painter has given ears like Midas, who holds forth his hand to Calumny,
as if inviting her to approach. He is attended by Ignorance and
Suspicion, who stand by his side. Calumny advances in the form of a
beautiful female, her countenance and demeanor exhibiting an air of fury
and hatred; in one hand she holds the torch of discord, and with the
other, she drags by the hair a youth personifying Innocence, who, with
eyes raised to heaven, seems to implore succor of the gods. She is
preceded by Envy, a figure with a pallid visage and emaciated form, who
appears to be the leader of the band. Calumny is also attended by two
other figures who seem to excite and animate her, and whose deceitful
looks discover them to be Intrigue and Treachery. At last follows
Repentance clothed in black, and covered with confusion at the discovery
of Truth in the distance, environed with celestial light.”
This sketch has been regarded as one of the most ingenious examples of
allegorical painting which the history of the art affords. Raffaelle
made a drawing from Lucian’s description, which was formerly in the
collection of the Duke of Modena, and was afterwards transferred to the
French Museum.
Professor Tölken, of Berlin, has shown that this Apelles was not the
great cotemporary of Alexander, for the persons mentioned in connection
with the story, lived more than a hundred years after the death of
Alexander--or about the 144th Olympiad. This reconciles many
contradictory statements with regard to Apelles, both by ancient and
modern writers. See Spooner’s Dictionary of Painters, Engravers,
Sculptors, and Architects.
SIR GODFREY KNELLER.
Soon after Kneller’s arrival in England, he painted the portrait of the
Duke of Monmouth, who was so much pleased with it that he persuaded the
king, his father (Charles II.) to have his portrait painted by the _new
artist_. The King had promised the Duke of York his portrait, to be
painted by Sir Peter Lely, and unwilling to go through the ceremony of a
double sitting, he proposed that both artists should paint him at the
same time. Lely, as the king’s painter, took the light and station he
liked; but Kneller took the next best he could find, and went to work
with so much expedition, that he had nearly finished his portrait, when
Lely had only laid in his dead coloring. This novelty pleased, and Lely
himself had the candor to acknowledge his merit. Kneller immediately
found himself in the possession of great reputation and abundant
employment, and the immense number of portraits he executed, proves the
stability of his reputation. He was equally patronized by Kings Charles,
James, and William, and he had the honor of painting ten sovereigns. His
best friend was King William, for whom he painted the beauties of
Hampton Court, and by whom he was knighted in 1692, and presented with a
gold chain and medal, worth £300. In the latter part of this reign, he
painted the portraits of the members of the famous Kit-cat Club,
forty-two in number, and the several portraits now in the gallery of the
Admirals. He lived to paint the portrait of George I., who made him a
Baronet. He died in 1723. His body lay in state, and he was buried at
his country-seat at Wilton; a monument was erected to his memory in
Westminster Abbey.
KNELLER AND JAMES II.
It was while sitting to this artist, that James the Second manifested a
most surprising instance of coolness and shrewdness united. Kneller was
painting his portrait as a present to Pepys, when suddenly intelligence
arrived of the landing of the Prince of Orange. The artist was
confounded, and laid down his brush. “Go on, Kneller,” said the king,
betraying no outward emotion; “I wish not to disappoint my friend
Pepys.”
KNELLER’S COMPLIMENT TO LOUIS XIV.
When Kneller painted the portrait of Louis XIV., the monarch asked him
what mark of his esteem would be most agreeable to him; whereupon he
modestly answered that he should feel honored if his Majesty would
bestow a quarter of an hour upon him, that he might execute a drawing of
his face for himself. The request was granted. Kneller painted Dryden in
his own hair, in plain drapery, holding a laurel, and made him a present
of the work; to which the poet responded in an epistle containing
encomiums such as few painters deserve.
“Such are thy pictures, Kneller! such thy skill,
That nature seems obedient to thy will,
Comes out and meets thy pencil in the draught,
Lives there, and wants but words to speak the thought.”
KNELLER’S WIT.
The servants of his neighbor, Dr. Radcliffe, abused the liberty of a
private entrance to the painter’s garden, and plucked his flowers.
