Mensch wiltu (?) leben seliguch und bei Gott blibene
Solch (?) halten die zehen gebot die uns gebeut unser Gott ...
unser ...
"It seems to have been assumed," adds Mr. Eastlake, "that the
choir-book is a Protestant one, and therefore inconsistent with the
presence of the silver crucifix recently revealed in the left-hand
upper corner of the picture. But it is evident that the hymn or anthem
above mentioned is merely a paraphrase of the well-known 'Veni Sancte
Spiritus,' which for ages past has appeared in the Roman Catholic
breviary for use on Whit Sunday or the Feast of Pentecost, and still
survives in the Anglican Ordination Service." The music in the book
has been identified by Mr. W. B. Squire, of the British Museum, as the
counterpoint sung by the tenor in Johann Walther's setting for the
Wittenberg hymn-book of 1524. Mr. Squire adds his opinion that Holbein
chose those compositions for copying in the picture, "on account of
the bearing which the words had upon either the individuals portrayed,
or some incident connected with them, and intended to be commemorated"
(Letter to the _Times_, 14th November 1891). Miss Hervey finds an
explanation in the fact that the Bishop of Lavaur was devoted to the
cause of religious re-union between the Roman Catholic and the Reformed
Churches. The doctrine expressed by the two hymns was common to all the
churches.
[246] For further particulars the reader is referred to _Holbein's
'Ambassadors': the Picture and the Men_, by Mary F. S. Hervey (1900).
Miss Hervey gives an interesting account of her identification of the
sitters, and many curious speculations as to the details of the picture.
[247] It has been suggested by some high authorities that the lower
portion of the picture was probably left to some pupil to finish; for
the Admiral's legs are very flabbily drawn. They look as if there
were no bone or muscle in them, but only sawdust or padding. Señor de
Bereute, in spite of the very definite history of the picture given by
Palomino, attributes the whole work not to Velazquez but to his pupil
and son-in-law, J. B. del Mazo (1308). If this be correct, Mazo was
another Velazquez. There is nothing in Mazo's known works to justify
such an estimate of his powers. "Mazo, still in his early youth, had
in 1634 married a daughter of Velazquez, and had only recently got a
subordinate place in Philip's court. It is hard to believe that he
could have painted this superb picture when only about 25 years of
age, or that Philip would have entrusted him with the portrait of a
favourite when he had beside him his trusty Court painter, Velazquez"
(_Quarterly Review_, April 1899, p. 521).
[248] "Congratulate me (he wrote to his old friend and colleague,
Sir H. A. Layard) on a real _trouvaille_. The picture I bought at
G. Bentinck's sale has come out splendidly, and is in first-rate
condition. Burton is greatly struck with it. It is a wonderful bit
of luck to have picked up so fine a picture from among so many of
the cognoscenti." No wonder that Sir William Gregory, who bought his
pictures so cheap, was aghast at the large and even fancy price which
the nation sometimes has to pay. "The cost of them," he writes of the
Longford pictures (Nos. 1314-1316) "makes me blush when I think of it."
[249] The composition, however, has been blamed on the ground that
the square picture on the wall interferes with the girl's head in a
very awkward manner. The Cupid represented in that picture is also
very clumsy. A correspondent replying to these criticisms writes:
"The composition depends not upon the rhythm of the lines, but upon
the arrangement of patches of colour, somewhat in the manner of the
Japanese. Dutch painters often represented inferior pictures upon
the walls of their interiors, perhaps as a kind of humorous contrast
to their own masterpieces. See, for instance, the daub in De Hooch's
picture in the National Gallery (No. 834)."
[250] By Mr. Berenson ascribed to "Amico di Sandro."
[251] "Hung on each side of the great Vandyck, on the east wall of
the principal Dutch and Flemish room, they have given the completing
touch to that collection of _chefs d'oeuvre_, and made it now beyond
question the finest wall of masterpieces of those schools in Europe"
(Sir Edward Poynter's speech at the Royal Academy Banquet, 1899).
[252] The purchase for the nation was at one time in jeopardy. Early in
1899 the two pictures were offered by Lord de Saumarez to the National
Gallery for the sum of £12,500. A special grant was obtained from Her
Majesty's Treasury for this sum on the condition that the Trustees
should forego the annual grant for 1899-1900, estimated at £5000.
