temperament in their work with extraordinary clearness. His spirit was
ardent and his moods were varying. With far less technical skill than
his contemporary, Mantegna, he has at once a warmer and more brilliant
style and a more modern feeling for natural and significant gesture. His
earliest known work that bears a date is the altar-piece in S. Silvestro
at Massa near Fermo; but his most recent biographer, Mr. Rushworth,
gives to his Venetian period before he left for the Marches, the Virgin
and Child now at Verona, and sees in this the strongest evidences of his
connection with the School of Padua. Other important pictures by him are
at Ascoli, in the Lateran Gallery, Rome, in the Vatican, in the Brera
Gallery at Milan, in the Berlin Gallery, in the National Gallery at
London, in Frankfurt (the Staedel Gallery), in the Museum of Brussels, in
Lord Northbrook's collection, London, in the Boston Museum, in Mrs.
Gardiner's collection at Boston, and in Mr. Johnson's collection at
Philadelphia. The eight examples in the National Gallery, although
belonging for the most part to his later period, show his wide range and
his predominating characteristics, which indeed are stamped with such
emphasis upon each of his works that despite the many and great
differences in these, there seems to be little difficulty in recognizing
their authorship. No. 788, _The Madonna and Child Enthroned, surrounded
by Saints_, an altarpiece painted for the Dominican Church at Ascoli in
1476, is the most elaborate and pretentious of the National Gallery
compositions, but fails as a whole to give that impression of moral and
physical energy, of intense feeling expressed with serene art, which
renders the _Annunciation_ (No. 739) both impressive and ingratiating.
The lower central compartment is instinct with grace and tenderness. The
Virgin, mild-faced and melancholy, is seated on a marble throne. The
Child held on her arm, droops his head, heavy with sleep, upon her arm
in a babyish and appealing attitude curiously opposed to the dignity of
the Child in Mantegna's group which hangs on the opposite wall. His hand
clasps his mother's finger and his completely relaxed figure has
unquestionably been studied from life. At the right and left of the
Virgin are St. Peter and St. John, St. Catherine of Alexandria and St.
Dominic, whole-length figures strongly individualized and
differentiated. St. John in particular reveals in the beauty of feature
and expression Crivelli's power to portray subtleties and refinements of
character without sacrificing his sumptuous taste for accessories and
ornament. The Saint, wearing his traditional sheep skin and bearing his
cross and scroll, bends his head in meditation. His brows are knit, his
features, ascetic in mold and careworn, are eloquent of serious thought
and moral conviction. By the side of St. Peter resplendent in pontifical
robes and enriched with jewels, he wears the look of a young devout
novice not yet so familiar with sanctity as to carry it with ease. He
stands by the side of a little stream, in a landscape that combines in
the true Crivelli manner direct realism with decorative formality. The
St. Dominic with book and lily in type resembles the figure in the
Metropolitan, but the face is painted with greater skill and has more
vigor of expression. Above this lower stage of the altarpiece are four
half-length figures of St. Francis, St. Andrew the Apostle, St. Stephen
and St. Thomas Aquinas, and over these again are four pictures showing
the Archangel Michael trampling on the Dragon, St. Lucy the Martyr, St.
Jerome and St. Peter, Martyr, all full length figures of small size and
delicately drawn, but which do not belong to the original series. The
various parts of the altarpiece were enclosed in a splendid and ornate
frame while in the possession of Prince Demidoff in the latter half of
the nineteenth century and the whole is a magnificent monument to
Crivelli's art. The heavy gold backgrounds and the free use of gold in
the ornaments, together with the use of high relief (St. Peter's keys
are modeled, for example, almost in the round, so nearly are they
detached from the panel) represent his tendency to overload his
compositions with archaic and realistic detail, but here as elsewhere
the effect is one of harmony and corporate unity of many parts. The
introduction of sham jewels, such as those set in the Virgin's crown and
in the rings and medallions worn by Peter, fails to destroy the dignity
of the execution. It may even be argued that these details enhance it by
affording a salient support to the strongly marked emotional faces of
the saints and to the vigorous gestures which would be violent in a
classic setting.
[Illustration: ST. DOMINIC
_From a panel by Carlo Crivelli_]
A quite different note is struck in the grave little composition
belonging to an altarpiece of early date in which two infant angels
support the body of Christ on the edge of the tomb. Nothing is permitted
to interrupt the simplicity of this pathetic group. In the much more
passionate rendering of a similar subject--the _Pieta_ in Mr. Johnson's
collection--the child angels are represented in an agony of grief, their
features contorted and their gestures despairing. The little angels of
the National Gallery picture, on the contrary, are but touched by a
pensive sorrow. One of them rests his chin upon the shoulder of the
Christ half tenderly, half wearily; the other in fluttering robes of a
lovely yellow, applies his slight strength to his task seriously but
without emotion. The figure of Christ, tragically quiet, with suffering
brows, the wound in the side gaping, is without the suggestion of
extreme physical anguish that marks the figure in the Boston _Pieta_. The
sentiment with which the panel is inspired is one of gentleness, of
resignation, of self-control and piety. The same sentiment is felt in
the companion panel, now in the Brussels Gallery--_The Virgin and the
Child Jesus_--which originally, with the _Pieta_, formed the central
double compartment of a triptych at Monte Fiore, near Fermo. The sad
coloring of the Virgin's robe--a dull bluish green with a gold pattern
over an under robe of pale ashes of roses, the calm, benign features,
the passive hands, are all in the spirit of subdued feeling. The child
alone, gnomish in expression and awkward in a straddling attitude upon
his mother's knee, fails to conform to the general gracious scheme.
In the _Annunciation_ already mentioned, we have another phase of
Crivelli's flexible genius--a phase in which are united the pomp and
splendor of his fantastic taste with the innocence and sweetness of his
most engaging feminine type. It would be difficult to imagine a more
demure and girlish Virgin than the small kneeling figure in the richly
furnished chamber at the right of the panel. The glory of her fate is
symbolized by the broad golden ray falling from the heavens upon her
meekly bowed head. Her face is pale with the dim pallor that commonly
rests upon Crivelli's flesh tones, and her clasped hands have the
exaggerated length of finger and also the look of extraordinary
pliability which he invariably gives. Outside the room in the open court
kneels the Angel of the Annunciation and by his side kneels St. Emedius,
the patron of Ascoli, with a model of the city in his hands. These
figures are realistic in gesture and expression, interested, eager,
responsive, filled with quick life and joyous impulse. The richly
embroidered garment of the angel, his gilded wings, his traditional
attitude, neither overpower nor detract from the vivid individuality of
the beautiful face so firmly yet so freely modeled within its delicate
hard bounding line. This feeling of actuality in the scene is carried
still farther by the introduction of a charming little child on a
balcony at the left, peering out from behind a pillar with naive
curiosity and half-shy, half-bold determination to see the end of the
adventure. All this is conceived in the spirit of modernity and the
personal quality is unmistakable and enchanting. There is no excess of
emotion nor is there undue restraint. There is a blithe sense of the
interest of life and the personality of human beings that gives a value
to the subject and a meaning beyond its accepted symbolism. On the
technical side, also, the panel has remarkable merit even for this
expert and careful painter. His Venetian fondness for magnificent
externals finds ample expression in the rich accessories. A peacock is
perched on the casement of the Virgin's room, flowers and fruits, vases
and variegated marbles all come into the plan of the handsome
environment, and are justified artistically by the differentiation of
textures, the gradation of color, the research into intricacies of
pattern, the light firm treatment of architectural structure, and the
skilful subordination of all superficial detail to the elements of the
human drama, the figures of which occupy little space, but are
overwhelming in significance.
[Illustration: In the Metropolitan Museum, New York.
ST. GEORGE
_From a panel by Carlo Crivelli_]
It is interesting to compare this _Annunciation_ with the two small
sextagonal panels of the same subject in the Staedel Museum at Frankfurt
which are earlier in date. In many respects the compositions are closely
similar. There is the same red brick wall, the same Oriental rug hanging
from the casement, the types of Angel and Virgin are the same, but in
the Frankfurt panel there is more impetuous motion in the gesture of the
Angel, who hardly pauses in his flight through air to touch his knee to
the parapet. His mouth is open and the words of his message seem
trembling on his lips. Although all the outlines are severely defined
with the sharpness of a Schiavone, the interior modeling is sensitive
and delicate and in the case of the Virgin, tender and softly varied, so
that the curve of the throat and chin seem almost to ripple with the
breathing, the young chest swells in lovely gradation of form under the
close bodice, and the whole figure has a graciousness of contour, a slim
roundness and elasticity by which it takes its place among Crivelli's
many realizations of his ideal type as at least one of the most lovable
if not the most characteristic and personal. Especially fine, also, is
the treatment of the drapery in these two admirable little panels. The
mantle surrounding the angel billows out in curling folds as eloquent of
swift movement as the draperies of Botticelli's striding nymphs; and the
opulent line of the Virgin's cloak is superb in its lightly broken swirl
about the figure. The hair, too, of both the Angel and the Virgin, waves
in masses at once free and formal, with something of the wild beauty of
Botticelli's windblown tresses. The analogy between the two painters,
the ardent and poetic Florentine and the no less ardent and at times
almost as poetic Venetian (if we accept his own claim to the title),
might be further dwelt upon, although it would be easy to overemphasize
it. One attribute, certainly, they had in common and it is the one that
most completely separates each of them from his fellows--the exultant
_verve_, that is, with which the human form is made to communicate
energy of movement in their compositions. It is impossible to believe
that either of them ever painted a tame picture. If, however, Crivelli
could not be tame he could be insipid, escaping tameness by what might
be called the violence of his affectation. The _St. George_ in the
Metropolitan Museum is an instance of his occasional use of a type so
frail and languid in its grace and so sentimental in gesture and
expression as to suggest caricature. Another example dated 1491 is the
_Madonna and Child Enthroned_ in the National Gallery. On either side of
the melancholy Madonna are St. Francis and St. Sebastian. The latter is
pierced by arrows and tied to a pillar, but so far from wearing the look
of suffering or of calm endurance, he has a trivial glance of
deprecation for the observer, and his figure is wholly wanting in the
force of young manhood. A striking contrast to this effeminate mood may
be found in No. 724, also a _Madonna Enthroned_, between St. Jerome and
St. Sebastian, a late signed picture of Crivelli's declining talent,
with a predella below the chief panel in which appear St. Catherine,
St. Jerome in the Wilderness, the Nativity, the Martyrdom of St.
Sebastian again, and St. George and the Dragon. The little compartment
containing the scene of the Nativity is quite by itself among Crivelli's
works for intimate and homely charm. The simplicity of the surroundings
and the natural attitudes of the people have an almost Dutch character,
borne out by the meticulous care for detail in the execution united to
an effect of chiaro-oscuro very rare in early Italian art and hardly to
be expected in a painter of Crivelli's Paduan tendencies. The St. George
is more characteristic, with an immense energy in its lines. In
arrangement it recalls the St. George of Mrs. Gardiner's collection and
despite its small size is almost the equal of that magnificent example
in concentration and fire.
[Illustration: In the Metropolitan Museum, New York.
PIETA
_From a panel by Carlo Crivelli_]
Still another type, and one that combines dignity and much spirituality
with naive realism, is the _Beato Ferretti_ (No. 668), showing an open
landscape with a village street at the right and a couple of ducks in a
small pond at the left, the Beato kneeling in adoration with a vision of
the _Virgin and Child_ surrounded by the _Mandorla_ or _Verica_ glory
appearing above. The kneeling saint is realistically drawn and his face
wears an expression of intense piety. The landscape is marked by the
bare twisted stems of trees, that seem to repeat the rigid and
conceivably tortured form of the saint. A beautiful building with a
domed roof is seen at the right. At the top of the picture across the
cloud-strewn sky is a festoon of fruits, Crivelli's characteristic
decoration.
[Illustration: In the Staedel Gallery at Frankfort.
A PANEL BY CARLO CRIVELLI (_a_)]
[Illustration: In the Staedel Gallery at Frankfort.
A PANEL BY CARLO CRIVELLI (_b_)]
In all these pictures Crivelli reveals himself as an artist filled with
emotional inspiration, to whom the thrill of life is more than its
trappings, and one, moreover, who observes, balances and differentiates.
The society of his saints and angels is stimulating; the element of the
unexpected enters into his work in open defiance of his pronounced
mannerism. It is possible to detect beneath the close and manifold
coverings of his ornate decoration a swift flame of imaginative impulse
such as Blake sent into the world without such covering. He would have
pleased Blake by this nervous energy and by his pure bright coloring,
despite the fact that he signed himself "Venetus." He painted in tempera
and finished his work with care and deliberation. It is remarkable that
so little of his mental fire died out in the slow process of his
execution. It is still more remarkable that in spite of his reactionary
tendencies, his archaistic use of gold and relief at a moment when all
great artists were renouncing these, he is intensely modern in his
sentiment. He seems to represent a phase of human development at which
we in America have but recently arrived; a phase in which appreciation
of ancient finished forms of beauty is united to a restless eagerness
and the impulse toward exaggerated self-expression. He is supposed to
have been born about 1440, which would make him a contemporary of the
two Bellini, of Hans Memling and of Mantegna. Had he only been able to
give his imagination a higher range--had he possessed a more controlling
spiritual ideal, had the touch of self-consciousness that rests like a
grimace on the otherwise lovely aspect of much of his painting, been
eliminated, he would have stood with these on the heights of fifteenth
century art. We are fortunate to have in America the Boston Museum
_Pieta_, which shows him in one of his most temperate moods, the _Pieta_
of Mr. Johnson's collection, which is the emphatic expression of his
least restrained moments, the _St. George_ of Mrs. Gardiner's
collection, in which his grasp of knightly character and pictorial grace
is at its best, and these two strongly contrasted types of the
Metropolitan Museum.
REMBRANDT AT THE CASSEL GALLERY
VII
REMBRANDT AT THE CASSEL GALLERY
The art gallery of Cassel is well known to connoisseurs as containing a
group of Rembrandts of the first order. The earliest example is a small
painting of a boy's head supposed to be a portrait of the artist at the
age of twenty or one and twenty; Dr. Bode considers 1628 too late rather
than too early as the probable date, and the same authority warns us
against considering such studies in the light of serious portraiture:
"It had never occurred to the young artist," he says, "to make a
dignified portrait of himself at the time when he painted these
pictures." The execution is clumsy, the color is dull and heavy and of
the brownish tone common to Rembrandt's early painting, and much of the
drawing--as in the rings of hair escaping to the surface from the thick
curling mass--is meaningless and indefinite, but the distribution of
light and shade is not unlike that of Rembrandt's later work and the
touch has a certain bold freedom that seems to have been his from the
first whenever he served as his own model, even while his handling was
still hard and prim in his portraits of others. Another work ascribed
to his early period, about 1634, is the "Man with a Helmet," also
commonly known as a self-portrait, fluent in execution and vivacious and
lifelike in expression, yet not without that hint of conscious pose
common with the artist in his endeavors to force the note of character.
The blunt, strong features are strikingly like those of the
authenticated portraits of the artist, but Dr. Karl Voll, Director of
the Alt Pinakothek at Munich, declares that the idea of a
"self-portrait," attractive as it is, can hardly in this case be upheld.
Whoever the sitter may have been, the painting is an amazing example of
dexterity of hand and acute observation. The sharp glitter of the
helmet, the contrasting flesh-like quality of the painting in the face,
the light vigorous drawing of the moustache and hair, give an impression
of the artist's mastery of his craft hardly to be surpassed at any
period of his life. Far less poetic in its color-scheme and
chiaro-oscuro than the youthful portrait belonging to Mrs. Gardiner's
collection, it is even more eloquent of the ease with which he managed
his tools. Of a still greater charm, with subtler problems met and
solved, is the portrait of Saskia van Ulenburgh, whom he married in
Amsterdam in the year 1634, the probable date of the Cassel portrait. At
all events the young woman carries in her hand a spray of rosemary, the
symbol of betrothal, and her dress has the richness of a Dutch bride's
equipment. Here we see Rembrandt's art in perhaps its most delicate and
psychologically interesting phase. The character revealed by the small
pretty features has neither extraordinary force nor marked
individuality. The lines are neither deep-cut nor broad. One is reminded
of a fine little etching in which the plate has been bitten only to a
moderate depth and which requires a sensitive handling in the printing
to produce anything like richness. Yet the result is rich in the fullest
sense of the term. It depends for its quality not only upon the splendid
color-scheme formed by the dark red of the velvet hat and gown, the
white of the feather, the gold and gray and dull blue of the trimmings
and ornaments, the beautiful jewels, with which Rembrandt then as later
produced an appearance of great magnificence, the bright red-gold of the
hair falling lightly over the softly modeled brow, and the fair warm
tones of the flesh glowing as from living health and physical energy: it
depends as much upon the deep research into the expression that has
resulted in the intimate portraiture possible only to genius and seldom
found even in the work of the great masters, never, so far as the
writer's observation has gone, in the work of their later years. The
smile that hesitates at the corner of the whimsical little mouth, the
tender modulations of surface on the forehead and about the
straight-gazing honest eyes, the swift suggestions of movement and play
of mood in the flexible contours, the gaiety and sweetness and singular
purity of the girlish face, are evoked with magisterial authority and
precision. Never surely has there been a finer example of Dutch care and
thoroughness in the observation and rendering of minute detail united to
breadth of effect. The painting of the jewels and embroideries is
wrought to a singularly perfect finish. It is almost as though the
artist had set himself to extract the utmost beauty of which the
textures of stuffs and gems are capable, to prove how much more
enchanting was the beauty of the brilliant blond demure little face
daintily poised above them. Dr. Bode calls the picture "one of the most
attractive, not only of his early pictures, but of all his works."
[Illustration: Courtesy of Berlin Photographic Company.
SASKIA
_From a portrait by Rembrandt_]
To Rembrandt's early years also are ascribed certain careful studies of
old men's heads and several portraits of younger men. Among these are
one of the writing-master Coppenol and one of the poet Krul, the former
painted in 1632, the latter in 1633. The Krul portrait is the more
striking of the two, and the pictorial costume with the broad hat
casting its lucent shadow over the fine brow, the silken jacket with its
gleaming reflections and the wide white ruffles at neck and sleeve on
which the light blazes full, adds to the dignity and richness of the
effect. It is easy, however, to agree with Dr. Voll in ranking the
splendid portrait of an unknown man, of some five or six years later
date, far above the Krul portrait in artistic quality. Although
excessively warm in tone it has in addition to excellent construction
and a lifelike aspect a nobility of bearing that imposes itself directly
and irresistibly upon the spectator.
The portrait of Coppenol is not easily analyzed and Dr. Bode notes that
the likeness to the authenticated portraits of the famous drawing master
is not altogether convincing. Simpler and homelier in appearance than
the portrait of Krul, this solid and even heavy figure seated
comfortably in an armchair, the well-drawn hands busy with mending a
quill pen, the glance reflective, but hardly thoughtful, the mouth under
the small fair moustache slightly indeterminate, the head covered with
short hair, the smooth fat face three-quarters in light, presents at
first glance a commonplace aspect enough. But returning to it from the
Krul or even from the more masterly later portrait, the spectator is
certain to be deeply impressed by the quiet yet searching execution that
takes account of every significant change in plane or outline in the
large cheek and full chin. From the very commonplace of the pose and
type one gains a special pleasure, since the power of the artist to
irradiate an ordinary subject is the more clearly seen. The serene light
enveloping the good head and falling gently on the background brings no
thought of method or pigment to the mind, and the fleshlike quality of
the face and hands is as near imitation of reality as is possible within
the bounds of synthetic art. It is easy to agree with Dr. Bode's opinion
that the homely simple portraits painted in ordinary costume and under
ordinary conditions of light during Rembrandt's first three years in
Amsterdam are intellectually more worth while than the earlier more
personal works. The theory is that he turned them out in competition
with his contemporaries and eclipsed them on their own ground.
The portrait of "Rembrandt's Father in Indoor Dress," of the preceding
year (1631), is in a quite different manner, and closely resembles the
painting in Boston of an old man with downcast eyes, from the same
model. The bald head and scanty beard, the wrinkled face and slightly
uncertain mouth, are familiar to all students of Rembrandt's art. In
1631 Rembrandt was still in his father's house and one gains some notion
of the old miller's amiability from the frequency with which he appeared
in etchings and paintings and the variety of the poses which he took on
behalf of his ardent son, adjusting his expression to his assumed
character with no little dramatic skill. Never in his later years did
Rembrandt so delicately render the patience and discipline of age. In
this alert, unprepossessing yet kindly face we can read a not too
fanciful history of the temperament of the sitter. We see, at all
events, the mark of a sympathetic mind.