It is enough to name the Feast of the Gods, began by John Bellini,
but finished, and the whole landscape added, by Titian[204], or the
landscape of the Bacchus and Ariadne[205], and those of the fine
pictures in the Bridgewater Gallery, impressed as they are with the
grandeur of the wild forests and bold mountains of his native province.
Poussin follows him closely in this department, but his excellences are
owing to careful choice and study, combining much of antique feeling
with the rich sources he found in nature. His Calisto[206] is a very
fine example: his Arcadia[207] another, and so, generally speaking, are
all those where he has introduced Bacchanalian subjects.
Where the landscape itself without accompanying figures is considered,
Claude Lorraine is unrivalled, whether he chooses the sober hue of the
Enchanted Castle[208], or the glowing sunsets seen from the shores of
Italy, with all the riches of architecture and shipping, or softened by
inland landscape such as only Italy can suggest[209].
Highly imaginative also are the landscapes of Salvator Rosa, who
is among painters, like the writers of romance among poets, bold,
wild, and interesting. But I must only name Gaspar Poussin, Annibale
Caracci, and Domenichino among the Italian landscape painters, and
then hasten to Rembrandt, whose grand and characteristic landscapes
equal in sentiment and effect his historical works and his portraits.
Nor is Rubens less remarkable: witness his Saint George[210], and the
landscapes of the Munich Gallery. Cuyp, whether representing the cattle
and grazing grounds, or the busy river and canal scenes of his native
country, is inimitable; and Ruysdael and Vanderveldt each stand at the
head of a class far above the painters of mere views.
Yet views in some hands acquire value, if not dignity. The very truth
of Canaletti’s Venice becomes poetical. And now and then Vernet has
made a seaport fit to gratify the vanity of his master, Louis XIII., in
more senses than one.
Thus have I endeavoured to distribute into classes that charming
department of the art which the poet loved who hung his bower of
enchantment with
Whate’er Lorraine light touch’d with soft’ning hue,
Or savage Rosa dashed, or learned Poussin drew.
It now only remains to speak of the painters of animals. Every body
will at once feel, that if the Greeks counted Apelles, and Pausias,
and Nicias, among their best animal painters, that if Polygnotus chose
to introduce a dog even into the Battle of Marathon, and that if
part of the great fame of Protogenes arose from the manner in which
he painted the dogs and the game in his Ialysus, the moderns have to
boast of Rubens, whose various excellences would have been incomplete
without his hunts of the lion and the boar; and Snyders, though
professing little else, raised his animals to the dignity of history,
by his manner of treating them. I might quote the pampered lap-dogs of
Titian[211], and the graceful favourites of Paul Veronese[212], and
even the tame partridge of the grave John Bellini[213], as well as the
horses of Vandyke and Velasquez, as instances of occasional success in
these things.
But I cannot regard the diligent Paul Potter as more than a very
excellent cattle portrait painter, so unequal are his choice of subject
and his treatment to his exquisite execution. Of Cuyp’s animals, I can
only repeat what I have said as to his landscape, with which they are
so intimately connected, that they form a part of it; and the same is
true of Adrian Vanderveldt’s.
This essay has grown to great length, because I have been tempted to a
larger list of instances and examples than I intended; but yet I have
abstained from naming many others well suited to my purpose. Of those I
have quoted, with the exception of antique works, there are not six of
which I have not myself seen the originals.
FOOTNOTES:
[142] Fuseli felt the incongruity and inconvenience of throwing
together all the variety of pictures which commonly take the name of
historical paintings, and has judiciously divided, and eloquently
supported the division of that class of pictures into nearly the same
sections as I have proposed. But he looked too disdainfully on all
art which he did not practise, to have great weight; and is on that
account, as well as on some others, less followed than he deserves; he
has not condescended to notice any other branch of painting except the
historical portrait.
[143] For the truth of this, see any catalogue of either ancient or
modern masters.
[144] Pliny says, b. xxv. ch. 2, that the Greek authors on Physic,
Cratevus, Dionysius, and Metrodorus, painted every herb in colours; and
under their portraits they couched and subscribed their several names
and effects.--_Holland’s Trans._
[145] Reynolds for instance. But Fuseli more particularly, as I have
mentioned in a former note.