Kneller sent him word that he must shut the door up; whereupon the
doctor peevishly replied, “Tell him he may do any thing with it but
paint it.” “Never mind what he says,” retorted Sir Godfrey; “I can take
anything from him but physic.” He once overheard a low fellow cursing
himself. “God damn _you_, indeed!” exclaimed the artist in wonder; “God
may damn the Duke of Marlborough, and perhaps Sir Godfrey Kneller; but
do you think he will ever take the trouble of damning such a scoundrel
as you?” To his tailor, who proposed his son for a pupil, he said, “Dost
thou think, man, I can make thy son a painter? No, God Almighty only
makes painters.” He gave a reason for preferring portraiture to
historical painting, which forms an admirable _bon-mot_, for its
shrewdness, truthfulness, and ingenuity. “Painters of history,” said he,
“make the dead live, and do not begin to live till they are dead. I
paint the living, and they make me live!”
KNELLER’S KNOWLEDGE OF PHYSIOGNOMY.
In a conversation concerning the legitimacy of the unfortunate son of
James II., some doubts having been expressed by an Oxford Doctor,
Kneller exclaimed, with much warmth, “His father and mother have sat to
me about thirty-six times apiece, and I know every line and bit of their
faces. Mein Gott! I could paint King James _now_ by memory. I say the
child is so like both, that there is not a feature of his face but what
belongs either to father or mother; this I am sure of, and cannot be
mistaken; nay, the nails of his fingers are his mother’s, the queen that
was. Doctor, you may be out in your letters, but I cannot be out in my
lines.”
KNELLER AS A JUSTICE OF THE PEACE.
Sir Godfrey acted as a justice of the peace at Wilton, and his sense of
justice induced him always to decide rather by equity than law. His
judgments, too, were often accompanied with so much humor, as caused the
greatest merriment among his acquaintance. Thus, he dismissed a poor
soldier who had stolen a piece of meat, and fined the butcher for
purposely tempting him to commit the crime. Hence Pope wrote the
following lines:
“I think Sir Godfrey should decide the suit,
Who sent the thief (that stole the cash) away,
And punished him that put it in his way.”
Whenever he was applied to by paupers, he always inquired which were the
richest parishes, and settled them there. He could never be induced to
sign a warrant to distrain the goods of a poor man, who could not pay a
tax, and he took pleasure in assisting the honest poor with his advice
and purse. He disliked interruption, and if the case appeared trivial,
or was the result of a row, he would not be disturbed. Seeing a
constable coming to him one day, with two men, having bloody noses, and
a mob at his heels, he called out to him, “Mr. Constable, do you see
that turning? Go that way, and you will find an ale-house--the sign of
the King’s Head. Go and make it up.” A handsome young woman came before
him one day to swear a rape; struck with her beauty, he continued
examining her as he sat painting, till he had taken her likeness.
Perceiving from her manner that she was not free from guilt, he advised
her not to prosecute her suit, but seek some other mode of redress.
These instances show the goodness of his heart, and refute the many
absurd and malicious stories that are told of him.
KNELLER AND CLOSTERMANS.
When Clostermans, an inferior artist, sent a challenge to Kneller to
paint a picture in competition with him for a wager, he courteously
declined the contest, and sent him word that “he allowed him to be his
superior.”
THE CAVALIERE BERNINI.
Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini, whose renown filled all Europe in the
seventeenth century, was called the Michael Angelo of his age, because,
like that great artist, he united in an eminent degree, the three great
branches of art--painting, sculpture, and architecture, though he was
chiefly renowned in the two last.
BERNINI’S PRECOCITY.
Bernini manifested his extraordinary talents almost in infancy. At the
age of eight years, he executed a child’s head in marble, which was
considered a wonder. When he was ten years old, his talents had become
so widely known, that Pope Paul V. wished to see the prodigy who was the
astonishment of artists, and on his being brought into his presence,
desired him to draw a figure of St. Paul, which he did in half an hour,
so much to the satisfaction of the pontiff that he recommended him to
Cardinal Barberini, saying, “Direct the studies of this child, who will
become the Michael Angelo of this century.”
BERNINI’S STRIKING PREDICTION.
