Nature, flattering her, idealizing her, and realizing her creations in
their double æsthetic expression, with undulating outlines and tender
tones. His drawing was modelled and supple, with a certain vigour of
line and a certain solidity of relief. He had a charming imagination of
conception and a voluptuous grace in its accomplishment, which are
requisites in the painting of women and children. He therefore excelled
in rendering _bambini_. With a note-book in his hand, he studied them
everywhere. This explains why his Loves and his Cherubs have such rare
truth of mien, of flesh, and of life. His knowledge of anatomy is great
and he foreshortens on canvas and ceiling astonishingly before the
advent of Michael Angelo. His enchanting colouring, impasted like that
of Giorgione, vivid as that of Titian, ran through the most delicate
gradations and melted into the most elusive harmonies. Beneath his
facile brush, soft and thick, the transparencies of the skin and the
morbidezza of the flesh become ideal.
He was the first to apply himself to the choice of fabrics, and one of
the first in Italy to attend to the scientific distribution of light.
But, in the famous _chiaroscuro_ he does not get his effects by
contrasts, but by analogies, superimposing shadow upon shadow and light
upon light, both being disposed in large masses and graduated in
progression. This process occurs at its fullest in the _Christmas
Night_, where the moon shines, and the child glows with radiance, in a
kind of symbolic struggle between the natural light of this world and
the supernatural light of the other. The effect is such that the
spectator is forced instinctively to blink his eyes, as does the
Shepherdess herself entering the stable.
"When Correggio excels he is a painter worthy of Athens," wrote Diderot,
whose art criticism had in it more of sentiment than knowledge.
"With Correggio everything is large and graceful," said Louis Carrache,
who gave Correggio a large place in his eclecticism. But after studying
and weighing everything, from his somewhat excessive qualities it
follows that Correggio was more of an idealist than a mystic and obeyed
Art more than Faith, with a leaning towards the apotheosis of form. He
painted _Io and Jupiter_ for Frederick Gonzaga of Mantua. This picture
having passed to the son of the Regent, the two passionate heads so
strongly troubled his prudery that he cut them out and burned them.
Coypel then begged the Prince to spare the rest and to give it to him.
He obtained it on condition that "he would make good use of it," and on
the death of Coypel, M. Pasquier, _député du Commerce de Rouen_, paid
16,500 _livres_ for the mutilated remains, as I find in a very old
account.
[Illustration: MAGDALEN.
_Correggio_]
All the great museums of the world possess Correggios, and I will only
mention the exquisite _Saint Catherine_ and the resplendent _Antiope_ of
the Louvre; the _Danaë_ of the Borghese Gallery, a _chef-d'oeuvre_ of
grace and delicacy; and, finally, in the Dresden Gallery, our _Magdalen
in the Desert_, that jewel so well-known and so often reproduced.
This Magdalen as a matter of fact holds the first place among the small
Correggios. There are two kinds of Magdalens in art: I. the Repentant,
emaciated, growing ugly, disfigured by tears and penitence at the end of
her life, with a skull in her hand or before her eyes, not having had
even--like the one sculptured in the Cathedral of Rouen--"for three
times ten winters any other vesture than her long hair," according to
Petrarch's verse; II. the Sinner, always young, always beautiful, always
seductive, who has not lost any of her charms nor even of her coquetry,
and with whom the Book of Life takes the place of the Death's Head.
Our Magdalen belongs to the latter class. In a solitary spot, but
attractive with its verdure and rocks, on a grassy knoll the saint is
stretched out at full length, with her shoulder, her bosom, her arms,
and her feet adorably bare. A blue fabric drapes the rest of her body
and forms a coquettish hood for her head and neck. Her flesh has a
robust elegance of line. Leaning on her right elbow, her hand, half
hidden in her hair, supports a charming and meditative head, while her
other arm is slipped under an open manuscript. Her hair, long and
blonde, according to legend--which she loves and still cares for because
it once wiped the feet of her Saviour--falls in thick curls, or strays
at will with a premeditated abandon. On the ground, to her right, stands
the vase of perfumes of her first adoration; to the left are the stones
of her supreme expiation.
What grace in her attitude! What beauty of form! She is thrown in with a
rare happiness and painted with an exquisite delicacy of touch and tint.
The blue drapery upon the green landscape defines her sufficiently
without making her stand out too much, leaving the figure and the
landscape to mingle without disturbing each other in skilful harmony.