[146] It is worth the reader’s while to turn to an abridged account of
this curious table in Moor’s three Essays. Cebes himself, seated by
the death-bed of Socrates, and learning to hope with something like
confidence for the immortality of the soul, furnishes a beautiful moral
picture, which even the disagreeable translation of the Phædo, by
Taylor, cannot spoil.
[147] From MS. notes on the old pictures of Italy. Of this class,
there is a magnificent early Flemish picture, of which I never saw the
original: it is Van Eyck’s worship of the Lamb. There is an excellent
description of it in Madame Schopfenhauer’s pleasant volumes on the
ancient Flemish schools of art; and one in a periodical work published
at Brussels, in which there is an etching of the whole subject.
[148] If painting were not exclusively my subject, I might here mention
a number of ingenious allegorical prints, especially the various dances
of death.
[149] About the year 1345. I shall have occasion hereafter to notice
these pictures again. But I here subjoin a literal translation of the
description of the first of them. “In the second place the aforesaid
[150]Cola admonished the governors and people to do well by an
allegory, which he caused to be painted on the Palace of the Capitol
opposite the market, on the outer wall above the chamber; the painted
allegory was in this form. There was painted a vast sea, the waves
horrid and much troubled; in the midst thereof was a ship little less
than foundered, without a rudder, without a sail; in this ship, so
dangerously placed, there was a widow woman, clad in black, girded
with the girdle of grief; loose her scarf from her bosom, and her hair
dishevelled as if she wept; she was on her knees, her hands crossed and
pressed to her breast as in prayer, as she were perishing, for such was
her danger; above was written THIS IS ROME. Around this ship, below the
water, there were four sunken ships, their sails fallen, their masts
broken, their rudders lost; in every one a drowned woman, dead. The
first was called Babylon; the second, Carthage; the third, Troy; the
fourth, Jerusalem. The superscription bore, that these cities had been
brought by injustice, first to danger and then to destruction. A label
from the mouths of these four women was inscribed--
Thou wast raised high above every sovereignty,
Now we await thy final wreck.
On the left hand were two islands, on the one a woman sitting in a
posture of shame, with the superscription, THIS IS ITALY; her label of
speech bore--
Thou tookest the guardianship of all lands,
And only me thou ownedst for a sister.
In the other island were four women, their cheeks on their hands, their
elbows on their knees, in most sorrowful action, and saying,--
Thou wast accompanied by every virtue,
Now thou art abandoned on the wide sea.
These were the four cardinal virtues, Temperance, Prudence, Justice,
and Fortitude.
On the right was a little island in which was a kneeling woman; her
hand stretched to heaven, as in prayer; she was dressed in white, her
name was Christian Faith, and her verse was--
Oh! highest father, my lord and conductor,
If Rome perish what becomes of me?
Above all this, on the right hand, were four orders of animals, with
horns at their mouths, blowing like winds and causing tempests on the
sea, and helping to increase the danger of the ship. The first order
was of lions, wolves, and bears. The inscription bore, _these are the
potent Barons and unjust Governors_.
The second order were dogs, pigs, and he-goats; their inscription was,
These are evil councillors, the parasites of the nobles. The third
order were rams, dragons, and foxes; their inscription was, These are
the false officers, judges, and notaries. The fourth order consisted of
hares, cats, goats, and apes; their superscription bore, that they were
the populace, thieves, murderers, adulterers, and spoilers.
Above all was painted heaven; in the midst of which was the divine
Majesty coming to judgment; out of his mouth proceeded two swords, one
pointing one way, the other, the other: on one hand was St. Peter, on
the other St Paul, in prayer.
And when the people saw this allegory every one marvelled.”
[150] Rienzi’s nick-name, from Nicolo Rienzi.
[151] Reynold’s, in his Fifth Discourse, says that Michael Angelo
“never needed, or seemed to disdain, to look abroad for foreign help,”
and contrasts this _originality_ with Raffaelle’s practice of using
occasionally the inventions of his predecessors. But Reynolds, if he
had been acquainted with the work of Signorelli, would have seen that
Michael Angelo took from him, not only single figures of great power,
but at least one group of importance, which he used with little change
in the Last Judgment.
[152] “BE STILL, AND KNOW THAT I AM GOD.”
[153] At Dresden.
[154] In Venice.
[155] In Venice.
[156] In Rome.
