"Any one who goes to the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square, may see
two large and beautiful pictures--the nearer of the two labelled
'Titian,' representing Bacchus leaping from a car drawn by leopards. The
other, labelled 'Francia,' representing the Holy Family seated on a sort
of throne, with several figures arranged below--one of them a man pierced
with arrows. Between these two, low down, hangs a small picture, about
two feet square, containing only the portrait of an old man, in a white
cap and robe, and labelled on the picture itself, '_Joannes Bellinus_.'
Now this old man is a very ancient friend of mine, and has comforted my
heart, and preached me a sharp sermon, too, many a time. I never enter
that gallery without having five minutes' converse with him; and yet he
has been dead at least three hundred years, and, what is more, I don't
even know his name. But what more do I know of a man by knowing his
name? Whether the man's name be Brown, or whether he has as many names
and titles as a Spanish grandee, what does that tell me about the
_man_?--the spirit and character of the man--what the man will say when
he is asked--what the man will do when he is stirred up to action? The
man's name is part of his clothes; his shell; his husk. Change his name
and all his titles, you don't change _him_--'a man's a man for a' that,'
as Burns says; and a goose a goose. Other men gave him his name; but his
heart and his spirit--his love and his hatred--his wisdom and his
folly--his power to do well and ill; those God and himself gave him. I
must know those, and then I know the _man_. Let us see what we can make
out from the picture itself about the man whom it represents. In the
first place, we may see by his dress that he was in his day the Doge (or
chief magistrate) of Venice--the island city, the queen of the seas. So
we may guess that he had many a stirring time of it, and many a delicate
game to play among those tyrannous and covetous old merchant-princes who
had elected him; who were keeping up their own power at the expense of
everyone's liberty, by spies and nameless accusers, and secret councils,
tortures, and prisons, whose horrors no one ever returned to describe.
Nay, we may guess just the very men with whom he had to deal--the very
battles he may have seen fought.
"But all these are _circumstances_--things which _stand round_ the man
(as the word means), and not the whole man himself--not the character and
heart of the man: that we must get from the portrait; and if the portrait
is a truly noble portrait we shall get it. If it is a merely vulgar
picture, we shall get the man's dress and shape of his face, but little
or no expression: if it is a _pathetic_ portrait, or picture of passion,
we shall get one particular temporary expression of his face--perhaps
joy, sorrow, anger, disgust--but still one which may have passed any
moment, and left his face quite different; but if the picture is one of
the noblest kind, we shall read the man's whole character there; just all
his strength and weakness, his kindliness or his sternness, his
thoughtfulness or his carelessness, written there once and for ever;--what
he would be, though all the world passed away; what his immortal and
eternal soul will be, unless God or the devil changed his heart, to all
eternity.
"We may see at once that this man has been very handsome; but it is a
peculiar sort of beauty. How delicate and graceful all the lines in his
face are!--he is a gentleman of God's own making, and not of the tailor's
making. He is such a gentleman as I have seen among working men and nine-
shilling-a-week labourers, often and often; his nobleness is in his
heart--it is God's gift, therefore it shows in his noble looking face. No
matter whether he were poor or rich; all the rags in the world, all the
finery in the world, could not have made him look like a snob or a swell.
He was a thoughtful man, too; no one with such a forehead could have been
a trifler: a kindly man, too, and honest--one that may have played
merrily enough with his grandchildren, and put his hand in his purse for
many a widow and orphan. Look what a bright, clear, straightforward,
gentle look he has, almost a smile; but he has gone through too many sad
hours to smile much: he is a man of many sorrows, like all true and noble
rulers; and, like a high mountain-side, his face bears the furrows of
many storms. He has had a stern life of it, with the cares of a great
nation on his shoulders. He has seen that in this world there is no rest
for those who live like true men: you may see it by the wrinkles in his
brow, and the sharp-cut furrows in his cheeks, and those firm-set,
determined lips. His eyes almost show the marks of many noble
tears,--tears such as good men shed over their nation's sins; but that,
too, is past now. He has found out his path, and he will keep it; and he
has no misgiving now about what God would have him do, or about the
reward which God has laid up for the brave and just; and that is what
makes his forehead so clear and bright, while his very teeth are clenched
with calm determination. And by the look of those high cheek bones, and
that large square jaw, he is a strong-willed man enough, and not one to
be easily turned aside from his purpose by any man alive, or by any woman
either, or by his own passions and tempers. One fault of character, I
think, he may perhaps have had much trouble with--I mean bitterness and
contemptuousness. His lips are very thin; he may have sneered many a
time, when he was younger, at the follies of the world which that great,
lofty, thoughtful brain and clear eye of his told him were follies; but
he seems to have got past that too. Such is the man's character: a
noble, simple, commanding old man, who has conquered many hard things,
and, hardest of all, has conquered himself, and now is waiting calm for
his everlasting rest. God send us all the same.
