the tomb of the Doge Francesco Dandolo, and, at the side of it, one of
the most highly finished Tintoret's in Venice, namely: _The Marriage in
Cana_. An immense picture, some twenty-five feet long by fifteen
high, and said by Lazari to be one of the few which Tintoret signed with
his name. I am not surprised at his having done so in this case.
Evidently the work has been a favourite with him, and he has taken as
much pains as it was ever necessary for his colossal strength to take
with anything. The subject is not one which admits of much singularity
or energy in composition. It was always a favourite one with Veronese,
because it gave dramatic interest to figures in gay costumes and of
cheerful countenances; but one is surprised to find Tintoret, whose tone
of mind was always grave, and who did not like to make a picture out of
brocades and diadems, throwing his whole strength into the conception of
a marriage feast; but so it is, and there are assuredly no female heads
in any of his pictures in Venice elaborated so far as those which here
form the central light. Neither is it often that the works of this
mighty master conform themselves to any of the rules acted upon by
ordinary painters; but in this instance the popular laws have been
observed, and an academy student would be delighted to see with what
severity the principal light is arranged in a central mass, which is
divided and made more brilliant by a vigorous piece of shadow thrust
into the midst of it, and which dies away in lesser fragments and
sparkling towards the extremities of the picture. This mass of light is
as interesting by its composition as by its intensity. The cicerone who
escorts the stranger round the sacristy in the course of five minutes
and allows him some forty seconds for the contemplation of a picture
which the study of six months would not entirely fathom, directs his
attention very carefully to the "bell' effetto di prospettivo," the
whole merit of the picture being, in the eyes of the intelligent public,
that there is a long table in it, one end of which looks further off
than the other; but there is more in the "bell' effetto di prospettivo"
than the observance of the common law of optics. The table is set in a
spacious chamber, of which the windows at the end let in the light from
the horizon, and those in the side wall the intense blue of an Eastern
sky. The spectator looks all along the table, at the farther end of
which are seated Christ and the Madonna, the marriage guests on each
side of it,--on one side men, on the other women; the men are set with
their backs to the light, which passing over their heads and glancing
slightly on the table-cloth, falls in full length along the line of
young Venetian women, who thus fill the whole centre of the picture with
one broad sunbeam, made up of fair faces and golden hair. Close to the
spectator a woman has risen in amazement, and stretches across the table
to show the wine in her cup to those opposite; her dark red dress
intercepts and enhances the mass of gathered light. It is rather
curious, considering the subject of the picture, that one cannot
distinguish either the bride or the bride-groom; but the fourth figure
from the Madonna in the line of women, who wears a white head-dress of
lace and rich chains of pearls in her hair, may well be accepted for the
former, and I think that between her and the woman on the Madonna's left
hand the unity of the line of women is intercepted by a male figure: be
this as it may, this fourth female face is the most beautiful, as far as
I recollect, that occurs in the works of the painter, with the
exception only of the Madonna in the _Flight into Egypt_. It is an ideal
which occurs indeed elsewhere in many of his works, a face at once dark
and delicate, the Italian cast of feature moulded with the softness and
childishness of English beauty some half a century ago; but I have never
seen the ideal so completely worked out by the master. The face may best
be described as one of the purest and softest of Stothard's conceptions,
executed with all the strength of Tintoret. The other women are all made
inferior to this one, but there are beautiful profiles and bendings of
breasts and necks along the whole line. The men are all subordinate,
though there are interesting portraits among them; perhaps the only
fault of the picture being that the faces are a little too conspicuous,
seen like balls of light among the crowd of minor figures which fill the
background of the picture. The tone of the whole is sober and majestic
in the highest degree; the dresses are all broad masses of colour, and
the only parts of the picture which lay claim to the expression of
wealth or splendour are the head-dresses of the women. In this respect
the conception of the scene differs widely from that of Veronese, and
approaches more nearly to the probable truth. Still the marriage is not
an important one; an immense crowd, filling the background, forming
superbly rich mosaic of colour against the distant sky. Taken as a whole
the picture is perhaps the most perfect example which human art has
produced of the utmost possible force and sharpness of shadow united
with richness of local colour. In all the other works of Tintoret, and
much more of other colourists, either the light and shade or the local
colour is predominant; in the one case the picture has a tendency to
look as if painted by candle-light, in the other it becomes daringly
conventional, and approaches the conditions of glass-painting. This
picture unites colour as rich as Titian's with light and shade as
forcible as Rembrandt's, and far more decisive.
