Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8
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Title: Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8
Editor: Charles F. Horne
Release date: July 8, 2009 [eBook #29352]
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GREAT MEN AND FAMOUS WOMEN, VOL. 8 ***
Produced by Sigal Alon, Christine P. Travers and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
file was produced from images generously made available
by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries)
[Transcriber's note: Obvious printer's errors have been corrected,
all other inconsistencies are as in the original. The author's
spelling has been maintained.]
[Illustration: Sarah Bernhardt as Cleopatra.]
GREAT MEN AND FAMOUS WOMEN
_A Series of Pen and Pencil Sketches of_
THE LIVES OF MORE THAN 200 OF THE MOST PROMINENT PERSONAGES IN HISTORY
VOL. VIII.
Copyright, 1894, BY SELMAR HESS
edited by Charles F. Horne
[Illustration: Publisher's arm.]
New-York: Selmar Hess Publisher
CONTENTS OF VOLUME VIII.
SUBJECT AUTHOR PAGE
MICHAEL ANGELO, _Anna Jameson_, 214
BEETHOVEN, _C. E. Bourne_, 319
SARAH BERNHARDT, _H. S. Edwards_, 382
ROSA BONHEUR, _Clarence Cook_, 276
EDWIN BOOTH, _Clarence Cook_, 370
CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN, _Dutton Cook_, 355
_Letter from Miss Cushman to a young friend on the subject
of "Self-conquest,"_ 362
LEONARDO DA VINCI, _Anna Jameson_, 209
GUSTAVE DORÉ, _Kenyon Cox_, 298
ALBERT DÜRER, _W. J. Holland_, 231
EDWIN FORREST, _Lawrence Barrett_, 349
DAVID GARRICK, _Samuel Archer_, 343
GÉRÔME, _Clarence Cook_, 281
HANDEL, _C. E. Bourne_, 302
HAYDN, _C. E. Bourne_, 315
WILLIAM HOGARTH, 247
JOSEPH JEFFERSON, _Clarence Cook_, 374
FRANZ LISZT, _Rev. Hugh R. Haweis, M.A._, 332
MEISSONIER, _Clarence Cook_, 272
MENDELSSOHN, _C. F. Bourne_, 326
JEAN FRANÇOIS MILLET, _Clarence Cook_, 265
MOZART, _C. E. Bourne_, 308
PAGANINI, 325
ADELINA PATTI, _Frederick F. Buffen_, 378
PHIDIAS, _Clarence Cook_, 203
RACHEL, _Dutton Cook_, 363
RAPHAEL, _Mrs. Lee_, 221
REMBRANDT, _Elizabeth Robins Pennell_, 240
SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS, _Samuel Archer_, 250
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI, _Edmund Gosse_, 287
RUBENS, _Mrs. Lee_, 236
THORWALDSEN, _Hans Christian Andersen_, 258
TITIAN, _Giorgio Vasari_, 226
GIUSEPPE VERDI, 342
RICHARD WAGNER, _Franklin Peterson, Mus. Bac._, 338
BENJAMIN WEST, _Martha J. Lamb_, 254
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
VOLUME VIII.
PHOTOGRAVURES
ILLUSTRATION ARTIST TO FACE
PAGE
SARAH BERNHARDT AS CLEOPATRA, _Georges Clairin_ _Frontispiece_
MICHAEL ANGELO AND VITTORIA COLONNA, _Hermann Schneider_ 220
ALBERT DÜRER VISITS HANS SACHS, _Richard Gross_ 234
MARIE DE MEDICI AT THE HOUSE OF
RUBENS, _Florent Willems_ 240
CONNOISSEURS AT REMBRANDT'S STUDIO, _Adolphe-Alexandre Lesrel_ 244
MEISSONIER'S ATELIER, _Georges Bretegnier_ 272
MOZART SINGING HIS REQUIEM, _Thomas W. Shields_ 314
AN ANECDOTE ABOUT BEETHOVEN, _Paul Leyendecker_ 322
FRANZ LISZT, _Fortuné-Joseph-Seraphin
Layraud_ 334
WAGNER AND HIS FRIENDS, _Wilhelm Beckmann_ 340
RACHEL AS THE MUSE OF GREEK TRAGEDY, _Jean Léon Gérôme_ 368
JOE JEFFERSON AS BOB ACRES, _From life_ 376
WOOD-ENGRAVINGS AND TYPOGRAVURES
RAPHAEL INTRODUCED TO DA VINCI, _Brune Pagès_ 212
LEO X. AT RAPHAEL'S BIER, _Pietro Michis_ 224
A FÊTE AT THE HOUSE OF TITIAN, _F. Kraus_ 228
ALBERT DÜRER'S WEDDING, _A. Bodenmüller_ 232
HOGARTH SKETCHING THE HIGHWAY OF
QUEENBOROUGH, 248
BENJAMIN WEST, PRESIDENT OF THE
ROYAL ACADEMY, _Sir Thomas Lawrence_ 258
ROSA BONHEUR, _E. Dubufe_ 278
HANDEL'S RIVER-CONCERT FOR GEORGE I., _A. Hamman_ 304
HAYDN COMPOSING HIS "CREATION," _A. Hamman_ 318
PAGANINI IN PRISON, _Louis Boulanger_ 326
GARRICK AS RICHARD III., _William Hogarth_ 346
FORREST AS METAMORA, _From Photograph_ 352
CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN AS MRS. HALLER, _Watkins_ 360
PAINTERS AND SCULPTORS
PHIDIAS[1]
[Footnote 1: Copyright, 1894, by Selmar Hess.]
By CLARENCE COOK
(ABOUT 500-432 B.C.)
Phidias, one of the greatest sculptors the world has seen, and whose
name has become, as it were, the synonym of his art, was born at
Athens about 500 B.C. He belonged to a family of artists, none of whom
indeed were distinguished in their profession, but their varied
occupations furnished the atmosphere in which such a talent as that of
Phidias could best be fostered and brought to maturity. His father was
Charmides, who is believed to have been an artist, because the Greeks,
in their inscriptions, did not associate the name of the father with
that of the son unless both were of the same calling. A brother of
Phidias, Panoenos, was a painter, and is mentioned among those
artists, twenty or more in number, who in conjunction with Polygnotus,
one of the chief painters of his day, were employed in the decoration
of the Poecile or Painted Portico, one of the many beautiful buildings
erected by Cimon. The Poecile was simply a long platform, with a roof
supported by a row of columns on one side and by a wall on the other.
It was called "the painted," because the wall at the back was covered
with a series of large historical pictures containing many figures,
and recording some of the chief events of the time, together with
others relating to an earlier and more shadowy epoch. The subject of
the painting, executed, at least in part, by the brother of Phidias,
was the Battle of Marathon, in which great event it is thought he may
himself have taken part.
The boyhood of Phidias fell in a time of national revival, when under
the influence of an ennobling political excitement, all the arts were
quickened to a fresh, original, and splendid growth. The contest
between the Greeks and Persians, which had begun with the Ionian
revolt, was in full activity at the time of his birth. He was ten
years old when the battle of Marathon was fought, and when he was
twenty, four of the most striking events in the history of Greece were
crowded into a single year; the battle of Thermopylæ, the victory at
Salamis, and the twin glories of Platæa and Mycale. His early youth,
therefore, was nourished by the inspiring influences that come from
the victorious struggle of a people to maintain their national life.
He was by no means the only sculptor of his time whom fame remembers,
but he alone, rejecting trivial themes, consecrated his talent to the
nobler subjects of his country's religious life and the ideal
conception of her protecting gods. No doubt, Phidias, like all who are
born with the artistic temperament, would be interested from childhood
in the progress of the splendid works with which Athens was enriching
herself under the rule of Cimon. But his interest must have been
greatly increased by the fact that his brother Panoenos was actively
engaged in the decoration of one of those buildings. It would be
natural that he should be often drawn to the place where his brother
was at work, and that the sight of so many artists, most of them young
men, filled with the generous ardor of youth, and inspired by the
nature of their task, should have stirred in him an answering
enthusiasm. It gives us a thrill of pleasure to read in the list of
these youths the name of the great tragic poet, Euripides, who began
life as a painter, and in whose plays we find more than one reference
to the art. It cannot be thought unreasonable to suppose that two such
intelligences as these must have had an attraction for one another,
and that, as in the case of Dante and Giotto, the great poet and the
great artist would be drawn together by a likeness in their taste and
aims.
Phidias studied his art first at Athens, with a native sculptor,
Hegias, of whom we know nothing except from books. Later, he went to
Argos, and there put himself under the instruction of Ageladas, a
worker chiefly in bronze, and very famous in his time, of whom,
however, nothing remains but the memory of a few of his more notable
works. For us, his own works forgotten, he remains in honor as the
teacher of Myron, of Polycletus, and of Phidias, the three chief
sculptors of the next generation to his own. On leaving the workshop
of Ageladas, Phidias executed several statues that brought him
prominently before the public. For Delphi, he made a group of thirteen
figures in bronze, to celebrate the battle of Marathon and apotheosize
the heroes of Attica. In this group, Miltiades was placed in the
centre, between Athena, the tutelary goddess of Athens, and Apollo,
the guardian of Delphi; while on each side were five Athenian heroes,
Theseus and Codrus with others, arranged in a semicircle. This
important work was paid for by Athens out of her share in the spoils
of Marathon. Another important commission executed by Phidias was a
statue of Athena made for her temple at Platæa, and paid for with the
eighty talents raised by the contributions of the other Grecian states
as a reward for the splendid services of the Platæans at Marathon,
where they played somewhat the same part as the Prussians at the
battle of Waterloo. The head, hands, and feet of this statue were of
marble, but the drapery was of gold; so arranged, probably, as in the
case of the great statue of Athena designed later by Phidias for the
Parthenon, as to be removable from the marble core at pleasure.
Phidias made so many statues of the virgin goddess Athena, that his
name became associated with hers, as at a later day that of Raphael
was with the Virgin Mary. In the first period of his artistic career,
moved perhaps by his patriotic gratitude for her intervention in
behalf of his native state, he had represented the goddess as a
warlike divinity, as here at Platæa; but in his later conceptions, as
in a statue made for the Athenians of Lemnos, Athena appeared invested
with milder attributes, and with a graceful and winning type of
beauty.
In their invasion of Attica the Persians had destroyed the city of
Athens, and the people, who had fled to all quarters of the peninsula
to seek refuge from the enemy, returned after the victory at Salamis
and the flight of the Persians, to find their homes a heap of ruins.
The dwelling-houses of the Greeks were everywhere, even in their
largest cities, built of mean materials: walls of stubble overlaid
with stucco and gayly painted. It was not long, therefore, before
Athens resumed something of her old appearance, with such improvements
as always follow the rebuilding of a city. The most important change
effected was that brought about in the character of the great plateau,
the fortified rock of the Acropolis. Here, as in many Greek cities,
the temples of the gods had been erected, and about them, as about the
cathedrals of the Middle Ages, there had grown up a swarm of houses
and other buildings built by generations of people who sought there at
once the protection of the stockade which enclosed the almost
inaccessible site, and the still further safeguard of the presence of
the divinities in their temples. The destructive hand of the Persian
invaders had swept this platform clear of all these multiplied
incumbrances, and in the rebuilding of the city it was determined to
reserve the Acropolis for military and religious uses alone.
The work of improvement was begun by Cimon, who, however, confined his
attention chiefly to the lower city that clustered about the base of
the Acropolis. Here, among other structures, he built the temple of
Theseus and the Painted Portico, and he also erected, near the summit
of the Acropolis, on the western side, the little gem-like temple of
the Wingless Victory, Nike Apteros, in commemoration of the success of
the Athenian arms at the battle of the Eurymedon. It was from Cimon
that Phidias received his first commission for work upon the
Acropolis, where later he was to build such a lasting monument to his
own fame and to the fame of his native land. The commission given him
by Cimon was to erect a bronze statue of Athena which was to stand on
the citadel, at once a symbol of the power of Athens and a tribute to
the protecting goddess of the city. The work upon the statue was
probably begun under Cimon, but according to Ottfried Müller it was
not completed at the death of Phidias. It stood in the open air, and
nearly opposite the Colonnade at the entrance of the great flight of
marble steps that led from the plain to the summit of the Acropolis,
and was the first object to meet the eye on passing through the
gateway. It represented the goddess, armed, and in a warlike attitude,
from which it derived its name, Athena Promachos: Athena, the leader
of the battle. With its pedestal it stood about seventy feet high,
towering above the roof of the Parthenon, the gilded point of the
brazen spear held by the goddess flashing back the sun to the ships as
in approaching Athens they rounded the promontory of Sunium. We read
that the statue was still standing so late as 395 A.D., and it is said
that its towering height and threatening aspect caused a panic terror
in Alaric and his horde of barbarians when they climbed the Acropolis
to plunder its temple of its treasure.
But it was under the rule of Pericles that Phidias was to find at
Athens his richest employment. Pericles had determined, probably by
the advice of Phidias, to make the Acropolis the seat and centre of
the new and splendid city that was to arise under his administration.
The first great undertaking was the building of a temple to Athena
Parthenos, Athena the Virgin, a design believed to have been suggested
to Pericles by Phidias. The plans were intrusted to Ictinus, an
Athenian, one of the best architects of the day; but the general
control and superintendence of the work were given to Phidias. As the
building rose to completion, workmen in all branches of the arts
flocked to Athens from every part of Greece and were given full
employment by Phidias in the decoration and furnishing of the temple.
The taste of Phidias controlled the whole scheme of decoration applied
to the building, into which color entered, no doubt, to a much greater
extent than was formerly believed. Even after time and the destructive
hand of man have done their worst, there still remain sufficient
traces of color to prove that the sculpture, and the whole upper part
of the temple, were painted in bright but harmonious colors, and that
metal ornaments and accessories accented the whole scheme with
glittering points of light reflected from their shining surfaces.
The sculptures with which the Parthenon was adorned by Phidias, and
which were executed under his immediate superintendence, consisted of
two great groups that filled the eastern and western pediments; of
groups of two figures each in the ninety-two metopes or panels above
the outer row of columns; and, finally, the famous frieze that ran
completely round the temple itself, just below the ceiling of the
colonnade, and at a height of about thirty-nine feet from the floor.
The subject of the group that filled the eastern pediment, the one
above the entrance door of the temple, was the birth of Athena. Just
how the event was represented we do not know because quite half the
group, including the principal figures, disappeared very early in our
era, and no description of them remains in any ancient or modern
writer. The group in the western pediment represented the contest
between Athena and Poseidon for the dominion over Attica. According to
the legend, the strife between the two divinities took place in an
assembly of the gods on the Acropolis, who were to determine which of
the two contestants should be the protector of the city. To prove his
power, Poseidon struck the rock with his trident, and a salt spring
leaped forth, as if the sea itself had obeyed the call of its lord.
Athena struck the ground, and an olive-tree sprang up, the emblem of
peace and of the victories of commerce, and the assembly awarded the
prize to her. The goddess having thus received the sovereignty of
Athens, it was but natural that a day should be set apart for her
special honor, and a festival instituted to commemorate the great
event. This was the greater Panathenaia, or All Athenians Day, which
was celebrated every fourth year in honor of the goddess, and which,
as its name implies, was taken part in by all the people of the city.
It occurred in the early summer and lasted five days. On the fifth
day, it closed with a procession which went through all the chief
streets of the city and wound its way up the Great Stairway to the
Acropolis, bearing the _peplos_ or embroidered robe woven by young
virgin ladies of Athens, chosen from the highest families, and known
for their skill in this kind of work. After the _peplos_ had been
consecrated in the temple it was placed with due solemnities upon the
ancient and venerable figure of the goddess, made of olive-wood, and
said to have descended from heaven. From its subject, which thus
celebrates the Panathenaic procession, the frieze is often called the
Panathenaic frieze.
It is carved from Pentelic marble, of which material the marble
building is constructed. Its original length, running as it did around
the entire building, was 522.80 feet, of which about 410 feet remain.
Of this portion, 249 feet are in the British Museum in slabs and
fragments; the remainder is chiefly in the Louvre, with scattered
fragments in other places. As a connected subject this was the most
extensive piece of sculpture ever made in Greece. From all that can be
gathered from the study of the fragments that remain, the design of
the frieze was of the utmost simplicity and characterized by the union
of perfect taste and clear purpose that marks all the work of the
great sculptor. The subject begins in the frieze at the western end of
the temple, where we watch the assembling of the procession. It then
proceeds along the northern and southern sides of the building, in
what we are to suppose one continuous line, moving toward the east,
since all the faces are turned that way; and at the eastern end,
directly over the main entrance to the building, the two parts of the
procession meet, in the presence of the magistrates and of the
divinities who had places of worship in Athens.
Of the grace, the skill in arrangement, the variety of invention, the
happy union of movement and repose shown in this work, not only
artists--men best fitted to judge its merits from a technical point of
view--but the cultivated portion of the public, and a large and
ever-increasing circle of every-day people, have by common consent
agreed in praise. By the multiplication of casts, to be found now in
all our principal museums, we are enabled to study and to enjoy the
long procession even better than it could have been enjoyed in its
original place, where it must have been seen at a great disadvantage
in spite of the skill shown by Phidias in adapting it to its site;
for, as the frieze stood thirty-nine feet from the floor, and as the
width of the portico between the wall and the columns was only nine
feet, it was seen at a very sharp angle, and owing to the projection
of the roof beyond the wall of the temple the frieze received only
reflected light from the marble pavement below.
Apart from the marble sculptures on the exterior of the Parthenon, the
two most famous works of Phidias were the statues of Athena, made for
the interior of the Parthenon, and of Zeus for the temple of the god
at Olympia in Elis. Both these statues were of the sort called
_Chryselephantine_, from the Greek _chrousous_, golden, and
_elephantinos_, of ivory; that is, they were constructed of plates of
gold and ivory, laid upon a core of wood or stone. The style was not
new, though its invention was at one time ascribed to Phidias. It came
from the East, but it was now employed for the first time in Greece in
a work of national importance.