"Now consider the deep insight of old John Bellini, who could see all
this, and put it down there for us with pencil and paint. No doubt there
was something in Bellini's own character which made him especially best
able to paint such a man; for we always understand those who are most
like ourselves; and therefore you may tell pretty nearly a painter's own
character by seeing what sort of subjects he paints, and what his style
of painting is. And a noble, simple, brave, godly man was old John
Bellini, who never lost his head, though princes were flattering him and
snobs following him with shouts and blessings for his noble pictures of
the Venetian victories, as if he had been a man sent from God Himself, as
indeed he was--all great painters are; for who but God makes beauty? Who
gives the loving heart, and the clear eye, and the graceful taste to see
beauty and to copy it, and to set forth on canvas, or in stone, the noble
deeds of patriots dying for their country? To paint truly patriotic
pictures well, a man must have his heart in his work--he must be a true
patriot himself, as John Bellini was (if I mistake not, he had fought for
his country himself in more than one shrewd fight). And what makes men
patriots, or artists, or anything noble at all, but the spirit of the
living God? Those great pictures of Bellini's are no more; they were
burnt a few years afterwards, with the magnificent national hall in which
they hung; but the spirit of them is not passed away. Even now, Venice,
Bellini's beloved mother-land, is rising, new-born, from long weary years
of Austrian slavery, and trying to be free and great once more; and young
Italian hearts are lighting up with the thoughts of her old fleets and
her old victories, her merchants and her statesmen, whom John Bellini
drew. Venice sinned, and fell; and sorely has she paid for her sins,
through two hundred years of shame, and profligacy, and slavery. And she
has broken the oppressor's yoke. God send her a new life! May she learn
by her ancient sins! May she learn by her ancient glories!
"You will forgive me for forgetting my picture to talk of such things.
But we must return. Look back at what I said about the old portrait--the
clear, calm, victorious character of the old man's face, and see how all
the rest of the picture agrees with it, in a complete harmony. The
dress, the scenery, the light and shade, the general 'tone' of colour
should all agree with the character of the face--all help to bring our
minds into that state in which we may best feel and sympathise with the
human beings painted. Now here, because the face is calm and grand, the
colour and the outlines are quiet and grand likewise. How different
these colours are from that glorious 'Holy Family' of Francia's, next to
it on the right; or from that equally glorious 'Bacchus and Ariadne' of
Titian's, on the left! Yet all three are right, each for its own
subject. Here you have no brilliant reds, no rich warm browns; no
luscious greens. The white robe and cap give us the thought of purity
and simplicity; the very golden embroidery on them, which marks his rank,
is carefully kept back from being too gaudy. Everything is _sober_ here;
and the lines of the dress, how simple they all are--no rich curves, no
fluttering drapery. They would be quite stiff if it were not for that
waving line of round tassels in front, which break the extreme
straightness and heaviness of the splendid robe; and all pointing upwards
towards that solemn, thin, calm face, with its high white cap, rising
like the peak of a snow mountain against the dark, deep, boundless blue
sky beyond. That is a grand thought of Bellini's. You do not see the
man's hands; he does not want them now, his work is done. You see no
landscape behind--no buildings. All earth's ways and sights are nothing
to him now; there is nothing but the old man and the sky--nothing between
him and the heaven now, and he knows it and is glad. A few months more,
and those way-worn features shall have crumbled to their dust, and that
strong, meek spirit shall be in the abyss of eternity, before the God
from whence it came.
"So says John Bellini, with art more cunning than words. And if this
paper shall make one of you look at that little picture with fresh
interest, and raise one strong and solemn longing in you to die the death
of the righteous, and let your last end be like his who is painted
there--then I shall rejoice in the only payment I desire to get, for this
my afternoon's writing."