Vernet, notwithstanding he loved to depict the sea in its most convulsed
and terrible aspects, was a perfect gentleman of the French school,
whose manners were most amiable and engaging. What he most loved after
painting was music. He had formed at Rome, an intimate friendship with
Pergolesi, the composer, who afterwards became so celebrated, and they
lived almost continually together. Vernet placed a harpsichord in his
studio for the express use of his friend, and while the painter, carried
away by his imagination, put the waters of the mighty main into
commotion, or suspended persons on the towering waves, the grave
composer sought, with the tips of his fingers, for the rudiments of his
immortal melodies. It was thus that the melancholy stanzas of that _chef
d'oeuvre_ of sadness and sorrow, the _Stabat-Mater_, were composed for
a little convent in which one of Pergolesi's sisters resided. It seems
to one that while listening to this plaintive music, Vernet must have
given a more mellow tint to his painting; and it was, perhaps, while
under its influence, that he worked at his calms and moonlights, or,
making a truce with the roaring billows of the sea, painted it tranquil
and smooth, and represented on the shore nothing but motionless
fishermen, sailors seated between the carriages of two cannons, and
whiling away the time by relating their travels to one another, or else
stretched on the grass in so quiescent a state, that the spectator
himself becomes motionless while gazing on them.
Pergolesi died in the arms of Joseph Vernet, who could never after hear
the name of his friend pronounced, without being moved to tears. He
religiously preserved the scraps of paper, on which he had seen the
music of the _Stabat-Mater_ dotted down before his eyes, and brought
them with him to France in 1752, at which period he was sent for by the
Marquis de Marigny, after an absence of twenty years. Vernet's love for
music procured Grétry a hearty welcome, when the young composer came to
Paris. Vernet discovered his talent, and predicted his success. Some of
Grétry's features, his delicate constitution, and, above all, several of
his simple and expressive airs, reminded the painter of the immortal man
to whom music owes so large a portion of its present importance; for it
was Pergolesi who first introduced in Italy the custom of paying such
strict attention to the sense of the words and to the choice of the
accompaniments.