become vague, indistinct, and only the masses of colour and the light
and shade perfectly distinguishable, we shall see that the picture is
indeed divided as if horizontally, the upper half being all light, and
the lower half comparatively all dark. As we approach nearer, step by
step, we behold above, the radiant figure of the Saviour floating in mid
air, with arms outspread, garments of transparent light, glorified
visage upturned as in rapture, and the hair uplifted and scattered as I
have seen it in persons under the influence of electricity. On the
right, Moses; on the left, Elijah; representing, respectively, the old
law and the old prophecies, which both testified of Him. The three
disciples lie on the ground, terror-struck, dazzled. There is a sort of
eminence or platform, but no perspective, no attempt at real locality,
for the scene is revealed as in a vision, and the same soft transparent
light envelops the whole. This is the spiritual life, raised far above
the earth, but not yet in heaven. Below is seen the earthly life, poor
humanity struggling helplessly with pain, infirmity, and death. The
father brings his son, the possessed, or, as we should now say, the
epileptic boy, who ofttimes falls into the water or into the fire, or
lies grovelling on the earth, foaming and gnashing his teeth; the boy
struggles in his arms--the rolling eyes, the distorted features, the
spasmodic limbs are at once terrible and pitiful to look on.
Such is the profound, the heart-moving significance of this wonderful
picture. It is, in truth, a fearful approximation of the most opposite
things; the mournful helplessness, suffering, and degradation of human
nature, the unavailing pity, are placed in immediate contrast with
spiritual light, life, hope--nay, the very fruition of heavenly rapture.
It has been asked, who are the two figures, the two saintly deacons, who
stand on each side of the upper group, and what have they to do with the
mystery above, or the sorrow below? Their presence shows that the whole
was conceived as a vision, or a poem. The two saints are St. Lawrence
and St. Julian, placed there at the request of the Cardinal de' Medici,
for whom the picture was painted, to be offered by him as an act of
devotion as well as munificence to his new bishopric; and these two
figures commemorate in a poetical way, not unusual at the time, his
father, Lorenzo, and his uncle, Giuliano de' Medici. They would be
better away; but Raphael, in consenting to the wish of his patron that
they should be introduced, left no doubt of the significance of the
whole composition--that it is placed before worshippers as a revelation
of the double life of earthly suffering and spiritual faith, as an
excitement to religious contemplation and religious hope.
In the Gospel, the Transfiguration of our Lord is first described, then
the gathering of the people and the appeal of the father in behalf of
his afflicted son. They appear to have been simultaneous; but painting
only could have placed them before our eyes, at the same moment, in all
their suggestive contrast. It will be said that in the brief record of
the Evangelist, this contrast is nowhere indicated, but the painter
found it there and was right to use it--just the same as if a man should
choose a text from which to preach a sermon, and, in doing so, should
evolve from the inspired words many teachings, many deep reasonings,
besides the one most obvious and apparent.
But, after we have prepared ourselves to understand and to take into our
heads all that this wonderful picture can suggest, considered as an
emanation of the mind, we find that it has other interests for us,
considered merely as a work of Art. It was the last picture which came
from Raphael's hand; he was painting on it when seized with his last
illness. He had completed all the upper part of the composition, all the
ethereal vision, but the lower part of it was still unfinished, and in
this state the picture was hung over his bier, when, after his death, he
was laid out in his painting-room, and all his pupils and his friends,
and the people of Rome, came to look upon him for the last time; and
when those who stood round raised their eyes to the _Transfiguration_,
and then bent them on the lifeless form extended beneath it, "every
heart was like to burst with grief" (_faceva scoppiare l' anima di
dolore a ognuno che quivi guardava_), as, indeed, well it might.
