Artists Have Portrayed Abraham Threatening
Isaac with a Blunderbuss, and
Romans Smoking Pipes.
Whether it be due to ignorance or careless impatience, it is true that
many of the greatest writers and painters have been guilty of the most
surprising anachronisms. Thus Shakespeare introduces cannon into the play
of "Hamlet," and in "Julius Caesar" reference is made to the striking of
the clock, though striking clocks were not invented until fourteen hundred
years after Caesar's death. Schiller, in his "Piccolomini," refers to
lightning-conductors--at least one hundred and fifty years before they
were invented. Instances might be added almost indefinitely.
The anachronisms of painters are more noticeable, as a rule, than those of
writers. In "The Fancies of Fact" is the following compilation of blunders
by artists:
Tintoretto, in a picture of the Children of Israel gathering
manna, has taken the precaution to arm them with the modern
invention of guns. Cigoli painted the aged Simeon at the
circumcision of the Infant Saviour; and, as aged men in
these days wear spectacles, the artist has shown his
sagacity by placing them on Simeon's nose.
In a picture by Verrio of Christ healing the sick, the
lookers-on are represented as standing with periwigs on
their heads. To match, or rather to exceed, this ludicrous
representation, Duerer has painted the expulsion of Adam and
Eve from the Garden of Eden by an angel in a dress
fashionably trimmed with flounces.
The same painter, in his scene of Peter denying Christ,
represents a Roman soldier very comfortably smoking a pipe
of tobacco.
A Dutch painter, in a picture of the Wise Men worshiping the
Holy Child, has drawn one of them in a large white surplice,
and in boots and spurs, and he is in the act of presenting
to the child a model of a Dutch man-of-war.
In a Dutch picture of Abraham offering up his son, instead
of the patriarch's "stretching forth his hand and taking the
knife," as the Scriptures inform us, he is represented as
using a more effectual and modern instrument; he is holding
to Isaac's head a blunderbuss.
A French artist has drawn, with true French taste, the
Lord's Supper, with the table ornamented with tumblers
filled with cigar-lighters; and, as if to crown the list of
these absurd and ludicrous anachronisms, the Garden of Eden
has been drawn with Adam and Eve in all their primeval
simplicity and virtue, while near them, in full costume, is
seen a hunter with a gun, shooting ducks.
Another famous mixture of periods occurs in a picture of the
Crucifixion, by Fra Angelico. In the foreground are a
Dominican monk, a bishop with a crozier, a mitered abbot,
and a man holding up a crucifix.