have been merely a mediocre academic figure-painter if an accident had not kept him away when his name was called to enter the competition for the Prix de Rome. Disappointed in this way, he then turned his attention strictly to the painting of landscape. He was perhaps less original, less inspired than most of the others of the Barbizon school. His work shows the influence at times of Millet, of Corot, of Rousseau, and he was less an interpreter of nature than her photographer. He loved her devotedly however, and his canvases show an intimate friendship, a deep feeling for all the simplest sights and views. Gray murmuring water, silvery Spring all apple- blossom-laden, old boats drawn to a marshy shore, fields of waving corn, mills working by sputtering streams, — it is the homely, daily life about the river Oise that he loves best and paints best. His work too, is full of a delicious vapour, a softness of air and atmosphere that can be fairly felt. It is not surprising that the con- sumptive boy, on seeing one of Daubigny's Springtimes should have cried, " Oh ! I can breathe now." He liked best to paint the cool of the evening after the glow of the sunset has quite left the sky. His days he spent in his big boat-barge, and as it drifted up or down the Oise he would moor it wherever a gentle turn, an old mill or a waving field attracted him.
The Springtime in this room is one of his more finished canvases. Down a path leading through the end of a field of green wheat, rides a young girl on donkey-back,
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the framework for panniers sticking far out on each side of the beast. Behind her in the wheat two rustic lovers are embracing. At the left at the top of a softly sloping hill the orchards bloom against the sky. Over all is the exquisite tenderness of the early spring.
The Vintage in Burgundy shows the peasants gathering grapes. At the left is a cart drawn by two oxen on which is loaded a tub and from it by a little path comes one of the gatherers. Two boys are lying down in the foreground. The landscape is flat.
Fromentin's unfinished canvas, An Arabian Encamp- ment, hangs on the west wall of the Salle des Etats. It was bought after the death of the painter, just as he had left it. In the foreground, slightly at the left are two white horses, standing in profile, absolutely quiet, though wholly unharnessed and unhitched. In front of them, slightly farther back in the scene are three half-nude Arab women, one standing with arm on hip, facing her two companions, who are sitting and half-lying on the ground. Behind them and the sands of the foreground, are three or four umbrella-sort of tents and back of them the oasis with a few picturesque trees and wooded mounds, and beyond a line of blue hills against the luminous sky. Toward the end of his life Fromentin was accused of painting an East Parisianized, and this picture is hardly up to his earlier Poems of the Desert.
For whatever this lawyer-writer-painter did he was a true poet. In colouring he was always charming, and his aim was to give not only local character and colour to his Eastern scenes but to give them besides a breadth and largeness of vision which to his mind painting was in danger of losing. It was in 1847, after four years in Algeria that his picture Gorges de la ChifFa was exhibited and at the same time his " L'£te dans le Sahara " was pub-
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lished. Sainte-Beuve said of him " Hie paints in two languages and is an amateur in neither. The two are in accord — he passes from one to the other with facihty." As a critic of art of other lands and times, Fromentin is almost unapproachable. As a painter he has been called the " Watteau of the East." His canvases are full of lovely whites, blues and greens. It was the silvery gamut which he felt above all else in the East.
Regnault's Equestrian Portrait of Juan Prim is not so great a work as his portrait of Mile. Breton, his fiancee, but it has, nevertheless, very great claims to highest praise. Painted when Regnault was full of fresh fire in his devotion to Velasquez, this, though not accepted by the sitter, is one of the notable portraits of the century. It represents the general seated on a backing Andalusian horse, his head uncovered, his troops lightly indicated behind him. The general himself called it " A dirty fellow with unwashed face." But in the Salon of 1869 it was tremendously admired and called " Most mag- nificently rendered."
The Romans of the Decadence by Couture is a picture of an orgy, held in a Corinthian hall, decorated with statues of Brutus, Pompey, Cato and Germanicus. Through the pillars and open roof gleams a delicious blue-toned sky. Lying about on the marble seats and standing on the tesselated floor are Roman men and women, the latter mostly only half-clothed. Nearly all are more or less overcome by the wines they have been drinking, and the attitudes of the men and women are recklessly indecent. In the centre, facing the spectator is a woman diaphanously but more completely robed than most of her companions. Of a very beautiful form, with noble lines, she is in much the posture of a figure in one of the tympana of the Parthenon. Her eyes are vacant,
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her whole attitude expresses a listless indifference that is emphasized by her expressionless face. The model for this woman was the betrothed of Couture.
The composition is far beyond the merely excellent, the harmony of colours is delightful, the mass and line full of curve, balance and dignity. But so meaningless are the faces, so merely typical the figures, so little vital interest is in the whole picture that it affects one almost like stepping into a cold-storage warehouse. If the colour is more rich and full than a David, for instance, that does not redeem it sufficiently to give it any impor- tance.
Couture never equalled this picture which won an early fame for him when he was only thirty. His draw- ing was impeccable, his design rich and fertile, his colours pleasing, in general of a golden tone. But he was too closely bound to the academic school and traditions ever to reach the heights he might have attained.
CHAPTER XVIII.
SALLE LACAZE — ROOM I. — ALL SCHOOLS
In 1869 M. Lacaze left to the Louvre a large collection of paintings, principally of Flemish, Dutch and French painters. As already noted the Dutch and most of the Flemish pictures have been put into the Cabinets on either side of the Rubens Gallery. In Room I., called Salle Lacaze are the others of the bequest. The pictures are chiefly French of the Louis XIV. era, but a few other periods as well as other countries are represented.
Among the Spanish pictures in the room are two por- traits by Murillo of the poet Quevado and the Duke d'Assuna. They are both round panels, showing only the head and shoulders of the sitters. Quevado, the poet, with his enormous round eyeglasses, his soft curling hair that falls to his shoulder, his stiff right-angled collar projecting far out, looks as a typical poet should, so much so that in spite of the excellence of the painting it is difficult to believe in his reality.
The duke is a man of the world, with wide sleepy eyes, a double chin and a dissatisfied mouth. It is painted with a soft, full, easy stroke.
A very beautiful Ribera is in this room, the Madonna and Qiild. Mary is lifting her son from his pallet of straw, her own face raised to heaven as if calling a bless- ing upon the sleeping babe. It is a half-length picture
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and has much of the depth of shadow usual to Ribera. The deep tones are used effectively, however, making the light on the child and Mary's face all the more telHng in brilliancy. Correggio might own the chubby baby without shame, and Murillo has painted far more un- satisfactory Madonnas than this deep-eyed, earnest woman who seems to feel a presage of future woe.
Two out of the seven works labelled Velasquez owned by the Louvre are in this collection. The bust of Philip IV. is a repetition of the one in the National Gallery. Here the monarch is about fifty years old, is dressed in a close-fitting habit of black silk, a broad white collar and the chain of the Order of the Golden Fleece. His long hair falls in waves on his collar, his moustache as always is turned sharply upward and the intense pallor of his face is more marked than usual.
The so-called Marie-Theresa is now believed to be the Queen Mariana, second wife of Philip IV. M. Beruete claims this as the study for the full-length of Mariana in Vienna. It represents the young queen about twelve years old, in three-quarters view, turned toward the left. The heavy under lip of the Austrian, the blond hair with its extraordinary ornamentation are character- istics of the girl who, engaged to the Prince of Spain, afterward became the wife of his father. The arrangement of the hair in this portrait is a marvel. Drawn out on each side of her face into regular balloons, it is then curled and puffed, and false hair added, the whole sur- mounted with bows of pink ribbon, feathers and jewels till it is doubtful if she could ever have moved her head so much as an inch. She is dressed in white with a gauze collar bordered with rose-coloured embroidery. Upon her breast are the jewels of some order and on her left shoulder a knot of ribbon. A gvctn curtain partly
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lifted forms the background. This, like most of the Velasquez pictures in the Louvre is far below the painter's best work.
A family Portrait Group by Largilliere of himself, his wife and his daughter, is not particularly happy in com- position. The painter, in a wig that rivals Le Brun's in length and luxuriance, is seated in profile at the extreme left of an outdoor scene. Standing before him and holding a scroll of music in her hand, his young daughter is turning slightly toward her mother who is seated opposite the painter, facing him, her head thus in almost complete profile. The girl is rather charming, the mother high-bred, the accessories conventional and academic as indeed is the entire picture. It does not as a whole compare favourably with much of the painter's work. For Largilliere was not only a noted portrait- painter of his day, but he has left many canvases that reveal real talent. His colour is somewhat heavy, his shadows are too brown, his lights too yellow, the half- tones in his flesh often too green. Yet, nevertheless, the general effect has a sort of distinction of its own. His drawing is vigorous and frequently extremely interesting.
Nattier's Portrait of Mile, de Lambesc and the Young Comte de Brienne is an average example of this painter's style. In front of a drapery lifted at the right mademoi- selle is sitting, turned three-quarters to the left. Her costume, as usual in a Nattier portrait is a mythologic sort of affair. A blue mantle covers the lower part of her figure, her white corsage is low-cut, with a belt of gold, and over her right shoulder a tiger skin is thrown. She is buckling on the sword of her young brother who is standing at her left. He is gaily attired in yellow and red, and carries a red banner.
Hercules and Omphale by Le Moine is one of that
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painter's characteristic works, with some real charm in the handHng of flesh. Omphale is standing on her right foot, her left leg brought around crossing her right. Her right hand hangs at her side, her left arm is about the neck of the seated Hercules who is gazing into her laughing face, while he awkwardly holds the distaff she has given him. At his feet, leaning against his leg, is an adorable little Cupid. The modelling here, especially of the bust of Omphale has a delicate softness that is one of Le Moine's pleasing attributes.
A well-known picture by Boucher in this room is his Three Graces. The three bear on their shoulders a tiny Cupid who, singing in triumph, holds in each outstretched hand, a torch. The maidens can hardly be said to rest, even on one foot. They are all just beginning, it seems, to enter into a dance. The one on the left, holding Cupid's quiver, is almost wholly back to, her head how- ever in profile, turned sharply to the left, and bent down- ward. Her uplifted right arm helps to steady the triumphant Cupid. The central Grace is nearly full face, with her right leg advanced and her left bent backward. She holds a wreath of blooms, and a bit of drapery falls over her left arm across her breast, while her head is thrown back and turned to the left in profile. The one on the right, of darker tone than the others, is more frankly dancing. She rests on her left foot, which is pointed outward, almost meeting the extended right one of the central Grace. Her right foot is thrown out behind and lifted some distance from the ground. All these figures have the upper part of their bodies twisted more or less sharply. There are a grace, an abandon, and if a certain roughness in their postures, also a vigour and frankness that suggest abounding life. About them swirl the clouds of the universe, behind them the luminous
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ether, full of golden light. They are on top of what looks like the rolling globe and at their feet are the roses and dropped petals from their wreaths of flowers. Cupid is a fat baby full of a hilarity his eyes and laughing mouth proclaim loudly, and the reckless way in which he flings his lighted torch about gives a key to the whole picture.
There are a large number of canvases by Chardin in this room, most of which are still-life groups. The one called Various Utensils shows a large quantity of all kinds of dishes on a buffet. At the left is a silver chafing- dish, then a loaf of sugar in a blue paper, a soup-tureen, a napkin and knife, and some jugs. At the right is a small red table with an open drawer and on it porcelain cups and a sugar-bowl. Nothing here looks as if it had been arranged for a picture; the things are placed ex- actly as they might easily have been left by a servant. All Chardin's still life is simply wonderful. It seems painted less for itself than for its surroundings of which it appears merely an integral part.
The House of Cards is a noted figure composition by Chardin here. A young man with large, soft hat is seated in profile before a table upon which he is constructing a house of cards. He has a serious expression, is perhaps a trifle ennuied. His coat is gray, hat black, his long loosely curling hair blond. There are no accessories, the background being as plain as a modern painter would make it, and though Chardin reminds one in certain ways of the Dutch school he is very unlike it in this simplicity of details.