All of this is in most finished execution, a little elaborate, perhaps,
and the expression of the face reflects the sweet, sad memory of the
Beloved, whose Gospels she is reading, just as one reads again tender
letters of the past.
This work was executed for the Dukes of Este, who kept it in a silver
frame studded with precious stones and used it as an ornament for their
bedrooms, and when they travelled, they took it with them in a casket.
When the King of Poland became its possessor, he gave it a second boxing
of glass with lock and key. In 1788, this masterpiece having been
stolen, 1,000 ducats were promised for its discovery, and, in
consideration of that sum, the thief denounced himself. Cristofano
Allori, the greatest Florentine painter of the Decadence, made a superb
copy for the Offices, I believe.
This Magdalen of Correggio's, "the least converted of sinners and the
most adorable of penitents," is she really, historically and
liturgically the Magdalen of the House of Bethany, of the grotto de la
Sainte-Baume in Provence? No. She recalls rather "_cette dame de
marque_" who was evoked in the Seventeenth Century by the Carmelite
Father Pierre de Saint-Louis in his sublime poem of accomplished
burlesque; and does not the following verse hum in your ear:
_"Lèvres dont l'incarnat faisant voir à la fois
Un rosier sans épine, un chapelet sans croix,"_
while the sinner
_" ... s'occupe à punir le forfait
De son temps prétérit qui ne fut qu'imparfait"?_
This evidently is not at all the art of the Middle Ages, nor its saints,
whose vestment was sackcloth and whose body was a mere lay figure for a
soul devoted entirely to purity, to simplicity, to mysticism, and to the
other world. In the Sixteenth Century, however, people took the
sackcloth from the saints and dressed them in flesh. Then was produced a
kind of revival of paganism, of naturalism, of life; and religious art,
in its flesh and colouring, no longer created anything but an Olympus of
beautiful maidens, or, at least, noble goddesses. Correggio's Magdalen
belongs to this artistic cycle and the painter executed it in the
noonday splendour of those qualities, the dawn of which glows in Parma
at St. Paul's. Correggio is not a mystic, he is a voluptuous naturalist,
and from him to the realist Caravaggio, "the grinder of flesh," and the
exuberant Rubens, who gave much study to Correggio, the distance is not
very great and the decline is fatal. But, in the meantime, where shall
we find more grace, or seductiveness--under this conversion complicated
with memories--than in Correggio's Magdalen?
In hagiographal literature we find a work of similar tone and charm:
_Marie Madeleine_, by P. Lacordaire, an exquisite little book written
with tenderness and piety, which deliciously calls up before us the
Magdalen of repentance and love, "the loving woman accustomed to the
delights of contemplation and needing only to see in her heart him whom
in other days she saw under the transparent veil of mortal flesh."
It must be confessed that Correggio was constantly preoccupied with
_charm_ and with that skilful coquetry that sports with every grace.
This is a subtlety of purely personal qualities; but let others beware
of a systematic affectation! In this way Correggio did not found a
school, but he had imitators, among whom was Parmigiano, who by dint of
study and in search for grace--the most natural thing in the world--most
often fell into affected and conventional ways.
Jouin, _Chefs-d'oeuvre: Peinture, Sculpture, Architecture_
(Paris, 1895-7).
BANQUET OF THE ARQUEBUSIERS
_(VAN DER HELST)_
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
The _Night-Watch_ at Amsterdam is magnificent in parts, but on the side
to the spectator's right, smoky and dim. The _Five Masters of the
Drapers_ is wonderful for depth, strength, brightness, massive power.
What words are these to express a picture! to describe a description! I
once saw a moon riding in the sky serenely, attended by her sparkling
maids of honour, and a little lady said, with an air of great
satisfaction, "_I must sketch it_." Ah, my dear lady, if with an H.B., a
Bristol board, and a bit of india-rubber, you can sketch the firmament
on high, and the moon in her glory, I make you my compliment! I can't
sketch _The Five Drapers_ with any ink or pen at present at command--but
can look with all my eyes, and be thankful to have seen such a
masterpiece.
They say he was a moody, ill-conditioned man, the old tenant of the
mill. What does he think of the "Van der Helst" which hangs opposite his
_Night-Watch_, and which is one of the great pictures of the world? It
is not painted by so great a man as Rembrandt; but there it is--to see
it is an event of your life. Having beheld it you have lived in the
year 1648, and celebrated the Treaty of Münster. You have shaken the
hands of the Dutch Guardsmen, eaten from their platters, drunk their
Rhenish, heard their jokes, as they wagged their jolly beards. The
Amsterdam Catalogue discourses thus about it:--a model catalogue: it
gives you the prices paid, the signatures of the painters, a succinct
description of the work.