In the Athena, the face, neck, arms, hands, and feet were made of
ivory, and the drapery and ornaments, the helmet, the shield, and the
sandals of gold, which as in the case of the statue made for Platæa,
was removable at pleasure. The height of the statue, including the
pedestal, was nearly forty feet. The goddess stood erect, clothed with
a tunic reaching to the ankles, and showing her richly sandalled feet.
She had the ægis on her breast, her head was covered with a helmet,
and her shield, richly embossed with the Battle of the Amazons, rested
on the ground at her side. In one hand she held a spear, and in the
other, an image of Victory six feet high.
A still more splendid work, and one which raised the fame of Phidias
to the highest point, was the statue of the Olympian Zeus, made for
the Eleans. In this statue, Phidias essayed to embody the Homeric
ideal of the supreme divinity of the people of Greece sitting on his
throne as a monarch, and in an attitude of majestic repose. The
throne, made of cedar-wood, was covered with plates of gold, and
enriched with ivory, ebony, and precious stones. It rested on a
platform twelve feet high, made of costly marble and carved with the
images of the gods who formed the council of Zeus on Olympus. The feet
of the god rested on a footstool supported by lions, and with the
combat of Theseus and the Amazons in a bas-relief on the front and
sides. In one hand Zeus held the sceptre, and in the other a winged
Victory. His head was crowned with a laurel wreath; his mantle,
falling from one shoulder, left his breast bare and covered the lower
part of his person with its ample folds of pure gold enamelled with
flowers. The whole height of the statue with the pedestal was about
fifty feet; by its very disproportion to the size of the temple it was
made to appear still larger than it really was. This statue was
reckoned one of the wonders of the world. In it the Greeks seemed to
behold Zeus face to face. To see it was a cure for all earthly woes,
and to die without having seen it was reckoned a great calamity.
The downfall of Pericles, due to the jealousies of his rivals, carried
with it the ruin of Phidias, his close friend, to whom he had
entrusted such great undertakings. An indictment was brought against
the sculptor, charging him with appropriating to himself a portion of
the gold given him for the adornment of the statue of Athena; and
according to some authorities Pericles himself was included in the
charge. The gold had, however, been attached to the statue in such a
manner that it could be taken off and weighed, and in the proof, the
charge had to be abandoned. But Phidias did not escape so easily. He
was accused of sacrilege in having introduced portraits of himself and
Pericles on the shield of the goddess, where, says Plutarch, in the
bas-relief of the Battle of the Amazons, he carved his own portrait as
a bald old man lifting a stone with both hands, and also introduced an
excellent likeness of Pericles fighting with an Amazon.
Phidias died in prison before the trial came off, and his name must be
added to the long list of those whom an ungrateful world has rewarded
for their services with ignominy and death.
[Signature of the author.]
LEONARDO DA VINCI
By ANNA JAMESON
(1452-1519)
[Illustration: Leonardo Da Vinci.]
Leonardo da Vinci seems to present in his own person a _résumé_ of all
the characteristics of the age in which he lived. He was _the_ miracle
of that age of miracles. Ardent and versatile as youth; patient and
persevering as age; a most profound and original thinker; the greatest
mathematician and most ingenious mechanic of his time; architect,
chemist, engineer, musician, poet, painter--we are not only astounded
by the variety of his natural gifts and acquired knowledge, but by the
practical direction of his amazing powers. The extracts which have
been published from MSS. now existing in his own handwriting show him
to have anticipated by the force of his own intellect some of the
greatest discoveries made since his time. "These fragments," says Mr.
Hallam, "are, according to our common estimate of the age in which he
lived, more like revelations of physical truths vouchsafed to a single
mind than the superstructure of its reasoning upon any established
basis. The discoveries which made Galileo, Kepler, Castelli, and other
names illustrious; the system of Copernicus, the very theories of
recent geologists, are anticipated by Da Vinci within the compass of a
few pages, not perhaps in the most precise language, or on the most
conclusive reasoning, but so as to strike us with something like the
awe of preternatural knowledge. In an age of so much dogmatism he
first laid down the grand principle of Bacon, that experiment and
observation must be the guides to just theory in the investigation of
nature. If any doubt could be harbored, not as to the right of
Leonardo da Vinci to stand as the first name of the fifteenth century,
which is beyond all doubt, but as to his originality in so many
discoveries, which probably no one man, especially in such
circumstances, has ever made, it must be by an hypothesis not very
untenable, that some parts of physical science had already attained a
height which mere books do not record."
It seems at first sight almost incomprehensible that, thus endowed as
a philosopher, mechanic, inventor, discoverer, the fame of Leonardo
should now rest on the works he has left as a painter. We cannot,
within these limits, attempt to explain why and how it is that as the
man of science he has been naturally and necessarily left behind by
the onward march of intellectual progress, while as the poet-painter
he still survives as a presence and a power. We must proceed at once
to give some account of him in the character in which he exists to us
and for us--that of the great artist.
Leonardo was born at Vinci, near Florence, in the Lower Val d'Arno, on
the borders of the territory of Pistoia. His father, Piero da Vinci,
was an advocate of Florence--not rich, but in independent
circumstances, and possessed of estates in land. The singular talents
of his son induced Piero to give him, from an early age, the advantage
of the best instructors. As a child he distinguished himself by his
proficiency in arithmetic and mathematics. Music he studied early, as
a science as well as an art. He invented a species of lyre for
himself, and sung his own poetical compositions to his own music, both
being frequently extemporaneous. But his favorite pursuit was the art
of design in all its branches; he modelled in clay or wax, or
attempted to draw every object which struck his fancy. His father sent
him to study under Andrea Verrocchio, famous as a sculptor, chaser in
metal, and painter. Andrea, who was an excellent and correct designer,
but a bad and hard colorist, was soon after engaged to paint a picture
of the baptism of our Saviour. He employed Leonardo, then a youth, to
execute one of the angels; this he did with so much softness and
richness of color, that it far surpassed the rest of the picture; and
Verrocchio from that time threw away his palette, and confined himself
wholly to his works in sculpture and design, "enraged," says Vessari,
"that a child should thus excel him."
The youth of Leonardo thus passed away in the pursuit of science and
of art; sometimes he was deeply engaged in astronomical calculations
and investigations; sometimes ardent in the study of natural history,
botany, and anatomy; sometimes intent on new effects of color, light,
shadow, or expression in representing objects animate or inanimate.
Versatile, yet persevering, he varied his pursuits, but he never
abandoned any. He was quite a young man when he conceived and
demonstrated the practicability of two magnificent projects: one was
to lift the whole of the church of San Giovanni, by means of immense
levers, some feet higher than it now stands, and thus supply the
deficient elevation; the other project was to form the Arno into a
navigable canal as far as Pisa, which would have added greatly to the
commercial advantages of Florence.
It happened about this time that a peasant on the estate of Piero da
Vinci brought him a circular piece of wood, cut horizontally from the
trunk of a very large old fig-tree, which had been lately felled, and
begged to have something painted on it as an ornament for his cottage.
The man being an especial favorite, Piero desired his son Leonardo to
gratify his request; and Leonardo, inspired by that wildness of fancy
which was one of his characteristics, took the panel into his own
room, and resolved to astonish his father by a most unlooked-for proof
of his art. He determined to compose something which should have an
effect similar to that of the Medusa on the shield of Perseus, and
almost petrify beholders. Aided by his recent studies in natural
history, he collected together from the neighboring swamps and the
river-mud all kinds of hideous reptiles, as adders, lizards, toads,
serpents: insects, as moths, locusts, and other crawling and flying
obscene and obnoxious things; and out of these he composed a sort of
monster or chimera, which he represented as about to issue from the
shield, with eyes flashing fire, and of an aspect so fearful and
abominable that it seemed to infect the very air around. When
finished, he led his father into the room in which it was placed, and
the terror and horror of Piero proved the success of his attempt. This
production, afterward known as the "Rotello del Fico," from the
material on which it was painted, was sold by Piero secretly for one
hundred ducats to a merchant, who carried it to Milan, and sold it to
the duke for three hundred. To the poor peasant, thus cheated of his
"Rotello," Piero gave a wooden shield, on which was painted a heart
transfixed by a dart, a device better suited to his taste and
comprehension. In the subsequent troubles of Milan, Leonardo's picture
disappeared, and was probably destroyed as an object of horror by
those who did not understand its value as a work of art.
During this first period of his life, which was wholly passed in
Florence and its neighborhood, Leonardo painted several other pictures
of a very different character, and designed some beautiful cartoons of
sacred and mythological subjects, which showed that his sense of the
beautiful, the elevated, and the graceful was not less a part of his
mind than that eccentricity and almost perversion of fancy which made
him delight in sketching ugly, exaggerated caricatures, and
representing the deformed and the terrible.
Leonardo da Vinci was now about thirty years old, in the prime of his
life and talents. His taste for pleasure and expense was, however,
equal to his genius and indefatigable industry; and anxious to secure
a certain provision for the future, as well as a wider field for the
exercise of his various talents, he accepted the invitation of
Ludovico Sforza il Moro, then regent, afterward Duke of Milan, to
reside in his court, and to execute a colossal equestrian statue of
his ancestor, Francesco Sforza. Here begins the second period of his
artistic career, which includes his sojourn at Milan, that is from
1483 to 1499.
Vasari says that Leonardo was invited to the court of Milan for the
Duke Ludovico's amusement, "as a musician and performer on the lyre,
and as the greatest singer and _improvisatore_ of his time;" but this
is improbable. Leonardo, in his long letter to that prince, in which
he recites his own qualifications for employment, dwells chiefly on
his skill in engineering and fortification; and sums up his
pretensions as an artist in these few brief words: "I understand the
different modes of sculpture in marble, bronze, and terra-cotta. In
painting, also, I may esteem myself equal to anyone, let him be who he
may." Of his musical talents he makes no mention whatever, though
undoubtedly these, as well as his other social accomplishments, his
handsome person, his winning address, his wit and eloquence,
recommended him to the notice of the prince, by whom he was greatly
beloved, and in whose service he remained for about seventeen years.
It is not necessary, nor would it be possible here, to give a
particular account of all the works in which Leonardo was engaged for
his patron, nor of the great political events in which he was
involved, more by his position than by his inclination; for instance,
the invasion of Italy by Charles VIII. of France, and the subsequent
invasion of Milan by Louis XII., which ended in the destruction of the
Duke Ludovico. The greatest work of all, and by far the grandest
picture which, up to that time, had been executed in Italy, was the
"Last Supper," painted on the wall of the refectory, or dining-room,
of the Dominican convent of the Madonna delle Grazie. It occupied
Leonardo about two years, from 1496 to 1498.
The moment selected by the painter is described in the 26th chapter of
St. Matthew, 21st and 22d verses: "And as they did eat, he said,
Verily, I say unto you, that one of you shall betray me: and they were
exceeding sorrowful, and began every one of them to say unto him,
Lord, is it I?" The knowledge of character displayed in the heads of
the different apostles is even more wonderful than the skilful
arrangement of the figures and the amazing beauty of the workmanship.
The space occupied by the picture is a wall twenty-eight feet in
length and the figures are larger than life.
Of this magnificent creation of art, only the mouldering remains are
now visible. It has been so often repaired that almost every vestige
of the original painting is annihilated; but from the multiplicity of
descriptions, engravings, and copies that exist, no picture is more
universally known and celebrated. Perhaps the best judgment we can now
form of its merits is from the fine copy executed by one of Leonardo's
best pupils, Marco Uggione, for the Certosa at Pavia, and now in
London, in the collection of the Royal Academy. Eleven other copies,
by various pupils of Leonardo, painted either during his lifetime or
within a few years after his death, while the picture was in perfect
preservation, exist in different churches and collections.
While engaged on the Cenacolo, Leonardo painted the portrait of
Lucrezia Crivelli, now in the Louvre (No. 483). It has been engraved
under the title of _La Belle Ferronnière_, but later researches leave
us no doubt that it represents Lucrezia Crivelli, a beautiful favorite
of Ludovico Sforza, and was painted at Milan in 1497. It is, as a work
of art, of such extraordinary perfection that all critical admiration
is lost in wonder.
Of the grand equestrian statue of Francesco Sforza, Leonardo never
finished more than the model in clay, which was considered a
masterpiece. Some years afterward (in 1499), when Milan was invaded by
the French, it was used as a target by the Gascon bowmen, and
completely destroyed. The profound anatomical studies which Leonardo
made for this work still exist.
[Illustration: Raphael Introduced to Da Vinci.]
In the year 1500, the French being in possession of Milan, his patron
Ludovico in captivity, and the affairs of the state in utter
confusion, Leonardo returned to his native Florence, where he hoped to
re-establish his broken fortunes, and to find employment. Here begins
the third period of his artistic life, from 1500 to 1513, that is,
from his forty-eighth to his sixtieth year. He found the Medici family
in exile, but was received by Pietro Soderini (who governed the city
as "_Gonfaloniêre perpetuo_") with great distinction, and a pension
was assigned to him as painter in the service of the republic. One of
his first works after his return to Florence was the famous portrait
of Madonna Lisa del Giocondo, called in French _La Joconde_, and now
in the Louvre (484), which after the death of Leonardo was purchased
by Francis I. for 4,000 gold crowns, equal to 45,000 francs or £1,800,
an enormous sum in those days; yet who ever thought it too much?
Then began the rivalry between Leonardo and Michael Angelo, which
lasted during the remainder of Leonardo's life. The difference of age
(for Michael Angelo was twenty-two years younger) ought to have
prevented all unseemly jealousy; but Michael Angelo was haughty and
impatient of all superiority, or even equality; Leonardo, sensitive,
capricious, and naturally disinclined to admit the pretensions of a
rival, to whom he could say, and _did_ say, "I was famous before you
were born!" With all their admiration of each other's genius, their
mutual frailties prevented any real good-will on either side.
Leonardo, during his stay at Florence, painted the portrait of Ginevra
Benci, the reigning beauty of her time. We find that in 1502 he was
engaged by Cæsar Borgia to visit and report on the fortifications of
his territories, and in this office he was employed for two years. In
1503 he formed a plan for turning the course of the Arno, and in the
following year he lost his father. In 1505 he modelled the group which
we now see over the northern door of the San Giovanni, at Florence. In
1514 he was invited to Rome by Leo X., but more in his character of
philosopher, mechanic, and alchemist, than as a painter. Here Raphael
was at the height of his fame, and engaged in his greatest works, the
frescos of the Vatican. The younger artist was introduced to the
elder; and two pictures which Leonardo painted while at Rome--the
"Madonna of St. Onofrio," and the "Holy Family," painted for Filiberta
of Savoy, the pope's sister-in-law (which is now at St.
Petersburg)--show that even this veteran in art felt the irresistible
influence of the genius of his young rival. They are both
_Raffaelesque_ in the subject and treatment.
It appears that Leonardo was ill-satisfied with his sojourn at Rome.
He had long been accustomed to hold the first rank as an artist
wherever he resided; whereas at Rome he found himself only one among
many who, if they acknowledged his greatness, affected to consider his
day as past. He was conscious that many of the improvements in the
arts which were now brought into use, and which enabled the painters
of the day to produce such extraordinary effects, were invented or
introduced by himself. If he could no longer assert that measureless
superiority over all others which he had done in his younger days, it
was because he himself had opened to them new paths to excellence. The
arrival of his old competitor, Michael Angelo, and some slight on the
part of Leo X., who was annoyed by his speculative and dilatory habits
in executing the works intrusted to him, all added to his irritation
and disgust. He left Rome, and set out for Pavia, where the French
king, Francis I., then held his court. He was received by the young
monarch with every mark of respect, loaded with favors, and a pension
of 700 gold crowns settled on him for life. At the famous conference
between Francis I. and Leo X., at Bologna, Leonardo attended his new
patron, and was of essential service to him on that occasion. In the
following year, 1516, he returned with Francis I. to France, and was
attached to the French court as principal painter. It appears,
however, that during his residence in France he did not paint a single
picture. His health had begun to decline from the time he left Italy;
and feeling his end approach, he prepared himself for it by religious
meditation, by acts of charity, and by a most conscientious
distribution by will of all his worldly possessions to his relatives
and friends. At length, after protracted suffering, this great and
most extraordinary man died at Cloux, near Amboise, May 2, 1519, being
then in his sixty-seventh year. It is to be regretted that we cannot
wholly credit the beautiful story of his dying in the arms of Francis
I., who, as it is said, had come to visit him on his death-bed. It
would indeed have been, as Fuseli expressed it, "an honor to the king,
by which destiny would have atoned to that monarch for his future
disaster at Pavia."
MICHAEL ANGELO
By ANNA JAMESON
(1474-1564)
[Illustration: Michael Angelo.]
We have spoken of Leonardo da Vinci. Michael Angelo, the other great
luminary of art, was twenty-two years younger, but the more severe and
reflective cast of his mind rendered their difference of age far less
in effect than in reality. It is usual to compare Michael Angelo with
Raphael, but he is more aptly compared with Leonardo da Vinci. All the
great artists of that time, even Raphael himself, were influenced more
or less by these two extraordinary men, but they exercised no
influence on each other. They started from opposite points; they
pursued throughout their whole existence, and in all they planned and
achieved, a course as different as their respective characters.
Michael Angelo Buonarroti was born at Setignano, near Florence, in the
year 1474. He was descended from a family once noble--even among the
noblest of the feudal lords of Northern Italy--the Counts of Canossa;
but that branch of it represented by his father, Luigi Leonardo
Buonarroti Simoni, had for some generations become poorer and poorer,
until the last descendant was thankful to accept an office in the law,
and had been nominated magistrate or mayor (_Podesta_) of Chiusi. In
this situation he had limited his ambition to the prospect of seeing
his eldest son a notary or advocate in his native city. The young
Michael Angelo showed the utmost distaste for the studies allotted to
him, and was continually escaping from his home and from his desk to
haunt the ateliers of the painters, particularly that of Ghirlandajo
who was then at the height of his reputation.