During Bernini’s distinguished career, Charles I. of England endeavored
in vain to allure him to visit his court. Not succeeding in this, he
employed Vandyck to paint two excellent portraits of himself, one in
profile and the other in full face, and sent them to Bernini, to enable
him to execute his bust. The sculptor surveyed them with an anxious eye,
and exclaimed, “Something evil will befall this man; he carries
misfortune in his face.” The tragical termination of the monarch’s
career, verified the sculptor’s knowledge of physiognomy. Bernini made a
striking likeness, with which the king was so much pleased, that, in
addition to the stipulated price, six thousand crowns, he made him a
present of a diamond ring, worth six thousand more.
BERNINI AND LOUIS XIV.
Bernini received the most flattering and pressing invitations from Louis
XIV. to visit Paris. At length, he was persuaded by the great Colbert to
undertake the journey, and having with great difficulty obtained
permission of the Pope, he set out for France, at the age of
sixty-eight, accompanied by one of his sons, and a numerous retinue.
Never did an artist travel with so much pomp, and under so many
flattering circumstances. By order of the King, he was received
everywhere on his way with the honors due to a prince, and on his
arrival at Paris, he was received by the king with every mark of
distinction, and apartments assigned to him in the royal palace. Louis
defrayed all the expenses of his journey, and to immortalize the event,
had a medal struck, with the portrait of the artist, and on the reverse,
the Muses of the Arts, with this inscription, “_Singularis in
singularis; in omnibus, unicus_.” When he returned to Rome, Louis
presented him with ten thousand crowns, gave him a pension of two
thousand, and one of four hundred to his son, and commissioned him to
execute an equestrian statue of himself, in marble, of colossal
proportions. The statue was executed in four years, and sent to
Versailles, where it was afterwards converted into _Marcus Curtius_, and
where, as such, it still remains.
BERNINI’S WORKS.
Bernini designed and wrought with wonderful facility; his life was one
of continued exertion, and he lived to the great age of eighty-two
years, so that he was enabled to execute an astonishing number of works.
Richly endowed by nature, and favored by circumstances, he rose superior
to the rules of art, creating for himself an easy manner, the faults of
which he knew well how to disguise by its brilliancy; yet this course,
as must ever be the case, did not lead to a lasting reputation. “The
Cav. Bernini,” says Lanzi, “the great architect and skillful sculptor,
was the arbiter and dispenser of all the works at Rome, under the
pontificates of Urban VIII. and Innocent X. His style necessarily
influenced those of all the artists, his cotemporaries. He was affected,
particularly in his drapery. He opened the way to caprice, changed the
true principles of art, and substituted for them the false. At
different times, the study of painting has taken the same vicious
course; above all, among the imitators of Pietro da Cortona, some of
whom went so far as to condemn a study of the works of Raffaelle, and
even to decry, as useless, the imitation of nature.” Bernini lived in
splendor and magnificence, and left a fortune of 400,000 Roman crowns
(about $700,000), to his children.
BERNINI AND THE VEROSPI HERCULES.
When the Verospi statue of Hercules killing the Hydra was first
discovered, some parts of it, particularly the monster itself, were
wanting, and were supplied by Bernini. Some years after, in further
digging the same piece of ground, they found the hydra that originally
belonged to it, which differs very much from Bernini’s supplemental one;
yet the latter is given in Maffei’s Statues, and other books of prints,
as the antique. The statue was removed from the Verospi palace to the
Capitol, where it now is; and the original hydra, with a horned sort of
a human face, snakes for hair, and a serpentine body, is there also, in
the same court.
FANATICISM DESTRUCTIVE TO ART.
Queen Elizabeth was a bitter persecutor of art; she ordered all sacred
pictures in the churches to be utterly destroyed, and the walls to be
white-washed, so that no memorial of them might remain. In her reign, it
became fashionable to sally forth and knock pictures and images to
pieces. Flaxman says, “The commands for destroying sacred paintings and
sculpture prevented the artist from suffering his mind to rise to the
contemplation or execution of any sublime effort, as he dreaded a prison
or a stake, and reduced him to the lowest drudgery in his profession.
This extraordinary check to our national art occurred at a time which
offered the most essential and extraordinary assistance to its
progress.” Flaxman proceeds to remark, “the civil wars completed what
fanaticism had begun, and English art was so completely extinguished
that foreign artists were always employed for public or private
undertakings.”