Two-thirds of the price of the picture, 655 _duccati di camera_, had
already been paid by the Cardinal de' Medici; and, in the following
year, that part of the picture which Raphael had left unfinished was
completed by his pupil Giulio Romano, a powerful and gifted but not a
refined or elevated genius. He supplied what was wanting in the colour
and chiaroscuro according to Raphael's design, but not certainly as
Raphael would himself have done it. The sum which Giulio received he
bestowed as a dowry on his sister, when he gave her in marriage to
Lorenzetto the sculptor, who had also been a pupil and friend of
Raphael. The Cardinal did not send the picture to Narbonne, but,
unwilling to deprive Rome of such a masterpiece, he presented it to the
Church of San Pietro in Montorio, and sent in its stead the _Raising of
Lazarus_, by Sebastian del Piombo, now in our National Gallery. The
French carried off the _Transfiguration_ to Paris in 1797, and, when
restored, it was placed in the Vatican, where it now is. The _Communion
of St. Jerome_, by Domenichino, is opposite to it, and it is a sort of
fashion to compare them, and with some to give the preference to the
admirable picture by Domenichino; but the two are so different in aim
and conception, the merits of each are so different in kind, that I do
not see how any comparison can exist between them.
_The History of Our Lord, as exemplified in Works of Art_,
continued and completed by Lady Eastlake (2nd ed., London, 1865).
THE BULL
(_PAUL POTTER_)
EUGÈNE FROMENTIN
_The Lesson in Anatomy, The Night Watch_, and Paul Potter's _Bull_ are
the most celebrated things in Holland. To the latter the Museum at The
Hague owes a great part of the interest it inspires. It is not the
largest of Paul Potter's canvases; but it is, at least, the only one of
his great pictures that merits serious attention. _The Bear Hunt_ in the
Museum of Amsterdam (supposing it to be authentic), even by ridding it
of the retouches which disfigure it, has never been anything else save
the extravagance of a young man, the greatest mistake he committed. _The
Bull_ is not priced. Estimating it according to the present value of
Paul Potter's other works, nobody doubts that in a European auction it
would fetch a fabulous sum. Then is it a beautiful picture? By no means.
Does it deserve the importance attached to it? Incontestably. Then is
Paul Potter a very great painter? Very great. Does it follow that he
really does paint as well as is commonly supposed? Not exactly. That is
a misapprehension that it will be well to dissipate.
[Illustration: THE BULL.
_Paul Potter._]
On the day when this suppositious auction of which I speak opened, and
consequently when every one had the right freely to discuss the merits
of this famous work, if anyone dared to let the truth be heard, he
would speak very nearly as follows:
"The reputation of the picture is very much exaggerated and at the same
time very legitimate; it is contradictory. It is considered as an
incomparable specimen of painting, and that is a mistake. People think
it is an example to be followed, a model to be copied, one in which
ignorant generations may learn the technical secrets of their art. In
that again they deceive themselves entirely. The work is ugly and very
ill-conceived, and the painting is monotonous, thick, heavy, dull, and
dry. The arrangement is of the poorest. Unity is lacking in this
picture, which begins one knows not where, does not end anywhere,
receives light without being illuminated, and distributes it at random,
escapes on every side and runs out of the frame, so exactly like
flowered linen prints does it seem to be painted. The space is too
crowded without being occupied. Neither the lines, nor the colour, nor
the distribution of the effects, give it even those first conditions of
existence which are essential to any fairly well-ordered work. The
animals are ridiculous in their size. The painting of the fawn cow with
the white head is very hard. The ewe and the ram are modelled in
plaster. As for the shepherd, no one would think of defending him. Only
two portions of this picture seem to be intended for our notice, the
great sky and the enormous bull. The cloud is well in place: it is
lighted up where it should be, and it is also properly tinted according
to the demands of the principal object, its purpose being to accompany
or serve as a relief to the latter. With a wise understanding of the
law of contrasts, the painter has beautifully graded the strong tints
and the dark shading of the animal. The darkest part is opposed to the
light portion of the sky, and the most energetic and ingrained
characteristic of the bull is opposite to all that is most limpid in the
atmosphere. But this is hardly a merit, considering the simplicity of
the problem. The rest is simply a surplus that we might cut away without
regret, to the great advantage of the picture."
That would be a brutal criticism, but an exact one. And yet public
opinion, less punctilious or more clear-sighted, would say that the
signature was well worth the price.