The father of Michael Angelo, who found his family increase too
rapidly for his means, had destined some of his sons for commerce (it
will be recollected that in Genoa and Florence the most powerful
nobles were merchants or manufacturers), and others for civil or
diplomatic employments; but the fine arts, as being at that time
productive of little honor or emolument, he held in no esteem, and
treated these tastes of his eldest son sometimes with contempt and
sometimes even with harshness. Michael Angelo, however, had formed
some friendships among the young painters, and particularly with
Francesco Granacci, one of the best pupils of Ghirlandajo; he
contrived to borrow models and drawings, and studied them in secret
with such persevering assiduity and consequent improvement, that
Ghirlandajo, captivated by his genius, undertook to plead his cause to
his father, and at length prevailed over the old man's family pride
and prejudices. At the age of fourteen Michael Angelo was received
into the studio of Ghirlandajo as a regular pupil, and bound to him
for three years; and such was the precocious talent of the boy, that,
instead of being paid for his instruction, Ghirlandajo undertook to
pay the father, Leonardo Buonarroti, for the first, second, and third
years, six, eight, and twelve golden florins, as payment for the
advantage he expected to derive from the labor of the son. Thus was
the vocation of the young artist decided for life.
At that time Lorenzo the Magnificent reigned over Florence. He had
formed in his palace and gardens a collection of antique marbles,
busts, statues, fragments, which he had converted into an academy for
the use of young artists, placing at the head of it as director a
sculptor of some eminence, named Bertoldo. Michael Angelo was one of
the first who, through the recommendation of Ghirlandajo, was received
into this new academy, afterward so famous and so memorable in the
history of art. The young man, then not quite sixteen, had hitherto
occupied himself chiefly in drawing; but now, fired by the beauties he
beheld around him, and by the example and success of a fellow-pupil,
Torregiano, he set himself to model in clay, and at length to copy in
marble what was before him; but, as was natural in a character and
genius so steeped in individuality, his copies became not so much
imitations of form as original embodyings of the leading idea. For
example: his first attempt in marble, when he was about fifteen, was a
copy of an antique mask of an old laughing Faun; he treated this in a
manner so different from the original, and so spirited as to excite
the astonishment of Lorenzo de Medici, who criticised it, however,
saying, "Thou shouldst have remembered that old folks do not retain
all their teeth; some of them are always wanting." The boy struck the
teeth out, giving it at once the most grotesque expression; and
Lorenzo, infinitely amused, sent for his father and offered to attach
his son to his own particular service, and to undertake the entire
care of his education. The father consented, on condition of
receiving for himself an office under the government, and thenceforth
Michael Angelo was lodged in the palace of the Medici and treated by
Lorenzo as his son.
Michael Angelo continued his studies under the auspices of Lorenzo;
but just as he had reached his eighteenth year he lost his generous
patron, his second father, and was thenceforth thrown on his own
resources. It is true that the son of Lorenzo, Piero de Medici,
continued to extend his favor to the young artist, but with so little
comprehension of his genius and character, that on one occasion,
during the severe winter of 1494, he set him to form a statue of snow
for the amusement of his guests.
Michael Angelo, while he yielded, perforce, to the caprices of his
protector, turned the energies of his mind to a new study--that of
anatomy--and pursued it with all that fervor which belonged to his
character. His attention was at the same time directed to literature,
by the counsels and conversations of a very celebrated scholar and
poet then residing in the court of Piero--Angelo Poliziano; and he
pursued at the same time the cultivation of his mind and the practice
of his art. Engrossed by his own studies, he was scarcely aware of
what was passing around him, nor of the popular intrigues which were
preparing the ruin of the Medici; suddenly this powerful family were
flung from sovereignty to temporary disgrace and exile; and Michael
Angelo, as one of their retainers, was obliged to fly from Florence,
and took refuge in the city of Bologna. During the year he spent there
he found a friend, who employed him on some works of sculpture; and on
his return to Florence he executed a Cupid in marble, of such beauty
that it found its way into the cabinet of the Duchess of Mantua as a
real antique. On the discovery that the author of this beautiful
statue was a young man of two-and-twenty, the Cardinal San Giorgio
invited him to Rome, and for some time lodged him in his palace. Here
Michael Angelo, surrounded and inspired by the grand remains of
antiquity, pursued his studies with unceasing energy; he produced a
statue of Bacchus, which added to his reputation; and in 1500, at the
age of five-and-twenty, he produced the famous group of the dead
Christ on the knees of his Virgin Mother (called the "Pietà"), which
is now in the church of St. Peter's, at Rome; this last being
frequently copied and imitated, obtained him so much applause and
reputation, that he was recalled to Florence, to undertake several
public works, and we find him once more established in his native city
in the year 1502.
In 1506 Michael Angelo was summoned to Rome by Pope Julius II., who,
while living, had conceived the idea of erecting a most splendid
monument to perpetuate his memory. For this work, which was never
completed, Michael Angelo executed the famous statue of Moses, seated,
grasping his flowing beard with one hand, and with the other
sustaining the tables of the Law. While employed on this tomb, the
pope commanded him to undertake also the decoration of the ceiling of
the Sistine Chapel. Pope Sixtus IV. had, in the year 1473, erected
this famous chapel, and summoned the best painters of that time,
Signorelli, Cosimo Roselli, Perugino, and Ghirlandajo, to decorate the
interior; but down to the year 1508 the ceiling remained without any
ornament; and Michael Angelo was called upon to cover this enormous
vault, a space of one hundred and fifty feet in length by fifty in
breadth, with a series of subjects representing the most important
events connected, either literally or typically, with the fall and
redemption of mankind.
No part of Michael Angelo's long life is so interesting, so full of
characteristic incident, as the history of his intercourse with Pope
Julius II., which began in 1505, and ended only with the death of the
pope in 1513.
Michael Angelo had at all times a lofty idea of his own dignity as an
artist, and never would stoop either to flatter a patron or to
conciliate a rival. Julius II., though now seventy-four, was as
impatient of contradiction as fiery in temper, as full of magnificent
and ambitious projects as if he had been in the prime of life; in his
service was the famous architect, Bramante, who beheld with jealousy
and alarm the increasing fame of Michael Angelo, and his influence
with the pontiff, and set himself by indirect means to lessen both. He
insinuated to Julius that it was ominous to erect his own mausoleum
during his lifetime, and the pope gradually fell off in his attentions
to Michael Angelo, and neglected to supply him with the necessary
funds for carrying on the work. On one occasion, Michael Angelo,
finding it difficult to obtain access to the pope, sent a message to
him to this effect, "that henceforth, if his Holiness desired to see
him, he should send to seek him elsewhere;" and the same night,
leaving orders with his servants to dispose of his property, he
departed for Florence. The pope despatched five couriers after him
with threats, persuasions, promises--but in vain. He wrote to the
Gonfaloniere Soderini, then at the head of the government of Florence,
commanding him, on pain of his extreme displeasure, to send Michael
Angelo back to him; but the inflexible artist absolutely refused;
three months were spent in vain negotiations. Soderini, at length,
fearing the pope's anger, prevailed on Michael Angelo to return, and
sent with him his relation, Cardinal Soderini, to make up the quarrel
between the high contending powers.
On his return to Rome, Michael Angelo wished to have resumed his work
on the mausoleum; but the pope had resolved on the completion of the
Sistine Chapel; he commanded Michael Angelo to undertake the
decoration of the vaulted ceiling; and the artist was obliged, though
reluctantly, to obey. At this time the frescos which Raphael and his
pupils were painting in the chambers of the Vatican had excited the
admiration of all Rome. Michael Angelo, who had never exercised
himself in the mechanical part of the art of fresco, invited from
Florence several painters of eminence, to execute his designs under
his own superintendence; but they could not reach the grandeur of his
conceptions, which became enfeebled under their hands, and one
morning, in a mood of impatience, he destroyed all that they had done,
closed the doors of the chapel against them, and would not thenceforth
admit them to his presence. He then shut himself up, and proceeded
with incredible perseverance and energy to accomplish his task alone;
he even prepared his colors with his own hands. He began with the end
toward the door, and in the two compartments first painted (though
not first in the series), the "Deluge," and the "Vineyard of Noah;" he
made the figures too numerous and too small to produce their full
effect from below, a fault which he corrected in those executed
subsequently. When almost half the work was completed, the pope
insisted on viewing what was done, and the astonishment and admiration
it excited rendered him more and more eager to have the whole
completed at once. The progress, however, was not rapid enough to suit
the impatient temper of the pontiff. On one occasion he demanded of
the artist _when_ he meant to finish it; to which Michael Angelo
replied calmly, "When I can." "When thou canst!" exclaimed the fiery
old pope, "thou hast a mind that I should have thee thrown from the
scaffold!" At length, on the day of All Saints, 1512, the ceiling was
uncovered to public view. Michael Angelo had employed on the painting
only, without reckoning the time spent in preparing the cartoons,
twenty-two months, and he received in payment three thousand crowns.
The collection of engravings after Michael Angelo in the British
Museum is very imperfect, but it contains some fine old prints from
the Prophets which should be studied by those who wish to understand
the true merit of this great master, of whom Sir Joshua Reynolds said
that, "to kiss the hem of his garment, to catch the slightest of his
perfections, would be glory and distinction enough for an ambitious
man!"
When the Sistine Chapel was completed Michael Angelo was in his
thirty-ninth year; fifty years of a glorious though troubled career
were still before him.
Pope Julius II. died in 1513, and was succeeded by Leo X., the son of
Lorenzo the Magnificent. As a Florentine and his father's son, we
might naturally have expected that he would have gloried in
patronizing and employing Michael Angelo; but such was not the case.
There was something in the stern, unbending character, and retired and
abstemious habits of Michael Angelo, repulsive to the temper of Leo,
who preferred the graceful and amiable Raphael, then in the prime of
his life and genius; hence arose the memorable rivalry between Michael
Angelo and Raphael, which on the part of the latter was merely
generous emulation, while it must be confessed that something like
scorn mingled with the feelings of Michael Angelo. The pontificate of
Leo X., an interval of ten years, was the least productive period of
his life. In the year 1519, when the Signoria of Florence was
negotiating with Ravenna for the restoration of the remains of Dante,
he petitioned the pope that he might be allowed to execute, at his own
labor and expense, a monument to the "Divine Poet." He was sent to
Florence to superintend the building of the church of San Lorenzo and
the completion of Santa Croce; but he differed with the pope on the
choice of the marble, quarrelled with the officials, and scarcely
anything was accomplished. Clement VII., another Medici, was elected
pope in 1523. He had conceived the idea of consecrating a chapel in
the church of San Lorenzo, to receive the tombs of his ancestors and
relations, and which should be adorned with all the splendor of art.
Michael Angelo planned and built the chapel, and for its interior
decoration designed and executed six of his greatest works in
sculpture.
While Michael Angelo was engaged in these works his progress was
interrupted by events which threw all Italy into commotion. Rome was
taken and sacked by the Constable de Bourbon in 1527. The Medici were
once more expelled from Florence; and Michael Angelo, in the midst of
these strange vicissitudes, was employed by the republic to fortify
his native city against his former patrons. Great as an engineer, as
in every other department of art and science, he defended Florence for
nine months. At length the city was given up by treachery, and,
fearing the vengeance of the conquerors, Michael Angelo fled and
concealed himself; but Clement VII. was too sensible of his merit to
allow him to remain long in disgrace and exile. He was pardoned, and
continued ever afterward in high favor with the pope, who employed him
on the sculptures in the chapel of San Lorenzo during the remainder of
his pontificate.
In the year 1531 he had completed the statues of "Night and Morning,"
and Clement, who heard of his incessant labors, sent him a brief
commanding him, _on pain of excommunication_, to take care of his
health, and not to accept of any other work but that which his
Holiness had assigned him.
Clement VII. was succeeded by Pope Paul III., of the Farnese family,
in 1534. This pope, though nearly seventy when he was elected, was as
anxious to immortalize his name by great undertakings as any of his
predecessors had been. His first wish was to complete the decoration
of the interior of the Sistine Chapel, left unfinished by Julius II.
and Leo X. He summoned Michael Angelo, who endeavored to excuse
himself, pleading other engagements; but the pope would listen to no
excuses which interfered with his sovereign power to dissolve all
other obligations; and thus the artist found himself, after an
interval of twenty years, most reluctantly forced to abandon sculpture
for painting; and, as Vasari expresses it, he consented to serve Pope
Paul only because he _could_ not do otherwise.
The same Pope Paul III. had in the meantime constructed a beautiful
chapel, which was called after his name the chapel _Paolina_, and
dedicated to St. Peter and St Paul. Michael Angelo was called upon to
design the decorations. He painted on one side the "Conversion of St.
Paul," and on the other the "Crucifixion of St. Peter," which were
completed in 1549. But these fine paintings--of which existing old
engravings give a better idea than the blackened and faded remains of
the original frescos--were from the first ill-disposed as to the
locality, and badly lighted, and at present they excite little
interest compared with the more famous works in the Sistine.
With the frescos in the Pauline Chapel ends Michael Angelo's career as
a painter. He had been appointed chief architect of St. Peter's, in
1547, by Paul III. He was then in his seventy-second year, and during
the remainder of his life, a period of sixteen years, we find him
wholly devoted to architecture. His vast and daring genius finding
ample scope in the completion of St. Peter's, he has left behind him
in his capacity of architect yet greater marvels than he has achieved
as painter and sculptor. Who that has seen the cupola of St. Peter's
soaring into the skies, but will think almost with awe of the
universal and majestic intellect of the man who reared it?
It appears, from the evidence of contemporary writers, that in the
last years of his life the acknowledged worth and genius of Michael
Angelo, his widespread fame, and his unblemished integrity, combined
with his venerable age and the haughtiness and reserve of his
deportment to invest him with a sort of princely dignity. It is
recorded that, when he waited on Pope Julius III., to receive his
commands, the pontiff rose on his approach, seated him, in spite of
his excuses, on his right hand, and while a crowd of cardinals,
prelates, and ambassadors, were standing round at humble distance,
carried on the conference as equal with equal. When the Grand Duke
Cosmo was in Rome, in 1560, he visited Michael Angelo, uncovered in
his presence, and stood with his hat in his hand while speaking to
him; but from the time when he made himself the tyrant of Florence he
never could persuade Michael Angelo to visit, even for a day, his
native city.
The arrogance imputed to Michael Angelo seems rather to have arisen
from a contempt for others than from any overweening opinion of
himself. He was too proud to be vain. He had placed his standard of
perfection so high, that to the latest hour of his life he considered
himself as striving after that ideal excellence which had been
revealed to him, but to which he conceived that others were blind or
indifferent. In allusion to his own imperfections, he made a drawing,
since become famous, which represents an aged man in a go-cart, and
underneath the words "_Ancora impara_" (still learning).
He continued to labor unremittingly, and with the same resolute energy
of mind and purpose, till the gradual decay of his strength warned him
of his approaching end. He did not suffer from any particular malady,
and his mind was strong and clear to the last. He died at Rome, on
February 18, 1564, in the ninetieth year of his age. A few days before
his death he dictated his will in these few simple words: "I bequeath
my soul to God, my body to the earth, and my possessions to my nearest
relations." His nephew, Leonardo Buonarroti, who was his principal
heir, by the orders of the Grand Duke Cosmo had his remains secretly
conveyed out of Rome and brought to Florence; they were with due
honors deposited in the church of Santa Croce, under a costly
monument, on which we may see his noble bust surrounded by three very
commonplace and ill-executed statues, representing the arts in which
he excelled--Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture. They might have
added _Poetry_, for Michael Angelo was so fine a poet that his
productions would have given him fame, though he had never peopled the
Sistine with his giant creations, nor "suspended the Pantheon in the
air." The object to whom his poems are chiefly addressed, Vittoria
Colonna, Marchioness of Pescara, was the widow of the celebrated
commander who overcame Francis I. at the battle of Pavia; herself a
poetess, and one of the most celebrated women of her time for beauty,
talents, virtue, and piety. She died in 1547.
[Illustration: Michael Angelo and Vittoria Colonna.]
RAPHAEL
By Mrs. LEE
(1483-1520)
[Illustration: Raphael.]
The solemn and silent season of Lent had passed away; and, on the
second evening of the joyful Easter, a house was seen brightly
illuminated in one of the streets of Urbino. It was evident that a
festival was held there on some happy occasion. The sound of music was
heard, and guest after guest entered the mansion. No one, however, was
more cordially welcomed than Pietro Perugino, the fellow-student of
Leonardo da Vinci, at the school of the good old Andrea Verocchio.
For a moment, general gayety was suspended in honor of the guest. He
was considered at that time one of the greatest painters of the age;
and the host, Giovanni di Sanzio, though himself only ranking in the
second or third order of limners, knew well how to prize the rare
talents of his visitor.
The wife of Giovanni came forward, leading her son Raphael. Perugino
had the eye of an artist: he gazed upon the mother and son with
enthusiastic feeling; the striking resemblance they bore to each
other, so exquisitely modulated by years and sex, was indeed a study
for this minute copyist of nature.
"Benvenuto, Messer Perugino," said the hostess, with her soft musical
voice and graceful Italian accent, and she placed the hand of her boy
in that of the artist. Gently he laid the other on the head of the
youthful Raphael, and in a solemn and tender manner pronounced a
benediction.
"Your blessing is well timed, my honored friend," said Giovanni, "our
festival is given to celebrate the birthday of our son."
"Is this his birthday?" inquired Perugino.
"Not so," replied the father, "he was born on April 7th, the evening
of _Good Friday_, and it well befits us to be gay on the joyful Easter
that succeeds it."
"My friend," said Perugino, "if thou wilt entrust thy boy to my care,
I will take him as my pupil."
The father acceded with delight to this proposal. When the mother
became acquainted with the arrangement, and found that her son was to
quit his paternal dwelling at the early age of twelve, and reside
wholly with Perugino, she could not restrain her tears. With hers the
young Raphael's mingled, though ever and anon a bright smile darted
like a sunbeam across his face.
He remained with Perugino several years. Raphael was made for
affection, and fondly did his heart cling to his instructor. For a
time he was content to follow his manner; but at length he began to
dwell upon his own beau ideal; he grew impatient of imitation, and
felt that his style was deficient in freshness and originality. He
longed to pass the narrow bounds to which his invention had been
confined.