A most charming example of Rigaud is his portrait of the young Due de Lesdiguieres. The duke was only eight years old when the picture was painted, in 1687. He has a blond peruke, holds in his left hand the baton of the commander, and is in armour, as if emphasizing
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that he was the youngest of a race of soldiers. The tone of the flesh is fine and rarely clear, the complexion charm- ing, the drawing almost a caress, so exquisitely has the point indicated the delicate forms. The large eyes are brilliant with a spirit that seems as gay as it is intense. About the whole figure there are nevertheless a slightness and a transparency in the exquisite flesh, that convey an impression of the delicate health of the young duke who died so early. The picture is Rigaud at his best.
With the exception of the Embarkation for Cythera the Louvre owned nothing of Watteau till it received the bequest from M. Lacaze. Though none of the ten panels in this collection equals that famous one, there are a number of great merit and charm. Of them all Gilles and the Antiope are the most noted.
Gilles stands with both arms flat at his side, all in his white costume, at the top of a knoll up to which others are scrambling after him. It is life-size, and it is said Watteau never painted another life-size figure. The contention that he could not, seems here answered. Certainly the figure is as splendidly drawn, as firmly modelled, as a Rubens or a Veronese would have done it. The characterization of the face is as remarkable as its firm full modelling. The mingled amusement and spitefulness that overspread it are most aptly indicated. The tones of his white costume abound in the pearly lights Watteau so loved.
More beautiful, if not more famous, is the Jupiter and Antiope, which up to the late rearrangement of the rooms in the museum had a place in the Salon Carre. Lying at the edge of a bank on her side, facing out, is Antiope, her head resting on her right arm, her left hanging straight down across her breast. Her right knee is drawn sharply up, her left leg stretched out more
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nearly to its length. Under the sleeping figure is a bit of drapery, but over her is none, for the slight wrapping that evidently had shielded her is being plucked back by the dark, brawny arm of Jupiter, who, in satyr guise, is behind her gazing down entranced.
It is a scene almost more Titianesque than Titian ever painted. Its similarity to that master's works has been frequently pointed out, as well as certain Rubenesque attributes. That it is neither a copy of Rubens nor of Titian is its greatest claim to admiration. If the style and subject of the composition and the flesh gradations suggest Titian, or if the drawing of the nymph's body and certain tones of the flesh recall Rubens, it is neverthe- less all Watteau.
The figure of Antiope is hardly less beautiful than any Venus that Titian ever painted. The modulations in the golden tones are almost as exquisite as the Venetian painter could have achieved, but there is a sort of silver coolness about them that makes them Watteau's own. The surety of construction, the mastery of form, the sim- ple handling, have rarely been excelled by the greatest masters of the Renaissance of Italy. Perhaps that fallen left arm, cutting as it does in its brilliant colour so sharply against the dark bank, is a doubtful note, from a compositional point of view. But as a bit of local colour and modelling it is in itself a reason for being. The head of this sleeping favourite of the king of the gods is piquant, fascinating, — but unquestionably it is the head of a veritable French girl. Titian's nymphs and goddesses are mostly of a large, impersonal type, sug- gesting by this very impersonality the calm-eyed Greek statues. But here, Watteau has gone far beyond the impersonal, the general. This is an individual, un- doubted French nymph, in spite of the ugly satyr above
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her, not so much a Grecian goddess, as a gay Gallic sprite.
La Finette and L'Indifferent are small pictures on wood. They were both once the property of Madame de Pompadour. Biirger calls them masterpieces for "quality and purity."
LTndifferent is a counterpart of Gilles. He stands with one foot pointed, both arms extended, his short cape falling over his right arm. He is just about to make a pas-seul and he is fairly thrilling with life, move- ment and grace, though the whole figure is not twenty centimetres high. He has a pink short cloak lined with pale blue, waistcoat of blue-green, breeches to match and pink silk stockings, hat of the same delicate green as the costume. The background of trees on the left keeps the general blue-green scheme, and on the right it is lightened by a sun setting in silvery pinks, thus com- plementing the cloak and the pink silk stockings. The charm of the whole picture is in this exquisite gradation of such delicate tones, broken up by reflections that produce a " harmony which is very simple but extremely distingue and rare."
In Finette are much the same qualities, perhaps intensi- fied.
The False Step shows a young woman who has slipped and fallen and is seated almost squarely back to on the ground, resting on her left arm with which she has caught herself. With her right arm she is somewhat uncertainly pushing back the young man who is leaning over her, his arm about her waist. The light strikes full on her charming neck, and her head and the young cavalier's stand out against a blue sky called by M, Burger " tm peu vif."
The Juggler is attributed to the earliest period of
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Watteau's art. The juggler himself stands in profile before an oval table on which is a pack of cards and three dice-boxes. Above these latter he holds his right hand, while with the left he is attracting the attention of his audience, two women seated opposite him with a child between them. Back of the chair of the one on the right is a gallant, much interested in a young woman who is at the extreme left and is apparently about leaving the room, not without, however, a parting glance at the watching youth. Here are the fine soft silks, and gay ap- parel Watteau so delights in, and in the countenance of the juggler he had a chance to display his love for the grotesque.
Fragonard as well as Watteau has a long list of pictures in this room, of many different subjects.
The Bathers represents half a dozen nymphs or maidens in a very revel of bathing. They are springing into the waves, rushing through them, or coming buoyantly to the top. The water is not deep, and trees, rushes and grass are all about. Two of the principal figures are in the centre of the composition, one throwing herself backward into the water with arms and legs extended, while the other is springing in from the bordering grass, showing her full back. This is not far removed from the manner of Boucher. But loosely as it is drawn and constructed it has much charm of colour and joy of move- m.ent.
The two figure studies called Inspiration and a Figure of Fantasy are almost identical in position. In both a young man is seated turned three-quarters to the right, his head facing in the opposite direction. Each head is slightly lifted and has clear-cut, vigorous features, firm full brow, and searching eyes. The one called an imagi- nary figure holds its hands rather tightly closed, one
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on the balustrade in front of him, the other above clasping his coat. A black hat with a gray plume is on the balus- trade beside him, his full loose ruffle is close about his neck, his tunic is blue and his hair blond. In Inspiration the loose white collar is open far down the throat. Before him on a table are papers and he holds a pen suspended in his left hand. Both of these figures have life and character and are firmly and vividly drawn.
Another charming panel is the one called A Study, showing a very young girl seated before a table, hold- ing an open book. Her head is bent somewhat back and sidewards, her eyes merrily glancing to the left, a be- witching smile on her soft red lips. Neck and part of the bust are bare, surrounded by a big, flaring Marie-Antoi- nette sort of collar.
The Head of a Young Girl by Greuze is not one of his most beautiful faces, being somewhat heavy in feature. It is worth noticing however for one reason, that com- paratively few of his girls' faces are ever seen in profile. In this the shoulders are nearly in full view, but the head is turned up and around toward the left shoulder. Her light hair is bound with a violet ribbon run over it twice, her gray chemisette is open at the neck leaving one breast uncovered. The heaviness and angularity of the drapery so often found in Greuze's works is very notice- able here, but as usual, also, there are the clear, fresh, transparent tones and the soft luminous eyes.
CHAPTER XIX.
SALLE DENON — ROOM XV. — ALL SCHOOLS — PORTRAITS
Salle Denon, marked Room XV. on the plan, is re- served for portraits of artists. It was opened in 1887 and is modelled on the general lines of the collection of portraits in the Uffizi. The portraits here, however, do not begin to compare with those in the Florentine gallery either in number or extent.
One of the most important in the room is Tintoretto's Portrait of Himself. Indeed, of all the long list of paintings ascribed to Tintoretto in the Louvre, it is only in this portrait that a half-adequate idea of his genius can be obtained. It is supposed to have been painted either just before or just after he did the Paradise and represents him therefore as an old man. He is in full face, dressed in black against a dark background, the deep tones of his surroundings making more striking the whiteness of his curly beard and short-cropped hair. It is a face in which the fires of youth still burn in the slumberous depths of the great dark eyes, a face that is marked genius from the square, ridged, long forehead to the mouth which though hidden under the moustache, reveals itself in the sensitive lines that mark the shadows above and below. It is a worn face, with shadows under the eyes, with hollow cheeks, with mournful fur- rows reaching downward from the nose. It is a self-
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contained, solitary spirit that yet looks out at the world eagerly, passionately, and if the stoop of the shoulders hints of the weary years that rest upon them, there is a firmness of pose, a calmness even in the flames within the eyes that bespeak the undying creative spirit.
The Portrait of Le Brun by Largilliere is one of the best known of all Largilliere's works. Seated before an easel on which is a large sketch of one of his Versailles compositions, Le Brun, in his enormous curled wig that reaches almost to his waist, points to this sketch while his face is turned outward as if he were speaking to some one about it. His ample cloak of red velvet covers his legs, and seems to accentuate the princely character of the man. Beside him on the right, on a table, is an engraving of the Tent of Darius, a small cast of Antinoiis and of the Gladiator. At the left, on the floor, are a head and a torso modelled upon the antique, a globe, a book, a drawing and papers. It is the portrait best recognized as Charles Le Brun, and though, so far as surroundings and treatment go it is a thoroughly academic portrait, it has besides much more than the elements of style, individuality and characterization. Its very pseudo-classicism is after all extremely fitting in a portrait of that great champion of the Grand Monarch.
Another Portrait of Le Brun is by Rigaud, Largilliere's great friend. Le Brun is here painted on the same panel with Mignard, and the two, if less beautiful examples of Rigaud 's skill than the celebrated double portrait of his mother, are worthy of the painter who was the great favourite of kings and princes. The two men are behind a sort of railing. At the right, Le Brun, turning to the left is seen in three-quarters position, his costume a dead-leaf colour, his cloak of violet velvet. In one hand he holds his palette and brushes, his maulstick in tlie
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other. Mignard is on the left, almost full face, his head bare, as is Le Brun's, dressed in black velvet, one hand resting on a drawing, the other raised, pointing to something out of the picture.
Tocque is represented in this gallery by two admirable portraits, one of the painter Louis Galloche, the other of the sculptor Jean-Louis Lemoyne. Tocque had a vigour and simplicity in portraiture rare in that day, though he was injured by Nattier 's influence.
One of the best portraits that Greuze ever painted is that of himself in this room. He was an extremely inter- esting man in appearance, of middle height, with a strik- ing head, full, high forehead, large, luminous eyes, finely formed nose, rather thin mouth. His hair he wore in curls on either side of his face, the front being combed straight back. This portrait shows him rather late in life, in three-quarters position, turned toward the left. The hair is powdered and he has a blue coat, a gray waistcoat and a loosely tied white cravat. About the mouth and the eyes there is, perhaps, a hint of the self- esteem and vanity which were his worst faults.
Three portraits by Madame Vigee-Le Brun are here, of Joseph Vernet, of Hubert Robert and of herself and daughter. This latter is one of her best known and most successful works. She is seated upon a green sofa, in a white muslin dress that leaves her right arm, shoul- der and neck bare. Bound about her waist with a red sash the ends of an olive-toned mantle behind her drop on to her lap. Her soft blond hair with the fascinating loose curls about her face, is partly confined by a red ribbon. Leaning against her mother's knee, with both arms clasped about her neck, and her head against her shoulder, is the small daughter, dressed in blue. Her tender little face with its half-open mouth expresses a
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childlike and very real devotion. Madame Le Brun herself, if somewhat conscious of her delicate oval face, shining eyes and pink cheeks, shows a maternal love that is both spontaneous and unaffected. This picture is painted with a full if delicate brush, the general tone is most harmonious, the scheme of colour distinguished.
Hubert Robert is posed in an attitude absolutely free from affectation. It is exactly as if he had suddenly leaned upon the stone balustrade before him while work- ing at his painting, and for a moment stopped to turn and talk. His hair is white, his full neck is bound about with a soft white kerchief giving a brilliant high light to the rather gay costume. His coat is violet with a red collar, displaying a yellow waistcoat. In his left hand he holds his palette and brushes. There is a vigour of expression about the face, a very living feeling in the modelling, that indicates that it must have been a most excellent portrait. The brush-work is free, loose and supple. There is none of the dryness Madame Le Brun sometimes fell into in her later years.