"This masterpiece represents a banquet of the Civic Guard, which took
place on the 18th of June, 1648, in the great hall of the St. Joris
Doele, on the Singel at Amsterdam, to celebrate the conclusion of the
Peace at Münster. The thirty-five figures composing the picture are all
portraits.
"'The Captain Witse' is placed at the head of the table, and attracts
our attention first. He is dressed in black velvet, his breast covered
with a cuirass, on his head a broad-brimmed black hat with white plumes.
He is comfortably seated on a chair of black oak, with a velvet cushion,
and holds in his left hand, supported on his knee, a magnificent
drinking-horn, surrounded by a St. George destroying the dragon, and
ornamented with olive-leaves. The captain's features express cordiality
and good-humour; he is grasping the hand of 'Lieutenant Van Wavern'
seated near him in a habit of dark grey, with lace and buttons of gold,
lace-collar and wrist-bands, his feet crossed, with boots of yellow
leather, with large tops, and gold spurs, on his head a black hat and
dark-brown plumes. Behind him, at the centre of the picture, is the
standard-bearer, 'Jacob Banning,' in an easy martial attitude, hat in
hand, his right hand on his chair, his right leg on his left knee. He
holds the flag of blue silk, in which the Virgin is embroidered" (such a
silk! such a flag! such a piece of painting!), "emblematic of the town
of Amsterdam. The banner covers his shoulder, and he looks towards the
spectator frankly and complacently.
[Illustration: THE BANQUET OF THE ARQUEBUSIERS.
_Van der Helst._]
"The man behind him is probably one of the sergeants. His head is bare.
He wears a cuirass, and yellow gloves, grey stockings, and boots with
large tops, and knee-caps of cloth. He has a napkin on his knees, and in
his hand a piece of ham, a slice of bread and a knife. The old man
behind is probably 'William the Drummer.' He has his hat in his right
hand, and in his left a gold-footed wineglass, filled with white wine.
He wears a red scarf, and a black satin doublet, with little slashes of
yellow silk. Behind the drummer, two matchlock-men are seated at the end
of the table. One in a large black habit, a napkin on his knee, a
_hausse-col_ of iron, and a linen scarf and collar. He is eating with
his knife. The other holds a long glass of white wine. Four musketeers,
with different shaped hats, are behind these, one holding a glass, the
three others with their guns on their shoulders. Other guests are placed
between the personage who is giving the toast and the standard-bearer.
One with his hat off, and his hand uplifted, is talking to another. The
second is carving a fowl. A third holds a silver plate; and another, in
the background, a silver flagon, from which he fills a cup. The corner
behind the captain is filled by two seated personages, one of whom is
peeling an orange. Two others are standing, armed with halberts, of whom
one holds a plumed hat. Behind him are other three individuals, one of
them holding a pewter pot on which the name 'Poock,' the landlord of the
'Hotel Doele,' is engraved. At the back, a maid-servant is coming in
with a pasty, crowned with a turkey. Most of the guests are listening to
the captain. From an open window in the distance, the façades of two
houses are seen, surmounted by stone figures of sheep."
There, now you know all about it: now you can go home and paint just
such another. If you do, do pray remember to paint the hands of the
figures as they are here depicted; they are as wonderful portraits as
the faces. None of your slim Van Dyck elegancies, which have done duty
at the cuffs of so many doublets; but each man with a hand for himself,
as with a face for himself. I blushed for the coarseness of one of the
chiefs in this great company, that fellow behind "William the Drummer,"
splendidly attired, sitting full in the face of the public; and holding
a pork-bone in his hand. Suppose the _Saturday Review_ critic were to
come suddenly on this picture? Ah! what a shock it would give that noble
nature! Why is that knuckle of pork not painted out? at any rate, why is
not a little fringe of lace painted round it? or a cut pink paper? or
couldn't a smelling-bottle be painted in instead, with a crest and a
gold top, or a cambric pocket-handkerchief in lieu of the horrid pig,
with a pink coronet in the corner? or suppose you covered the man's hand
(which is very coarse and strong), and gave him the decency of a kid
glove? But a piece of pork in a naked hand? O nerves and eau de Cologne,
hide it, hide it!