[157] At Bologna.
[158] In Spain.
[159] In the possession of the Duke of Wellington.
[160] Raffaelle’s engraved designs of the same subject are still more
charming than those of the Farnesina. The decorations of his own villa,
near the Porta del Popolo, and those still existing in Mr. M----’s
villa, on the Palatine Hill, yield to neither.
[161] Hans Hemelink is said to have been a soldier, who, after
receiving a severe wound, was cured in the hospital at Bruges; and
that the first of his pictures that attracted public attention, he
painted in consequence of a vow made while under cure. Having recovered
his health, and fulfilled his vow at home, he went on a pilgrimage to
Saint Jago de Compostella, in Spain, and was heard no more of. The fine
picture described formed part of the Boiserée collection. There are two
exquisite heads in the Florence Gallery, by Hemelink.
[162] These designs are the originals of the set of prints usually
called Raffaelle’s Bible.
[163] In our National Gallery.
[164] At Rome in the Borghese.
[165] In Spain.
[166] At Paris.
[167] At Dresden.
[168] At Vienna.
[169] At Rome, in the church of the Trinità del Monte.
[170] Florence Gallery.
[171] At Naples, in the church of San Martino.
[172] In the National Gallery. The expression in this picture makes
me prefer it to the Woman taken in Adultery. I should have named the
Blinding of Sampson in the Schœnborn collection at Vienna, but for the
atrocious choice of the painter as to the time and action.
[173] A picture in brown and white, after Michael Angelo’s cartoon,
exists at Holkham. A drawing was made by Rubens of part of the Battle
of the Standard, from which the print published by Edelink was taken.
[174] This very beautiful work is in the Belvedere Gallery at Vienna.
An excellent copy, by Rottenhamer, is in the King of Bavaria’s
collection.
[175] At Dresden. When the Russian army was at Dresden, in 1814, this
picture was borrowed for an altar-piece for Alexander’s temporary
chapel: on removing, the picture was packed up and carried off as
lawful plunder, but the curator of the Gallery chose his time and place
of remonstrance so well that it was restored.
[176] In the church of St Paul’s, without the walls of Rome.
[177] Now in Russia.
[178] In the Florence Gallery.
[179] Both in the Pitti Palace, Florence.
[180] In the Pitti Palace.
[181] At Dresden.
[182] Marco Uggione, a contemporary, made an oil copy, thought very
inferior at the time, but it is now the best memorial of the picture:
it belongs to the Royal Academy. Some works in fresco, of great merit,
by Uggione, are collected in the Brera at Milan.
[183] Of the innumerable “Last Suppers” painted after this, none
reached this sublimity of expression. Gravity and dignity are the
highest characteristics of the best, such as that of Andrea del Sarto.
Many degenerated into the pure picturesque: and once in the hands of
Tintoret, the subject became almost absurd.
[184] At Schleissheim.
[185] The picture was rolled up as it had come from Paris. The
description is from the preface to the third book of the Lives of the
Painters, where in many of the later editions the picture has been
given to Palma.
[186] Particularly those in the Scuola di San Marco.
[187] Painted for the Carità, now in the Gallery of the Fine Arts,
Venice.
[188] Gallery at Venice.
[189] Several of these are at Hampton Court, others at Munich.
[190] At Dulwich.
[191] In the Bridgewater collection.
[192] At Florence.
[193] Borghese palace, Rome.
[194] Vienna, and in Spain.
[195] Grimani palace, Venice.
[196] Doria palace, Rome.
[197] Doria palace, Rome. This pope was of the Panfili Doria family.
[198] Often repeated.
[199] Belonging to His Grace of Northumberland, who allows nobody to
see it. The copy by Gainsborough is fine; and is in more liberal hands.
[200] Pisani palace, Venice.
[201] In France.
[202] In the possession of Earl Spencer.
[203] In the Louvre.
[204] In the collection of Camuccini, at Rome.
[205] In the National Gallery.
[206] In the possession of the Marquis of Westminster.
[207] In the possession of the Duke of Devonshire.
[208] In the possession of Mr. Wells of Redleaf.
[209] Some very fine ones of this description are in the National
Gallery, and some in the Bridgewater Collection.
[210] In our National Gallery.
[211] Particularly in the picture of the Child in the Strozzi Palace at
Florence.