The Portrait of Himself by Delacroix, painted in 1827, shows clearly the kind of man he was. For strangely enough, this painter who revelled in colour, in warmth, in movement, in a very orgy of emotion on canvas, lived the simplest, quietest, most reserved of lives. All his strength, energy and passion went into his brush, — he had none left for his daily life. Fighting disease always, fragile from boyhood, it was only by thus conserving all his powers that he could have begun to produce the enormous mass of work he left behind him. This pale-faced young man, with the deep, shadowed eyes, the heavy hair over the full square brow, the sensitive, firm mouth, was almost a recluse. He left the portrait to his governess with the verbal stipula-
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tion that it should be given to the Louvre so soon as a Bourbon should be once more on the French throne. The Man with the Leather Belt by Courbet is a por- trait of the painter himself when he was a young man. Seated beside a table, he is shown in three-quarters view, facing to the right of the picture. Has right elbow rests upon a volume or portfolio on the table and his head leans slightly against his right hand which is drawn up to his neck. His left hand fingers the broad leather belt which has given the name to the picture. He is dressed in black, has bushy, curling black hair, worn long, black eyes and a thin black moustache and beard. The face that Sylvestre likened to an Assyrian bas-relief, shows the finely-drawn eyebrows, the full forehead, the mobile lips, the deep, passionate eyes that made Courbet, especially as a young man, so remarkably handsome. Even with greater pow'er are the hands portrayed. The virile strength, yet fineness of line and construction of that flexible right hand would alone mark Courbet as a powerful draughtsman.
CHAPTER XX.
THOMY-THIERY SALLES — FRENCH SCHOOL
With the opening of the Thomy-Thiery collection in 1903, three more rooms of the Louvre were given up to paintings. These rooms are far from the rest of the picture-gallery, being up-stairs and across the court, over the double colonnade of Louis XIV., at the end of the Musee de Marine. To get to them it is necessary to go up crooked, narrow, wooden back stairs, but it is an ascent that must more than repay the climber. These pictures, most of which are of rather small dimen- sions, represent the very height of French art — espe- cially French landscape art, — from 1830 to, say, 1870 or later. Such a collection the Louvre probably never could have owned without individual generosity like this of M. Thomy-Thiery.
Corot, Daubigny, Decamps, Delacroix, Diaz, Dupre, Fromentin, Isabey, Meissonier, Millet, Rousseau and Troyon are all represented in the hundred pictures left by M. Thomy-Thiery as well as Barye with one sketch and a hundred and forty-four bronzes. Painters who otherwise are hardly known in the Louvre are most splendidly in evidence in this collection.
There are seventeen of Decamps and they are very various in subject and quality. All sides of his art are here shown. The splendid dogs, the Oriental subjects,
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the Elephant and the Tiger at the Stream, where the light is so golden, composition so picturesque, with such a superb effect made by the huge and sombre mass of the elephant against the evening sky, the Street of Smyrna, so sun-kissed, the Knife-Grinder, the Beggar Counting His Gains, the Valet of the Dogs, the Bell-Ringers, the Hunt- ing Dogs at Rest, — these are all chefs-d'oeuvre.
The Monkey Painter shows one of the beasts Decamps so often painted, seated on the ground, profile turned to the right, before a canvas. He is dressed in a black velvet suit ornamented with gold braid and bound about his waist with a leather belt. In his left hand he holds his palette and extra brushes, while he paints with a long-handled brush held in his right, the canvas which is leaning against a table on top of which is a bottle of varnish and an earthen jar full of a lot of brushes. A palette, a Dutch pipe, and another landscape hang on the wall behind, and an elaborate jar and tea-caddy are on the floor in front of the table. Around the corner, in back at the left, a second monkey is seen back to, mixing colours on a slab. The earnestness and gravity of the mimic workmen are expressed with a sort of glee and one can nearly hear the laugh of the painter who por- trayed them. The arrangement, colour and delicate esprit of this composition are a marvel, the execution broad and free.
His Valet de Chiens was one of his greatest successes in the Exposition of 1855, at which time his works filled almost an entire room. The valet is just opening the door at the back of the yard or court which contains six dogs. He has raised his whip in air, and is about to land one of his feet on the yelping brutes below him, in an attempt to stop their noise. The dogs, the court, the bit of sky, the man himself are all vivid, actual and
XTbom^^Ubtet^ Salles 387
full of life and movement. As a whole, however, the composition is spotted and lacks balance and massing.
The Bulldog and Scotch Terrier here is a small picture of the larger sketch already described.
With Delacroix the museum has gained even more. These are his smaller pictures illustrating scenes from Shakespeare and Walter Scott, such as the Abduction of Rebecca, which is full of movement, the Fiancee d'Abydos, the Death of Ophelia, Hamlet and Horatio, all excellent works. The romantic elements are equally strongly marked in Roger Delivering Angelica, a most dramatic picture, which, compared with the same subject treated by Ingres is a very antithesis in its point of view. As an animal-painter, and Delacroix took high rank as that, he is only represented by two canvases, both of lions.
There are thirteen scenes by Daubigny, of which per- haps the most important are La Mare aux Cigognes, La Vue de la Tamise a firith, Les Peniches, L'J&tang, Les Bords de I'Oise, Le Moulin de Gylieu. The first of these, The Pond of the Storks, has as foreground a marshy pool where rushes and water-lilies grow thickly. In the middle of it are five or six storks fishing with their long necks and bills and making dark spots on the gleaming surface. At the right is a tree in blossom, and beyond a forest of trees stands deep in the water. At the left are more trees on a higher bit of ground, and beyond soft hills blur against the luminous sky. A tender tranquillity broods over this shaded pool, and soft zephyrs whisper through the branches and scarce lift the leaves and blossoms. The pond is exquisite in its fleckings and reflections, the whole scene a dream of beauty.
Almost everything Diaz loved to paint has at least one
388 ube art of tbe Xouvre
sample here. Mythologic scenes, nude women, animals, country landscape, Oriental subjects and some of his beautiful bits of the Barbizon forest.
One of the most exquisite of them all is L'l&ploree. It is evening in the woods. In this dim and shrouding light is seen a young woman turned back to, but slightly to the left, her head bent forward. Her shoulders and back are bare above a gray skirt. The colour of her flesh is wonderful. The soft creaminess of the skin, the delicious gradations of tone are indescribable in words. And over all is the feeling of the evening. It is in its own way as rare a tone-poem as a Corot.
Sous Bois is a characteristic bit in the very heart of the Forest of Fontainebleau. The low, scraggy trees with mossgrown, twisted trunks and branches suggest in their outline something of an old New England orchard. The leaves are not too thick to hide the gnarled limbs, nor to prevent the sunlight from flickering through down on to the mossy, rocky ground. At the foot of two trees close together, in the shade, sits a man with two dogs beside him. One lies close to his side, the other stands at his right, his body half in the broad shaft of light that falls beyond the man. The picture is full of the sheen and glimmer and soft coolness and dim glades of a summer forest.
Corot has many lovely examples here, the most notice- able being La Porte d' Amiens, La Route d'Arras, Le Soir, L'figlogue, Le Vallon, L'fitang.
The little canvas of Le Vallon is in his rather early manner, or perhaps better in his transition style. The greenness of the beautiful scene is fairly thrilling. It is so very green and sunny that it is hard to reconcile it with the silvery palette Corot is mostly known by. Yet, intense as it is, it is soft and exquisite in colour. The
Ubomp^Ubterp Salles 389
composition is almost like a Daubigny with its solidity and definiteness of place. At the right stretching over to beyond the centre of the canvas, is a clump of trees, with hedges running out from it at each end. The sun is behind all this foliage and therefore its shadow fills nearly the whole of the foreground. And what a tender, luminous shadow it is! Between the trunks and through openings in the leaves, the sun-bathed sky and fields can be seen. In the foreground, mostly in the shadow, are a group of peasants, a cow and a labourer. There is more tangibility here than in some of Corot's later works, but it has almost as great a charm and poetic feeling as his best known canvases.
The Landscape with Cows called also L'fitang, is a rather curious composition, the massing of the five or six willows against the sky looking a little like a procession of long-legged, soft-winged birds, wandering through the marshy water. It is however, none the less charming. Again, as so often with Corot, the trees are silhouetted against the sky, which is here of a soft golden tone full of the effulgence of the setting sun. The trees are massed mostly at the left, growing on a point of land that sharpens into the water to nothing, and leaves two willows as advance-guard, striding into the glowing pool. Two cows stand gazing ruminatingly about in this pool which fills the left and centre of the foreground and is beautiful in its silvery-golden shimmer. On a high bank a herdsman in a red cap sits watching the cows, and in the distance, at the left, a gray hill rises against the sunset sky. It is dreamy, poetic, soft and tender.
One of the most important of the Thomy-Thiery Corots is La Route d'Arras. It is a scene of very humble peasant surroundings, as simple and frankly stated as the severest naturalist could desire. Yet how Corot's brush has caught
390 Ube Hrt ot tbe %o\xvtc
the poetry, the charm, the hidden beauty! No longer banal, low, dingy or commonplace, the little hamlet with its stagnant pool, its thin, poverty-stricken trees, its old, red-roofed cottages, becomes a tender painter's dream, yet so real, so true, that there can be no doubts of its actual existence. At the right, stretching diagonally to the central plane of the picture, is the row of beech, birch and ash-trees, with slender, crooked trunks and scattering leaves of gray-green, that mass against a pale sky, soft, wide-arched, infinite. At the right of the trees is a line of low cottages following the row of trees, and in front the torpid gutter reflecting the tree-trunks. A wide road stretches out to the horizon at the left, here and there dotted with heavy-headed willows. A horseman walks toward this distance, soft clouds float in the pale, clear sky. A gentle shadow envelops most of the foreground.
Le Paysage d'ltalie, L'figlogue, with their lengthened gi-oups of trees, the Porte d'Amiens, Le Chemin de Sevres, La Soulaie, L'Entree de Village, Les Chaumieres, — all are exquisite notes, subtle, full of the spirit of the painter, he who saw with different eyes from most of us workaday mortals, — full of the perfume of a quiet, peaceful soul, yet as true and just as serene.
Of all the landscape-painters of the romantic school, Theodore Rousseau is here represented with the great- est variety of works and of the greatest value. There are small bits of the highest excellence, Hke Le Coteau, Le Passeur, L'fitang, and La Plaine des Pyrenees and there are the larger canvases, evincing still more clearly his wonderful mastery, such as Les Chenes, Les Bords de la Loire, Le Printemps, Le Village sous les Arbres.
The foreground of Les Bords de la Loire is a low marsh, over which the river has flowed into little pools and inlets. In one of these bigger inlets in the very
centre of the foreground, a fisherman has moored his boat at the edge of the marshy shore, and, leaning over its side, he is washing his nets. Back of him and a Httle to the left, is a group of trees under which a peasant sits watching. Beyond, again, the wide unbroken Loire, till it reaches the farthest bank which, with its trees, a church and some cottages, blurs softly against the sky. This sky is gray, illumined here and there with the rays of the sun behind the clouds. It is a beautiful landscape, full of the peace of a quiet spot far from the noise and turmoil of city life. Like all of Rosseau's canvases it is surcharged with rich, deep colour, vigorous yet tender.
Les Chenes shows how differently he paints the oak from Dupre. He sees in it perhaps, less of mood, and more of tree. Dupre often seems to endow his marvellous French oaks with a personality that makes them half- human. With Rousseau they are, if less personified, none the less wonderful. Actual trees of actual forests, taken root and branch right out of mother earth, they seem positively planted in these compositions of this father of modern landscape art. This one is a picture of a rich green field, crossed by a narrow, curving roadway. In the middle ground are three of the tremendous oaks, their trunks grouped together in the centre, with several more separate ones at short distances apart. Their foliage makes one mass, even the limbs of those farthest meeting the middle group. The shadows are spotted over the field which is dotted also with cows and peasants. Noth- ing much more beautiful can be imagined than the way in which these trees mass together and make the composition.