In spite of this lamentable coarseness, my noble sergeant, give me thy
hand as nature made it! A great, and famous, and noble handiwork I have
seen here. Not the greatest picture in the world--not a work of the
highest genius--but a performance so great, various, and admirable, so
shrewd of humour, so wise of observation, so honest and complete of
expression, that to have seen it has been a delight, and to remember it
will be a pleasure for days to come. Well done, Bartholomeus Van der
Helst! Brave, meritorious, victorious, happy Bartholomew, to whom it has
been given to produce a masterpiece!
... Was it a dream? It seems like one. Have we been to Holland? Have we
heard the chimes at midnight at Antwerp? Were we really away for a week,
or have I been sitting up in the room dozing, before this stale old
desk? Here's the desk; yes. But if it has been a dream, how could I have
learned to hum that tune out of _Dinorah?_ Ah, is it that tune, or
myself that I am humming? If it was a dream how comes this yellow NOTICE
DES TABLEAUX DU MUSÉE D'AMSTERDAM AVEC FASCIMILE DES MONOGRAMMES before
me, and this signature of the gallant
Bartholomeus van der Helst fecit A; 1648.
Yes, indeed, it was a delightful little holiday; it lasted a whole
week.
_Roundabout Papers_ (London, 1863).
L'EMBARQUEMENT POUR L'ÎLE DE CYTHÈRE
(_WATTEAU_)
EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT
Watteau is the great poet of the Eighteenth Century. A creation, a whole
creation of poetry and dreams, emanated from his brain and filled his
work with the elegance of a supernatural life. From the fantasies of his
brain, from the caprice of his art, from his perfectly original genius,
not one but a thousand fairies took their flight. From the enchanted
visions of his imagination, the painter has drawn an ideal world, and,
superior to his own time, he has created one of those Shakespearian
realms, one of those countries of love and light, one of those paradises
of gallantry that Polyphile built upon the cloud of dreams for the
delicate joy of poetic mortals.
Watteau revived grace. Grace with Watteau is not the antique grace--a
rigid and solid charm, the perfection of the marble of a Galatea, the
entirely plastic and the material glory of a Venus. Grace with Watteau
is grace. It is that nothing that invests a woman with an attraction, a
coquetry, a more than physical beauty. It is that subtile quality which
seems the smile of a line, the soul of form, the spiritual physiognomy
of matter.
[Illustration: L'EMBARQUEMENT POUR L'ÎLE DE CYTHÈRE.
_Watteau._]
All the fascinations of a woman in repose: languor, idleness, abandon,
leaning back, reclining at full length, nonchalance, the cadences of
pose, the pretty air of profiles bending over the scales of love
(_gammes d'amour_), the receding curves of the bosom, the serpentine
lines and undulations, the suppleness of the female body, the play of
slender fingers on the handle of a fan and the indiscretions of high
heels beyond the skirts, and the happy fortune of deportment, and the
coquetry of actions, and the management of the shoulders, and all that
knowledge that was taught to women by the mirrors of the last
century,--the mimicry of grace!--lives in Watteau with its blossom and
its accent, immortal and fixed in a more vital proof than the bosom of
the wife of Diomedes moulded by the ashes of Pompeii. And if this grace
is animated by Watteau, if he looses it from repose and immobility, if
he renders it active and moving, it seems that it works with a rhythm
and that its measured pace is a dance led by some harmony.
How decorative is the form of woman, and her grace! O nature, wherein
the painter's poetic fancies wander! O landscape! O stage fit for a
desirable life! a helpful land, gallant woods, meadows full of music,
groves propitious to the sports of Echo! cradling trees hung with
baskets of flowers! desert places far from the jealous world, touched by
the magic brush of a Servandoni, refreshed with fountains, peopled with
marbles and statues, and Naiads, that spot the trembling shadow of the
leaves! jets of water suddenly springing up in the midst of farm-yards!
an amiable and radiant countryside! Suns of apotheosis, beautiful lights
sleeping on the lawns, penetrating and translucent verdure without one
shadow where the palette of Veronese, the riot of purple, and of blonde
tresses may find sleep. Rural delights! murmurous and gorgeous
decorations! gardens thick with brier and rose! French landscapes
planted with Italian pines! villages gay with weddings and carriages,
ceremonies, toilettes, and fêtes stunned with the noise of violins and
flutes leading the bridal of Nature and the Opera to a Jesuit fane!
Rustic scene on the green curtain, on the flowery slope up which the
_Comédie Française_ climbs and the _Comédie Italienne_ gambols.