[212] Those pretty greyhounds, which appear under the table in the
Supper at the house of Simon, the study for which Mr. Rogers has, and
which are often, repeated.
[213] The pretty bird is picking up the crumbs under the table at
Emmaus.
ESSAY VI.
ON THE MATERIALS USED BY PAINTERS.
However admirable his taste may be, he is but half a painter who can
only conceive his subject, and is without knowledge of the mechanical
part of his art.
REYNOLDS’ NOTES ON DU FRESNOY.
When first scholars began to study the works of the ancients, at that
busy period distinguished by the revival of letters and the arts, the
discoveries they made were so new and so surprising, that a kind of
enchanted mist overspread every object in their eyes, and all they
looked back upon was magnified or distorted.
They found so much wisdom and knowledge in the writings of the
ancients, that they, as is natural, thought that all antiquity was
wise and knowing; and in proportion to their exaggerated esteem for
the ancients, they encouraged a contempt for their contemporaries and
countrymen, at least as extravagant.
A little consideration would have told them, however, that many
things must continue unaltered in nature, though fashion or accident
should vary the form in all societies, after the first conveniences,
comforts, and luxuries of civilised life have been invented. But here
the pride of unusual learning stepped in, and it would have mortified
the scholar to think that what he pored over by his midnight lamp in
the books of Greece and Rome, could have anything in common with the
manners and occupations of his vulgar neighbours. Thus an ignorance
founded on prejudice was begotten, and has been maintained in part even
to the present day, notwithstanding the stores of common knowledge
opened to us by the discovery of Pompeii and its neighbouring towns.
Scholars and antiquaries rejoiced indeed at the finding of those towns,
because their position, long matter of controversial speculation, was
ascertained; but I very much doubt if they did not also feel something
like mortification, on beholding open proof that the materials and
contrivances of the cooks of these our degenerate days continue
like those of the ancients, and that there is no Greek method of
eating[214].
Every day is adding something to the conviction of those who required
proof, that where the end to be answered is the same, the tools and
materials, employed in different ages and countries, cannot choose but
be wonderfully alike.
This homely way of considering such matters is not, I know, agreeable
to the moderately learned, who think much of small acquirements; but,
to real scholars and philosophers, truth is at all times, and under
every form, acceptable.
I purpose in this essay to give such an account as I can collect, of
the materials used by painters; the substances upon which they painted,
the pigments they coloured with, the vehicles by means of which the
colours were applied, and the tools employed in painting.
It would appear, from the judiciously conducted researches of some late
travellers, that some of the earliest coloured work in Egypt is upon
bare sand-stone. Where that rock is of very fine grit the water-colours
seem to have answered well, but where the grit was coarse the work
became gross and uneven. A remedy was therefore applied; a plaster of
very fine lime and some kind of size was spread over the stone, and
the colour applied most probably before the plaster was dry, and so
approaching to fresco painting, which doubtless grew out of that older
manner. The lately opened Etruscan tombs show the same variety; colour
upon the bare sand-stone and colour upon thin fine plaister.
The advantage of applying colour upon a damp or even wet ground must
have been abundantly apparent, from the success of the painted vases so
early brought to perfection in Greece and Tuscany; and accordingly, in
the earliest pictures of any magnitude described as painted in either
country, we recognise genuine fresco painting[215].
But walls were not always at hand for the painter; and many were eager
to have pictures which they might transport to other countries than
those of the painter, either for the religious purposes of decorating
temples and fulfilling vows, or purely for the pleasure of possessing
works of art, or, finally, for the purposes of trade.
A substitute easily occurred. Wooden panels, well seasoned, and smeared
over with plaster, smoothed either with pumice, or some substance
answering the same purpose, were found to answer admirably. Yet even
here it would seem that the Egyptians led the way; for in order to
prepare the coffins of their mummies for their painted decorations,
they were in like manner prepared with a fine plaster of lime or chalk,
exceedingly thin[216].
The mummy cases were made of various woods; among others the
Egyptian fig, which is often translated sycamore[217]. From Pliny’s
description[218] it is not certain which of the known figs was the
Egyptian sycamore. The grain is light, close, and tough, and the timber
is best seasoned in water.