With the approbation of Perugino and the consent of his parents, he
repaired to Siena; here he was solicited to adorn the public library
with fresco, and painted there with great success. But while he was
busily engaged, his friend, Pinturrichio, one day entered. After
looking at his friend's work very attentively, "Bravo!" he exclaimed,
"thou hast done well, my Raphael--but I have just returned from
Florence--oh, would that thou couldst behold the works of Leonardo da
Vinci! Such horses! they paw the ground and shake the foam from their
manes. Oh, my poor Raphael! thou hast never seen nature; thou art
wasting time on these cartoons. Perugino is a good man and a good
painter, I will not deny that--but Leonardo's horses!"
Raphael threw aside his pencil and hastily rose.
"Where now?" asked his friend; "whither art thou going so hastily?"
"To Florence," exclaimed Raphael.
"And what carries you so suddenly?"
"The horses of Leonardo," replied the young artist, sportively;
"seriously, however, the desire of excellence implanted in my soul."
When he arrived at Florence he was charmed with the appearance of the
city; but his whole mind was absorbed in the works of Leonardo da
Vinci and of Michael Angelo, the rival artists of the age. As his stay
was to be short, he did not enter upon laborious occupation. His
mornings were passed in the reveries of his art; his evenings in the
gay and fascinating society of Florence, where the fame of Perugino's
beloved pupil had already reached. The frescos at Siena were spoken
of; and the beautiful countenance and graceful deportment of Raphael
won him the friendship of distinguished men. Taddeo Taddei, the
learned friend of Cardinal Bembo, solicited him to reside in his
house; he consented, and in return for the courtesy painted for him
two pictures, in what is called his first style, that of Perugino.
One evening he retired to his couch at a late hour. He had been the
hero of a _fête_, and love and beauty had heedlessly scattered their
flowers in the path of the living Adonis. In vain he sought a few
hours of slumber. He had quaffed the juice of the grape, emptying
goblet after goblet, till his beating pulse and throbbing temples
refused to be quieted. He started from his couch and approached the
lattice; the heavens had changed their aspect, the still serenity of
the evening had passed away, and the clouds were hurrying over the
pale and watery moon. Nothing was heard but the low sighing of the
wind, and now and then a sudden gust swept through the lattice, and
threatened to extinguish the taper which was burning dimly on the
table. A slight noise made him turn his eyes, and he perceived a note
that the wind had displaced. He hastily took it up. It was Perugino's
handwriting. He cut the silken cord that fastened it, and read:
"On me, my beloved Raffaello, devolves the task of informing you of
the events which have taken place at Urbino. May this letter find you
prepared for all the changes of life; a wise man will never suffer
himself to be taken by surprise; this is true philosophy, and the
_only philosophy_ that can serve us! An epidemic has prevailed at
Urbino, and has entered your paternal dwelling. Need I say more? Come
to me, my son, at Perugia, for I am the only parent that remains to
you. Pietro Perugino."
As he hastily arose, a crucifix which his mother had suspended to his
neck at parting, fell from his bosom. Even the symbols of religion are
sacred where the living principle has been early implanted in the
heart. He pressed it to his lips: "Ah!" thought he, "what is the
_philosophy_ of Perugino, compared to the _faith_ of which this is the
emblem?" His thoughts went back to infancy and childhood, and his
grief and remorse grew less intense. He dwelt on the deep and enduring
love of his parents till he felt assured death could not extinguish
it, and that he should see them again in a brighter sphere.
When morning came it found Raphael calm and composed; the lines of
grief and thought were deeply marked on his youthful face; but the
whirlwind and the storm had passed. He took leave of his friends, and
hastened to Perugino, who received him with the fondness of a parent.
Here he remained some time, and at length collected sufficient
resolution to return to Urbino, and once more enter the mansion of his
desolated home.
It was necessary for him to reside at his native place for a number of
months. During that time he painted several fine pictures. His heart,
however, yearned for Florence, and he returned to it once more with
the determination of making it his home. With far different sensations
did he a second time enter the city of beauty. The freshness of his
gayety was blighted; lessons of earthly disappointment were ever
present to his mind, and he returned to it with the resolute purpose
of devoting himself to serious occupation.
How well he fulfilled this resolution all Italy can bear witness. From
this time he adopted what has been called his _second manner_. He
painted for the Duke of Urbino the beautiful picture of the Saviour at
sunrise, with the morning light cast over a face resplendent with
divinity; the flowers glittering with dew, the two disciples beyond,
still buried in slumber, at the time when the Saviour turns his eyes
upon them with that tender and sorrowful exclamation, "Could ye not
watch one hour?"
Raphael enriched the city of Florence with his works. When asked what
had suggested some of the beautiful combinations of his paintings, he
said, "They came to me in my sleep." At other times he called them
"visions;" and then again said they were the result of "una certa idea
che mi viene alla mente." It was this power of drawing from the deep
wells of his own mind that gave such character, originality, and
freshness to his works. He found that power _within_ which so many
seek, and seek in vain, _without_.
At the age of twenty-five Raphael was summoned by the pope to paint
the chambers of the Vatican. The famous frescos of the Vatican need
neither enumeration nor description; the world is their judge and
their eulogist.
No artist ever consecrated his works more by his affections than
Raphael. The same hallowed influence of the heart gave inexpressible
charm to Correggio's, afterward. One of Raphael's friends said to him,
in looking upon particular figures in his groups, "You have
transmitted to posterity your own likeness."
"See you nothing beyond that?" replied the artist.
"I see," said the critic, "the deep-blue eye, and the long, fair hair
parted on the forehead."
"Observe," said Raphael, "the feminine softness of expression, the
beautiful harmony of thought and feeling. When I take my pencil for
high and noble purposes, the spirit of my mother hovers over me. It is
her countenance, not my own, of which you trace the resemblance."
This expression is always observable in his Madonnas. His portraits of
the _Fornarina_ are widely different. Raphael, in his last and most
excellent style, united what was graceful and exquisite in Leonardo
with the sublime and noble manner of Michael Angelo. It is the
privilege and glory of genius to appropriate to itself whatever is
noble and true. The region of thought is thus made a common ground for
all, and one master mind becomes a reservoir for the present and
future times.
When Raphael was invited to Rome by Pope Julius II., Michael Angelo
was at the height of his glory; his character tended to inspire awe
rather than affection; he delighted in the majestic and the terrible.
In boldness of conception and grandeur of design, he surpassed
Leonardo, but never could reach the sweetness and gentleness of his
figures. Even his children lose something of their infantine beauty,
and look mature; his women are commanding and lofty; his men of
gigantic proportions. His painting, like his sculpture, is remarkable
for anatomical exactness, and perfect expression of the muscles. For
this union of magnificence and sublimity, it was necessary to prepare
the mind; the first view was almost harsh, and it was by degrees that
his mighty works produced their designed effect. Raphael, while he
felt all the greatness of the Florentine, conceived that there might
be something more like nature--something that should be harmonious,
sweet, and flowing--that should convey the idea of intellectual rather
than of external majesty. Without yielding any of the correctness of
science, he avoided harshness, and imitated antiquity in uniting grace
and elegance with a strict observation of science and of the rules of
art.
It was with surprise that Michael Angelo beheld in the youthful
Raphael a rival artist; nor did he receive this truth meekly; he
treated him with coldness and distance. In the meantime Raphael went
on with his works; he completed the frescos of the Vatican, and
designed the cartoons. He also produced those exquisite paintings in
oil which seem the perfection of human art.
[Illustration: Leo X. at Raphael's Bier.]
Human affection is necessary to awaken the sympathy of human beings;
and Raphael, in learning how to portray it, had found the way to the
heart. In mere grandeur of invention he was surpassed by Michael
Angelo. Titian excelled him in coloring, and Correggio in the
beautiful gradation of tone; but Raphael knew how to paint the soul;
in this he stood alone. This was the great secret of a power which
seemed to operate like magic. In his paintings there is something
which makes music on the chords of every heart; for they are the
expression of a mind attuned to nature, and find answering sympathies
in the universal soul.
While Michael Angelo was exalted with the Epic grandeur of his own
Dante, Raphael presented the most finished scenes of dramatic life,
and might be compared to the immortal Shakespeare--scenes of spiritual
beauty, of devotion, and of pastoral simplicity, yet uniting a classic
elegance which the poet does not possess. Buonarroti was the wonder of
Italy, and Raphael became its idol.
Julius was so much enchanted with his paintings in the halls of the
Vatican, that he ordered the frescos of former artists to be
destroyed. Among them were some of Perugino's, but Raphael would not
suffer these to be removed for his own; he viewed them as the relics
of a beloved and honored friend, and they were consecrated by tender
and grateful feelings.
Raphael collected from every part of the world medallions of intaglios
and antiques to assist him in his designs. He loved splendor and
conviviality, and gave offence thereby to the rigid and austere. It
was said that he had a prospect of changing the graceful beretta for a
cardinal's hat; but this idea might have arisen from the delay which
existed in his marriage with Cardinal Bibiano's niece, whose hand her
uncle had offered to him. Peremptorily to reject this proposal of the
cardinal without giving offence would have been impossible, and
Raphael was too gentle in his own feelings voluntarily to injure
another's; but he was not one to sacrifice his affections to ambition.
Whatever were the struggles of his heart, they were early terminated.
Amid the caresses of the great, the fond and devoted friendship of his
equals, the enthusiastic love of his pupils, the adulation of his
inferiors, while crowned with wealth, fame, and honor, and regarded as
the equal of the hitherto greatest artist in the world, he was
suddenly called away. He died on Good Friday, the day of his birth, at
the age of thirty-seven, 1520.
We are sometimes impressed with veneration when those who have even
drunk the cup of life almost to its dregs resign it with resignation
and Christian faith. But Raphael calmly and firmly resigned it when it
was full to the brim.
Leo X. and Cardinal Bibiano were by his bedside. The sublime picture
of the "Transfiguration," the last and greatest which he painted, was
placed opposite to him, by his own desire. How impressive must have
been the scene! His dying eye turned from the crucifix he held in his
hand to the glory of the beatified Saviour.
His contemporaries speak of him as affectionate, disinterested,
modest, and sincere; encouraging humble merit, and freely giving his
advice and assistance where it was needed and deserved.
TITIAN
By GIORGIO VASARI[2]
[Footnote 2: Giorgio Vasari, a contemporary of Titian, and
himself a painter of no mean rank, wrote a series of lives of
the Italian artists, from which the following is extracted.
There are several slight inaccuracies in his work Titian was
born, not in 1480, but in 1477, and died in 1576. He was in
coloring the greatest artist who ever lived.]
1477-1576
[Illustration: Titian.]
Titian was born in the year 1480, at Cadore, a small place distant
about five miles from the foot of the Alps; he belonged to the family
of the Vecelli, which is among the most noble of those parts. Giving
early proof of much intelligence, he was sent at the age of ten to an
uncle in Venice, an honorable citizen, who, seeing the boy to be much
inclined to painting, placed him with the excellent painter, Gian
Bellino, then very famous. Under his care, the youth soon proved
himself to be endowed by nature with all the gifts of judgment and
genius required for the art of painting. Now, Gian Bellino and the
other masters of that country, not having the habit of studying the
antique, were accustomed to copy only what they saw before them, and
that in a dry, hard, labored manner, which Titian also acquired; but
about the year 1507, Giorgione da Castel Franco, not being satisfied
with that mode of proceeding, began to give to his works an unwonted
softness and relief, painting them in a very beautiful manner; yet he
by no means neglected to draw from the life, or to copy nature with
his colors as closely as he could; and in doing the latter he shaded
with colder or warmer tints as the living object might demand, but
without first making a drawing; since he held that, to paint with the
colors only, without any drawing on paper, was the best mode of
proceeding, and most perfectly in accord with the true principles of
design.
Having seen the manner of Giorgione, Titian early resolved to abandon
that of Gian Bellino, although well grounded therein. He now,
therefore, devoted himself to this purpose, and in a short time so
closely imitated Giorgione that his pictures were sometimes taken for
those of that master, as will be related below. Increasing in age,
judgment, and facility of hand, our young artist executed numerous
works in fresco which cannot here be named individually, having been
dispersed in various places; let it suffice to say, that they were
such as to cause experienced men to anticipate the excellence to which
he afterward attained. At the time when Titian began to adopt the
manner of Giorgione, being then not more than eighteen, he took the
portrait of a gentleman of the Barberigo family, who was his friend,
and this was considered very beautiful, the coloring being true and
natural, and the hair so distinctly painted that each one could be
counted as might also the stitches in a satin doublet, painted in the
same work; it was so well and carefully done, that it would have been
taken for a picture by Giorgione, if Titian had not written his name
on the dark ground.
Giorgione meanwhile had executed the façade of the German Exchange,
when, by the intervention of Barberigo, Titian was appointed to paint
certain stories in the same building and over the Merceria. After
which he executed a picture with figures the size of life, which is
now in the Hall of Messer Andrea Loredano, who dwells near San
Marcuola; this work represents "Our Lady" in her flight into Egypt.
She is in the midst of a great wood, and the landscape of this picture
is well done; Titian having practised that branch of art, and keeping
certain Germans, who were excellent masters therein, for several
months together in his own house. Within the wood he depicted various
animals, all painted from the life, and so natural as to seem almost
alive. In the house of Messer Giovanni Danna, a Flemish gentleman and
merchant, who was his gossip, he painted a portrait which appears to
breathe, with an "Ecce Homo," comprising numerous figures which, by
Titian himself, as well as others, is considered to be a very good
work. The same artist executed a picture of "Our Lady," with other
figures the size of life, men and children being all taken from
nature, and portraits of persons belonging to the Danna family.
In the year 1507, when the Emperor Maximilian was making war on the
Venetians, Titian, as he relates himself, painted the "Angel Raphael,
with Tobit and a Dog," in the Church of San Marziliano. There is a
distant landscape in this picture, wherein San Giovanni Battista is
seen at prayer in a wood; he is looking up to heaven, and his face is
illumined by a light descending thence; some believe this picture to
have been done before that on the "Exchange of the Germans," mentioned
above, was commenced. Now, it chanced that certain gentlemen, not
knowing that Giorgione no longer worked at this façade, and that
Titian was doing it (nay, had already given that part over the
Merceria to public view), met the former, and began as friends to
rejoice with him, declaring that he was acquitting himself better on
the side of the Merceria than he had done on that of the "Grand
Canal;" which remark caused Giorgione so much vexation, that he would
scarcely permit himself to be seen until the whole work was completed,
and Titian had become generally known as the painter; nor did he
thenceforward hold any intercourse with the latter and they were no
longer friends.
In the year 1508, Titian published a wood-engraving of the "Triumph of
Faith;" it comprised a vast number of figures: our first Parents, the
Patriarchs, the Prophets, the Sybils, the Innocents, the Martyrs, the
Apostles, and Our Saviour Christ borne in triumph by the four
Evangelists, and the four Doctors, followed by the holy Confessors;
here Titian displayed much boldness, a fine manner, and improving
facility. I remember that Fra Bastiano del Piombo, speaking on this
subject, told me that if Titian had then gone to Rome, and seen the
works of Michael Angelo, with those of Raphael and the ancients, he
was convinced, the admirable facility of his coloring considered, that
he would have produced works of the most astonishing perfection;
seeing that, as he well deserved to be called the most perfect
imitator of Nature of our times, as regards coloring, he might thus
have rendered himself equal to the Urbinese or Buonarroto, as regarded
the great foundation of all, design. At a later period Titian repaired
to Vicenza, where he painted "The Judgment of Solomon," on the
Loggetta wherein the courts of justice are held; a very beautiful
work. Returning to Venice, he then depicted the façade of the Germain;
at Padua he painted certain frescos in the Church of Sant' Antonio,
the subjects taken from the life of that saint; and in the Church of
Santo Spirito he executed a small picture of San Marco seated in the
midst of other saints, whose faces are portraits painted in oil with
the utmost care; this picture has been taken for a work of Giorgione.
Now, the death of Giovan Bellino had caused a story in the hall of the
Great Council to remain unfinished; it was that which represents
Federigo Barbarossa kneeling before Pope Alessandro III., who plants
his foot on the emperor's neck. This was now finished by Titian, who
altered many parts of it, introducing portraits of his friends and
others. For this he received from the senate an office in the Exchange
of the Germans called the Senseria, which brought him in three hundred
crowns yearly, and which those Signori usually give to the most
eminent painter of their city, on condition that from time to time he
shall take the portrait of their doge, or prince when such shall be
created, at the price of eight crowns, which the doge himself pays,
the portrait being then preserved in the Palace of San Marco, as a
memorial of that doge.
After the completion of these works, our artist painted, for the
Church of San Rocco, a figure of Christ bearing his cross; the Saviour
has a rope round his neck, and is dragged forward by a Jew; many have
thought this a work of Giorgione. It has become an object of the
utmost devotion in Venice, and has received more crowns as offerings
than have been earned by Titian and Giorgione both, through the whole
course of their lives. Now, Titian had taken the portrait of Bembo,
then secretary to Pope Leo X., and was by him invited to Rome, that he
might see the city, with Raffaello da Urbino and other distinguished
persons; but the artist having delayed his journey until 1520, when
the pope and Raffaello were both dead, put it off for that time
altogether. For the Church of Santa Maria Maggiore he painted a
picture of "St. John the Baptist in the wilderness;" there is an angel
beside him that appears to be living; and a distant landscape, with
trees on the bank of a river, which are very graceful. He took
portraits of the Prince Grimani and Loredano, which were considered
admirable; and not long afterward he painted the portrait of King
Francis, who was then leaving Italy to return to France.
[Illustration: A Fête at the House of Titian.]
In 1530, when the Emperor Charles V. was in Bologna, Titian, by the
intervention of Pietro Aretino, was invited to that city by the
Cardinal Ippolito de' Medici, and there he made a magnificent portrait
of his majesty in full armor. This gave so much satisfaction that the
artist received a present of a thousand crowns for the same. Out of
these he had subsequently to give the half to Alfonso Lombardi, the
sculptor, who had made a model of that monarch to be executed in
marble.