In Village sous les Arbres, are a number of little low huts nestling under the deep shade of some enormous oaks. Against the clear sky this forms a sombre, heavy
392 Ube Hrt of tbe Xou\?re
mass, and the poor little cottages seem, in their shadowed retreat, insignificant and lowly enough. A peasant carry- ing two pails is walking toward a rivulet that flows at the right of the hamlet. As a composition it is dig- nified, even stately. And as ever the great oaks are magnificently portrayed.
Millet has a number of beautiful works, among them being La Bruleuse d'Herbes, Le Fendeur de Bois, La Lessiveuse, Le Vanneur, La Precaution Maternelle, and Les Botteleurs, which, showing the peasants making hay, is a canvas almost rivalling the Gleaners in popularity.
La Bruleuse d'Herbes is one of the single-figure com- positions Millet was so fond of, where a solitary woman stands in a landscape that tells its own story and so helps to tell hers. Here she is leaning on her three-pronged rake, looking down at a burning mound of dry leaves and twigs. She has been clearing the ground and all about her is the dry, bubbly earth, and back, against which she is silhouetted, is the illimitable sky, enveloping all. There is infinite patience, a calmness born of long experience, a oneness with stern nature in this admirably drawn and poised figure, which is in a shadow that is only lightened on her left shoulder and down the left half of her heavy apron. Scarcely any of Millet's pic- tures are fuller of poetry than is this little canvas.
La Lessiveuse is the interior of a kitchen lighted only from the left, with the housewife standing by her huge tub pouring the lye on to the cloth thrown over it. The steam rises in thick vapour and she has pulled back her skirts to keep them away from the too strong fumes. She is so placed that the light strikes the left side of her face, the upper part of her body, a little on the right below the waist and her right arm. The rest of her body is thrown into shadow by the tub. This is an immense but
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rather low, wooden affair bound about many times with wooden hoops and resting upon two wooden saw-horses. Behind the woman is the big fireplace where the fire crackles about the pot of grease. The woman herself, dressed in roughest of peasant clothes, is interesting even as mere spots of colour, with her gray cap, her rose bodice and her blue apron. As a personality she is more than interesting. Vigour, absorption in her work, firm- ness of muscle, quietness of pose all go to make this sturdy figure a sort of prose pastel.
Le Vanneur is still another interior, and one with even less light is the barn wherein is the winnower. Coming from the left, which is the direction from which comes the light also, is the man, bent almost double back- wards under the weight of an enormous flat, scuttle- shaped basket. This is filled with grain and from it a cloud of chaff arises. The labourer is in strict profile, dressed in a gray waistcoat and blue overalls. As he staggers across the barn the light strikes against his back and hits his left hand, thus making a spot of bril- liancy toward the centre of the picture and helping to balance the composition. It is only the simplest sort of scene, of a bit of rough peasant life. But by the arrange- ment of light, by the choice of sympathetic if very quiet colours, by very excellent and very forceful drawing, it would be a splendid piece of work even without the attribute that was in everything Millet did, — that soul- quality without which none of his canvases would be truly his.
The collection of Troyons in these rooms is wonder- ful. They were picked with great discrimination and taste and almost every one is a masterpiece. The Hau- teurs de Suresnes is perhaps the most marvellous, though Others are almost as beautiful, such as L*Abreuvoir,
394 Ube Htt of tbe Xouvte
Le Gue, La Barriere, La Rencontre des Troupeaux, La Provende des Poules.
In the first of these the Seine makes a broad curve as it sweeps on toward the low hills that break the line of the horizon. On a level rise of ground a herd of cows is grazing while a young boy keeps watch, and coming from the hills at the right is a peasant on horseback. This is one of Troyon's canvases noted for its clearness of atmosphere, its charm of landscape, its quiet country life, its stolid ruminating cows.
In La Barriere a stream runs diagonally across the foreground, a low bank sloping to it on the right, a rail fence crossing it on the left. In the middle ground in the field beyond, a man on horseback drives a herd of cattle before him. Three of these have already come around the corner of the fence and are going to the water for drink. The fields stretch out broadly on all sides rising to low hills in the distance which are bathed by the sun's rays. This brilliant canvas is, like all, a veritable bit of outdoors. The cows are portrayed as only Troyon could portray them, with a solidity, a massive impassiveness, and a surety of vision that did not need microscopically exact anatomical drawing to make them splendidly real.
In looking at Le Matin, once more one is inclined to cavil at those who call Troyon a painter but no poet. If this is not poetry, then it is painting that is more pregnant with beauty and meaning than most poems. Here are the very hours of the day that Corot loved. Yet with what a vastly different brush are they portrayed. Perhaps it is this very difference that makes the critics claim that if Corot is poetry, then forsooth this is none. Cer- tainly it is more direct, less subtle, more vigorous, less ethereal, more earthly than the exquisite tone-poems of Pere Corot. Yet it is none the less so full of the spirit
.
Zbom^^Ubict^ Salles 395
of the morning, so charged with the freshness that is perennial, so full of the gladness of spring, withal so simply natural, so exuberantly sane, that it must be a soul of one idea who cannot see beauty as well as truth, poetry as well as vivid reality in this canvas.
On a path coming straight forward walks a peasant holding her small boy by the hand. The pathway is broken by the long, soft shadows thrown by the border- ing trees and the two travellers, for directly behind them the sun is just rising. Ajt the woman's left and ahead of her two cows have gone to the pool below the pathway. A dog barks at them, and far behind in the morning mist a peasant in a cart talks with a woman. This distance is peculiarly lovely in tone. The shimmer- ing, hazy air is rendered with a charm very unusual in paintings, however common in nature. And it is a charm that rests over all the scene.
The Troupeau de Moutons are coming out of a clear- ing into the woods, driven by a shepherd-boy behind them. Back of them the sun shows clearer, here within the forest it only flecks in spots and streaks over boy and sheep. Troyon was said to paint sheep till one could hear them bleat, and this flock justifies his reputation. Surely living sheep could hardly be more real, or seem more capable of filling the air with their baa-ahs.
It is evening, in the Rencontre des Troupeaux, and through the broad pathway of the forest one man driv- ing his cows, meets a flock of sheep. Beyond the road shines the clear light of the evening sky.
La Provende des Poules is a bit of brilliant colour. A deep thundercloud is back of the farm and its outbuild- ings, and at the right the men are hastily piling hay into the carts. In the foreground a woman has just fed the flock of poultry and is going back to the farm. The
396 Ube Hrt ot tbe Xou\>re
wonderful light that breaks through the clouds strikes her and the poultry squarely, intensifying the bright feathers of the hens and roosters.
No pictures by Dupre are in the Louvre except in this collection. Here are twelve of his canvases, and almost all are chefs-d'oeuvre, not so greatly retouched and re- handled as are some of his later works. Studying these it is possible to see how Dupre's contemporaries could have had the tremendous admiration for this solitary man of L'Isle Adam, who worked without ceasing, in great humility of spirit, avoiding both connoisseurs and buyers, fretting with a consciousness of what he felt to be the impossibility of ever adequately representing the spirit of his vision. It is this care, this dissatisfaction that has made us of to-day feel that his touch was heavy and laboured, that his canvas was overladen, too solid, too full of consideration and lacking in that esprit and ease which seems obligatory in works of art. These, in this collection, however, show him at his best, and, in the four, L'Abreuvoir et Grand Chene, Les Landes, Soleil Couchant apres I'Orage, and Soleil Couchant sur un Marais, he is seen to be a master almost without an equal in his own line.
The Great Oak and Watering- Place shows this mighty, wide-armed tree filling nearly the centre of the picture. It grows on a bank that slopes down rather sharply to a clear pool bordered with reeds, that fills the left of the foreground. To this pool come straying down a dozen or so of cattle from the road that stretches above from the tree to the left. Some are already drinking, some are still only part-way down the bank. Under the spreading branches of the tree are the thatched roofs of peasants' cottages, and walking down the roadway toward them is a man with his scythe over his shoulder.
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TLbom^^Ubict^ Salles 397
At the left is a glimpse of plain to the horizon, and at the right a hint of forest against the sky. This sky is very beautiful, filled with soft, gray, tremulous clouds. It is a peaceful scene full of a placid poetry.
More brilliant in colour is the one where the sun is setting over a marsh. In the foreground a wet marsh with small and big pools of reed-grown water is spotted with grazing cattle. In the distance a line of trees and thatched cottages are dark against the gleaming sky. The rays of the sun, just hidden by the lowest bank of cloud, separate fanlike over the sky, which is flecked with other clouds whose edges only hint the gold behind them. The water reflects in more unbroken expanse the golden light, and drowns the shadows of the trees and reeds. It is softly glorious in colour, full of sentiment and feeling, one of the very best canvases by Jules Dupre.
Almost equal to it is the Sun Smiling after a Storm. Cows again are drinking from the pond, at one side of which a huge oak grows, its branches half-denuded of leaves. The plain extends out beyond to a dark forest at the edge of the horizon. Gray, heavy clouds fill the sky whose outlines are limned with the golden pencil of the setting sun.
Les Landes is a gray-toned scene, and is perhaps the greatest of all the painter's canvases here. Above all trees Dupre loved the oak, and it is the oak in all its moods, in sun, in rain, in quiet, in storm, under the morning light, darkened against the evening sky, half- disrobed of its reddened leaves or full of richest greenery, that he has painted over and over with a scrupulous fidelity but with an artistic poetizing that reveals the very spirit of this ancient tree. Here, in Les Landes are the oaks of central France. Not the great, free, broad-armed, vigorous oaks of Brittany, but the poor, little, misshaped,
39^ Ube Hrt ot tbe Xouvte
obstinate, sad trees of the arid soil that only half-nour- ishes. The land is sadder still with its autumn dryness and burnt surfaces. In the foreground some cows are grazing in a pasture all dry and full of crisp heath and herbs. Farther back are the oaks, growing on the bank of a river. The sky is full of clouds, so full that not one gleam from the sun can pierce through. One critic says that Dupre has rendered the scene with "a brush rude, intense, majestic," and " shown the penetrating silence of the solitude, the melancholy, and at the same time the dolorousness and splendour in that deserted land."
Meissonier also has no canvases yet in the Louvre ex- cept these in this gallery. Among these other men, mostly of the school of Barbizon, this painter's works stand out with an individuality and almost strangeness. Meissonier out-Dutched the Dutch in his extraordinary care for detail, his microscopical finish. It may be said that he was great in spite of his historical accuracy, his elaborate button-detail. He possessed to a high degree first-class draughtsmanship, a feeling for movement, mass and climax. He could tell, none better, a story most won- derfully well. He had a strong dramatic sense, was a vigorous if not subtle or poetic colourist and was able to infuse life into the smallest, most minutely finished of his most insignificant canvases. Coming as a boy to Paris when romanticists and classicists were in the depths of their most violent discussions, he was already strong enough and original enough to choose a path for himself quite unassailed and untroubled by either school. For years he painted almost entirely little genre subjects; not till the emperor ordered a picture of Solferino did he begin the military scenes that have made his name world- renowned. The pictures here show him with all his ex-
XTbomi^^Ubtet^ Salles 399
quisite brush-work, his vivacity, his reality, his fine draw- ing, admirable composition and striking local colour.
Les Ordonnances is one where his wonderful knowl- edge of the horse is apparent in the four animals here depicted, each in an extremely foreshortened position, scarcely lessened in difficulty because all are at rest. In front of a stone house are two mounted hussars, each holding by the bridle another fully harnessed animal. The wall of the house is in brilliant sunshine, augmented in effect by the three-cornered shadow of a balcony or landing that projects from a doorway in the second story. The sun is high in the heavens, for the shadows under the horses' feet are only slightly prolonged and their flanks glisten in the sharp light. The two forward horses stand facing the wall and the grenadier at the entrance on guard. The hussar is almost squarely back to, giving a fine view of his braided and fur-bound jacket, slung across his shoulders. The other soldier has his two horses planted facing almost opposite and as he bends forward over his bundle of blankets, his face is in shadow. In the distance another grenadier is at a wide opening of a building with a sharp-pointed roof. This picture was once in the Stuart collection.