Public opinion never goes entirely astray. By uncertain roads, often by
those not most happily chosen, it arrives definitely at the expression
of a true sentiment. The motives that lead it to acclaim any one are not
always of the best, but there are always other good reasons that justify
this expression. It is deceived regarding titles, sometimes it mistakes
faults for excellencies, it estimates a man for his manner, and that is
the least of all his merits; it believes that a painter paints well when
he paints badly and because he paints minutely. What is astonishing in
Paul Potter is the imitation of objects carried to the point of
eccentricity. People do not know, or do not notice, that in such a case
the soul of the painter is of more worth than the work, and that his
manner of feeling is of infinitely greater importance than the result.
When he painted _The Bull_ in 1647, Paul Potter was not twenty-three
years of age. He was a very young man; and according to the usual run of
young men of twenty-three years, he was a child. To what school did he
belong? To none. Had he any masters? We do not know of any other
teachers than his father Pieter Simonsz Potter, an obscure painter, and
Jacob de Wet (of Haarlem), who had no force to influence a pupil either
for good or evil. Paul Potter then found around his cradle and
afterwards in the studio of his second master nothing but simple advice
and no doctrines; very strange to say, the pupil did not need anything
more. Until 1647 Paul Potter divided his time between Amsterdam and
Haarlem, that is to say, between Frans Hals and Rembrandt in the focus
of the most active, the most inspiring and the richest art of celebrated
masters that the world had ever known except during the preceding
century in Italy. Professors were not lacking, the choice was only too
embarrassing. Wynants was forty-six; Cuyp, forty-two; Terburg,
thirty-nine; Ostade, thirty-seven; Metzu, thirty-two; Wouwerman,
twenty-seven; and Berghem, about his own age, was twenty-three years of
age. Many of the youngest even were members of the Guild of St. Luke.
Finally, the greatest of all, the most illustrious, Rembrandt, had
already produced the _Night Watch_, and he was a master to tempt one.
What became of Paul Potter? How did he isolate himself in the heart of
this rich and swarming school, where practical ability was extreme,
talent universal, style somewhat similar, and, nevertheless--a beautiful
thing at that happy time--the methods of feeling were very individual?
Had he any fellow-pupils? We do not see them. His friends are unknown.
He was born,--it is the utmost we can do to be sure of the exact year.
He reveals himself early, signing a charming etching at fourteen; at
twenty-two he is ignorant on many points, but on others his maturity is
unexampled. He laboured and produced work upon work; doing some things
admirably. He accumulated them in a few years in haste and abundance, as
if death were at his heels, and yet with an appreciation and a patience
which render this prodigious labour miraculous. He married, young, for
any one else but very late for him, for it was on July 3, 1650; and on
August 4, 1654, four years afterwards, death seized him in the height of
his glory, but before he had learned his whole ground. What could be
simpler, shorter, and more fully accomplished? Genius and no lessons,
ardent study, an ingenuous and able product, attentive observation and
reflection; add to this great natural charm, the gentleness of a
meditative mind, the appreciation of a conscience filled with scruples,
the sadness inseparable from solitary labour, and, perhaps, the natural
melancholy belonging to sickly beings, and you very nearly have all Paul
Potter.
To this extent, if we except its charm, _The Bull_ at The Hague
represents him wonderfully well. It is a great _study_, too great from
the common-sense point of view, not too great for the research of which
it was the object, nor for the instruction that the painter drew from
it.
Reflect that Paul Potter, compared with his brilliant contemporaries,
was ignorant of all the skill of the handicraft: I do not speak of the
tricks of which his frankness can never be suspected. He especially
studied forms and aspects in their absolute simplicity. The least
artifice was an embarrassment which would have spoiled him, because it
would have altered his clear view of things. A great bull in a vast
plain, an immense sky, and no horizon, so to speak,--what better
opportunity is there for a student to learn once for all a host of very
difficult things, and to know them, as they say, by rule and compass.
The action is very simple; he did not fail with it; the movement is
true, and the head admirably full of life. The beast has his age, his
type, his character, his disposition, his length, his height, his
joints, his bones, his muscles, his hair rough or smooth, in flocks or
curls, his hide loose or stretched,--all is perfection. The head, the
eye, the neck and shoulders, the chest, from the point of view of a
naïve and powerful observation, form a very rare specimen, perhaps,
really without an equal. I do not say that the pigment is beautiful, nor
that the colour is well chosen; pigment and colour are here subordinated
too visibly to preoccupations of form for us to exact much on that head,
when the designer has given all, or nearly all, under another. Moreover,
the work in that field accomplished with such force results in rendering
nature exactly as she is, in her reliefs, her nuances, and her power,
and almost in her mysteries. It is not possible to aim at a more
circumscribed but more formal result and attain it with more success.