Having returned to Venice, Titian there found that many gentlemen had
begun to favor Pordenone, commending exceedingly the works executed by
that artist in the ceiling of the Hall of the Pregai, and elsewhere.
They had also procured him the commission for a small picture in the
Church of San Giovanni Elemosynario, which they intended him to paint
in competition with one representing that saint in his episcopal
habits, which had previously been executed there by Titian. But
whatever care and pains Pordenone took, he could not equal nor even
approach the work of the former. Titian was then appointed to paint a
picture of the Annunciation for the Church of Santa Maria degli
Angeli, at Murano; but those who gave the commission for the work, not
wishing to pay so much as five hundred crowns, which Titian required
as its price, he sent it, by the advice of Pietro Aretino, as a gift
to Charles V., who being greatly delighted with the work, made him a
present of two thousand crowns. The place which the picture was to
have occupied at Murano was then filled by one from the hand of
Pordenone.
When the emperor, some time after this, returned with his army from
Hungary, and was again at Bologna, holding a conference with Clement
VII., he desired to have another portrait taken of him by Titian, who,
before he departed from the city, also painted that of the Cardinal
Ippolito de Medici in the Hungarian dress, with another of the same
prelate fully armed, which is somewhat smaller than the first; these
are both now in the Guardaroba of Duke Cosimo. He painted the
portraits of Alfonso, Marquis of Davalos, and of Pietro Aretino, at
the same period, and these things having made him known to Federigo
Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua, he entered the service of the latter, and
accompanied him to his states. At Mantua our artist made a portrait of
the duke, which appears to breathe, and afterward executed that of his
brother, the cardinal. These being finished, he painted twelve
beautiful "Heads of the Twelve Cæsars," to decorate one of the rooms
erected by Giulio Romano, and when they were done, Giulio painted a
"Story from the Lives of the Emperors" beneath each head.
The productions, but more especially the portraits, of Titian are so
numerous that it would be almost impossible to make the record of them
all. I will, therefore, speak of the principal only, and that without
order of time, seeing that it does not much signify to tell which was
painted earlier and which later. He took the portrait of Charles V.
several times, as we have said, and was finally invited by that
monarch to his court; there he painted him as he was in those last
years; and so much was that most invincible emperor pleased with the
manner of Titian, that once he had been portrayed by him, he would
never permit himself to be taken by any other person. Each time that
Titian painted the emperor he received a present of a thousand crowns
of gold, and the artist was made a cavalier, or knight, by his
majesty, with a revenue of two hundred crowns yearly, secured on the
treasury of Naples, and attached to his title.
When Titian painted Filippo, King of Spain, the son of Charles, he
received another annuity of two hundred crowns; so that these four
hundred, added to the three hundred from the German Exchange, make him
a fixed income of seven hundred crowns, which he possesses without the
necessity of exerting himself in any manner. Titian presented the
portraits of Charles V. and his son Filippo to the Duke Cosimo, who
has them now in his Guardaroba. He also took the portrait of
Ferdinand, King of the Romans, who was afterward emperor, with those
of his children, Maximilian, that is to say, now emperor, and his
brother; he likewise painted the Queen Maria; and at the command of
the Emperor Charles, he portrayed the Duke of Saxony, when the latter
was in prison. But what a waste of time is this! when there has
scarcely been a noble of high rank, scarcely a prince or lady of great
name, whose portrait has not been taken by Titian, who in that branch
of art is indeed an excellent painter.
All these works, with many others which I omit to avoid prolixity,
have been executed up to the present age of our artist, which is above
seventy-six years. Titian has been always healthy and happy; he has
been favored beyond the lot of most men, and has received from Heaven
only favors and blessings. In his house he has entertained whatever
princes, literati, or men of distinction have gone to or dwelt in
Venice; for, to say nothing of his excellence in art, he has always
distinguished himself by courtesy, hospitality, and rectitude.
Titian has had some rivals in Venice, but not of any great ability,
wherefore he has easily overcome them by the superiority of his art;
while he has also rendered himself acceptable to the gentlemen of the
city. He has gained a fair amount of wealth, his labors having always
been well paid; and it would have been well if he had worked for his
amusement alone during these latter years, that he might not have
diminished the reputation gained in his best days by works of inferior
merit, performed at a period of life when nature tends inevitably to
decline, and consequent imperfection.
In the year 1566, when Vasari, the writer of the present history, was
at Venice, he went to visit Titian, as one who was his friend, and
found him, although then very old, still with the pencils in his hand
and painting busily. Great pleasure had Vasari in beholding his works
and in conversing with the master.
It may be affirmed, then, that Titian, having adorned Venice, or
rather all Italy, and other parts of the world, with excellent
paintings, well merits to be loved and respected by artists, and in
many things to be admired and imitated also, as one who has produced,
and is producing, work of infinite merit; nay, such as must endure
while the memory of illustrious men shall remain.
ALBERT DÜRER[3]
[Footnote 3: Copyright, 1894, by Helmar Hess.]
By W. J. HOLLAND, Chancellor of the Western University of Pennsylvania
(1471-1528)
[Illustration: Albert Dürer.]
It has been given to some men to be not only great in the domain of
art by reason of that which they have themselves succeeded in
producing, but by reason of that which they have inspired other men to
produce. They have been not merely artists, but teachers, who by
precept and example have moulded the whole current and drift of
artistic thought in the ages and lands to which they have belonged.
Among these lofty spirits, who live through the centuries not only in
what their hands once fashioned, but still more in what they have
inspired others to do, undoubtedly one of the greatest is Albert
Dürer. Justly reckoned as the representative artist of Germany, he has
the peculiar honor of having raised the craft of the engraver to its
true position, as one of the fine arts. As a painter not unworthy to
be classified with Titian and Raphael, his contemporaries upon Italian
soil, he poured the wealth of his genius into woodcuts and
copperplates, and taught men the practically measureless capacity of
what before his day had been a rudimentary art.
Dürer was born in Nuremberg on May 21, 1471. The family was of
Hungarian origin, though the name is German, and is derived from
Thürer, meaning a maker of doors. The ancestral calling of the family
probably was that of the carpenter. Albert Dürer, the father of the
great artist, was a goldsmith, and settled about 1460 in Nuremberg,
where he served as an assistant to Hieronymus Holper, a master
goldsmith, whose daughter, Barbara, he married in 1468. He was at the
time forty years of age, and she fifteen. As the result of the union
eighteen children were born into the world, of whom Albrecht was the
second. The lad, as he grew up, became a great favorite with his
father, who appeared to discern in him the promise of future ability.
The feeling of attachment was reciprocated in the most filial manner,
and there are extant two well-authenticated portraits of the father
from the facile brush of the son, one in the Uffizi at Florence, the
other in the possession of the Duke of Northumberland. It was the
original intention of the father of the artist that he should follow
the craft of the goldsmith, but after serving a period as an
apprentice in his father's shop, his strong predilection for the
calling of the painter manifested itself to such a degree that the
father reluctantly consented to allow the boy to follow his natural
bent, and placed him under the tutelage of Michael Wohlgemuth, the
principal painter of Nuremberg. Wohlgemuth was a representative artist
of his time, who followed his calling after a mechanical fashion,
having a large shop filled with apprentices who, under his direction
and with his assistance, busied themselves in turning out for a small
consideration altar-pieces and pictures of martyrdoms, which were in
vogue as necessary parts of decoration in churches. Numerous examples
of the work of Wohlgemuth and his contemporaries survive, attesting,
by the wealth of crudities and unintended caricatures with which they
abound, the comparatively low stage of development attained by the art
of the painter in Germany at that day. According to Dürer, the period
of his apprenticeship to Wohlgemuth was spent profitably, and resulted
in large acquisitions of technical skill. The period of his
preliminary training being ended, he set forth upon his "Wanderjahre,"
and travelled extensively. Just what points he visited cannot with
certainty be determined. It is ascertained beyond doubt that he
visited Colmar, where he was hospitably entertained by the family of
Martin Schongauer, the greatest painter of his time on German soil,
but who had died shortly before the visit of Dürer. He also visited
Strasburg, and it is thought by many that he extended his journeyings
as far as Venice. In 1494 he returned to Nuremberg, and in the month
of July was married to Agnes Frey, the daughter of a prosperous
merchant of the city. He was twenty-three years of age, and she
somewhat younger. They lived together happily, though no children were
born to them, and it has been proved that the reputation which has
been given her, of being little better than a common scold, who
imbittered his life by her termagancy, is the creation of the ill
temper of one of the testy friends of Dürer, Willibald Pirkheimer,
who, in the spirit of spitefulness, besmirched her character in a
letter which unfortunately survives to this day, and in which he
accuses her of having led her husband a mad and weary dance by her
temper. The reason for this ebullition on the part of Pirkheimer
appears to have been that, after Dürer's death, she refused to give
him a pair of antlers which had belonged to her husband, and which
Pirkheimer had set his heart upon having.
[Illustration: Albert Dürer's Wedding.]
The first eleven years of the married life of Dürer were spent in
Nuremberg, where he devoted himself with unremitting assiduity to the
prosecution of his art. During these years his powers unfolded
rapidly, and there are extant two notable pictures, which were
undoubtedly produced at this time, the triptych in the Dresden
Gallery, and an altar-piece which is in the palace of the Archbishop
of Vienna, at Ober St. Veit. These compositions, while remarkable in
many respects, still reveal the influence of his master, Wohlgemuth,
and give evidence of having been in part executed with the assistance
of apprentices. In fact, the peak-gabled house at the foot of the
castle-mound in Nuremberg was a picture factory like that of
Wohlgemuth, in which, however, work of a higher order than any
hitherto produced in Germany was being turned out. We know the names
of four or five of those who served as apprentices under Dürer at
this time and they are stars of lesser magnitude in the
constellation of German art. But Dürer was not contented simply to
employ his talents in the production of painted altar-pieces, and we
find him turning out a number of engravings, the most noticeable among
which are his sixteen great wood-cuts illustrating the Apocalypse,
which were published in 1498. The theme was one which had peculiar
fascinations for all classes at the time. The breaking up of all
pre-existing systems, the wonderful stirrings of a new life which were
beginning to be felt everywhere with the close of the Middle Age and
the dawning of the Renaissance, had filled the minds of men with
wonder, and caused them to turn to the writings of the Apocalyptic
Seer with keenest interest. A recent critic, commenting upon his work
as represented in these engravings, says: "The energy and undismayed
simplicity of his imagination enable him, in this order of creations,
to touch the highest point of human achievement. The four angels
keeping back the winds that they blow not, the four riders, the
loosing of the angels of the Euphrates to slay the third part of
men--these and others are conceptions of such force, such grave or
tempestuous grandeur, in the midst of grotesqueness, as the art of no
other age or hand has produced."
At this period Dürer was also engaged in experimenting upon the art of
copper-plate engraving, in which he restricted himself mainly to
reproducing copies of the works of other artists, among them those of
Jacopo de Barbari, a painter of the Italian school, who was residing
in Nuremberg, and who among other things gave the great artist
instruction in plastic anatomy. The influence of his instructor is
plain, when we compare engravings executed about 1504 with those
published at a previous date, and especially when we examine his
design of the Passion of our Lord painted in white upon a green
ground, commonly known as "The Green Passion," which is treasured in
the Albertina at Prague. He also during these twelve years finished
seven of the twelve great wood-cuts illustrating the passion, and
sixteen of the twenty cuts which compose the series known as "The Life
of the Virgin." The activities of Dürer in Nuremberg were temporarily
interrupted by a journey to Italy, which he undertook in the fall of
the year 1505. What the immediate occasion for undertaking this
journey may have been is not plain, though it seems most likely that
one of his objects was to enable him to recuperate from the effects of
a protracted illness, from which he had suffered during the summer of
this year, and also incidentally to secure a market for his wares in
Venice, the commercial relationships of which with Nuremberg were very
close at this period. A German colony, composed largely of Nuremberg
factors and merchants, was located at this time in Venice, and they
had secured the privilege of dedicating a great painting in the church
of St. Bartholomew. The commission for the execution of this painting
was secured by Dürer. It represents the adoration of the Virgin, but
has been commonly known under the name of "The Feast of the Rose
Garlands." After having undergone many vicissitudes, it is preserved
to-day in a highly mutilated condition in the monastery of Strachow,
near Prague. Dürer's stay in Venice was signalized not only by the
production of this painting, but of three or four other notable works
which still exist, and which reflect the great influence upon him of
the Italian school of painting, with which he had attained
familiarity. His stay in Venice lasted about a year. In the fall of
1506, he returned to Nuremberg, and there remained for the next
fourteen years, engaged in the practice of his art. These years were
years of success and prosperity. His name and fame had spread over the
whole of Europe, and the greatest artists of the day were glad to do
him homage. Raphael said of him, when contemplating some of his
designs, "Truly this man would have surpassed us all, if he had the
masterpieces of ancient art constantly before his eyes as we have." A
friendly correspondence was maintained between the immortal Italian
and his German contemporary, and in his own country, all men, from the
emperor to the peasant, delighted to do honor to his genius, the
products of which were found alike in church and palace, and through
his printed designs in the homes of the humble poor.
The proud old imperial city of Nuremberg had gathered within its
battlemented walls a multitude of men who were distinguished not only
for their commercial enterprise and wealth, but many of whom were the
exponents of the literary and artistic culture of the time. Among the
men with whom Dürer found congenial companionship were Adam Krafft,
the sculptor; Veit Stoss, whose exquisite carvings in wood may reflect
in some measure in the wild luxuriance of the imagination which they
display, the restless, "dare-devil" spirit with which his biographers
invest him; Peter Vischer, the bronze founder; and last but not least.
Hans Sachs, the cobbler poet, whose quaint rhymes are a source of
delight to this day, and were a mighty force in the great work of the
Reformation, by which the fetters of mediæval traditions and
ecclesiastical abuse were thrown off by the German people.
Of the personal appearance of Dürer at this time, we are not left in
ignorance. A portrait of himself from his own hands has been preserved
and is well known. His features reveal refinement and great
intellectuality, united with grace, and his attire shows that he was
not oblivious to matters of personal adornment. After the fashion of
the time, his hair was worn in long and graceful ringlets, which fell
in heavy masses about his shoulders.
The first six years which followed his return from Venice were almost
wholly given to painting, and his productions give evidence of the
fact that he had dismissed from his employment the retinue of
assistants and apprentices, whom he had employed in his earlier years.
From this period date most of his great masterpieces, which are still
preserved, among them the "Adam and Eve," in the Pitti Palace; the
"Ten Thousand Martyrs of Nicomedia," in the Imperial Gallery, at
Vienna; the "Adoration of the Trinity," at the Belvedere, in Vienna;
and "The Assumption of the Virgin," the original of which was
destroyed by fire more than three hundred years ago, but of which a
good copy is preserved at Frankfort. To this period belong the
portraits of Charlemagne and of the Emperor Sigismund, which are
preserved in the National German Museum at Nuremberg.
[Illustration: Albert Dürer Visits Hans Sachs.]
But while prosecuting the work of the painter, he did not neglect the
art of the engraver, and in 1511, brought out in complete form his
great book of woodcuts in folio, and began to develop that marvellous
art of etching which is indissolubly connected with his name. Among
the products of the etcher's needle which attest his activity in this
direction are those masterpieces which have for centuries been at once
the delight and the puzzle of artistic minds: the "Melancholia," "The
Knight and the Devil," and "St. Jerome in his Cell." The most
reasonable explanation of these weird fancies is that they were
intended to represent in allegorical style the three temperaments--the
melancholic, the sanguine, and the phlegmatic. The Diet of Augsburg,
which was convened in 1518, gave Dürer a passing opportunity to depict
the lineaments of the Emperor Maximilian, who gave him several
sittings, and who manifested great interest in the painter. The death
of the emperor in the following year, the outbreak of an epidemic in
Nuremberg, together with the coronation of Charles V. at
Aix-la-Chapelle, led Dürer to undertake a journey to the Low
Countries, in which he was accompanied by his faithful wife. He was
present at the coronation and was one of the distinguished civilians
whose appearance added dignity to the occasion. His diary, in which he
recounts his experiences upon this journey, and which is accompanied
by a multitude of wayside sketches, is still preserved, and contains,
besides the dry entries of his current expenditures, most entertaining
allusions to the distinguished people whom he met, and who received
him with the utmost cordiality. Intermingled with these narrative
details are outbursts of feeling, which are provoked by passing
political and ecclesiastical events, in which he took a profound
interest, though he never appears to have committed himself with
positive openness to the party of reform. His sympathies are, however,
clearly shown by his writings, as well as by his works of art, to have
been with the Reformers, and he lived on terms of intimacy with
Erasmus and Melancthon, of both of whom we have portraits from his
hand.
Dürer returned from the Netherlands in 1521, about the middle of July,
and the remaining years of his life were spent in the prosecution of
the art of the engraver, in painting, and in the effort to elucidate
the sciences of perspective, geometry, and fortification, upon all of
which he has left treatises.
His labors, though they had not brought with them great wealth, had
secured for him a competency, and the latter years of his life were
devoted more and more to labors which, while dignified, did not tend
to add greatly to his already magnificent reputation. These labors
were prosecuted in spite of ever-failing health. While in the
Netherlands he had contracted a malarial fever, the effects of which
clung to him, in spite of the best treatment which could be secured,
and left him the wreck of his former self. On April 6, 1528, death
suddenly overtook him. There was not even time to summon his friends
to his side before his spirit had fled. The city which had been his
home from childhood was filled with mourning. They took up his remains
and gently laid them to rest in the burial vault of his wife's family
in the graveyard of the Church of St. John, where the setting sun
pours its last glowing beams at evening over the low Franconian
hill-tops. The vault has since been changed and the last
resting-place of the remains of the Raphael of the North is a lowly
mound, reverently approached by all who visit the quaint imperial
city, upon which is a slab, covered with a bronze tablet upon which
are the words:
Quicquid Alberti Dureri Mortale
Fuit Sub Hoc Conditum Tumulo.