The Poet is seated in profile at the right at a table which is in front of a window. He is in gray, in the style of Louis XV., and as he sits meditating and reading what he has written, he lays the end of his goose-quill pen against his lips. Large books rest upon the table and back on the wall a tapestry hangs. There is an air of distinction about this that satisfies, even if it does not profoundly impress.
Le Liseur is in a costume of the time of Louis XIII., the Flute-Player in that of Louis XV. These are both Meissonier at his level, which is also his best.
400 XTbe Hrt ot tbe Xouvre
Of the several Isabeys perhaps the most delightful is A Marriage in the Church at Delft. The colour of tiiis little picture, so crowded with tiny figures, is like the heart of a gem. The church interior is thronged with spectators of a noble wedding. Banners hang from the pillars, and as the bride and groom advance from the left up toward the stairway leading to the balcony, they are followed and preceded by a brilliant cortege in the costume of the seventeenth century. The shimmer of the satins and silks is wonderful, and the bride's gown of white satin is a marvellous rendering of the lights and shadows of that entrancing material.
Besides the splendid collection of bronzes by Barye there is one sketch by him in oil. It shows two lions near their cave on a rocky hillside. One has his head on the other's back. The surroundings are savage. It is evening, and the loneliness, the wildness, the untam- ableness and yet the intimacy and friendship of the two wild beasts are here clearly displayed.
THE END.
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National du Louvre. Lancret, a. p. : Le Musee Royal. Larousse : Dictionnaire Universel. Lasteyrie, F. : Le Palais du Louvre. Lemaitre, a. : Le Louvre. Mander, Carel van: Le Livre des Peintres. Mantz, Paul: Frangois Boucher, Lemoyne et Natoire. Mantz, Paul: Decamps; Les Chefs-d'CEuvre de la Peinture
Italienne. Mauclair, Camille: The Great French Painters. Maxwell, Sir William Stirling: Annals of the Artists of
Spain.
BtbliOGtapbi? 403
Meissner, Franz Hermann: Veronese.
Merson, Olivier: Ingres, Sa Vie et Ses CEuvres.
Merson, Olivier: La Peinture Frangaise au XVII^ et au XVIII®
Siecle. Michel, Andre: Frangois Boucher. Michel, E. : Les Cuyp, In Gazette des Beaux Arts; Rubens, Sa
Vie, Son GEuvre et Son Temps. MoLLETT, J. W. : Watteau.
Morelli, Giovanni: Critical Studies of Italian Painters. MuNTz, E. : La Renaissance; Histoire de I'Art Pendant la
Renaissance; Leonardo da Vinci. MuTHER, Richard: The History of Modern Painting. Nolhac, Pierre de: Nattier, Peintre de Mesdames, In Gazette
des Beaux Arts. Pater, Walter: The Renaissance.
Pattison, Mme. M, : Claude Lorrain, Sa Vie et Ses CEuvres. Perkins, F. Mason : Giotto. PiLLET, Charles : Mme. Vigee-Le Brun. Plunkett, Count: Botticelli and His School. PoRTALis, Roger: Honore Fragonard, Sa Vie et Son OEuvre. Redgrave, R. and S. : A Century of Painters. Rinder, Frank: The New Louvre, In Magazine of Art. RoBAUT, Adolf, Ernest Chesneau, et Fernand Calmettes:
L'CEuvre Complet de Eugene Delacroix. Rosenberg, Adolf : Watteau. Rothenstein, Will: Goya, In Saturday Review. Sensier, a. : Souvenirs sur Th. Rousseau. Silvestre, T. H. : Histoire des Artistes Vivants. Smith, Charles Sprague: Barbizon Days. Smith, J. : Catalogue Raisonne. Stanley: Synopsis of Dutch and French Painters. Stearns, F. P.: Life and Genius of Jacopo Robusti. Stephens, F. G. : Flemish and French Pictures. Stothart, James : French and Spanish Painters. Stranahan, C. H. : A History of French Painting. Streeter, a. : Botticelli.
Sturgis, Russell: Liibke's History of Art, Edited. Symonds, J. A. : Renaissance in Italy, The Fine Arts. Thomson, David Croal: The Barbizon School of Painters. Viardot, Louis: Wonders of European Art. Visconti, E. Q. et T. B. Emeric-David: Le Musee Fran/gais. ViTU, A.: Paris. Waagen, G. F. : Peter Paul Rubens; Handbook of Painting,
German, Flemish, and Dutch Schools. Watson, Thomas: Story of France. Wauters, a. J. : La Peinture Flamande. Weale, W. H. J.: Hans Memlinc.
Wedmore, F. : The Masters of Genre Painting; Studies in Eng- lish Art. Woltmann, Alfred: Holbein und Seine Zeit. WoLTMANN and Woermann : History of Painting.
•ffnbei
AlbertinelH, ^y, "Visitation," 75; "Virgin and Child,"
75- Albizzi, Giovanna degli, 53. Alcuin, 4.
Alexander VII., Pope, 17. Alexandre Arsene, 64, ^6, 92,
165, 166, 176, 188, 191, 222,
234, 256, 262. Algerine Museum, Louvre,
Andrea del Sarto (see Sarto,
Andrea del). Androuin, 8.
Angiviller, Comte d', 31. Antonello da Messina (see
Messina). Armstrong, 71. Audran, Claude, 292.
Bacchiacca, " Portrait of a Young Man," 123.
Bailly, 30.
Baldovinetti, Alesso, 48.
Barocci, " Virgin in Glory," 261-262.
Barry, Madame du, 19, 20.
Barye, 385, 400.
Bassano, 104, 112.
Bastile, The, 6. 8.
Beechey, Sir William, " Brother and Sister," 139.
Bellini, Gentile, 84-85 ; " Por- traits of Two Men," 85-86.
Bellini, Giovanni, 84, 90-91, 93» loi, 105; "Holy Fam- ily," 85, 96.
Bellini, Jacopo, 84.
Benedetti, Abbe, 17.
Berchem, 225.
Berenson, 2>7y 50, 55, 71, 105- 107, 247.
Bernini, 17-18.
Beruete, 371.
Betfort, Duke of, 7.
Bissolo, 86.
Blanc, Charles, 269, 270, 291, 306.
Blashfield and Hopkins, 55.
Bol, Ferdinand, 216, 217; "The Mathematician," 216- 217; "Portrait of a Man," 217.
Bolingbroke, 17.
Bonheur, Rosa, 324.
Bonifazio, 106, 112; "Holy Family with Elizabeth and Joseph," 111-112.
Bonington, 143 ; " Frangois I. and the Duchess d'fi- tampes," 143.
Bordone, Paris, 28; "Por- trait of a Man," 112- 113.
Botticelli, 50-51, no; " Le Magnificat " ( Madonna) , 51-52; " Virgin, Child, and St. John," 52-53; Lemmi Frescoes, 50, 53-55; "Lo- renzo Tornabuoni," etc., 53-54 ; " Giovanni Torna- buoni," etc., 54-55.
Boucher, 273, 294, 301-302, 306, 307, 309. 316, 356, 378; "Diana at the Bath," 300-
405
4o6
fnt)cx
301; "The Target," 301;
"Three Graces," 373-374. Bourbon, Jeanne de, 7. Brauwer, Adriaen, 157, 161,
192, 193; "The Smoker,"
192-193; "The Operation,"
193. Brebion, 20. Breughel, Jan, 158, 190;
"The Air and the Earth,"
153-154.
Breughel, Peter, 153, 190; " Reunion of the Mendi- cants," 190 ; " Parable of the Blind," 190-191.
Brigiardini, 45.
Bril, Matthaus, 152.
Bril, Paul, 152, 154; "Diana and Her Nymphs," 152- 153; "Duck Shooting," 153.
Bronzino, "A Sculptor," 113.
Brownell, 268.
Brun, 71.
Brunellesco, 45.
Bullant, Jean, 10, 14.
Burger, 377.
Buti, Lucrezia, 46, 47.
Cabanel, 35.
Campana, The, Louvre, 27.
Campana Museum, 34.
Canaletto, 117.
Cantarini, 266.
Caracci, Agostino, 114, 116, 285. .
Caracci, Annibale, 114, 116, 130, 153,. 283, 285; "Sleep- ing Christ," 114; "Virgin with Cherries," 114-115; "Dead Christ," etc., 114,
115, 262.
Caracci, Lodovico, 113, 114,
116, 285.
Caravaggio, 115, 116, 118- 119, 127, 129, 200, 266, 285; "Death of the Virgin," 119; "Portrait of Alof de Wignacourt," 119.
Carpaccio, 1 12 ; " St. Etienne
Preaching at Jerusalem,"
95-96. Catena, 86. Catherine, wife of Henry
v., 7.
Cavaignac, General, 23.
Cavallini, 39.
Cerceau, Androuet du, 14.
Chambre aux Joyaux, Louvre, 7.
Chambre des Comptes, Louvre, 11.
Champaigne, 162; "Portrait of Mother Catherine Agnes Arnaud," etc., 162 - 163 ; " Frangois Mansard and Claude Perrault," 163-164; " Portrait of Richelieu," 164, 172-173; "Christ on the Cross," 164; "Dead Christ," 164; "St. Philip," 164; "Portrait of Him- self," 164.
Chardin, 289, 294, 295-296, 302, 306; "The Blessing," 296-297, 298 ; " The House- keeper," 297 ; " The Busy Mother," 297-298; "Vari- ous Utensils," 374; "House of Cards," 374.
Charlemagne, 4.
Charles I. of England, 29, 100, 175, 199.
Charles V., 6-8, 10, 11, 13, 20.
Charles V. of Germany, 9-10.
Charles VI., 7, 8, 12.
Charles VII., 12.
Charles VIII., 8, 12, 90.
Charles IX., 12, 13, 267.
Charles X., 22, 33.
Chatelet, The, 8.
Chavannes, Puvis de, 345.
Chesneau, 139.
Chigi, Cardinal, 17.
Childebert, 4.
Cima da Conegliano, 93; "Virgin and Child," 92.
Cimabue, 38 ; " Madonna,'* 37-38 ; " Rucellai Ma- donna," Z7'
ITnbei
407
Cingola, 107.
Clagny, Abbe de, 10- 11.
Clement, 326.
Clouet, Francois, 28, 267-268;
"Charles IX./' 267-268;
" Elizabeth of Austria,"
267-268. Colbert, 16-18, 29. Colonnade, Halls of the, 34. Colvin, Sidney, 14:^. Condamine, M. de la, 31. Conegliano, Cima da (see
Cima). Constable, John, 138, 142, 239,
348; "The Rainbow," 142;
"Bay of Weymouth," etc.,
142-143.
Cook, Herbert, 95.
Corot, 234, 308, 339-342, 357, 365, 366, 385, 388, 394; " View of the Forum," 342 ; " View of the Colosseum," 342; "A Landscape," 342- 343; "A Morning" (" Dance of the Nymphs "), 343-344 ; " Porte d' Ami- ens," 388, 390; "Route d' Arras," 388, 389-390 ; " Le Soir," 388; "L'figlogue," 388, 390; "Le Vallon," 388-389; "L'fitang" (or "Landscape with Cows"), 388 - 389 ; " Le Pay sage d'ltalie," 390; " Chemin de Sevres," 390; "La Sou- laie," 390 ; " Entree de Vil- lage," 390 ; " Les Chaumi- eres," 390.
Correggio, 30, 81, 97» 107, 114, 127, 129, 131, 255-256, 262, 319, 320, 335, 371; " Jupiter and Antiope," 256- 257; "Mystic Marriage of St. Catherine," 257-258.