Charles I. was a great lover and patron of the fine arts, and during his
reign they made rapid advances in England; but the blind zeal of the
Puritans dispersed his splendid gallery, and destroyed almost every
vestige of art. In the Journal of the House, July 23d, 1645, it is
“Ordered, that all pictures having the second person of the Trinity, be
burnt.” Walpole relates that “one Blessie was hired at half-a-crown a
day to break the painted windows in Croydon church.” One _Dowsing_ was
employed from June 9th, 1642, to October 4th, 1644, in this _holy_
business, and by calculation it is found that he and his agents had
destroyed about 4660 pictures, evidently not all glass, because when
they were glass he so specified them.
“The result of this continued persecution,” says Haydon, “was the ruin
of high art, for the people had not taste enough to feel any sympathy
for it independently of religion, and every man who has pursued it
since, who had not a private fortune, and was not supported by a
pension, like West, became infallibly ruined.”
PAINTINGS EVANESCENT.
“Few works are more evanescent than paintings. Sculpture retains its
freshness for twenty centuries. The Apollo and the Venus are as they
were. But books are perhaps the only productions of man coeval with the
human race. Sophocles and Shakspeare can be produced and reproduced
forever. But how evanescent are paintings, and must necessarily be!
Those of Zeuxis and Apelles are no more, and perhaps they have the same
relation to Homer and Æschylus, that those of Raffaelle and Guido have
to Dante and Petrarch.
“There is however, one refuge from the despondency of this
contemplation. The material part, indeed, of their works must perish,
but they survive in the mind of man, and the remembrances of them are
transmitted from generation to generation. The poet embodies them in his
creations, and the systems of philosophers are modeled to gentleness by
their contemplation; opinion, that legislator, is infected with their
influence; men become better and wiser; and the unseen seeds are perhaps
thus sown which shall produce a plant more excellent than that from
which they fell.”--_Shelley._
There is at least another _refuge_. Paintings are now rendered as
permanent as books by engraving, or statuary, by mosaics. In the time of
Pliny, there were Greek paintings in Rome 600 years old. There is a
painting at Florence dated 886. It is also to be hoped that christianity
and civilization have made such advances, that no more Goths, Vandals,
Turks, and fanatics, will take pleasure in demolishing works of art as
in ages past.
THE ENGLISH NATIONAL GALLERY.
“A fine gallery of pictures is a sort of illustration of Berkeley’s
theory of matter and spirit. It is like a palace of thought--another
universe, built of air, of shadows, of colors. Everything seems palpable
to feeling as to sight: substances turn to shadows by the arch-chemic
touch; shadows harden into substances; ‘the eye is made the fool of the
other senses, or else worth all the rest.’ The material is in some sense
embodied in the immaterial, or at least we see all things in a sort of
intellectual mirror. The world of art is an enchanting deception. We
discover distance in a glazed surface; a province is contained in a foot
of canvass; a thin evanescent tint gives the form and pressure of rocks
and trees; an inert shape has life and motion in it. Time stands still,
and the dead reappear by means of this so potent art!
“What hues (those of nature mellowed by time) breathe around, as we
enter! What forms are there woven into the memory! What looks, which
only the answering looks of the spectator can express! What intellectual
stores have been yearly poured forth from the shrine of ancient art! The
works are various, but the names the same; heaps of Rembrandts frowning
from their darkened walls--Rubens’ glad gorgeous groups--Titian’s more
rich and rare--Claude always exquisite, sometimes beyond
compare--Guido’s endless cloying sweetness--the learning of Poussin and
the Caracci--and Raphael’s princely magnificence, crowning all. We read
certain letters and syllables in the catalogue, and at the well-known
magic sound a miracle of skill and beauty starts to view.
“Pictures are a set of chosen images, a stream of pleasant thoughts
passing through the mind. It is a luxury to have the walls of our rooms
hung round with them, and no less so to have such a gallery in the
mind,--to con over the relics of ancient art bound up ‘within the book
and volume of the brain, unmixed, (if it were possible) with baser
matter.’ A life passed among pictures, in the study and love of art, is
a happy, noiseless dream: or rather it is to dream and to be awake at
the same time, for it has all ‘the sober certainty of waking bliss,’
with the romantic voluptuousness of a visionary and abstracted being.