Emigravit VIII Idus Aprilis, MDXXVIIL
"_Emigravit_ is the inscription on the tombstone where he lies;
Dead he is not, but departed--for the artist never dies.
Fairer seems the ancient city, and the sunshine seems more fair,
That he once has trod its pavement, that he once has breathed its air!"
[Signature of the author.]
RUBENS
By Mrs. LEE
(1577-1640)
[Illustration: Rubens.]
"It is just one hundred and twenty years to-day," said a young artist
to his friend, as he stood in the hall of St. Mark, at Venice,
contemplating the noble works of Titian. "Time, the destroyer, has
here stayed his hand; the colors are as vivid and as fresh as if they
were laid on but yesterday. Would that my old friend and master, Otho
Venius, was here! At least I will carry back to Antwerp that in my
coloring which shall prove to him that I have not played truant to the
art."
"Just one hundred and twenty years," repeated he, "since Titian was
born. Venice was then in its glory, but now it is all falling; its
churches and palaces are crumbling to dust, its commerce interrupted.
The republic continually harassed by the Porte, and obliged to call on
foreign aid; depressed by her internal despotism, her council of ten,
and state inquisitors; her decline, though gradual, is sure; yet the
splendor of her arts remains, and the genius of Titian, her favorite
son, is yet in the bloom and brilliancy of youth!"
Such was the enthusiastic exclamation of Rubens, as he contemplated
those paintings which had brought him from Antwerp. How many gifted
minds spoke to him from the noble works which were before him! The
three Bellinis, the founders of the Venetian school; Giorgione,
Titian, and Tintoretto. Then Paolo Veronese, who, though born at
Verona, in 1537, adopted Venice as his home, and became the
fellow-artist of Tintoretto, and the disciple of Titian. Pordenone,
too, who viewed Titian as a rival and an enemy. Palma the young, and
Palma the old, born in 1548, and the Bassanos, who died near 1627.
All these were present to the eye of Rubens, their genius embodied on
the canvas in the halls of St. Mark. "These," he exclaimed, "have
formed the Venetian school, and these shall be my study!"
From this time, the young artist might daily be seen with his sheets
of white paper, and his pencil in his hand. A few strokes preserved
the outline which his memory filled up; and by an intuitive glance,
his genius understood and appropriated every signal beauty.
In Venice he became acquainted with the Archduke Albert, who
introduced him to the Duke of Mantua, whither he went for the purpose
of studying the works of Julio Romano. From thence he proceeded to
Rome; here Raphael was his model, and Michael Angelo his wonder. He
devoted himself to painting with a fervor that belongs only to genius;
and he soon proved that, whatever he gained by ancient study, the
originality of his own conceptions would still remain and appear. To
the vivid and splendid coloring of the Venetian school, he was perhaps
more indebted than to any other model. The affectionate and constant
intercourse, by letters, that subsisted between Rubens and his mother,
made his long residence in Italy one of pleasure. At Rome he was
employed to adorn, by his paintings, the Church of Santa Croce, and
also the "Chiesa Nova."
Rubens had been originally destined by his mother for one of the
learned professions. His father was born at Antwerp, and held the
honorable office of councillor of state. When the civil war broke out
he repaired to Cologne, where his son, Peter Paul Rubens, was born. He
died soon after his return to Antwerp, and left his property much
diminished from losses occasioned by the civil war. The mother of
Rubens put him early to the best schools, where he was initiated in
learning and discovered a taste for belles-lettres; but all the
intervals of necessary study were devoted to drawing. His mother
perceiving it, determined to indulge his inclination, and placed him
in the studio of Van Noort.
The correct taste of the scholar soon led him to perceive that he
could not adopt this artist's style, and he became the pupil of Otho
Venius. Similarity of thought and feeling united them closely, and it
was with true disinterestedness that the master urged his pupil to
quit his confined circle and repair to Italy, the great school of art.
Time flew rapidly with Rubens, while engaged in his beloved and
honorable pursuit; he looked forward to the period when he might
return to Antwerp and place his mother in her former affluence. Nearly
seven years had passed since he took leave of her. Of late he thought
her letters had been less cheerful; she spoke of her declining
health, of her earnest hope that she might live to embrace him once
more. This hint was enough for his affectionate heart. He immediately
broke off all his engagements and prepared to return. Everyone knows
what impatience is created when one first begins to contemplate home,
after a long absence, and the heart is turned toward it. "Seven years
absent?" wrote Rubens to his mother, "how is it possible I have lived
so long away from you? It is too long; henceforth I will devote myself
to your happiness. Antwerp shall be my future residence. I have
acquired a taste for horticulture; our little garden shall be enlarged
and cultivated, and our home will be a paradise."
What are human anticipations and projects! the day before he was to
quit Rome he received a letter informing him that his mother was very
ill, and begging him to return with all speed. With breathless haste
he hurried back, without sleep or rest. When he reached the city he
dared not make any inquiries. At length he stood before the paternal
mansion; he saw the gloomy tiles and half-closed window-shutters. It
was the fall of the trees. He observed people going in and out at the
door; to speak was impossible. At length he rushed in and heard the
appalling sentence, "Too late," a sentence that often strikes
desolation to the human heart. His mother had expired that morning.
While he was struggling with the bitterness of sorrow, he met with
Elizabeth Brants. There was something in the tone of her voice which
infused tranquillity into his mind, and affection came in a new form
to assuage his loss. She was the "ladye of his love," and afterward
his wife. He built a magnificent house at Antwerp, with a saloon in
form of a rotunda, which he ornamented and enriched with antique
statues, busts, vases, and pictures by the most celebrated painters.
Thus surrounded by the gems of art, he devoted himself to the
execution of works which were the pride of his native country, and
caused honors and wealth to be heaped upon him.
There were those found who could not endure the splendor of his
success; these calumniated. There were others who tried to draw him
into visionary speculations. A chemist offered him a share of his
laboratory, to join in his search for the philosopher's stone. He
carried the visionary to his painting-room, and said, "The offer comes
too late. You see I have found out the art of making gold by my
palette and pencils."
Rubens was now at the height of prosperity and happiness, a dangerous
eminence, and one on which few are permitted to rest. A second time
his heart was pierced with sorrow: he lost his young wife, Elizabeth,
a few years after their union. Deep as was his sorrow, he had yet
resolution enough to feel the necessity of exertion. He left the place
which constantly reminded him of domestic enjoyment, the memory of
which contrasted so sadly with the present silence and solitude, and
travelled for some time in Holland. After his return, he received a
commission from Mary de Medici, of France, to adorn the palace of the
Luxembourg. He executed for this purpose a number of paintings at
Antwerp, and instructed several pupils in his art.
At this time Rubens devoted himself wholly to painting, and scarcely
allowed himself time for recreation. He considered it one of the most
effectual means of instruction, to allow his pupils to observe his
method of using his paints. He therefore had them with him while he
worked on his large pictures. Teniers, Snyders, Jordaens, and Vandyke
were among his pupils--all names well known.
When Rubens had executed the commission given him by Mary de Medici,
wife of Henry IV., he repaired to Paris to arrange his pictures at the
Luxembourg palace, and there painted two more, and likewise the
galleries, representing passages of her life.
Here he became acquainted with the Duke of Buckingham, as that
nobleman was on his way to Madrid with Prince Charles. On his return
to Antwerp, he was summoned to the presence of the Infanta Isabella,
who had, through Buckingham, become interested in his character. She
thought him worthy of a political mission to the court of Madrid,
where he was most graciously received by Philip. While at Madrid he
painted four pictures for the convent of the Carmelites, and a fine
portrait of the king on horseback, with many other pictures; for these
extraordinary productions he was richly rewarded, received the honor
of knighthood, and was presented with the golden key.
While in Spain, Don John, Duke of Braganza, who was afterward king of
Portugal, sent and invited him to visit him at Villa Vitiosa, the
place of his residence. Rubens, perhaps, might at this time have been
a little dazzled with his uncommon elevation. He was now _Sir Paul_
and celebrated all over Europe. It was proper he should make the visit
as one person of high rank visits another. His preparations were great
to appear in a becoming style, and not to shame his noble host. At
length the morning arrived, and, attended by a numerous train of
courteous friends and hired attendants, the long cavalcade began the
journey. When not far distant from Villa Vitiosa, Rubens learned that
Don John had sent an embassy to meet him. Such an honor had seldom
been accorded to a private gentleman, and Rubens schooled himself to
receive it with suitable humility and becoming dignity.
He put up at a little distance from Villa Vitiosa, awaiting the
arrival of the embassy; finally it came, in the form of a single
gentleman, who civilly told him that the duke, his master, had been
obliged to leave home on business that could not be dispensed with,
and therefore must deny himself the pleasure of the visit; but as he
had probably been at some extra expense in coming so far, he begged
him to accept of fifty pistoles as a remuneration.
Rubens refused the pistoles, and could not forbear adding that he had
"brought two thousand along with him, which he had meant to spend at
his court during the fifteen days he was to spend there."
The truth was, that when Don John was informed that Rubens was coming
in the style of a prince to see him, it was wholly foreign to his
plan; he was a great lover of painting, and had wished to see him as
an artist. He therefore determined to prevent the visit.
The second marriage of Rubens, with Helena Forman, was, no less than
the first, one of affection; she had great beauty, and became a model
for his pencil. His favor with the great continued. Mary de Medici
visited him at his own home more than once; and the Infanta Isabella
was so much satisfied with his mission in Spain, that she sent him to
England, to sound the disposition of the government on the subject of
a peace.
Rubens disclosed in this embassy his diplomatic talents; he first
appeared there in his character of artist, and insensibly won upon the
confidence of Charles. The king requested him to paint the ceiling of
the banqueting-house at Whitehall. While he was employed upon it,
Charles frequently visited him and criticised the work. Rubens, very
naturally introducing the subject, and finding, from the tenor of his
conversation, that he was by no means averse to a peace with Spain, at
length produced his credentials. The king received his mission most
graciously, and Rubens returned to the Netherlands crowned with honors
and success.
He had passed his fiftieth year when his health began to fail, and he
was attacked with a severe fit of the gout. Those who have witnessed
the irritation attendant upon that disorder will appreciate the
perfect harmony and gentleness that existed between Rubens and his
wife. With untiring tenderness she devoted herself to him, and was
ingenious in devising alleviations and comforts.
The severe attacks of Rubens' disorder debilitated his frame, yet he
continued painting at his easel almost to the last; and, amid
suffering and sickness, never failed in giving the energy of intellect
to his pictures. He died at the age of sixty-three, in the year 1640,
leaving great wealth. The pomp and circumstance of funeral rite can
only be of consequence as showing the estimation in which a departed
citizen is held. Public funeral honors were awarded, and men of every
rank were eager to manifest their respect to his memory. He was buried
in the Church of St. James, at Antwerp, under the altar of his private
chapel, which was decorated with one of his own noble pictures.
REMBRANDT[4]
[Footnote 4: Copyright, 1894, by Selmar Hess.]
By ELIZABETH ROBINS PENNELL
(1606-1669)
[Illustration: Rembrandt.]
A heretic in art Rembrandt was to many of his Dutch contemporaries; to
us, he is the master, supreme alike in genius and accomplishment.
Because, as time went on, he broke completely from tradition and in
his work gave full play to his originality, his pictures were looked
at askance; because he chose to live his own life, indifferent to
accepted conventions, he himself was misunderstood. It was his cruel
fate to enjoy prosperity and popularity in his earlier years, only to
meet with neglect in his old age. But this he felt probably less than
other men; he was not a courtier, with Velasquez, nor vowed to
worldly success, with Rubens. His pleasure and his reward, he found
in his work. So long as easel and canvas, brushes and paints were left
to him, he demanded no greater happiness.
[Illustration: Marie De Medici at the House of Rubens.]
In Leyden, a town already made famous by another master, Lucas van
Leyden, Rembrandt was born in 1606; though this date has been
disputed, some authorities suggesting 1607, others, 1608. His family
were respectable, if not distinguished, burghers, his father, Harmen
Gerritszoon, being a miller by trade, his mother, Neeltjen Willems of
Zuitbroeck, the daughter of a baker. Not until early in the
seventeenth century did permanent surnames become common among
Dutchmen; hitherto children had been given their father's, in addition
to their own Christian name; Rembrandt for many years was known as
Rembrandt Harmenzoon, or the son of Harmen. But the miller, to be in
the growing fashion, had called himself Van Ryn--of the Rhine--and
thus, later on, Rembrandt also signed himself. Harmen was well-to-do;
he owned houses in Leyden, and beyond the walls, gardens, and fields,
and the mill where Rembrandt, because he once drew a mill, was
supposed to have been born. But there was no reason for Neeltjen to
move from a comfortable house in town into such rustic quarters, and
it is more likely that Rembrandt's birthplace was the house pointed
out in the Nordeinde Street. A commercial career had been chosen for
his four older brothers. But Harmen, his means allowing the luxury,
decided to make of his fifth son a man of letters and learning, and
Rembrandt was sent to the University of Leyden. That letters, however,
had small charm for him, was clear from the first. Better than his
books he loved the engravings of Swanenburch, better still, the
pictures of Lucas van Leyden, which he could look at to his heart's
content on gala days, when the Town Hall, where they hung, was thrown
open to the public. His hours of study were less profitable than his
hours of recreation when he rambled in the country, through his
father's estate, and, sometimes as far as the sea, a sketch-book, the
chances are, for sole companion. Certainly, by the time he was
fifteen, so strong were the proofs of his indifference to the classics
and his love for art, that his father, sacrificing his own ambitions,
allowed Rembrandt to leave the university for the studio of Van
Swanenburch. From this day forth, his life's history is told in the
single word--work; his indeed was the genius of industry.
Van Swanenburch had studied in Italy; but his own painting, to judge
by the few examples still in existence, was entirely commonplace.
Three years were more than enough to be passed under his tuition. At
the end of the third, Rembrandt went to Amsterdam, and there entered
the studio of Lastman. His second master also had studied in Italy,
and also was a painter of mediocre talent, popular in his own
times--the Apelles of the day, he was called--but remembered now
chiefly because of his relations to his pupil. From the first,
Rembrandt, even if obliged to paint the stock subjects of the day, was
determined to treat them in his own way, and not to follow set forms
that happened to be adopted in the schools. He used real men and women
for models, and painted them as he saw them, not as he was bidden to
look at them through his teacher's spectacles. In six months he had
learned at least one thing, that Lastman had nothing more to teach
him. The man of genius must ever be his own master, though he remain
the hard-working student all his days. Back to Leyden and to his
father's house, Rembrandt had not returned to lead a life of idleness.
He worked tremendously in these early years. Even needed models he
found in the members of his family; he has made the face of his mother
as familiar as that of a friend; his own, with the heavy features, the
thick, bushy hair, the small intelligent eyes, between them the
vertical line, fast deepening on the fine forehead, he drew and etched
and painted, again and again. More elaborate compositions he also
undertook. As in his maturity, it was to the Bible he turned for
suggestions: Saint Paul in prison, Samson and Delilah, the
Presentation in the Temple--these were the themes then in vogue which
he preferred, rendering them with the realism which distinguished his
later, more famous Samsons and Abrahams and Christs, making them the
motive for a fine arrangement of color, for a striking study of light
and shadow. A pleasant picture one can fancy of his life at this
period; he was with his own people, for whom his love was tender; busy
with brush, pencil, and etching-needle; he was strengthening his
powers of observation, developing and perfecting his style,
occasionally producing work that won for him renown in Leyden; and,
gradually, he gathered round him a small group of earnest
fellow-workers, chief among them Lievens, Gerard Dou, and Van Vliet,
the last two, though but slightly his juniors, looking up to him as
master. These were the years of his true apprenticeship.
Leyden, however, was not the best place for a young painter who had
his fortunes to make. It was essentially a university town; interest
was concentrated upon letters; art was but of secondary consideration.
It was different in Amsterdam, the great commercial centre of Holland.
There, all was life and activity and progress; there, was money to be
spent, and the liberal patron willing to lavish it upon the artist.
Holland just then was in the first flush of prosperity and patriotism,
following upon her virtual independence from Spain. Not a citizen but
glowed with self-respect at the thought of the victory he had, in one
way or another, helped to win; the state, as represented by the good
burghers, was supreme in every man's mind. It was natural that
individuals and corporations alike should seek to immortalize their
greatness by means of the painter's art, which, in Holland, had long
since ceased to be a monopoly of the church. Hence the age became
essentially one of portrait-painting. Many were the painters whose
portraits had already achieved distinction. De Keyser was busy in
Amsterdam; a far greater genius, Franz Hals, but fifteen years
Rembrandt's senior, was creating his masterpieces in The Hague and
Harlem. It was as inevitable that Rembrandt should turn to
portraiture, as that he should find commissions less numerous in
Leyden than in Amsterdam. Often in the latter town his services were
required; so often, indeed, that at last, about 1631, when he was just
twenty-five, he settled there permanently and set up a studio of his
own.
Success was his from the start. Sitter after sitter sought him out in
his house on the Bloemgracht; the most distinguished men in the town
hastened to patronize him. His work was liked by the burghers whom he
painted, its strength was felt by artists, whose canvases soon showed
its influence. Admirers crowded to his studio. He had not been in
Amsterdam a twelvemonth when, before he was yet twenty-six, he was
entrusted with an order of more than usual importance. This was the
portrait of Dr. Tulp and his class of surgeons: the famous "Lesson in
Anatomy" now in the Gallery at The Hague. The subject at the time was
very popular. Many artists, De Keyser among others, had already, in
painting prominent surgeons, placed them around the subject they were
dissecting; indeed, this was the arrangement insisted upon by the
surgeons themselves, and, as there seems to have been no limit to
their vanity, "Lessons in Anatomy" were almost as plentiful in Holland
as "Madonnas" in Umbria. Rembrandt in his composition was simply
adhering to accepted tradition. It is true that he instilled life into
a group hitherto, on other painters' canvases, stiff and perfunctory;
but, though the picture was a wonderful production for a man of his
years, it is not to be ranked with his greatest work.