Cour aux Offices, La, Louvre,
Courbet, 364-365 ; " Inter- ment at Ornans," 333; " Wounded Man," 365 ; "Deer" (2), 365-366;
"Man with the Leather Belt," 384.
Court of the Louvre, 22.
Cousin, Jean, 267 ; " Last Judgment," 267.
Couture, " Romans of the Decadence," 368-369.
Coypel, Antoine, 288; "Su- sannah and the Elders," 288; "Esther in the Pres- ence of Ahasuerus," 288.
Coypel, Charles Antoine, 288; " Perseus Delivering An- dromeda," 288.
Cranach, 146-147; "Portrait of John Frederick IH.," 145 ; " Portrait of an Un- known Man," 145 - 146 ; " Venus in a Landscape," 146.
Credi, Lorenzo di, 69, 92; " Madonna Enthroned," etc., 57-58 ; " Mary Magdalene," 58 ; " Christ Appearing to Mary Magdalene," 77.
Crequy, Due de, 17-18.
Crevelli, Lucrezia, 72.
Crivelli, " St. Bernard of Siena," 86.
Crowe and Cavalcaselle, 40.
Cuyp, Aelbert, 222-223, 224, 355 ; " Landscape," 223 ; " Marine," 223 ; " Depar- ture for the Promenade," 223.
Dagobert, 4,
Daubigny, 355, 366, 385, 389; " Sprmgtim,e," 366 - 367 ; " Vintage in Burgundy," 367 ; " Pond of the Storks," 387 ; " Vue de la Tamise a firith," 387; "Les Pe- niches," 387; "L'fitang," 387 ; " Les Bords de I'Oise," 387; "Le Moulin de Gy- licu," 387.
David, 22. 31, 302, 30Q-3io» 316, 317, 321, 322, 323-324, 337-338, 369; "Oath of the
4o8
fn^eJC
Horatii," 309, 334; "Beli- sarius Asking Alms," etc., 309 ; " Coronation of Napo- leon," 312-313; "Rape of Sabines," 313-314; "Leoni- das at the Pass of the Thermopylse," 314; "Por- trait of Pope Pius VII.," 314; " Portrait of Himself," 314; "Portrait of Madame Recamier," 314-315.
Da Vinci (see Leonardo).
Decamps, 228, 327-329, 330, 385-386; "The Caravan," 329 ; " Bulldog and Scotch Terrier," 329-330, 387 ; " On the Towpath," 350-351 ; " Elephant and Tiger at Stream," 386; "Street of Smyrna," 386; " Knife- Grinder," 386 ; " Beggar Counting His Gains," 386; "Valet of the Dogs," 386-387; " Bell - Ringers," 386; "Hunting Dogs at Rest," 386; "Monkey Painter," 386.
De Goncourt, 294, 304, 306.
Delacroix, Eugene, 138, 142, 323, 326, 327, 328, 332, 338, 345-346, 349, 385 ; " Bark of Dante," 346-347 ; " Massa- cre of Chios," 347-349; " The Twenty-eighth of July," 349; "Women of Algiers," etc., 349-350; "Entry of the Crusaders into Constantinople," 350 ; " Portrait of Himself," 383- 384 ; " Fiancee d'Abydos," 387; "Death of Ophelia," 387; "Hamlet and Hora- tio," 387; "Abduction of Rebecca," 387; "Roger De- livering Angelica," 387.
Delaroche, Paul, 327, 356, " Young Martyr," 327 ; " Princes in the Tower," 344-345.
Del6cluse, Etienne, 31.
Delorme, Philibert, 10, 14.
Delorme's Facade, 2.
Denner, " Portrait of a Woman," 151.
Desportes, 289; "Chasseur," 289; "Portrait of Himself," 289, 290-291; "Diana and Blond," 289-290 ; " Bonne, Nonne and Ponne," 290; "Portrait of a Hunter," 290.
De Troy, 288, 291-292; " First Chapter of the Order of the Holy Ghost," 291.
De Witte, 158.
Diaz, 239, 330-331, 355, 3S6, 357, 385, 387-388; "No En- trance," 330 ; " Fairy with Pearls," 330; "Birch-Tree Study," 331; "The Bohe- mians," 331; "Under the Trees" (2), 351, 388; "L'fiploree," 388.
Diderot, 304.
Dilke, Lady, 296, 309.
Domenichino, " Communion of St. Jerome," 32, 115; "St. Cecilia," 115-116.
Donatello, 45.
Dou, Gerard, 199, 211-213, 216, 217, 219, 227, 229, 238; " Dropsical Woman," 213- 214; "At the Grocery," 214-215; "Girl with a Fowl," 215-216.
Doyen, 311.
Drouais, 334.
Duban, 23.
Dubois, Amboise, 28.
Duchatel, Comtesse, 62.
Du Guesclin, 6, 7.
Dupre, Jules, 355, 385, 39i; " L'Abreuvoir et Grand Chene," 396 - 397, " Les Landes," 396, 397 - 398 ; " Soleil Couchant apres I'Orage," 396, 397; "Soleil Couchant sur un Marais," 396, 397.
Diirer, 86, 107, 126, 143-144,
fnt)ex
409
146; "An Old Man," 144-
145. Dyck, Van (see Van Dyck).
Elsheimer, 150.
Escalier Daru, Louvre, 44,
50. Este, Isabella d', ^. fitampes, Duchesse d', 10. Ethnographical Museum,
Louvre, ^y.
Fabriano, Gentile da, 40-41, 84, 183; "Virgin and Child," 41; "Presentation in the Temple," 41-42.
Fiesole, Giovanni da (see Fra Angelico),
Filippino (see Lippi, Filip- pino).
Flandrin, 352; "Figure Study," 351 ; " Portrait of a Young Girl," 351-352.
Fontaine, 22.
Fontainebkau, 10, 28, 307, 328, 330, 342, 357.
Fouquet, 16,
Fra Angelico, 40-4i» 45> 49» 62, 96, 201 ; " Coronation of the Virgin," 42-44; "Be- heading of St. John the Baptist," 44; "Crucifixion," 44, 50.
Fra Bartolommeo, 28, 124, 254; "Holy Family" (or " Marriage of St. Cath- erine"), 73-75-
Fragonard, Jean, 294, 306- 307 ; " Music Lesson," 305 ; " Sacrifice of the High Priest Coresus," etc., 305- 306; "The Bathers," 378; " Inspiration," 378 - 379 ; " Figure of Fantasy," 378- 379; "A Study," 379.
Francesca, Pietro della, 49.
Francia (see II Francia).
Francken, 158.
Francois I., 3, 5, 8-1 1, 12, 21,
27-28, 70, 71, 78, 79, 81,
123, 246, 255, 267, 272. Frangois II., 12, 112. Frizzoni, 71. Fromentin, 205, 222, 223, 224,
225, 265, 367-368, 385;
" Arabian Encampment,"
Fyt, 160; "Game in a Larder," 159.
Gabriel, 19-20.
Gaddi, Agnolo, 40.
Gaddi, Taddeo, " Salome's Dance," 40 ; " Crucifixion," 40 ; " Christ Giving the Soul of Judas to Demons," 40.
Galerie d'Apollon, Louvre, 14, 15, 2Z, 27, 29, 31, 175, 284, 345.
Galerie des Rois, Louvre, 14,
34.
Galerie Rubens, Louvre, 27, 30, 35, 172, 177-180, 181, 370.
Galeries des Gardes, Louvre, 35-
Gardens of the Tuileries, 2.
Garofalo, 266.
Gautier, 43, 70, 81, 135, 160, 258, 264.
Gellee, Claude (see Lorrain, Claude).
Gentile da Fabriano (see Fabriano).
Gerard, Baron Frangois-Pas- cal Simon, 320-321 ; " Psy- che Receiving the Kisses of Cupid," 321 ; " Portrait of Isabey and His Daugh- ter." 321.
Gericault, 323-324; "Raft of the Medusa," 323, 324-326, 327 ; " Epsom Race," 326- 327.
Ghirlandajo, Ridolfo, 51, 55- 56, 254; "Visitation," 55, 56-57 ; " Portrait of an Old Man ?ind Little Boy /' 55,
4IO
tnbcx
57; "Nativity," 55; "An- nunciation," 55.
Giordano, Luca, 266; "Mars and Venus," 267.
Giorgione, 30, 90, 97, 98, loi, 132 ; " Holy Family," 93, 94- 95; "Concert," 246-247.
Giottino, 40.
Giotto, 45, 345 ; " St. Francis of Assisi Receiving the Stigmata," 38-40.
Giovanni, Fra (see Fra An- gelico).
Gonzaga, 90, 100.
Goujon, Jean, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14.
Gousse, 268.
Goya, 138; "Portrait of Guillemardet," 137; "Young Spanish Girl," 137.
Goyen, Jan van, 201, 237,
Gozzoli, Benozzo, 48, 51 ; "Triumph of St. Thomas Aquinas," 49.
Grande Galerie, Louvre, 34, 58, 64-171, 172, 266, 335.
Greuze, 302-303, 306, 311, 352 ; " Broken Pitcher," 303 ; " The Milkmaid," 304 ; " Study of a Young Girl's Head," 304; "The Village Bride," 304-305 ; " Parental . Curse," 305 ; " Punished Son," 305; "Head of a Young Girl," 379; "Por- trait of Himself," 382.
Gros, 321-322, 327, 346-347; " Bonaparte in the Pest House at Jaffa," 321, 322- 323, 336 ; " Napoleon at Ar- cole," 323 ; " Napoleon at Eylau," 335-336.
Gruyer, 71.
Guardi, " Procession of the Doge," 117; "Fete of Jeudi Gras," 117.
Guariento of Padua, 104.
Guercino, 116; "Circe," 116.
Guerin, 323, 339.
Guido Reni (see Reni).
Hals, Frans, 139, 192, 193, 198-199, 200, 218; "Bohe- mian Girl," 195-196, " Por- trait of a Woman," 196; " Van Beresteyn Family," 196-197, 198; "Van Bere- steyn and Wife," 197-198.
Hamerton, 138.
Heem, Jan David de, 151.
Heist, Van der (see Van der Heist).
Henry H., 11-12, 267.
Henry HI., 14, 267.
Henry IV., 14-15.
Henry V. of England, 7.
Henry VHI. of England, 10,
147.
Heyden, Van der (see Van der Heyden).
Hobbema, 234, 239, 240; " Landscape," 240 ; " Water- Mill," 240.
Hogarth, 237.
Holbein, 143, 146, 147 ; " Por- trait of Anne of Cleves," 147 - 148 ; " Portrait of Richard Warham," 148- 149; "Portrait of Nicholas Katzer," 149 ; " Portrait of Erasmus," 149-150.
Hondecoeter, 238 ; " Two Eagles," etc., 238.
Honthorst, Gerard, 200, 201 ; "Robert of Bavaria," 200; " Man with the Lute," 200.
Hooch, Pieter de, 230-231, 233, 238, 329; "Cottage Interior," 231-232; "Card Party," 232-233.
Hoppner, " Portrait of a Woman," 140.
Hotel de Grammont, 29.
Hotel de Ville, 8.
Hurault, Jacques, 73.
Huysmans, 165.
Huysum, 243-244.
II Francia, "Nativity," 64,
65-66 ; " Crucifixion," 64. Ingres, 301, 317* 337-33^, 352,
1[n^ex
411
387; *'La Source," 62-63; " QEdipus Interrogating the Sphinx," 63 ; ** Apotheosis of Homer," 336-337-
Isabella of Mantua, 72.
Isabelle, wife of Charles VI., 7.
Isabey, 385 ; " Marriage in the Church at Delft," 400.
Jabach, 29,
Jacque, 356, 357-
Jaillot, 3.
Jardin, 221 ; " Charlatans at
the Fair," 222. Jaubert, Comte, 23. John of England, 8. Jordaens, 166-167; "Four
Evangelists," 167-168;
"Family Repast," 168;
" Concert after Meals," 168 ;
"The King Drinks," 168-169;
"Infancy of Jupiter," 169.