Quick! to array the spring in ball costume, Watteau's heavens and earth,
quick. _Gelosi!_ A bergomask laugh shall be the laughter, animation, and
action, and movement of the piece. Look where Folly, capped and belled,
runs and wakes gaiety, zephyrs, and noise! Ruffs and caps, belts and
daggers, little vests and short mantles, go and come. The band of
buffoons comes running, bringing beneath the shady boughs the carnival
of human passions and its rainbow-hued garb. Variegated family, clothed
with sunlight and brilliant silk! that masks with the night! that
patches and paints with the moon! Harlequin, as graceful as a product of
the pencil of Parmesan! Pierrot, with his arms at his side, as straight
as an I, and the Tartaglias, and the Scapins, and the Cassandras, and
the Doctors, and the favourite Mezzetin "the big brown man with the
laughing face" always in the foreground with his cap on the back of his
head--striped all over like a zebra, proud as a god, and drunk as a
Silenus! It is the _Comédie Italienne_ that plays the guitar in all
these landscapes....
Here is the new Olympus and the new mythology; the Olympus of all the
demi-gods forgotten by antiquity. Here is the deification of the ideas
of the Eighteenth Century, the soul of Watteau's world and time led to
the Pantheon of human passions and fashions. These are the new humours
of aging humanity--Languor, Gallantry, and Reverie, which Watteau
incarnates as clothed allegories, and which he rests upon the _pulvinar_
of a divine nature; these are the moral muses of our age out of which he
has created the women, or, we might say, the goddesses of these divine
pictures.
Love is the light of this world, it penetrates and fills it. It is the
youth and serenity of it; and amidst rivers and mountains, promenades
and gardens, lakes and fountains, the Paradise of Watteau unfolds; it is
Cythera. Under a sky painted with the colours of summer, the galley of
Cleopatra swings at the bank. The waves are stilled. The woods are
hushed. From the grass to the firmament, beating the motionless air with
their butterfly wings, a host of Cupids fly, fly, play and dance, here
tying careless couples with roses, and tying above a circlet of kisses
that has risen from earth to the sky. Here is the temple, here is the
end of this world: the painter's _L'Amour paisible_, Love disarmed,
seated in the shadows, which the poet of Theos wished to engrave upon a
sweet cup of spring; a smiling Arcadia; a Decameron of sentiment; a
tender meditation; attentions with vague glances; words that lull the
soul; a platonic gallantry, a leisure occupied by the heart, an idleness
of youthful company; a court of amorous thoughts; the emotional and
playful courtesy of the young newly married leaning upon the offered
arm; eyes without fever, desire without appetite, voluptuousness without
desire, audacious gestures regulated like the ballet for a spectacle,
and tranquil defences disdainful of haste through their security; the
romance of the body and the mind, soothed, pacified, resuscitated,
happy; an idleness of passion at which the stone satyrs lurking in the
green _coulisses_ laugh with their goat-laughter. Adieu to the
bacchanales led by Gillot, that last pagan of the Renaissance, born of
the libations of the Pleiad to the rustic gods of Arcueil! Adieu to the
Olympus of the _Io Pæan_, the hoarse pipe and the goat-footed Gods, the
laughter of the _Cyclops_ of Euripides and the _Evohe_ of Ronsard, the
licentious triumphs, the ivy-crowned Joys;
"_Et la libre cadence
De leur danse._"
These gods have gone, and Rubens, who lives again in that palette of
light and rosy flesh, wanders bewildered in these _fêtes_, where the
riot of the senses is stilled,--animated caprices which seem to await
the crack of a whip to dissolve and disappear in the realm of fancy like
a mid-summer night's dream! It is Cythera; but it is Watteau's. It is
love, but it is a poetic love, a love that dreams and thinks; modern
love, with its aspirations and its crown of melancholy.
Yes, at the heart of this work of Watteau's, I do not know what slow and
vague harmony murmurs behind those laughing words; I do not know what
musical and sweetly contagious sorrow is diffused throughout these
gallant _fêtes_. Like the fascination of Venice, I do not know what
veiled and sighing poetry in low tones holds here the charmed spirit.
The man has passed across his work; and this work you come to regard as
the play and distraction of a suffering thought, like the playthings of
a sick child who is now dead....
But let us speak of that masterpiece of French masterpieces, that canvas
which has held a distinguished place on one of the walls of the _salon
carré_ for fifty years, _L'Embarquement de Cythère_.