There are one or two other interesting pictures of the early Venetian
school in this sacristy, and several important tombs in the adjoining
cloister; among which that of Francesco Dandolo, transported here from
the Church of the Frari, deserves especial attention.
_Stones of Venice_ (London, 1853).
MADAME DE POMPADOUR
(_DE LA TOUR_)
CHARLES-AUGUSTIN SAINTE-BEUVE
Madame de Pompadour was not exactly a _grisette_, as her enemies
affected to say and as Voltaire has said in a malicious moment: she was
a _bourgeoise_, a blossom of finance, the most lovely woman in Paris,
witty, elegant, adorned with a thousand gifts and a thousand talents,
but with a way of feeling that did not have the grandeur and coldness of
an aristocratic ambition. She loved the King for his own sake, as the
handsomest man in his realm, as the one who had seemed the most amiable
to her; she loved him sincerely, sentimentally, if not with a profound
passion. On her arrival at court, her ideal would have been to amuse him
with a thousand entertainments borrowed from the arts, or even from
matters of the intellect, to make him happy and constant in a circle of
varied enchantments and pleasures. A Watteau landscape, sports,
comedies, pastorals in the shade, a continual Embarkation for Cythera,
that would have been the round she would have preferred. But once
transported into the slippery enclosure of the court, she could realize
her ideal very imperfectly. Kind and obliging by nature, she had to take
up arms to defend herself against enmity and perfidy and to take the
offensive to avoid being overthrown; necessity led her into politics and
induced her to make herself Minister of State.
She loved the arts and intellectual things far above the comprehension
of any of the ladies of quality. On her arrival at her eminent and
dishonourable post--much more dishonourable than she thought--she at
first only thought of herself as destined to aid, to call to her side,
and to encourage struggling merit and men of talent of all kinds. This
is her sole glory, her best title, and her best excuse. She did her best
to advance Voltaire and to make him agreeable to Louis XV., whom the
petulant poet so strongly repelled by the vivacity and even the
familiarity of his praises. She thought she had found a genius in
Crébillon and honoured him accordingly. She showed favour to Gresset;
she protected Marmontel; she welcomed Duclos; she admired Montesquieu
and plainly showed it. She would have liked to serve Jean-Jacques
Rousseau. When the King of Prussia ostentatiously gave d'Alembert a
modest pension and Louis XV. was scoffing in her presence at the amount
(1200 livres), in comparison with the term _sublime genius_, for which
it was given, she advised him to forbid the philosopher to accept it and
to double it himself; which Louis XV. did not dare to do; his religious
principles would not permit it on account of the _Encyclopédie_. It was
not her fault that we cannot say _the century of Louis XV._, as we say
_the century of Louis XIV_.
[Illustration: PORTRAIT OF MADAME DE POMPADOUR.
_De la Tour._]
There are then in the career and power of Madame de Pompadour two
distinct periods: the first, the most brilliant and most greatly
favoured, was that following the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle (1748): in
this, she completely played her rôle of a youthful favourite, fond of
peace, the arts, the pleasures of the mind, and advising and protecting
all things happily. There was a second period, greatly checkered, but
more frequently disastrous and fatal; this was the whole period of the
Seven Years' War, the attempted assassination by Damiens, the defeat of
Rosbach, and the insults of the victorious Frederick. These were harsh
years which prematurely aged this weak and graceful woman, who was drawn
into a struggle beyond her strength.... However, my impression is that
things might have been worse, and that, with the aid of M. de Choiseul,
by means of the Family Compact she again covered her own mistakes and
the humiliation of the French monarchy with a certain amount of
prestige.
It seems that the nation itself felt this and felt more especially that
after this brilliant favourite there would be a greater fall; for when
she died at Versailles, April 15, 1764, the regret of the Parisian
populace, which some years before would have stoned her, was
universal....
The one who seemed to regret her the least was Louis XV.; it is related
that seeing from a window the hearse on its way from Versailles to
Paris, the weather being dreadful, he only said:
"The Marquise will not have very fine weather for her journey."