Kingsley, Miss, 332. Kugler, 87.
Lacaze Collection, 34, 161, 162, 181, 192, 370-379.
Lacaze, M., 370, 375.
La Farge, John, 345,
La Font de Saint Yenne, 30.
Lancret, 294.
Landseer, 228.
Largilliere, 300 ; " Family Portrait Group," 372; "Por- trait of Le Brun," 381.
Lawrence, Sir Thomas, 140, 141-142; "Mr. and Mrs. Augerstein," 141.
Lebeuf, 3.
Le Brun, Madame Vigee (see Vigec-Le Brun).
Le Brun, Charles, 29, 31, 160, 268-269, 271, 272, 273, 283- 284, 285, 288, 289, 345, 372, 381 ; " Descent of the Holy Spirit," 259; "Life of Al- exander Scries," 284-285 ;
"Apollo," 284; "The
Blessing," 284. Le Flamand, 8, Lefort, Paul, 130. Lef uel, 23-24 ; " Staircase,"
35.
Lemercier, 7, 15-16, 20, 21.
Lemmi, Doctor, 53.
Le Moine, Francois, 288, 292, 299; "Juno, Iris and Flora," 292 ; " Hercules and Omphale," 372-373-
Le Nain Brothers, 282.
Le Noir Museum, Louvre, 27.
Leonardo da Vinci, 9, 30, 38, 40, 59, 60, 67, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 97, 124, 251, 252, 254, 316, 335; " Mona Lisa" ("La Gioconda"), 26, 28, 60, 69, 70, 72, 245-246, 251, 252 ; " Madonna of the Rocks," 28, 69; "Cena- cola," 68, 69, 79; "St. Anne," 70 ; " St. John the Baptist," 71; "La Belle Feronniere," 71-72 ; " Vir- gin, St. Anne and the Child Jesus," 246.
Lescot, Pierre, 10-14, I5. 16, 22.
Le Sueur, 267, 268-269, 352; " Life of St. Bruno Series," 33, 268-271 ; " Cabinet of the Muses Series," 271; " Apparition of St. Scho- lastica," etc., 282-283.
Levau, 16, 17.
Lingelbach, 225.
Lippi, Filippino, 46, 55.
Lippi, Filippo, 51, 86; "Vir- gin and Child," etc., 45-48; " Nativity," 48.
Lippo, 57, 184.
Long Gallery, Louvre, 14-15.
Lorrain, Claude, 98, 152, 273. 279; "Landing of Cleo- patra," 280; "Village DancQ," 280; "Samuel Anointing David," 280-281 ;
412
fnt)ei
" Ulysses Restoring Chry- seis," 281 ; " Campo Vac- cino," 281 ; " Seaport at Sunset," 282.
Lo Spagnoletto (see li- bera).
Lotto, 102, 107, 252; "St. Jerome in the Desert," 105 ; " Christ and the Adulter- ess," 105-106; "Holy Fam- ily," 106.
Louis, Saint, 6, 11.
Louis XL, 8, 12.
Louis XIL, 8, 12, 73.
Louis XIIL, 7, 15-16, 28, 155, 272.
Louis XIV., 4, II, 16-19, 29- 30, 72, 100, 160, 165, 175, 213, 253, 283, 284, 288, 289, 293, 301, 370.
Louis XV., 19, 30.
Louis XVL, 20-21, 30-31, 234 309.
Louis XVIIL, 22, 24, 33, 320.
Louis Philippe, 23, 33.
Liibke, 71.
Luini, 59, 62 ; " Nativity," 60- 61 ; " Adoration of the Magi," 60, 61 ; " Salome Receiving the Head of John the Baptist," 72-73.
Luxembourg, The, 30, 31, 33, 35, 178, 268, 292.
Maes, 240-241; "The Bless- ing," 241.
Mainardi, 56.
Manetti, Antonio, 45.
Manetti, Giovanni, 45.
Mantegna, Andrea, 84, 86-87; " Crucifixion," 87-88; " Par- nassus," 88-89 ; " Madonna of Victory," 89-90.
Mantz, 190, 301, 329.
Maratta, 266 ; " Maria Mad- dalena Rospigliosi," 266.
Marigny, Marquis de, 19-20, 30.
Marilhat, 329.
Mary of Scotland, 12.
Masaccio, 45-46.
Matsys, Quentin, 188-189; "Banker and His Wife," 189-190; "Blessing Christ," 190.
Mayer, Mile., 316.
Mazarin, 29, 253.
Mazo, 131.
Medici, Catherine de', i, 12- 14, 27.
Medici, Marie de', 15, 177- 178.
Meel, "The Halt," 164-165.
Meissonier, 385, 398-399; " Les Ordonnances," 399 ; "The Poet," 399; "Le Li- seur," 399; "The Flute Player," 399.
Memling (or Memlinc), Hans, "Virgin and Child," 61-62, 185; "Mystic Mar- riage of St. Catherine," 185-188.
Mengs, Raphael, " Portrait of Marie-Amelie-Christine of Saxony," 151.
Messina, Antonello da, 76; "Portrait of a Man," 90- 92.
Metsu, Gabriel, 199, 227, 241 ; "Vegetable Market," 227- 228; "Young Woman and Officer," 228-229; "The Cook," 229-230.
Meulen, Van der (see Van der Meulen).
Michallon, 340.
Michel, Emile, 280, 302.
Michelangelo, 26, 49, 51, 74, 77, 78, 79, 86, 97, 98, 103, 123, 124, 132, 156, 252, 277, 324; "Leda," 28; "Last Judgment," 49.
Michelet, 226.
Miel (see Meel).
Mieris, Fams van, the Elder, "Woman at Her Toilet," 235.
Mignard, Pierre, 31, 284.
Mignon, 150.
fn^ex
413
Milanesi, 46.
Millet, Jean Frangois, 225, 241, 355-358, 363, 364, 366, 385 ; " Paysan Greffant," 357; "Angelus," 357-358, 360; "La Mort et la Bucheron," 358 ; " Glean- ers," 358-360, 392; "Ber- gere," 358; "The Sower," 360 ; " In Spring," 360 ; "Church of Greville," 360; " The Bathers," 361 ; " Bru- leuse d'Herbes," 392; " Fendeur de Bois," 392 ; " La Lessiveuse," 392-393 ; "Le Vanneur," 392, 393; " La Precaution Mater- nelle," 392; "Les Botte- leurs," 392.
Moliere, 237.
Monet, 360.
Montgomery, 12.
Morales, " Christ Carrying the Cross," 126-127.
Morelli, 48, 71, 85, loi, 122,
247-
Morland, 140- 141 ; " Halt," 140.
Miintz, 71.
Murillo, 129, 131, 133-134, 371; "Conception," 34; "Holy Family," I34-I35; " Birth of the Virgin," 135- 136 ; " Virgin and Child with Rosary," 136 ; " Mira- cle of San EWego," 136; "Young Beggar," 136-137; " Portrait of Quevado," 370; " Portrait of the Duke d'Assuna," 370.
Musee de Marine, Louvre, ^.-J, 308, 385.
Muther, 350.
Napoleon L, 22, 24, 30, Z2--^Zy 42, 56, 87, 259. 303, 313, 320.
Napoleon HL, i, 22,.
Natoire, 299, 306; "Three Graces," 299 ; " Marie Le- czinska," 300,
Nattier, 298-299, 300, 382; "Magdalene," 299; "Por- trait of Adelaide," 299; " Mile, de Lambesc and Young Comte de Brienne,"
Neefs, " Interior of a Cathe- dral," 158.
Netscher, Casper, " Singing Lesson," 241-242; "Lesson on the Bass Viol," 241, 242-
243- Nolhac, 298.
Ollivier, 294.
Opie, "Woman in White," 140.
Oriental Museum, Louvre, 27.
Ostade, Adriaen van, 207-208, 221, 237; "Family Group," 208-209; "Fish Market," 209; "The Reader," 209- 210.
Ostade, Isaack van, 208, 221 ; "Frozen Canals," 210; " Halts before Taverns," 210; "Winter Scene," 210.
Paleologue, Manuel, 8.
Palma Vecchio, 30, 112; "Ad- oration of the Shepherds," 101-102.
Pater, 294.
Pavilion de Flore, Louvre,
^4. 35.
Pavilion de Lesdiguieres, Louvre, 15.
Pavilion de L'Horloge, Louvre, 5, 16.
Pavilion des Arts, Louvre, 5.
Pavilion du Roi, Louvre, 11, 12, 13, 15, 16.
Percier, 22.
Perrault, Claude, 17-19. 20, 21, 22, 29.
Perugino, 28, 51, 64-65, 69, 124, 254; "Holy Family," 66 ; " Combat between Love and Charity," 66-67 ; " Vir- gin and Child," 121; "St.
414
irn&ex
S e b a s t i a n/' 121 - 122 ;
" Apollo and Marsyas,"
122. Petite Galerie, Louvre, 14. Petites Salles Frangaises,
266-271, 2^2. Philippe-Auguste, 3, 4-5, 9,
13-
Picault, 80.
Pillet, 315.
Pinturicchio, 182; "Virgin and Child," dy.
Piombo, Sebastian© del, 94, 124; "Visitation," 28; "St. John the Baptist," etc., 123.
Pisano, 39.
Place du Carrousel, 2, 20, 24.
Poelenburgh, 199, 244 ; " The Bathers," 199; "View of Mt Palatine," etc., 199-200.
Pompadour, 19, 20.
Pontormo, 113.
Ponzio, Paolo, 10, 11, 12, 13.
Potter, Paul, 222, 224, 234; "Bull," 224, 225; "Horses before a Thatched Cot- tage," 224-225; "The Prai- rie," 225.
Pourbus, Frans, 154; "Por- traits of Henry IV./' 154- 155; "Portrait of Marie de Medici," 155; "Portrait of Guillaume de Vair," 155.
Poussin, 17, 152, 162, 164, 272-273, 279, 281, 309, 313; "Rape of the Sabines," 273-274; "Holy Family," 274-275; "Vision of St. Paul," 275-276 ; " Time Rescuing Truth," etc., 276- 278; "The Bacchanals," 278; "The Concert," 278; " Four Seasons," 278-279.
Primaticcio, 28.
Prud'hon, 316-317, 33© ; "Por- trait of Madame Jarre," 317; "Justice and Ven- geance Pursuing Crime," 317-319 ; " Transportation of Psyche," etc., 319-320;
"Portrait of Baron De- non," 334-335.
Raeburn, " Disabled Sailor,"
139-140. Raibolini (see II Francia). Raphael, 26, 30, 40, 47, 51, 65,
Tl, 78, 79, 83-84, 95, 97, ii5,
121, 124, 132, 133, 136, 151, 157, 201, 236, 252, 268, 271, 316, 2>Z7, 346; "Holy Fam- ily," 28; "St. Michael," 28,
122, 123, 255 ; " Apollo and Marsyas," 122; "St. George," 122, 123 ; " Ma- donna of the Veil," 123; "St. John the Baptist," etc., 123 ; " St. Margue- rite," 123 ; " Portrait of a Young Man," 123; "Belle Jardiniere," 125, 253-255; " Portrait of Baldassare Castiglione," 253.
Ravenstein, Jan van, 195.
Raymond, 22.
Raymond du Temple, 7.
Redon, M., 21.
Regnault, 331-332; "Execu- tion without Judgment," 331, ZZ'2-ZZZ\ "Equestrian Portrait of Juan Prim," 368; "Portrait of Mile. Breton," 368.
Rembrandt, 26, 72, 97, 106, 130, 132, 150, 165, 192, 195, 198, 201-202, 209, 210, 211- 212, 216, 218, 222, 223, 227, 229, 230, 240, 253, 255, 329, 355 ; " Supper at Emmaus," 100, 204-205 ; " Home of the Carpenter," 202 ; " Phi- losopher in Meditation " (2), 202-203; "Angel Ra- phael Quitting Tobias," 203 ; " Good Samaritan," 204-205 ; " Portrait of an Old Man," 206 ; " Portraits of Himself" (4), 206-207; " Portrait of Hendrickje Stoffels," 264-265.
fnbex
415
Rembrandt Rooms, 201-208.