Lord de Saumarez found, however, that he had no power to sell the
pictures without an order from the Court of Chancery, and having been
subsequently offered the sum of £15,000 for these two pictures, the
Court decided they could only be sold to the National Gallery for an
advance on the sum offered. The Trustees, therefore, offered the sum of
£15,050, for which the Court awarded them to the Trustees. Towards the
balance of the purchase money, amounting to £2550, two of the Trustees,
Mr. Alfred de Rothschild and Mr. Heseltine, liberally contributed £500
each, and the remainder, amounting to £1550, was paid out of the grant
for the year 1898-99.
[253] Mr. Roger Fry (in _The Pilot_, Jan. 5, 1901) attributes our
picture, which he calls "a distressing production," to "some journeyman
painter who treated Fra Bartolommeo's design in the spirit of the
earlier furniture painters, but without their charm and _naïveté_."
[254] "His early pictures have only a hint of personal expression.
Some of his Madonnas are still almost Byzantine in their hieratic
solemnity. It is possible to follow Giovanni Bellini's career almost
from year to year by the increase of personal expression in his figures
and landscapes" (Mary Logan: _Guide to the Italian Pictures at Hampton
Court_, p. 9).
[255] See Bernhard Berenson's _Lorenzo Lotto_, 1895, pp. 21-120.
[256] See Mr. Herbert Cook's _Giorgione_, pp. 68-74.
[257] That fine picture came from the Manfrini Palace at Venice; and
though by some called a "bad and late copy" (Mündler, _Beiträge zu B.'s
Cicerone_, 1870, p. 61) is by others highly praised. Thus Waagen, in
his _Treasures of Art in Great Britain_ (vol. iii. 1854, p. 19), in
describing the Cobham Hall pictures, says of the picture now in the
National Gallery that it "agrees essentially with the fine portrait in
the Manfrini collection at Venice. But the tone of the flesh is heavier
here, and the grey colour of the dress unites too much with the grey
ground, while in the Manfrini picture, the brown tones of the dress
stand out decidedly from it."
[258] See the _Second Annual Report of the National Art Collections
Fund_, 1906, pp. 35, 36. Until the matter was cleared up by the
researches of Señor de Beruete, summarised in that Report, it was
supposed that our picture was one of five mythologies painted by
Velazquez for the Gallery of Mirrors in the Alcazar of Madrid, two of
which perished in the great fire of 1734. Knowledge of this fire was
doubtless the origin of a suggestion that our picture also had been
damaged and repainted. There was correspondence on this subject, and
on others connected with the picture, in the _Times_ of November and
December 1905 and the early part of 1906.
[259] The intermediate processes by which the price of the picture rose
from £30,500 to £45,000 have not been disclosed. Towards the latter
sum, the largest contributions were--"An Englishman" £10,000; Lord
Michelham, £8000; and Messrs. Agnew, £5250.
[260] See pp. 75-78 of _The Barbizon School_, by D. C. Thomson, from
whose translation I borrow a few sentences.
[261] According to William Morris, most visitors to the Gallery are apt
to pass by some of its principal treasures. "If ordinary people go to
our National Gallery, the thing which they want to see is the Blenheim
Raphael, which, though well done, is a very dull picture to any one
not an artist. While, when Holbein shows them the Danish princess of
the sixteenth century yet living on the canvas ...; when Van Eyck
opens a window for them into Bruges of the fourteenth century; when
Botticelli shows them Heaven as it lived in the hearts of men before
theology was dead, these things produce no impression on them, not so
much even as to stimulate their curiosity and make them ask what 'tis
all about; because these things were done to be looked at, and to make
the eyes tell the mind tales of the past, the present, and the future"
(Mackail's _Life of William Morris_, ii. 273).
[262] The precise nature of the transaction was this:--Lady Carlisle
received in cash £40,000 and the Treasury paid the death-duties
(£2776). Of these sums, the National Gallery funds contributed £15,000;
the National Art-Collections' Fund, £10,000; and the Treasury £17,776
(see House of Commons Debate, February 28, 1912).