All the masters of the French school of her time painted a portrait of
Madame de Pompadour: we have one by Boucher, and another by Drouais
which Grimm preferred to all others; but the most admirable of all is
certainly La Tour's pastel owned by the Louvre. To this we go in order
to see _la marquise_ before we allow ourselves to judge of her, or to
form the least idea of her personality.
She is represented as seated in an arm-chair, holding in one hand a book
of music, and with her left arm resting on a marble table on which are
placed a globe and several volumes. The largest one of these books,
which is next to the globe, is Volume IV. of the _Encyclopédie_; next to
it in a row are the volumes of _L'Esprit des Lois_, _La Henriade_, and
_Pastor Fido_, indicative of the tastes at once serious and sentimental
of the queen of this spot. Upon the table also and at the base of the
globe is seen a blue book upside down, its cover is inscribed: _Pierres
gravées_; this is her work. Underneath it and hanging down over the
table is a print representing an engraver of precious stones at work
with these words: _Pompadour sculpsit_. On the floor, by the foot of the
table, is a portfolio marked with her arms and containing engravings and
drawings; we have here a complete trophy. In the background, between the
feet of the consol-table, is seen a vase of Japanese porcelain: why not
of Sèvres? Behind her arm-chair and on the side of the room opposite the
table is another arm-chair, or an ottoman, on which lies a guitar. But
it is the person herself who is in every respect marvellous in her
extreme delicacy, gracious dignity, and exquisite beauty. Holding her
music-book in her hand lightly and carelessly, her attention is suddenly
called away from it; she seems to have heard a noise and turns her head.
Is it indeed the King who has arrived and is about to enter? She seems
to be expecting him with certainty and to be listening with a smile. Her
head, thus turned aside, reveals the outline of the neck in all its
grace, and her very short but deliciously-waved hair is arranged in
rows of little curls, the blonde tint of which may be divined beneath
the slight covering of powder. The head stands out against a light-blue
background, which in general dominates the whole picture. Everything
satisfies and delights the eye; it is a melody, perhaps, rather than a
harmony. A bluish light, sifting downwards, falls across every object.
There is nothing in this enchanted boudoir which does not seem to pay
court to the goddess,--nothing, not even _L'Esprit des Lois_ and
_L'Encyclopédie_. The flowered satin robe makes way along the
undulations of the breast for several rows of those bows, which were
called, I believe, _parfaits contentements_, and which are of a very
pale lilac. Her own flesh-tints and complexion are of a white lilac,
delicately azured. That breast, those ribbons, and that robe--all blend
together harmoniously, or rather lovingly. Beauty shines in all its
brilliance and in full bloom. The face is still young; the temples have
preserved their youth and freshness; the lips are also still fresh and
have not yet withered as they are said to have become from having been
too frequently puckered or bitten in repressing anger and insults.
Everything in the countenance and in the attitude expresses grace,
supreme taste, and affability and amenity rather than sweetness, a
queenly air which she had to assume but which sits naturally upon her
and is sustained without too much effort. I might continue and describe
many lovely details, but I prefer to stop and send the curious to the
model itself: there they will find a thousand things that I scarcely
dare to touch upon.
Such in her best days was this ravishing, ambitious, frail, but sincere
woman, who in her elevation remained good, faithful (I love to believe)
in her sin, obliging, so far as she could be, but vindictive when driven
to it; who was quite one of her own sex after all, and, finally, whose
intimate life her lady-in-waiting has been able to show us without being
too heavy or crushing a witness against her.
In spite of everything, she was exactly the mistress to suit this reign,
the only one who could have succeeded in turning it to account in the
sense of opinion, the only one who could lessen the crying discord
between the least literary of kings and the most literary of epochs. If
the Abbé Galiani, in a curious page, loudly preferring the age of Louis
XV. to that of Louis XIV., has been able to say of this age of the human
mind so fertile in results: "Such another reign will not be met with
anywhere for a long time," Mme. de Pompadour certainly contributed to
this to some extent. This graceful woman rejuvenated the court by
bringing into it the vivacity of her thoroughly French tastes, tastes
that were Parisian. As mistress and friend of the Prince, as protectress
of the arts, her mind found itself entirely on a level with her rôle and
her rank: as a politician, she bent, she did ill, but perhaps not worse
than any other favourite in her place would have done at that period
when a real statesman was wanting among us.
When she found herself dying after a reign of nineteen years; when at
the age of forty-two years she had to leave these palaces, these riches,
these marvels of art she had amassed, this power so envied and disputed,
but which she kept entirely in her own hands to her last day, she did
not say with a sigh, like Mazarin, "So I must leave all this!" She
faced death with a firm glance, and as the _curé_ of the Madeleine, who
had come to visit her at Versailles, was about to depart, she said:
"Wait a moment, _Monsieur le Curé_, we will go together."
Madame de Pompadour may be considered the last in date of the Kings'
mistresses who were worthy of the name: after her it would be impossible
to descend and enter with any decency into the history of the Du Barry.
The kings and emperors who have succeeded in France, from that day to
this, have been either too virtuous, or too despotic, or too gouty, or
too repentant, or too much the paterfamilias, to allow themselves such
useless luxuries: at the utmost, only a few vestiges have been
observable. The race of Kings' mistresses, therefore, may be said to be
greatly interrupted, even if not ended, and Mme. de Pompadour stands
before our eyes in history as the last as well as the most brilliant of
all.[19]
_Causeries de Lundi_ (Paris, 1851-57), Vol. II.
FOOTNOTES:
[19] Here is an exact statement of the civil register of the State
relating to Mme. de Pompadour: Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson, marquise de
Pompadour, born in Paris, Dec. 29, 1721 (Saint-Eustache);--married March
9, 1741, to Charles-Guillaume Lenormant, seigneur d'Étioles
(Saint-Eustache); died April 15, 1764; interred on the 17th at the
Capucines de la place Vendôme. Her parish in Paris was la Madeleine; her
hôtel, in the Faubourg Saint-Honoré, now l'Élysée.
M. Le Roi, librarian of Versailles, has published, after an authentic
manuscript the _Relevé des dépenses de Mme. de Pompadour depuis la
première année de sa faveur jusqu'à sa mort_. This statement, which
mentions the sums and their uses, presents a complete picture of the
marquise's varied tastes, and does not try too much to dishonour her
memory.
THE HAY WAIN
(_CONSTABLE_)
C.L. BURNS
A little strip of country on the borders of Essex and Suffolk, not ten
miles in length, and but two or three in breadth, presenting to the
casual observer few features more striking than are to be seen in many
other parts of England, but hailed with delight by painters for its
simple charm, has exercised a wider influence upon modern landscape
painting than all the noble scenery of Switzerland or the glories of
Italy; for here was nurtured that last and greatest master of that
school of English landscape painting, which made the Eastern Counties
famous in the annals of art. He was so essentially English, it might be
said local, in his feeling, that he never left his country, and produced
his greatest works within the narrow limits of his native valley; in
whom love of locality was indeed the very basis of his art.
[Illustration: THE HAY WAIN.]
Constable, for it was he, like Rembrandt, was the son of a miller, and
was born at a time when the winds and flowing waters were powers in the
land, bearing a golden harvest on their health-giving and invisible
currents, turning sails upon countless hill-tops, and wheels in every
river--before the supplanter, steam, was even dreamed of. His earliest
recollections were mingled with the busy clatter of wheels, and the
whirr of sails, as they sped round before the wind, was the music of his
boyhood. His father, good man of the world as he was, holding a high
opinion of the solid comforts gained by following his own profitable
calling, placed his son, at the age of seventeen, in charge of a
windmill, hoping thereby to curb his rising enthusiasm for the more
glorious but less substantial pursuit of art. Alas! how little can we
predict the effect of our actions. This one, framed to divert his
purpose in life, was the very means of leading him to study more closely
the ever-varying beauties of the sky, with its matchless combinations of
form and colour, and all the subtle differences of atmosphere, which in
after-life formed a distinctive feature in his work; and, for a
landscape-painter, perhaps no early training could have been better. His
daily occupation by bringing him continually face to face with Nature,
and necessitating a constant observance of all her changing phenomena,
trained his heart and eye to discover her secrets, hidden from the
careless, but revealed to all true lovers of her wisdom.