Reni, Guide, 116, 272, 285; "Magdalene," 115; " Ecce Homo," 115; "St. Sebas- tian," 115; "Dejanira and the Centaur Nessus," 262.
Reynolds, 139, 140, 142.
Ribera, 118, 119, 134; "Ma- donna and Child," 128-129, 370-371 ; " Adoration of the Shepherds," 128; "Entomb- ment," 129.
Richelieu, 15, 246, 2.^6, 278.
Richter, 71.
Rigaud, 31, 285-286, 291, 299; " Portraits of His Mother," 286 ; " Portrait of Louis XIV.," 286-287; "Portrait of Bossuet," 287 ; " Por- trait of Due de Lesdigui- eres," 374-375 ; " Portraits of Le Brun and Mignard," 381-382.
Robusti, Jacopo (see Tinto- retto).
Romano, Giulio, 40, 255, 266; "Nativity," 83; "Portrait of a Man," 83, 84; "Ma- donna of the Veil," 123 ; " St. Marguerite," 123 ; "Triumph of Titus and Vespasian," 125.
Romney, 138-139; "Sir Stan- ley," 139-
Rondinello, 85.
Rosa, Salvator, 118, 266; "Battle-Scene," 1 19-120.
Rosenburg, 71.
Rottenhammer, " Death of Adonis," 150,
Rousseau, Theodore, 239, 355, 356, 357, 363-364, 366, 385; " Opening in the Forest at Fontainebleau," 361-362; "The Marsh," 362; "The Storm," 362; "Along the River." 362-363; " Le Co- teau," 3Qo; " Le Passeur," 390; "L'fitang," 390; "La Plainc dc8 Pyrenees," 390;
"Les Chenes," 390, 391; " Bords de la Loire," 390- 391; "Le Printempjs," 390 ; " Village sous le« Arbres," 390, 391-392.
Rubens, 106, 131, 132, I33» 154, 155-157, 159, 166-167, 170-171, 188, 192, 198, 201, 216, 253, 259, 264, 278, 292, 294, 345, 346, 375, 2n(i\ "Kermesse," 157; "Flight of Lot," 157-158; "Virgin, Child Jesus and an Angel," etc., 158; "Portrait of Baron Henri de Vicq," ^y2)\ "Tourney in Front of the Moat," etc., 173-174; "Marie de Medici Series," 2>Z, 173, 177-180, 292; "Por- trait of Helen Fourment and Two of Her Children,** 262-263.
Rubens Room, Louvre (see Galerie Rubens).
Rue de Louvre, 18.
Rue de Marengo, 20.
Rue de Rivoli, i.
Ruskin, 103, 221, 279-280.
Ruysdael, 165, 222, 225, 234, 239, 240; "The Thicket," 225-226 ; " The Tempest," 226-227 ; " The Ray of Sun- light," 227.
Sainte-Beuve, 368. Salle Daru, 288-311. Salle Denon, 334, 380-384. Salle des fitats, 334-369. Salle des Primitifs, 37-51, 64, Salle des Sept Chemin6es,
Louvre, 11, 34, 312. Salle des Sept Metres (see
Salle des Primitifs). Salle Duchatel, Louvre, 59-
63. Salle Henri TL, Louvre, 312. Salic Lacazc, Louvre, 27,
370-379- Salle Mollien, 272-287. Salle Van Dyck, 173-177.
4i6
fnOei
Salon Carre, Louvre, 27, 34, 64, 98, 245-265, 346, 375.
Sandier, 35.
Sarto, Andrea del, 9, 77-80, 113; "Charity," 28, 80-82; "Holy Family" (2), 82-
83.
Sauvageot, The, Louvre, 27.
Sauval, 3, 4.
Savoldo, 107.
Scheffer, Ary, 339; "Death of Gericault," 338 ; " Temp- tation of Christ," 338-339.
Seine, The, i, 3, 8, 13, 20, 32.
Seybold, " Portrait of Him- self," 151.
Sforza, Lodovico, 69.
Sigismond, Emperor, 8.
Signorelli, "Birth of the Virgin," 49-50.
Smith's " Catalogue Rai- sonne," 221.
Snyders, 159-160; "Wild Boar Hunt," 158-159; "Dogs in a Larder," 191.
Solario, Andrea, " Madonna with the Green Cushion," 75-76 ; " Portrait of Charles d'Amboise," 'id-'JT, "Head of St. John," r?'
Sorbonne, The, 22.
Soufflot, 20.
Soult, Marshal, 34, 133, 136.
Squarcione, 86.
Steen, Jan, 157, 162, 190, 227, ^Z7y 238 ; " Flemish Fete in an Inn," 236; "Bad Com- pany," 236-237.
Stevenson, 293.
St. Germain-en-Laye, 35.
Sylvestre, 384.
Teniers, 158, 160-161, 193; " Inn beside a River," 161 ; "Temptation of St. An- thony," 161 ; " Prodigal Son," 161 ; " Village Fete," 161-162; "Kermesse," 162; "Works of Mercy," 162; "The Duo," 193.
Ter Borch, 141, 217-218, 227, 233, 241, 242; "The Con- cert," 218-219; "The Mu- sic-Lesson," 219-220; "Of- ficer Offering Money to a Young Girl," 220-221.
Thiers, 2Z.
Thomy - Thiery Collection, 334, 352, 366, 385-400.
Thomy-Thiery, M., 385.
Tieck, Ludwig, 256.
Tiepolo, 306; "Last Supper," 117-118.
Tintoretto, 103-104, 108, 131, 150; "Miracle of St Mark," 32; "Paradise" (sketch), 104; "Dead Christ with Two Angels," 104; "Susannah at the Bath," 258-259 ; " Portrait of Himself," 380-381.
Titian, 28, 30, 63, 84, 90, 91, 93-94, 96-98, 102, 103, 105, 106, 107, 108, 112, 131, 132, 147, 157, 171, 278, 292, 295, Z7^ ; " Entombment," 2!^, 248-250; "Man with the Glove," 26, 251-253; "As- sumption of the Virgin," 32; "Jupiter and Antiope," 98-99; "Disciples at Em- maus," 99 - 100 ; " Virgin and Child," etc., loo-ioi ; "Portrait of Francois I.,'* loi; "An Allegory," loi ; " Alfonso of Ferrara and Laura Dianti," 250-251.
Tocque, 299-300 ; " Portrait of the Dauphin," 300; "Portrait of Louis Gal- loche," 382; "Portrait of Jean-Louis Lemoyne," 382.
Tomabuoni, Giovanni, 53.
Tornabuoni, Lorenzo, 53.
Tour de la Libraire, Louvre, 7.
Tournelles, 8, 12-13.
Troyon, Constant, 354, 355, 385; "Oxen Going to Work," 352-354; "Return
fnt)ex
417
to the Farm," 354-355; " Hauteurs de Suresnes," 393-394; "L'Abrevoir," 393; "La Barriere," 394; "Ren- contre des Troupeaux," 394» 395 ; " Provende des Poules," 394, 395-396; "Le Matin," 394-395 ; " Trou- peau de Moutons," 395.
Tuileries, Gardens of the (see Gardens).
Tuileries, Palace of the, i, 2, II, 13, 14, 22, 23, 24.
Ucello, Paolo, 44-45-
Van der Heist, 141, 210-211 ; "Judging of the Archery Prize," 211; "Portrait of a Man," 211.
Van der Heyden, 234, 238; "Village on the Banks of a Canal," 239.
Van der Meulen, 165; "En- try of Louis XIV.," etc., 165 ; " Village and Cha- teau of Dinant," 165; " Fort of Luxembourg," 165; "View of Fontaine- bleau," 165; "View of Di- nant," 193-194-
Van der Wcrff, 243; "Danc- ing Nymph," 243.
Van der Weyden, Roger, 183, 185, 186; "Virgin and Child," 184; "Descent from the Cross," 184-185.
Van de Velde, Adriaen, 225, 234, 238 ; " Beach at Sche- veningen," 234; "Land- scape and Cattle," 234-235.
Van Dyck, 26, 30, 80, 131, 132, 133, 147, 166, 170-171, 195, 198, 201, 212, 265, 285, 286; "Children of Charles L," 169-170; "Duke of Rich- mond," 170; "Virgin and Child," 174; "Equestrian Portrait of Francois de Moncadc," 175; "Portrait
of Charles-Louis of Bava- ria," etc., 175-176; "Por- trait of Charles I.," 176- 177 ; " Virgin with the Donors," 177 ; " Portrait of Himsplf," 177.
Van Dyck Room (see Salle Van Dyck).
Van Eyck, Hubert, 183.
Van Eyck, Jan, 91, 149, 183, 186, 188; "Chancellor Rol- lin," etc., 181-183.
Van Loo, Charles Andre, 294, 306, 307-308, 309; "The Halt," 307 ; " Marie Le- czinska," 307.
Van Loo, Jean-Baptist, 307- 308.
Van Thulden, 158.
Varon, 31.
Vasari, zj, 38, 39, 44, 45, 46, 49, 65, 66, 7T, 78, 79, 82, 91, 94, 95, 113, 245, 246, 254, 257.
Velasquez, 26, 97, 129, 132- 133, 134, 157, 198, 201, 265, 368; "Infanta Margarita," 130, 263-264; "Portrait of Philip IV.," 130-131, 132, 264 ; " Assemblage of Thir- teen People," 131; "Bust of Philip IV.," 371 ; •' Por- trait of Marie-Theresa " (or "Queen Mariana"),
Vermeer, " The Lace Maker," 233-
Vernet, Claude, 308-309, 311.
Vernet, Claude-Joseph, 308.
Vernet, Joseph, " Ports of France," 33.
Vernet, Horace, 308, 328.
Verocchio, 51, 69.
Veronese, Paolo, 30, 97, 104, 107-108, 114, 117, 292, 350, 375; "Calvary," 108, 109- iio; "Disciples at Em- maus," 108-109; "Burning of Sodom," iio-iii ; " Holy Family," iii, 261; "Mar-
4i8
tn^cx
riage Feast at Cana," 259- 261 ; " Repast at the House of Simon," 261.
Versailles, 19, 30, 31, 33, 35, 175, 268.
Vigee - Le Brun, Madame, 310-31 1 ; "Peace Restoring Abundance," 310; "Herself and Daughter" (2), 315, 382-383 ; " Madame Ray- mond" ("Girl with Muff"), 315-316; "Joseph Vernet," 382 ; " Hubert Robert," 382, 383.
Villot, Frederic, 34.
Vinci, Leonardo da (see Le- onardo).
Visconti, 23-24.
Viti, Timoteo, 122, 124.
Vivarini, Alvise, 93, 96, 105.
Vollon, 296.
Vouet, 267, 272, 276, 284; " Presentation in the Tem- ple," 272.
Waagen, 157, 175, 183, 272. Watson, 6.
Watteau, 288, 292-294, 296, 302, 306, 368 ; " Embarka- tion for the Isle of Cyth- era," 292, 294-295, 375; "Gilles," 375, 377; "Jupi- ter and Antiope," 375-377; "La Finette," 377; "L'ln- different," 377 ; " The False Step," 377; "The Juggler," 377-378.
Wellington, Duke of, 33.
Weyden, Roger van der (see Van der Weyden).
Wilson, Richard, 138, 142.
Woltmann, 148.
Wouverman, 221, 222, 225; "The Fat Ox," 221-222; "The Stag Hunt," 221; " The Cavalrj' Charge," 221.
Wynants, 165, 234, 239.
Zurbaran, 129 ; " St. Peter and St. Raymond " (or " St. Bonaventura Presid- ing," etc.), 130; "Funeral of a Bishop," 130.
i
University of Toronto Robarts
o:
Dec
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NAME s
IRI1A tlAKARIUNAITE
BOOKS
The Nile Campaign: Nelson and Napoleon
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