People say _Paul Potter's Bull_, and that is not enough, I assure you:
they might say _The Bull_, and, in my opinion, that would be the
greatest eulogy that could be bestowed upon this work, so mediocre in
its weak parts and yet so decisive.
_Les Maîtres d'Autrefois_ (Paris, 1876)
CORÉSUS AND CALLIRHOÉ
(_FRAGONARD_)
EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT
Poets were lacking in the last century. I do not say rhymers, versifiers
and mechanical arrangers of words; I say poets. Poetry, taking the
expression in the truth and height of its meaning; poetry, which is an
elevation or an enchantment of the imagination, the contribution of an
ideal of reverie or gaiety to human thought; poetry, which carries away
and suspends above the world the soul of a period and the spirit of a
people, was unknown to the France of the Eighteenth Century, and her two
only poets were two painters: Watteau and Fragonard.
Watteau, the man of the North, the child of Flanders, the great poet of
Love! the master of sweet serenity and tender Paradises, whose work may
be likened to the Elysian Field of Passion! Watteau, the melancholy
enchanter who has made nature sigh so heavily in his autumn woods, full
of regret around dreamful pleasure! Watteau, the Pensieroso of the
Regency; Fragonard, the little poet of the _Art of Love_ of the time.
Have you noticed in _L'Embarquement de Cythère_ all those naked little
forms of saucy and knavish Loves half lost in the heights of the sky?
Where are they going? They are going to play at Fragonard's and to
put on his palette the hues of their butterfly wings.
[Illustration: CORÉSUS AND CALLIRHOÉ.
_Fragonard_.]
Fragonard is the bold narrator, the gallant _amoroso_, the rogue with
Gallic malice, nearly Italian in genius but French in spirit; the man of
foreshortened mythology and roguish undress, of skies made rosy by the
flesh of goddesses and alcoves lighted with female nudity.
Upon a table beside a bunch of roses let us allow the leaves of his work
to be ruffled by the wind of a lovely day: from landscapes where robes
of satin are escaping in coquettish flight, our glance skips to meadows
guarded by Annettes of fifteen years, to granges where the somersaults
of love upset the painter's easel, to pastures where the milk-maid of
the milk-jug reveals her bare legs and weeps like a nymph over her
broken urn, for her sheep, her flocks, and her vanished dream. Upon
another page a maiden in love is writing a beloved name on the bark of a
tree on a lovely summer evening. The breeze is always turning them over:
now a shepherd and shepherdess are embracing before a sun-dial which
little Cupids make into a pleasure-dial. It keeps on turning them; and
now we have the beautiful dream of a pilgrim sleeping with his staff and
gourd beside him, and to whom appears a host of young fays skimming a
huge pot. Does it not seem that your eye is upon a vision of a fête by
Boucher, shown by his pupil in Tasso's garden? Adorable magic lantern!
where Clorinde follows Fiammette, where the gleams of an epic poem
mingle with the smiles of the _novellieri_! Tales of the fay Urgèle,
little comic jests, rays of gayety and sunshine which one might say were
thrown upon the cloth upon which Béroalde de Verville made his
cherry-gatherer walk. Tasso, Cervantes, Boccaccio, Ariosto (Ariosto as
he has drawn him, inspired by Love and Folly), it recalls all his genii
of happiness. It laughs with the liberties of La Fontaine. It goes from
Properce to Grécourt, from Longus to Favart, from Gentil-Bernard to
André Chénier. It has, so to speak, the heart of a lover and the hand of
a charming rascal. In it the breath of a sigh passes into a kiss and it
is young with immortal youth: it is the poem of Desire, a divine poem!
It is enough to have written it like Fragonard for him to remain what he
will always be: the Cherubino of erotic painting....
He leaped into success and fame at one bound, with his picture of
_Callirhoé_, that painting of universal approbation, which caused him to
be received into the _Académie_ by acclamation; that painting which
aroused public enthusiasm at the Salon in the month of August, and which
had the honour of a Royal command for its reproduction upon Gobelin
tapestry.