The effect upon a temperament so artistic as Constable's was as
permanent as it was quickly apparent. In less than a year we find his
father reluctantly converted to his son's views in the choice of a
career, and consenting to his sojourn in London, to learn the principles
and technicalities of his profession, which he soon strove to forget and
subsequently set at defiance. Two years of studio work was sufficient to
convince him that his school was the open air; and in his own country,
amid the scenes of his boyhood, he could shake off the chains of
fashion, which bound the landscape-painter of that day, and go straight
to nature for his inspiration. Concerning this he writes: "For the last
two years I have been running after pictures, and seeing truth at
second-hand. I have not endeavoured to represent nature with the same
elevation of mind with which I set out, but have rather tried to make my
performances look like the work of other men; I shall return to
Bergholt, where I shall get a pure and unaffected manner of representing
the scenes which may employ me--there is room for a _natural_ painter;"
a prediction which was hardly fulfilled in his lifetime, for, with the
majority of even intelligent lovers of art, his works were rarely
understood and never popular, though the appreciative sympathy of an
enlightened few kept him from despair. But, appreciated or not, he had
found his life's work, and henceforth his mission was to depict the
scenes around his old home, and to express the love he felt so keenly
for "every stile and stump, and every lane in dear Bergholt."
"Painting," he writes, "is with me but another word for feeling, and I
associate my careless boyhood with all that lies on the banks of the
Stour--those scenes made me a painter, and I am grateful."
How lovingly he repaid this debt of gratitude to his native valley will
be seen by the tender care he bestowed in depicting its beauties;
indeed, the strongest impression produced after visiting Constable's
country and again turning to a study of his works, is the marvellous
sense of locality he has embodied in them. You seem to breathe the very
air of Suffolk and hear again the "sound of water escaping from
mill-dams," and see once more "the willows, the old rotten planks, the
slimy posts, and brickwork," he delighted in. In spite of the fifty
years which have elapsed since he laid aside his brush for ever, with
all the accidents of time and season, the subjects he painted are still
to be easily found, and clearly distinguished by anyone at all
acquainted with his works. The only exception is in the original of the
famous _Cornfield_, now in the National Gallery. Here the enemy has been
busy, and by the aid of his children Growth and Decay, has succeeded in
transforming the subject out of all recognition, tearing down the trees
on the left, enlarging the group on the right, shutting out the view of
Stratford Church, and choking up the brook from which the boy is
drinking. Nor has Time been idle with this same boy, who six years ago,
was carried to his last resting-place in Bergholt Churchyard, aged
sixty-five....
It is not, however, in Bergholt village that we must seek for the scenes
which made Constable a painter, but down in the quiet hollow a mile and
a half to the eastward on the banks of his much-loved Stour, and around
the paternal mill of Flatford, not improved as is the one at Dedham into
hideousness, but remaining much as it was in the artist's day. Both
mills were the property of Golding Constable, witnessed thereto in the
latter, the initials G.C., carved in irregular characters deep in the
huge mill scales, still legible beneath the dust of a century, as
enduring almost as the memory of his gifted son.
A low uneven structure is Flatford Mill, with many gables and queer
outbuildings; standing on an island, the millhouse backing the main
stream and facing a pool formed by the mill-tail, which, flowing
through the mill, rejoins the main stream a hundred yards below. To this
spot came Constable many a hundred times, we may be sure, fishing in the
stream, or sketching with his close ally, John Dunthorne, the village
plumber, and a lover of nature; their performances with the brush
doubtless puzzling old Willy Lott--whose farmhouse occupies the opposite
side of the pool; but though his judgment might not have been so
technically sound upon art matters as upon the merits of those hornless
Suffolk cattle, said to have been unconsciously introduced by Constable
into pictures painted in far distant countries, yet his criticisms would
have been worth hearing by virtue of their originality. Willy cared but
little for the outer world and its mode of thinking, any curiosity he
may have ever had concerning it being amply satisfied by the experiences
of four nights, separated by long intervals, spent away from his
ancestral roof in four-score years. That this house of his possessed a
peculiar fascination for Constable is evident from its forming an
important feature in two of his best known works, the _Hay Wain_ and the
_Valley Farm_, besides appearing in numerous sketches.