Commissions now poured in still faster. It was at this time he painted
several of his best known portraits: the "Master Shipbuilder and his
Wife," at present in Buckingham Palace; that simply marvellous old
woman at the National Gallery in London, made familiar to everyone by
countless photographs and other reproductions; the man in ruff and
woman in coif at the Brunswick Museum; and a score of others scarce
less important. With increasing popularity, he was able to command his
own prices, so that only a part of his time was it necessary for him
to devote to the portraits which were his chief source of income.
During the leisure he reserved, he painted biblical subjects, ever his
delight, and made etchings and drawings, today the most prized
treasures in the world's great galleries. As in Leyden, he drew about
him students; a few, notably Ferdinand Bol and Christophe Paudiss,
destined, in their turn, to gain name and fame. Indifferent to social
claims and honors--an indifference the burghers, his patrons, found it
hard to forgive, his one amusement was in collecting pictures and
engravings, old stuffs and jewels, and every kind of _bric-à-brac_,
until his house in Amsterdam was a veritable museum. This amusement
later was to cost him dear.
Four years after the "Lesson in Anatomy" was painted, when he was at
the height of prosperity, in 1634, he married Saskia van Uylenborch,
the Saskia of so many an etching and picture. She was of a good
Frisian family, and brought with her a dowry of no mean proportions.
Rembrandt's marriage made small changes in his way of living. Into the
society, so ready to receive him, he never went, not even now that he
had a wife to introduce. It bored him, and he was no toady to waste
his time fawning upon possible patrons. "When I desire to rest my
spirit, I do not seek honors, but liberty," was his explanation. The
companionship of artists he always welcomed; sometimes he visited the
humbler burghers, whose ways were as simple as his own; sometimes he
sought the humblest classes of all, because of their picturesqueness,
and his contemporaries took him to task for his perverted taste for
low company. The truth is that always he devoted himself solely and
wholly to his art; the only difference, once he was married, was that,
when he sat at his easel all day or over his copperplate, and
sketchbook all evening, Saskia was with him. She shared all his
interests, all his ambitions; she had no will but his. During his
working hours, she was his model, obedient to his call. She never
tired of posing for him, nor he of painting her now simply as Saskia,
now as Delilah feasting with Samson, as Susanna surprised by the
Elders, as the Jewish Betrothed at her toilet. Sometimes he
represented her alone, sometimes with himself at her side; once, in
the famous Dresden portrait, on his knee, as if to proclaim the love
they bore for one another. And he, who could render faithfully the
ways of the beggar, the austere black of the burgher, for himself and
Saskia found no masquerading too gay or extravagant. In inventing
costumes for their own portraits, he gave his exuberant fancy free
play: in gorgeous embroidered robes, waving plumes, and priceless gems
they arrayed themselves, until even the resources of his collection
were exhausted: the same rich mantle, the same jewels appear, and
reappear in picture after picture.
Rembrandt's short married years were happy, though not without their
sorrows. Of Saskia's five children, four died in infancy; the fifth,
Titus, was not a year old when, in 1642, the end came for Saskia, and
Rembrandt, who had just reached his thirty-seventh year, was left in
his great house alone with an infant son and his pupils. Her
confidence in him is shown by her will, in which the inheritance of
Titus is left in the father's charge, though already Rembrandt's
affairs must have given signs of coming complications.
[Illustration: Connoisseurs at Rembrandt's Studio.]
Much of his best work remained to be done, but after Saskia's death
his worldly fortunes and his popularity never again touched such
high-water mark. The reason for this is not far to seek. During all
these years, Rembrandt's powers had matured, his methods broadened,
and his individuality strengthened. With each new canvas, his
originality became more conspicuous. It was not only that the world of
nature, and not imagination, supplied his models. Many of the Dutch
painters now were no less realists than he. It was not only that he
solved certain problems of _chiaro oscuro_, there were men, like
Lievens, who were as eager as he in the study of light and shadow. But
Rembrandt brought to his every experiment an independence that
startled the average man. He painted well because he saw well. If no
one else saw things as he did, the loss was theirs. But he paid for
his keener vision; because he did not paint like other artists, his
methods were mistrusted. To be misunderstood is the penalty of genius.
The picture which, of all his work, is now the most famous, marks the
turn in the tide of his affairs. Shortly before Saskia's death, he had
been commissioned to paint a portrait group of Banning Cock and the
military company which he commanded. These portrait groups of the
military corporations rivalled in popularity the "Lessons in Anatomy."
Each member, or officer, paid to be included in the composition, and,
as a rule, a stiff, formal picture, with each individual posed as for
a photograph, was the result. Rembrandt, apparently, was in nowise
restricted when he undertook the work for Banning Cock, and so,
instead of the stupid, hackneyed arrangement, he made of the portrait
of the company a picture of armed men marching forth to beating of
drums and waving of banners, "The Night Watch," as it must ever be
known--more accurately, "The Sortie of the Company of Banning
Cock"--now in the Ryks Museum of Amsterdam. With the men for whom it
was painted, it proved a failure. The grouping, the arrangement
displeased them. Many of the company were left in deep shadow, which
was not the privilege for which they had agreed to pay good money.
Rembrandt was not the man to compromise. After this many burghers, who
cared much for themselves and their own faces, and not in the least
for art, were afraid to entrust their portraits to him lest their
importance might be sacrificed to the painter's effects. Certain it is
that six years later, in 1648, when the independence of Holland was
formally recognized at the Congress of Westphalia, though Terburg and
Van der Heist celebrated the event on canvas, Rembrandt's services
were not secured. Good friends were left to him--men of intelligence
who appreciated his strong individuality and the great originality of
his work. Banning Cock himself was not among the discontented. A few
leading citizens, like Dr. Tulp and the Burgomeister Six, were ever
his devoted patrons. Artists still gathered about him; pupils still
crowded to his studio; Nicolas Maes, De Gelder, Kneller among them.
Many of his finest portraits--those of Hendrickje Stoffels, of his
son, of himself in his old age, of the Burgomeister Six, above all,
his masterpiece, "The Syndics of the Guild of Clothmakers," now in
Amsterdam; many of his finest etchings, the little landscapes, the
famous "Hundred Guilder Print," "Christ Healing the Sick," belong to
this later period. There was no falling off, but rather an increase,
in his powers, despite the clouds that darkened his years of middle
age.
Of these clouds, the darkest was due to his financial troubles.
Rembrandt had made large sums of money; Saskia's dowry had been by no
means small. But he also spent lavishly. He had absolutely no business
capacity. Once he was accused of miserliness; that he would at times
lunch on dry bread and a herring served as reproach against him; there
was a story current that his pupils would drop bits of paper painted
to look like money in order to see him stoop to pick them up. Both
charges are too foolish to answer seriously. When he was at work, it
mattered little to him what he ate, so that he was not disturbed; who
would not stoop to pick up coins apparently scattered on the floor?
The money he devoted to his collection is sufficient to show how small
a fancy he had for hoarding; upon it a princely fortune had been
squandered. To his own people in Leyden, when times were hard, he had
not been slow to hold out a generous hand. It was because he was not
enough of a miser, because he gave too little heed to business
matters, that difficulties at length overwhelmed him. It is too sad a
story to tell in detail. Perhaps the beginning was when he bought a
house for which he had not the ready money to pay, and borrowed a
large sum for the purpose. More and more involved became his affairs.
In time his creditors grew clamorous, and at length the blow fell
when, in 1657, he was declared bankrupt. The collection of years, the
embroidered mantles and draperies, the jewels with which Saskia had
been so gayly decked, the plumes and furs and gorgeous robes in which
he himself had masqueraded, the armor and plate, the engravings and
pictures which had filled his house--all were sold. He, the master,
had, at the age of fifty-one, to begin life anew as if he were still
but the apprentice.
In the midst of his troubles and losses, Hendrickje Stoffels, whose
portrait hangs in the Louvre, was the friend who cheered and comforted
him. She had been his servant; afterward she lived with him as his
wife, though legally they were not married. To Titus, as to her own
children, she was ever a tender mother, and Titus, in return, seems to
have loved her no less well. In the end, they together took
Rembrandt's business interests into their own hands, the son,
probably, using his inheritance in the enterprise. Renting a house in
their own name, they became his print and picture dealers.
But as time went on, Rembrandt's work brought lower and lower prices,
and he, himself, the last two years of his life, was almost forgotten.
Though he still lived in Amsterdam, the town from which he had so
seldom journeyed, and then never far, he had fallen into such
obscurity, that report now established him in Stockholm as painter to
the King of Sweden, now in Hull, or Yarmouth. In his own family
nothing but sorrow was in store for him. Hendrickje died, probably
about 1664, and he was once more alone; and next he lost Titus, who
then had been married but a few short months.
Fortunately for Rembrandt, he did not long survive them. In 1669, at
the age of sixty-two, his release came. He was buried in the West
Church, quietly and simply. Thirteen florins his funeral cost, and
even this small expense had to be met by his daughter-in-law. When an
inventory of his possessions was taken, these were found to consist of
nothing but his own wardrobe and his painter's tools.
But better than a mere fortune, his work he left as an heirloom for
all time; his drawings, not the least among them without the stamp of
his genius; his prints, still unsurpassed, though it was he who first
developed the possibilities of etching; his pictures, "painted with
light," as Fromentin has said. His subjects he may have borrowed from
the fashions and traditions of the time; certain mannerisms of
technique and arrangement his pupils may have copied. But for all
that, his work belongs to no special school or group; like all the
world's great masterpieces, whether produced in Spain by a Velasquez,
in Venice by a Titian, in England by a Whistler, it stands alone and
supreme.
[Signature of the author.]
WILLIAM HOGARTH
(1697-1764)
[Illustration: William Hogarth.]
"I was born," says Hogarth, in his Memoirs of himself, "in the city of
London, November 10, 1697. My father's pen, like that of many authors,
did not enable him to do more than put me in a way of shifting for
myself. As I had naturally a good eye and a fondness for drawing,
shows of all sorts gave me uncommon pleasure when an infant; and
mimicry, common to all children, was remarkable in me. An early access
to a neighboring painter drew my attention from play, and I was, at
every possible opportunity, employed in making drawings. I picked up
an acquaintance of the same turn, and soon learned to draw the
alphabet with great correctness. My exercises when at school were more
remarkable for the ornaments which adorned them than for the exercise
itself. In the former I soon found that blockheads with better
memories could much surpass me, but for the latter I was particularly
distinguished."
To this account of Hogarth's childhood we have only to add that his
father, an enthusiastic and laborious scholar, who, like many of his
craft, owed little to the favor of fortune, consulted these
indications of talent as well as his means would allow, and bound his
son apprentice to a silver-plate engraver. But Hogarth aspired after
something higher than drawing ciphers and coats-of-arms; and before
the expiration of his indentures he had made himself a good
draughtsman, and obtained considerable knowledge of coloring. It was
his ambition to become distinguished as an artist; and not content
with being the mere copier of other men's productions, he sought to
combine the functions of the painter with those of the engraver, and
to gain the power of delineating his own ideas and the fruits of his
acute observation. He has himself explained the nature of his views in
a passage which is worth attention:
"Many reasons led me to wish that I could find the shorter path--fix
forms and characters in my mind--and instead of copying the lines, try
to read the language, and, if possible, find the grammar of the art by
bringing into one focus the various observations I have made, and then
trying by my power on the canvas how far my plan enabled me to combine
and apply them to practice. For this purpose I considered what
various ways, and to what different purposes, the memory might be
applied, and fell upon one most suitable to my situation and idle
disposition; laying it down first as an axiom, that he who could by
any means acquire and retain in his memory perfect ideas of the
subjects he meant to draw, would have as clear a knowledge of the
figure as a man who can write freely hath of the twenty-five letters
of the alphabet and their infinite combinations." Acting on these
principles, he improved, by constant exercise, his natural powers of
observation and recollection. We find him roaming through the country,
now at Yarmouth and again at Queenborough, sketching everywhere. In
his rambles among the motley scenes of London he was ever on the watch
for striking features or incidents; and not trusting entirely to
memory, he was accustomed, when any face struck him as being
peculiarly grotesque or expressive, to sketch it on his thumb-nail, to
be treasured up on paper at his return home.
For some time after the expiration of his apprenticeship, Hogarth
continued to practise the trade to which he was bred; and his
shop-bills, coats-of-arms, engravings upon tankards, etc., have been
collected with an eagerness quite disproportionate to their value.
Soon he procured employment in furnishing frontispieces and designs
for the booksellers. The most remarkable of these are the plates to an
edition of "Hudibras," published in 1726; but even these are of no
distinguished merit. About 1728 he began to seek employment as a
portrait-painter. Most of his performances were small family pictures,
containing several figures, which he calls "Conversation Pieces," from
twelve to fifteen inches high. These for a time were very popular, and
his practice was considerable, as his price was low. His life-size
portraits are few; the most remarkable are that of Captain Coram, in
the "Foundling Hospital," and that of Garrick as King Richard III.,
which is reproduced in the present volume. But his practice as a
portrait-painter was not lucrative, nor his popularity lasting.
Although many of his likenesses were strong and characteristic, in the
representation of beauty, elegance, and high-breeding he was little
skilled. The nature of the artist was as uncourtly as his pencil. When
Hogarth obtained employment and eminence of another sort through his
wonderful prints, he abandoned portrait-painting, with a growl at the
jealousy of his professional brethren; and the vanity and blindness of
the public.
March 25, 1729, Hogarth contracted a stolen marriage with the only
daughter of the once fashionable painter, Sir James Thornhill. The
father, for some time implacable, relented at last; and the
reconciliation, it is said, was much forwarded by his admiration of
the "Harlot's Progress," a series of six prints, commenced in 1731 and
published in 1734. The novelty as well as merit of this series of
prints won for them extraordinary popularity; and their success
encouraged Hogarth to undertake a similar history of the "Rake's
Progress," in eight prints, which appeared in 1735. The third, and
perhaps the most popular, as it is the least objectionable of these
pictorial novels, "Marriage à la Mode," was not engraved till 1745.
[Illustration: Hogarth Sketching the Highway of Queenborough.]
The merits of these prints were sufficiently intelligible to the
public: their originality and boldness of design, the force and
freedom of their execution, rough as it is, won for them an
extensive popularity and a rapid and continued sale. The "Harlot's
Progress" was the most eminently successful, from its novelty rather
than from its superior excellence. Twelve hundred subscribers' names
were entered for it; it was dramatized in several forms; and we may
note, in illustration of the difference of past and present manners,
that fan-mounts were engraved containing miniature copies of the six
plates. The merits of the pictures were less obvious to the few who
could afford to spend large sums on works of art, and Hogarth, too
proud to let them go for prices much below the value which he put upon
them, waited for a long time, and waited in vain, for a purchaser. At
last he determined to commit them to public sale; but instead of the
common method of auction, he devised a new and complex plan with the
intention of excluding picture-dealers, and obliging men of rank and
wealth who wished to purchase to judge and bid for themselves. The
scheme failed, as might have been expected. Nineteen of Hogarth's best
pictures, the "Harlot's Progress," the "Rake's Progress," the "Four
Times of the Day," and "Strolling Actresses Dressing in a Barn"
produced only £427 7s., not averaging £22 10s. each. The "Harlot's
Progress" was purchased by Mr. Beckford at the rate of fourteen
guineas a picture; five of the series perished in the fire at
Fonthill. The "Rake's Progress" averaged twenty-two guineas a picture;
it has passed into the possession of Sir John Soane, at the advanced
price of five hundred and seventy guineas. The same eminent architect
became the proprietor of the four pictures of an "Election" for the
sum of £1,732. "Marriage à la Mode" was disposed of in a similar way
in 1750; and on the day of the sale one bidder appeared, who became
master of the six pictures, together with their frames, for £115 10s.
Mr. Angerstein purchased them, in 1797, for £1,381, and they now form
a striking feature in the National Gallery.
The satire of Hogarth was not often of a personal nature; but he knew
his own power, and he sometimes exercised it. Two of his prints, "The
Times," produced a memorable quarrel between himself, on one side, and
Wilkes and Churchhill, on the other. The satire of the prints of "The
Times," which were published in 1762, was directed, not against Wilkes
himself, but his political friends, Pitt and Temple; nor is it so
biting as to have required Wilkes, in defence of his party, to
retaliate upon one with whom he had lived in familiar and friendly
intercourse. He did so, however, in a number of the _North Briton_,
containing not only abuse of the artist, but unjust and injurious
mention of his wife. Hogarth was deeply wounded by this attack; he
retorted by the well-known portrait of Wilkes with the cap of liberty,
and he afterward represented Churchill as a bear. The quarrel was
unworthy the talents either of the painter or poet. It is more to be
regretted because its effects, as he himself intimates, were injurious
to Hogarth's declining health. The summer of 1764 he spent at
Chiswick, and the free air and exercise worked a partial renovation of
his strength. The amendment, however, was but temporary, and he died
suddenly, October 26th, the day after his return to his London
residence in Leicester Square.
SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS
By SAMUEL ARCHER
(1723-1792)
[Illustration: Sir Joshua Reynolds.]
Sir Joshua Reynolds, the celebrated painter, was, on July 16, 1723,
born at Plympton, a small town in Devonshire, England. His father was
a minister of the parish, and also master of the grammar school; and
being a man of learning and philanthropy, he was beloved and respected
by all to whom he was known. Such a man, it will naturally be
supposed, was assiduous in the cultivation of the minds of his
children, among whom his son Joshua shone conspicuous, by displaying
at a very early period a superiority of genius and the rudiments of a
correct taste. Unlike other boys, who generally content themselves
with giving a literal explanation of their author, regardless of his
beauties or his faults, young Reynolds attended to both these,
displaying a happy knowledge of what he read, and entering with ardor
into the spirit of his author. He discovered likewise talents for
composition, and a natural propensity to drawing, in which his friends
and intimates thought him qualified to excel. Emulation was a
distinguishing characteristic of his mind, which his father perceived
with the delight natural to a parent; and designing him for the
church, in which he hoped that his talents might raise him to
eminence, he sent him to one of the universities.