Imagine a large picture nine feet high by twelve feet long, where the
human figures are of natural size, the architecture in its proper
proportion and the crowd and sky have their own space. Between two
columns of a shining marble with its iris-coloured reflections, above
the heavy purple of a tapestry with golden fringe spread out and broken
by the ridge of two steps, opens the scene of an antique drama which
seems to be under the curtain of a theatre. On this tapestry, on this
pagan altar-cloth, stands a copper crater near an urn of black marble
half veiled with white linen. A column cuts in half a large candelabra
smoking with incense and ornamented with goats' heads, a superb bronze
which must have been taken from the lava of Herculaneum. A young priest
has thrown himself on his knees against this candelabra and embraces its
pedestal; in terror he has allowed his censer to fall to the earth.
Standing by his side is Corésus, the high priest, crowned with ivy,
enveloped in draperies, and seemingly floating in the sacerdotal
whiteness of his vestments; a beardless priest, of doubtful sex, of
androgynous grace, an enervated Adonis, the shadow of a man. With a
backward turn of one hand he plunges the knife in his breast; with the
other he has the appearance of casting his life into the heavens, whilst
across his effeminate face pass the weakness of the agony and grief of
violent death. Opposite the dying high-priest is the living though
fainting victim, nearly dead at the belief that she is about to die.
With her head resting on her shoulder, she has glided before the smoking
altar. Her body has lost all rigidity on her bending legs, her arms hang
down at her side; her glance is distracted; she has lost all volition in
the use of her limbs; and she is there, sinking motionless, her throat
scarcely distending with a breath, turning white under her crown of
roses, which the painter's brush has made to pale in sympathy. Between
her body and the altar a young priest is leaning in horrified curiosity.
Another, upon one knee, perfectly terrified, with fixed gaze and parted
lips, holds before the young girl the basin used to receive the blood of
the victims. In the background are visible figures of old grey-bearded
priests, aghast at the horrible spectacle. Above them the smoke of the
temple, the flames, the perfumes, and the incense of the altar mingle
with the cloudy sky, a sky of a night of miracles and hell, wild and
rolling, a sky of fiery and sombre whirlwind, in which a genie
brandishing a torch and dagger bears Love away in sombre flight
enveloped in a black mantle. From that shadow, let us go to the shadow
at the base of the picture: two women, writhing with fear, shrink back
veiling their faces; a little boy clings about their knees and holds
fast to them, and a ray of sunlight, falling across the arm of one of
the women, illumines the hair and the little rosy hands of the child.
Such is Fragonard's great composition, that striking unexpected
production, for which he must have taken the idea, and, perhaps, even
the effect from one of the revivals of _Callirhoé_ by the poet Roy;[27]
a painting of the opera, and demanding from the opera its soul and its
light. But what a magnificent illusion this picture presents! It must be
seen in the Louvre so that the eyes may feast upon the clear and warm
splendour of the canvas, the milky radiance of all those white priestly
robes, the virginal light inundating the centre of the scene,
palpitating and dying away on _Callirhoé_, enveloping her fainting body
like the fading of day, and caressing that failing throat. The rays of
light and the smoke all melt into one another; the temple smokes and the
mists of incense ascend everywhere. Night is rolling above the day. The
sun falls into the gloom and casts a reflected glare. The gleams of
sulphur flames illuminate the faces and the throng. Fragonard lavishly
threw the lights of fairyland upon his masterpiece: it is Rembrandt
combined with Ruggieri.
And what movement, what action are in this agitated and convulsive
painting! The clouds and the garments whirl, the gestures are rapid, the
attitudes are despairing, horror shudders in every pose and on every
lip, and a great mute cry seems to rise throughout this entire temple
and throughout this entire lyrical composition.
This cry of a picture, so new for the Eighteenth Century, is Passion.
Fragonard introduces it into his time in this picture so full of tragic
tenderness where we might fancy the entombment of Iphigenia. The
phantasmagoria raises his art to the level of the emotion of the
_Alceste_ of Euripides; it reveals a future for French painting: pathos.
_L'Art du Dix-Huitième Siècle_ (3d ed., Paris, 1882).
FOOTNOTES: