The first thing I did when I got to Paris was to go to the Louvre. It
was indeed ‘first and last and midst’ in my thoughts. Well might it be
so, for it had never been absent from them for twenty years. I had gazed
myself almost blind in looking at the precious works of art it then
contained—should I not weep myself blind in looking at them again, after
a lapse of half a life—or on finding them gone, and with them gone all
that I had once believed and hoped of human kind? What could ever fill
up that blank in my heart, fearful to think upon—fearful to look upon? I
was no longer young; and he who had collected them, and ‘worn them as a
rich jewel in his Iron Crown,’ was dead, a captive and vanquished; and
with him all we who remained were ‘thrown into the pit,’ the lifeless
bodies of men, and wore round our necks the collar of servitude, and on
our foreheads the brand, and in our flesh and in our souls the stain of
thraldom and of the born slaves of Kings. Yet thus far had I come once
more ‘to dream and be an Emperour!’ Thou sacred shrine of God-like
magnificence, must not my heart fail and my feet stumble, as I approach
thee? How gladly would I kneel down and kiss thy threshold; and crawl
into thy presence, like an Eastern slave! For here still linger the
broken remains and the faded splendour of that proud monument of the
triumphs of art and of the majesty of man’s nature over the mock-majesty
of thrones! Here Genius and Fame dwell together; ‘_School_ calleth unto
_School_,’ and mighty names answer to each other; that old gallery
points to the long, dim perspective of waning years, and the shadow of
Glory and of Liberty is seen afar off. In pacing its echoing floors, I
hear the sound of the footsteps of my youth, and the dead start from
their slumbers!... In all the time that I had been away from thee, and
amidst all the changes that had happened in it, did I ever forget, did I
ever profane thee? Never for a moment or in thought have I swerved from
thee, or from the cause of which thou wert the pledge and crown. Often
have I sought thee in sleep, and cried myself awake to find thee, with
the heart-felt yearnings of intolerable affection. Still didst thou
haunt me, like a passionate dream—like some proud beauty, the queen and
mistress of my thoughts. Neither pain nor sickness could wean me from
thee—
‘My theme in crowds, my solitary pride.’
In the tangled forest or the barren waste—in the lowly hovel or the
lofty palace, thy roofs reared their vaulted canopy over my head, a
loftier palace, an ampler space—a ‘brave o’er-hanging firmament,’
studded with constellations of art. Wherever I was, thou wert with me,
above me and about me; and didst ‘hang upon the beatings of my heart,’ a
vision and a joy unutterable. There was one chamber of the brain (at
least) which I had only to unlock and be master of boundless wealth—a
treasure-house of pure thoughts and cherished recollections. Tyranny
could not master, barbarism slunk from it; vice could not pollute, folly
could not gainsay it. I had but to touch a certain spring, and lo! on
the walls the divine grace of Guido appeared free from blemish—there
were the golden hues of Titian, and Raphael’s speaking faces, the
splendour of Rubens, the gorgeous gloom of Rembrandt, the airy elegance
of Vandyke, and Claude’s classic scenes lapped the senses in Elysium,
and Poussin breathed the spirit of antiquity over them. There, in that
fine old lumber-room of the imagination, were the Transfiguration, and
the St. Peter Martyr, with its majestic figures and its unrivalled
landscape background. There also were the two St. Jeromes, Domenichino’s
and Correggio’s—there ‘stood the statue that enchants the world’—there
were the Apollo and the Antinous, the Laocoon, the Dying Gladiator,
Diana and her Fawn, and all the glories of the antique world—
‘There was old Proteus coming from the sea,
And aged Triton blew his wreathed horn.’
But Legitimacy did not ‘sit squat, like a toad,’ in one corner of it,
poisoning the very air, and keeping the free-born spirit aloof from it!
There were one or two pictures (old favourites) that I wished to see
again, and that I was told still remained. I longed to know whether
they were there, and whether they would look the same. It was
fortunate I arrived when I did; for a week later the doors would have
been shut against me, on occasion of the death of the King. His bust
is over the door, which I had nearly mistaken for a head of Memnon—or
some Egyptian God. After passing through the modern French Exhibition
(where I saw a picture by Sir Thomas Lawrence, and a vile farrago of
_Bourbon-Restoration_ pictures,) I came within sight of the Grand
Gallery of the Louvre, which is at present only railed off. One or two
English stragglers alone were in it. The coolness and stillness were
contrasted with the bustle, the heat, and the smell of the common
apartments. My thoughts rushed in and filled the empty space. Instead
of the old Republican door-keepers, with their rough voices and
affectation of equality, a servant in a court-livery stood at the
gate. On presenting myself, I inquired if a Monsieur Livernois (who
had formerly ushered me into this region of enchantment) were still
there; but he was gone or dead. My hesitation and foreign accent, with
certain other appeals, procured me admittance. I passed on without
further question. I cast a glance forward, and found that the Poussins
were there. At the sight of the first, which I distinctly recollected
(a fine green landscape, with stately ruins,) the tears came into my
eyes, and I passed an hour or two in that state of luxurious
enjoyment, which is the highest privilege of the mind of man, and
which perhaps makes him amends for many sorrows. To my surprise,
instead of finding the whole changed, I found every thing nearly in
its place, as I proceeded through the first compartments, which I did
slowly, and reserving the Italian pictures for a _bon bouche_. The
colours even seemed to have been mellowed, and to have grown to the
walls in the last twenty years, as if the pictures had been fixed
there by the cramping-irons of Victory, instead of hanging loose and
fluttering, like so much tattered canvass, at the sound of English
drums, and breath of Prussian manifestoes. Nothing could be better
managed than the way in which they had blended the Claudes and
Poussins alternately together—the ethereal refinement and dazzling
brilliancy of the one relieving and giving additional zest to the
sombre, grave, massive character of the other. Claude Lorraine pours
the spirit of air over all objects, and new-creates them of light and
sunshine. In several of his master-pieces which are shewn here, the
vessels, the trees, the temples and middle distances glimmer between
air and solid substance, and seem moulded of a new element in nature.
No words can do justice to their softness, their precision, their
sparkling effect. But they do not lead the mind out of their own magic
circle. They repose on their own beauty; they fascinate with faultless
elegance. Poussin’s landscapes are more properly pictures of time than
of place. They have a fine _moral_ perspective, not inferior to
Claude’s aërial one. They carry the imagination back two or four
thousand years at least, and bury it in the remote twilight of
history. There is an opaqueness and solemnity in his colouring,
assimilating with the tone of long-past events: his buildings are
stiff with age; his implements of husbandry are such as would belong
to the first rude stages of civilization; his harvests are such (as in
the Ruth and Boaz) as would yield to no modern sickle; his grapes (as
in the Return from the Promised Land) are a load to modern shoulders;
there is a simplicity and undistinguishing breadth in his figures; and
over all, the hand of time has drawn its veil. Poussin has his faults;
but, like all truly great men, there is that in him which is to be
found nowhere else; and even the excellences of others would be
defects in him. One picture of his in particular drew my attention,
which I had not seen before. It is an addition to the Louvre, and
makes up for many a flaw in it. It is the Adam and Eve in Paradise,
and it is all that Mr. Martin’s picture of that subject is not. It is
a scene of sweetness and seclusion ‘to cure all sadness but despair.’
There is the freshness of the first dawn of creation, immortal
verdure, the luxuriant budding growth of unpruned Nature’s gifts, the
stillness and the privacy, as if there were only those two beings in
the world, made for each other, and with this world of beauty for the
scene of their delights. It is a Heaven descended upon earth, as if
the finger of God had planted the garden with trees and fruits and
flowers, and his hand had watered it! One fault only can be found by
the critical eye. Perhaps the scene is too flat. If the ‘verdurous
wall of Paradise’ had upreared itself behind our first parents, it
would have closed them in more completely, and would have given effect
to the blue hills that gleam enchantment in the distance. Opposite,
‘in darkness visible,’ hangs the famous landscape of the Deluge by the
same master-hand, a leaden weight on the walls with the ark
‘_hulling_’ on the distant flood, the sun labouring, wan and faint, up
the sky, and the heavens, ‘blind with rain,’ pouring down their total
cisterns on the weltering earth. Men and women and different animals
are struggling with the wide-spread desolation; and trees, climbing
the sides of rocks, seem patiently awaiting it above. One would think
Lord Byron had transcribed his admirable account of the Deluge in his
_Heaven and Earth_ from this noble picture, which is in truth the very
poetry of painting.—One here finds also the more unequivocal
productions of the French school (for Claude and Poussin[15] were in a
great measure Italian,) Le Brun, Sebastian Bourdon, some of Le Sueur’s
expressive faces, and the bland expansive style of Philip Champagne—no
mean name in the history of art. See, in particular, the exquisite
picture of the Sick Nun, (the Nun was his own daughter, and he painted
this picture as a present to the Convent, in gratitude for her
recovery,)—and another of a Religious Communion, with attendants in
rich dresses.
One finds no considerable gap, till one comes to the Antwerp pictures;
and this yawning chasm is not ill supplied by the Luxembourg pictures,
those splendid solecisms of Rubens’s art. Never was exhibited a greater
union of French flutter and Gothic grace, of borrowed absurdity and
inherent power. He has made a strange jumble of the Heathen mythology,
his own wives, and the mistresses of Louis XIII. His youthful Gods are
painted all light and air, and figure in quaintly enough, with some
flaunting Dowager dressed in the height of the fashion in the middle of
the 17th century, or with some strapping quean (his queens are queans)
with her robes of rich stuffs slipping off her shoulders, and displaying
limbs that, both for form and hue, provoke any feeling but indifference.
His groups spring from the bold licentious hand of genius; and decorated
in the preposterous finery of courtly affectation, puzzle the sense. I
do not think with David (the celebrated French painter) that they ought
to be burnt, but he has himself got possession of their old places in
the Luxembourg, and perhaps he is tolerably satisfied with this
arrangement. A landscape with a rainbow by Rubens (a rich and dazzling
piece of colouring) that used to occupy a recess half-way down the
Louvre, was removed to the opposite side. The singular picture (the
Defeat of Goliath, by Daniel Volterra,) painted on both sides on slate,
still retained its station in the middle of the room. It had hung there
for twenty years unmolested. The Rembrandts keep their old places, and
are as fine as ever, with their rich enamel, their thick lumps of
colour, their startling gloom, and bold execution—their ear-rings, their
gold-chains, and fur-collars, on which one is disposed to lay furtive
hands, so much have they the look of wealth and substantial use! The
Vandykes are more light and airy than ever. There is a whole heap of
them; and among the rest that charming portrait of an English lady with
a little child (as fine and true a compliment as was ever paid to the
English female character,) sustained by sweetness and dignity, but with
a mother’s anxious thoughts passing slightly across her serene brow. The
Cardinal Bentivoglio (which I remember procuring especial permission to
copy, and left untouched, because, after Titian’s portraits, there was a
want of interest in Vandyke’s which I could not get over,) is not
there.[16] But in the Dutch division, I found Weenix’s game, the
battle-pieces of Wouvermans, and Ruysdael’s sparkling woods and
waterfalls without number. On these (I recollect as if it were
yesterday) I used, after a hard day’s work, and having tasked my
faculties to the utmost, to cast a mingled glance of surprise and
pleasure, as the light gleamed upon them through the high casement, and
to take leave of them with a _non equidem invideo, miror magis_.
In the third or Italian division of the Gallery, there is a profusion of
Albanos, with Cupids and naked Nymphs, which are quite in the old French
taste. They are certainly very pleasing compositions, but from the
change produced by time, the figures shew like beauty-spots on a dark
ground. How inferior is he to Guido, the painter of grace and sentiment,
two of whose master-pieces enchanted me anew, the Annunciation and the
Presentation in the Temple. In each of these there is a tenderness, a
delicacy of expression like the purest affection, and every attitude and
turn of a limb is conscious elegance and voluptuous refinement. The
pictures, the mind of the painter, are instinct and imbued with beauty.
It is worth while to have lived to have produced works like these, or
even to have seen and felt their power! Painting of old was a language
which its disciples used not merely to denote certain objects, but to
unfold their hidden meaning, and to convey the finest movements of the
soul into the limbs or features of the face. They looked at nature with
a feeling of passion, with an eye to expression; and this it was that,
while they sought for outward forms to communicate their feelings,
moulded them into truth and beauty, and that surrounds them with an
atmosphere of thought and sentiment. To admire a fine old picture is
itself an act of devotion, and as we gaze, we turn idolaters. The
moderns are chiefly intent on giving certain lines and colours, the
_mask_ or material face of painting, and leave out the immortal part of
it. Thus a modern Exhibition Room (whether French or English) has a
great deal of shew and glitter, and a smell of paint in it. In the
Louvre we are thrown back into the presence of our own best thoughts and
feelings, the highest acts and emanations of the mind of man breathe
from the walls, shadowy tears and sighs there keep vigils, and the air
within it is divine!
The _ideal_ is no less observable in the portraits than in the histories
here. Look at the portrait of a man in black, by Titian (No. 1210).
There is a tongue in that eye, a brain beneath that forehead. It is
still; but the hand seems to have been just placed on its side; it does
not turn its head, but it looks towards you to ask, whether you
recognise it or not? It was there to meet me, after an interval of
years, as if I had parted with it the instant before. Its keen,
steadfast glance staggered me like a blow. It was the same—how was I
altered! I pressed towards it, as it were, to throw off a load of doubt
from the mind, or as having burst through the obstacles of time and
distance that had held me in torturing suspense. I do not know whether
this is not the most striking picture in the room—the least
_common-place_. There may be other pictures more delightful to look at;
but this seems, like the eye of the Collection, to be looking at you and
them. One might be tempted to go up and speak to it! The allegorical
portrait of the Marchioness of Guasto is still here, transparent with
tenderness and beauty—Titian’s Mistress, that shines like a crystal
mirror—the Entombing of Christ, solemn, harmonious as the coming on of
evening—the Disciples at Emmaus—and the Crowning with Thorns, the blood
here and there seeming ready to start through the flesh-colour, which
even English artists have not known enough how to admire. The Young
Man’s Head, with a glove that used so much to delight, I confess,
disappointed me, and I am convinced must have been painted upon. There
are other Titians, and a number of Raphaels—the Head of a Student
muffled in thought—his own delightful Head (leaning on its hand)
redolent of youthful genius, and several small Holy Families, full of
the highest spirit and unction. There are also the three Marys with the
Dead Body of Christ, by L. Caracci; the Salutation by Sebastian del
Piombo; the noble Hunting-piece, by Annibal Caracci; the fine Landscapes
of Domenichino (that in particular of the story of Hercules and
Achelous, with the trunk of a tree left in the bed of a
mountain-torrent); and a host besides, ‘thick as the autumnal leaves
that strew the brooks in Vallombrosa,’ and of the same colour! There are
so many of these select and favourite pictures left, that one does not
all at once feel the loss of others which are more common in prints and
in the mouth of fame; and the absence of which may be considered as
almost an advantage for a first recognition and revival of old
associations. But afterwards we find a want of larger pictures to answer
to the magnitude of the Collection, and to sustain the balance of taste
between the Italian and the other schools. We have here as fine Claudes
and Poussins as any in the world, but not as fine Raphaels, Correggios,
Domenichinos, as there are elsewhere,—as were once here. There are
wanting, to make the gallery complete, six or eight capital pictures,
the Transfiguration, the St. Peter Martyr, &c.; and among others (not
already mentioned,) the Altarpiece of St. Mark, by Tintoret, and Paul
Veronese’s Marriage at Cana. With these it had been perfect, ‘founded as
the rock, as broad and general as the casing air;’ without these it is
‘coop’d and cabin’d in by saucy doubts and fears.’ The largest
Collection in the world ought to be colossal, not only in itself, but in
its component parts. The Louvre is a quarter of a mile in length, and
equal (as it is) to Mr. Angerstein’s, the Marquess of Stafford’s, the
Dulwich Gallery, and Blenheim put together. It was once more than equal
to them in every circumstance to inspire genius or console reflection.
We still see the palace of the Thuilleries from the windows, with the
white flag waving over it: but we look in vain for the Brazen Horses on
its gates, or him who placed them there, or the pale bands of warriors
that conquered in the name of liberty and of their country!