They are the bright consummate essence of things, and he who knows of
these delights, ‘to taste and interpose them oft, is not
unwise!’”--_Hazlitt._
THE NUDE FIGURE.
“It is difficult to discover any settled rules of propriety in the
different modes of dress, as all ages and nations have fluctuated with
regard to their notions and fashions in this matter. The Greek statues
of the Laocoön, Apollo, Meleager, Hercules; the Fighting and Dying
Gladiator, and the Venus de Medicis, though altogether without drapery,
yet surely there is nothing in them offensive to modesty, nothing
immoral: on the contrary, looking on these figures, the mind of the
spectator is taken up with the surprising beauty or sublimity of the
personage, his great strength, vigorous and manly character; or those
pains and agonies that so feelingly discover themselves throughout the
whole work. It is not in showing or concealing the form that modesty or
the want of it depends; _that_ rises entirely from the choice and
intentions of the artist himself. The Greeks and other great designers
came into this practice (of representing the figure undraped) in order
to show in its full extent the idea of character they meant to
establish. If it was beauty, they show it to you in all the limbs; if
strength, the same; and the agonies of the Laocoön are as discernible in
his foot as in his face. This pure and naked nature speaks a universal
language, which is understood and valued in all times and countries,
where the Grecian dress, language, and manners are neither regarded or
known. It is worth observing also that many of the fair sex do sometimes
betray themselves by their over-delicacy (which is the want of all true
delicacy) in this respect. But I am ashamed to be obliged to combat such
silly affectations; they are beneath men who have either head or heart;
they are unworthy of women who have either education or simplicity of
manner; they would disgrace even waiting-maids and sentimental
milliners-.”--_Barry._
“There is no more potent antidote to low sensuality than the adoration
of beauty. All the higher arts of design are essentially chaste, without
respect of the object. They purify the thoughts, as tragedy, according
to Aristotle, purifies the passions. Their accidental effects are not
worth consideration. There are souls to whom even a vestal is not
holy.”--_A. W. von Schlegel._
DIFFERENT SCHOOLS OF PAINTING COMPARED.
“The painters of the Roman school were the best designers, and had more
of the antique taste in their works than any of the others, but
generally they were not good colorists. Those of Florence were good
designers, and had a kind of greatness, but it was not antique. The
Venetian and Lombard schools had excellent colorists, and a certain
grace, but entirely modern, especially those of Venice; but their
drawing was generally incorrect, and their knowledge in history and the
antique very little. And the Bolognese school of the Caracci is a sort
of composition of the others; even Annibal himself possessed not any
part of painting in the perfection which is to be seen in those from
whom his manner is composed, though, to make amends, he possessed more
parts than perhaps any other master, and all in a very high degree. The
works of those of the German school have a dryness and ungraceful
stiffness, not unlike what is seen amongst the old Florentines. The
Flemings were good colorists, and imitated nature as they conceived
it--that is, instead of raising nature, they fell below it, though not
so much as the Germans, nor in the same manner. Rubens himself lived and
died a Fleming, though he would fain have been an Italian; but his
imitators have caricatured his manner--that is, they have been more
Rubens in his defects than he himself was, but without his excellencies.
The French, excepting some few of them (N. Poussin, Le Sueur, Sebastian
Bourdon), as they have not the German stiffness nor the Flemish
ungracefulness, neither have they the Italian solidity; and in their
airs of heads and manners they are easily distinguished from the
antique, how much soever they may have endeavored to imitate
it.”--_Richardson._
THE OLD MASTERS.
“The duration and stability of the fame of the old masters of painting
is sufficient to evince that it has not been suspended upon the slender
thread of fashion and caprice, but bound to the human heart by every
chord of sympathetic approbation.”--_Sir J. Reynolds._
PRICES OF GALLERIES.
The prices given for the three great collections of paintings sold in
England within the last century, may perhaps not be uninteresting. The
Houghton gallery, of two hundred and thirty-two pictures, collected by
Sir Robert Walpole, was sold to the Empress Catharine of Russia for
£43,500. The Orleans gallery of two hundred and ninety-six pictures was
sold in London, in 1798, for £43,555; and the Angerstein collection of
thirty-eight pictures was bought by the British government, in 1823, for
£57,000. This last purchase was the commencement of the English National
Gallery.