The wood usually employed for panels for large pictures was the heart
of the female larch. Pliny says, that painters have found by experiment
that it is smooth and clean, and not apt to split or warp; he adds that
it will last for ever[219]. Theophrastus speaks of the same wood for
the same purposes, and also of the cornel[220]. The cedar and cypress
appear also to have been used. For smaller pictures it is probable
that a greater variety of trees furnished tables for the painter.
The tablets used in the schools at Sicyon are said to have been of
box-wood. Holly was also particularly fitted for the purpose, by the
closeness of its grain and its durability. The earliest modern Italians
used also the wood of the fig tree well dried and seasoned[221],
besides the larch, ilex, sycamore, and walnut tree.
The ancients prepared their boards or tablets with a thin ground of
chalk and size of some kind[222], whether a size of flour paste, or
weak carpenter’s glue, does not appear. In the thirteenth century
the painters took the trouble to make the white for laying grounds
themselves. Cennino’s directions on the subject are curious on more
accounts than one. He says, “Take the pinion bones and ribs of
chickens, the staler the better, and, just as you find them under the
table[223], put them into the fire till they become whiter than the
ashes themselves.” After this he gives directions to pound, wash and
dry them thoroughly, and to keep them in a dry paper for use; he allows
certain bones of the sheep also to be used, but, as he always insists
on staleness, I suppose he wishes them to be free from grease[224].
Cennino’s boards were prepared with great care, washed with many
waters, and pumiced to perfect smoothness; the ground to be laid on
thin and rendered smooth and even with the hand, or, as he says, the
fat part of the thumb.
So far the boards for the school of Sicyon and those for the school
of Giotto appear to have been much alike. The next step seems to me
also the same. The pupils were to draw very lightly with a metal
point--Fuseli calls the antique one a cestrum--upon the white ground,
and if anything was amiss it was easily effaced. Cennino directs
that the tool should be tipped with silver, whatever metal the main
part might be made of, that it should be moderately sharp, and very
smooth[225].
We have not any direct evidence that linen cloth or canvass was used to
paint upon before the reign of Nero, who ordered an immense portrait
of himself to be painted on a linen cloth one hundred and twenty feet
in height. Pliny, who relates the fact, does not say whether it were
stretched on a frame, or whether it covered planks, to prevent, in
some degree, the warping and splitting, to which so many joinings as
would have been necessary in a table of that size must have rendered
them liable.
Several writers, and particularly Monsieur Durand[226], have imagined
that Pliny says, painting on linen had never till then been heard of.
I think, however, that it is the colossal size of the picture that
had not been heard of because we find that, at that very time, it
was no uncommon thing to decorate the places for the exhibition of
prize-fighters with hangings, on which were pictures of remarkable
fights; these, Pliny expressly says, were painted cloths[227], and,
were it of consequence, I think passages might be collected to show
the great probability that linen cloth was used by painters where works
of little durability were required. The preparation with chalk and size
must have been the same as that for painting on panel.
The use of linen books, for the registering private affairs is
mentioned as common, before paper made of the papyrus came into general
use[229]. Fronto saw many books of linen preserved in the ancient
archives of Anagni[230]. And even after the papyrus and parchment came
into use, Pliny mentions that several Eastern nations still made their
letters on woven cloth.
But is your worship’s folly less than mine,
When I with wonder view some rude design
In crayons or in charcoal, to invite
The crowd to see the gladiators fight?
Methinks in very deed they mount the stage,
And seem in real combat to engage:
Now in strong attitude they dreadful bend,
Wounded they wound, they parry and defend.
FRANCIS’ HORACE, Book ii. Sat. 7.
We are told that both Parrhasius and Zeuxis were in the habit of making
drawings on parchment[231]. We know also that Greek herbalists drew and
coloured the plants they wrote of in books. It is therefore improbable
that they should have overlooked the light, pliable, yet tough
material, linen cloth. It might seem less lasting than panel; but for
small subjects it was surely preferable either to paper or parchment,
and as the use of it was not unknown for writing upon, why should we
suppose painters so long neglected it?
The Mexicans, though certainly acquainted with the use of painting
on wood, used also the prepared skin of a small deer, and the paper
made from the Agave Americana; but they preferred cotton cloth, which
they prepared with a white shining earth, as they did their paper and
parchment, and as the Egyptians prepared their coffins, and the Greek
planters their tablets.