Soon after this period he grew passionately fond of painting; and by
the perusal of Richardson's theory of that art was determined to make
it his profession through life. At his own earnest request, therefore,
he was removed to London; and about the year 1742 became a pupil to
Mr. Hudson, who, though not himself an eminent painter, was preceptor
to many who afterward excelled in the art. One of the first advices
which he gave to Mr. Reynolds was to copy carefully Guercino's
drawings. This was done with such skill, that many of the copies are
said to be now preserved in the cabinets of the curious as the
originals of that very great master.
About the year 1749, Mr. Reynolds went to Italy under the auspices,
and in the company, of the late Lord (then Commodore) Keppel, who was
appointed to the command of the British squadron in the Mediterranean.
In this garden of the world, this magic seat of arts, he failed not to
visit the schools of the great masters, to study the productions of
different ages, and to contemplate with unwearied attention the
various beauties which are characteristic of each. His labor here, as
has been observed of another painter, was "the labor of love, not the
task of the hireling;" and how much he profited by it is known to all
Europe.
Having remained about two years in Italy, and studied the language as
well as the arts of the country with great success, he returned to
England, improved by travel and refined by education. On the road to
London from the port where he landed, he accidentally found in the inn
where he lodged Johnson's life of Savage, and was so taken with the
charms of composition, and the masterly delineation of character
displayed in that work, that, having begun to read it while leaning
his arm on the chimney-piece, he continued in that attitude,
insensible of pain till he was hardly able to raise his hand to his
head. The admiration of the work naturally led him to seek the
acquaintance of its author, who continued one of his sincerest
admirers and warmest friends till 1784, when they were separated by
the stroke of death.
The first thing that distinguished him after his return to his native
country was a full-length portrait of Commodore Keppel; which in
polite circles was spoken of in terms of the highest encomium, and
testified to what a degree of eminence he had arrived in his
profession. This was followed by a portrait of Lord Edgecombe, and a
few others, which at once introduced him to the first business in
portrait-painting; and that branch of the art he cultivated with such
success as will forever establish his fame with all descriptions of
refined society. Having painted some of the first-rate beauties of the
age, the polite world flocked to see the graces and the charms of his
pencil; and he soon became the most fashionable painter not only in
England, but in all Europe. He has indeed preserved the resemblance of
so many illustrious characters, that we feel the less regret at his
having left behind him so few historical paintings; though what he has
done in that way shows him to have been qualified to excel in both
departments. The only landscape, perhaps, which he ever painted,
except those beautiful and chaste ones which compose the backgrounds
of many of his portraits, is "A View on the Thames from Richmond,"
which in 1784 was exhibited by the Society for Promoting Painting and
Design in Liverpool.
In 1764 Mr. Reynolds had the merit of being the first promoter of that
club, which, having long existed without a name, became at last
distinguished by the appellation of the _Literary Club_. Upon the
foundation of the Royal Academy of Painting, Sculpture, and
Architecture, he was appointed president; and his acknowledged
excellence in his profession made the appointment acceptable to all
the lovers of art. To add to the dignity of this new institution, his
majesty conferred on the president the honor of knighthood; and Sir
Joshua delivered his first discourse at the opening of the Academy, on
January 2, 1769. The merit of that discourse has been universally
admitted among painters; but it contains some directions, respecting
the proper mode of prosecuting their studies, to which every student
of every art would do well to pay attention. "I would chiefly
recommend (says he) that an implicit obedience to the _rules of art_,
as established by the practice of the great masters, should be exacted
from the young students. That those models, which have passed through
the approbation of ages, should be considered by them as perfect and
infallible guides, as subjects for their imitation, not their
criticism. I am confident that this is the only efficacious method of
making a progress in the arts; and that he who sets out with doubting
will find life finished before he becomes master of the rudiments. For
it may be laid down as a maxim, that he who begins by presuming on his
own sense, has ended his studies as soon as he has commenced them.
Every opportunity, therefore, should be taken to discountenance that
false and vulgar opinion, that rules are the fetters of genius. They
are fetters only to men of no genius; as that armor, which upon the
strong becomes an ornament and a defence, upon the weak and misshapen
turns into a load, and cripples the body which it was made to
protect."
Each succeeding year, on the distribution of the prizes, Sir Joshua
delivered to the students a discourse of equal merit with this; and
perhaps we do not hazard too much when we say, that from the whole
collected, the lovers of belles-lettres and the fine arts will acquire
juster notions of what is meant by taste in general, and better rules
for acquiring a correct taste, than from the multitude of those
volumes which have been professedly written on the subject.
In the autumn of 1785 he went to Brussels, where he expended about
£1,000 on the purchase of paintings which, having been taken from the
different monasteries and religious houses in Flanders and Germany,
were then exposed to sale by the command of the Emperor Joseph.
Gainsborough and he had engaged to paint each other's portrait; and
the canvas for both being actually stretched, Sir Joshua gave one
sitting to his distinguished rival; but to the regret of every admirer
of the art, the unexpected death of the latter prevented all further
progress.
In 1790 he was anxiously desirous to procure the vacant professorship
of perspective in the academy for Mr. Bonomi, an Italian architect;
but that artist not having been yet elected an associate, was, of
course, no academician, and it became necessary to raise him to those
positions, in order to qualify him for being a professor. Mr. Gilpin
being his competitor for the associateship, the numbers on the ballot
proved equal, when the president, on his casting vote, decided the
election in favor of his friend, who was thereby advanced so far
toward the professorship. Soon after this, an academic seat being
vacant, Sir Joshua exerted all his influence to obtain it for Mr.
Bonomi; but finding himself out-voted by a majority of two to one, he
quitted the chair with great dissatisfaction, and next day sent to the
secretary of the academy a formal resignation of the office, which for
twenty-one years he had filled with honor to himself and to his
country. His indignation, however, subsiding, he suffered himself to
be prevailed upon to return to the chair, which, within a year and a
half, he was again desirous to quit for a better reason.
Finding a disease of languor, occasioned by an enlargement of the
liver, to which he had for some time been subject, increase, and daily
expecting a total loss of sight, he wrote a letter to the academy,
intimating his intention to resign the office of president on account
of bodily infirmities, which disabled him from executing the duties
of it to his own satisfaction. The academy received this intelligence
with the respectful concern due to the talents and virtues of their
president, and either then did enter, or designed to enter, into a
resolution honorable to all parties, namely, that a deputation from
the whole body of the academy should wait upon him, and inform him of
their wish, that the authority and privileges of the office of
president might be his during his life, declaring their willingness to
permit the performance of any of its duties which might be irksome to
him by a deputy.
From this period Sir Joshua never painted more. The last effort of his
pencil was the portrait of the honorable Charles James Fox, which was
executed in his best style, and shows that his fancy, his imagination,
and his other great powers in the art which he professed, remained
unabated to the end of his life. When the last touches were given to
this picture,
"The hand of Reynolds fell, to rise no more."
On Thursday, February 23, 1792, the world was deprived of this amiable
man and excellent artist, at the age of sixty-eight years; a man than
whom no one, according to Johnson, had passed through life with more
observations of men and manners. The following character of him is
said to be the production of Mr. Burke:
"His illness was long, but borne with a mild and cheerful fortitude,
without the least mixture of anything irritable or querulous,
agreeably to the placid and even tenor of his whole life. He had, from
the beginning of his malady, a distinct view of his dissolution, which
he contemplated with that entire composure which nothing but the
innocence, integrity, and usefulness of his life, and an unaffected
submission to the will of Providence, could bestow. In this situation
he had every consolation from family tenderness, which his tenderness
to his family had always merited.
"Sir Joshua Reynolds was, on very many accounts, one of the most
memorable men of his time; he was the first Englishman who added the
praise of the elegant arts to the other glories of his country. In
taste, in grace, in facility, in happy invention, and in richness and
harmony of coloring, he was equal to the great masters of the renowned
ages. In portrait he went beyond them; for he communicated to that
branch of the art in which English artists are the most engaged, a
variety, a fancy, and a dignity derived from the higher branches,
which even those who professed them in a superior manner did not
always preserve when they delineated individual nature. His portraits
reminded the spectator of the invention of history and the amenity of
landscape. In painting portraits he appears not to be raised upon that
platform, but to descend to it from a higher sphere. His paintings
illustrate his lessons, and his lessons seem to be derived from his
paintings.
"He possessed the theory as perfectly as the practice of his art. To
be such a painter, he was a profound and penetrating philosopher.
"In full happiness of foreign and domestic fame, admired by the expert
in art, and by the learned in science, courted by the great, caressed
by sovereign powers, and celebrated by distinguished poets, his native
humility, modesty, and candor never forsook him, even on surprise or
provocation; nor was the least degree of arrogance or assumption
visible to the most scrutinizing eye in any part of his conduct or
discourse.
"His talents of every kind--powerful from nature, and not meanly
cultivated in letters--his social virtues in all the relations and all
the habitudes of life, rendered him the centre of a very great and
unparalleled variety of agreeable societies, which will be dissipated
by his death. He had too much merit not to excite some jealousy, too
much innocence to provoke any enmity. The loss of no man of his time
can be felt with more sincere, general, and unmixed sorrow."
BENJAMIN WEST
By MARTHA J. LAMB[5]
[Footnote 5: Reprinted by permission, from the Magazine of
American History.]
(1738-1820)
[Illustration: Benjamin West.]
In the wilds of the new world, a century and a half ago, there was,
apparently, no spot less likely to produce a famous painter than the
Quaker province of Pennsylvania. And yet, when George Washington was
only six years old there was born, in the little town of Springfield,
Chester County, a boy whose interesting and remarkable career from
infancy to old age has provided one of the most instructive lessons
for students in art that America affords.
Perhaps Benjamin West's aptitude for picture-making in his infancy,
while he was learning to walk and to talk, did not exceed that of
hosts of other children, in like circumstances, in every generation
since his time. But many curious things were remembered and told of
this baby's performances after he had developed a decided talent for
reproducing the beautiful objects that captivated his eye. It was in
the summer of 1745, a few months before he was seven years old that
his married sister came home for a visit, bringing with her an infant
daughter. The next morning after her arrival, little Benjamin was left
to keep the flies off the sleeping baby, while his mother and sister
went to the garden for flowers. The baby smiled in its sleep, and the
boy was captivated. He must catch that smile and keep it. He found
some paper on the table, scrambled for a pen, and with red and black
ink made a hasty but striking picture of the little beauty. He heard
his mother returning, and conscious of having been in mischief, tried
to conceal his production; but she detected and captured it, and
regarded it long and lovingly, exclaiming as her daughter entered, "He
has really made a likeness of little Sally!" She then caught up the
boy in her arms, and kissed instead of chiding him, and he--looking up
encouraged--told her he could make the flowers, too, if she would
permit. The awakening of genius in Benjamin West has been distinctly
traced to this incident, as the time when he first discovered that he
could imitate the forms of such objects as pleased his sense of sight.
And the incident itself has been aptly styled "the birth of fine arts
in the New World."
The Quaker boy, in course of years, left the wilderness of America to
become the president of the Royal Academy in London. His
irreproachable character not less than his excellence as an artist,
gave him commanding position among his contemporaries. From first to
last he was distinguished for his indefatigable industry. The number
of his pictures has been estimated, by a writer in _Blackwood's
Magazine_, at three thousand; and Dunlap says that a gallery capable
of holding them would be four hundred feet long, fifty feet wide, and
forty feet high--or a wall a quarter of a mile long.
The parents of Benjamin West were sincere and self-respecting, and in
the language of the times, well-to-do. His mother's grandfather was
the intimate and confidential friend of William Penn. The family of
his father claimed direct descent from the Black Prince and Lord
Delaware, of the time of King Edward III. Colonel James West was the
friend and companion in arms of John Hampden. When Benjamin West was at
work upon his great picture of the "Institution of the Garter," the
King of England was delighted when the Duke of Buckingham assured him
that West had an ancestral right to a place among the warriors and
knights of his own painting. The Quaker associates of the parents of
the artist, the patriarchs of Pennsylvania, regarded their asylum in
America as the place for affectionate intercourse--free from all the
military predilections and political jealousies of Europe. The result
was a state of society more contented, peaceful, and pleasing than the
world had ever before exhibited. At the time of the birth of Benjamin
West the interior settlements in Pennsylvania had attained
considerable wealth, and unlimited hospitality formed a part of the
regular economy of the principal families. Those who resided near the
highways were in the habit, after supper and the religious exercises
of the evening, of making a large fire in the hallway, and spreading a
table with refreshments for such travellers as might pass in the
night, who were expected to step in and help themselves. This was
conspicuously the case in Springfield. Other acts of liberality were
performed by this community, to an extent that would have beggared the
munificence of the old world. Poverty was not known in this region.
But whether families traced their lineage to ancient and noble
sources, or otherwise, their pride was so tempered with the meekness
of their faith, that it lent a singular dignity to their benevolence.
The Indians mingled freely with the people, and when they paid their
annual visits to the plantations, raised their wigwams in the fields
and orchards without asking permission, and were never molested.
Shortly after Benjamin West's first efforts with pen and ink, a party
of red men reached and encamped in Springfield. The boy-artist showed
them his sketches of birds and flowers, which seemed to amuse them
greatly. They at once proceeded to teach him how to prepare the red
and yellow colors with which they decorated their ornaments. To these
Mrs. West added blue, by contributing a piece of indigo. Thus the boy
had three prismatic colors for his use. What could be more picturesque
than the scene where the untutored Indian gave the future artist his
first lesson in mixing paints! These wild men also taught him archery,
that he might shoot birds for models if he wanted their bright plumage
to copy.
The neighbors were attracted by the boy's drawings, and finally a
relative, Mr. Pennington, a prominent merchant of Philadelphia, came
to pay the family a visit. He thought the boy's crude pictures were
wonderful, as he was then only entering his eighth year. When he went
home he immediately sent the little fellow a box of paints, with six
engravings by Grevling. John Gait, who wrote from the artist's own
statements, describes the effect of this gift upon the boy. In going
to bed he placed the box so near his couch, that he could hug and
caress it every time he wakened. Next morning he rose early, and
taking his paints and canvas to the garret, began to work. He went to
breakfast, and then stole back to his post under the roof, forgetting
all about school. When dinnertime came he presented himself at table,
as usual, but said nothing of his occupation. He had been absent from
school some days before the master called on his parents to inquire
what had become of him. This led to the discovery of his secret
painting, for his mother proceeded to the garret and found the truant.
She was, however, so astonished with the creation upon his canvas,
that she took him in her arms and kissed him with transports of
affection. He had made a composition of his own out of two of the
engravings--which he had colored from his ideas of the proper tints to
be used--and so perfect did the picture appear to Mrs. West that,
although half the canvas remained to be covered, she would not suffer
the child to add another touch with his brush. Sixty-seven years
afterward, Mr. Gait saw this production in the exact state in which it
was left, and Mr. West himself acknowledged that in subsequent efforts
he had never been able to excel some of the touches of invention in
this first picture.
The first instruction in art which the artist received was from Mr.
William Williams, a painter in Philadelphia. Young West's first
attempt at portraiture was at Lancaster, where he painted "The Death
of Socrates" for William Henry, a gunsmith. He was not yet sixteen,
but other paintings followed which possessed so much genuine merit,
that they have been preserved as treasures. One of these is in
possession of General Meredith Reed, of Paris, France, a descendant of
the signer. West returned to his home in Springfield, in 1754, to
discuss the question of his future vocation. He had an inclination for
military life, and volunteered as a recruit in the old French war;
but military attractions vanished among the hardships involved, and in
1756, when eighteen years old, he established himself in Philadelphia
as a portrait-painter, his price being "five guineas a head." Two
years later he went to New York, where he passed eleven months, and
was liberally employed by the merchants and others. He painted the
portrait of Bishop Provoost, those of Gerardus Duyekinck and his
wife--full length--one of Mrs. Samuel Breese, and many others, which
are in the families of descendants, and characteristic examples of his
early work.
In 1760 an opportunity offered for him to visit Rome, Italy. He
carried letters to Cardinal Albani and other celebrities, and as he
was very handsome and intelligent, and came from a far-away land about
which hung the perpetual charm of tradition and romance, he soon
became the lion of the day among the imaginative Italians. It was a
novelty then for an American to appear in the Eternal City, and the
very morning after his arrival a curious party followed his steps to
observe his pursuit of art. He remained in Italy until 1763, and while
there he painted, among others, his pictures of "Cimon and Iphigenia,"
and "Angelica and Medora." His portrait of Lord Grantham excited much
interest, and that nobleman's introduction facilitated his visit to
London, which proved so prolific in results. There was no great living
historical painter in England just then; and at first there was no
sale for West's pictures, as it was unfashionable to buy any but "old
masters." But the young artist was undaunted, and presently attracted
attention in high places. His picture of "Agrippina Landing with the
Ashes of Germanicus," painted for Dr. Drummond, Archbishop of York,
secured him the favor of George III., and the commission from his
majesty to paint the "Departure of Regulus from Rome." His untiring
industry and gentlemanly habits were conspicuous, and may be regarded
as among the great secrets of his continual advance and public
recognition. His "Parting of Hector and Andromache," and "Return of
the Prodigal Son," were among his notable productions of this period.
His "Death of General Wolfe" has been, says Tuckerman, "truly declared
to have created an era in English art, by the successful example it
initiated of the abandonment of classic costume--a reform advocated by
Reynolds, who glories in the popular innovation." His characters were
clad in the dress of their time. Reynolds said to the Archbishop of
York: "I foresee that this picture will not only become one of the
most popular, but will occasion a revolution in art." It was purchased
by Lord Grosvenor. Among the long list of paintings executed by order
of the king were "The Death of Chevalier Bayard;" "Edward III.
Embracing his Son on the Field of Battle at Cressy;" "The Installation
of the Order of the Garter;" "The Black Prince Receiving the King of
France and his Son Prisoners at Poictiers," and "Queen Philippa
Interceding with Edward for the Burgesses of Calais." West was one of
the founders, in 1768, of the Royal Academy, and succeeded Sir Joshua
Reynolds as president of the institution in 1792, which post he held
almost uninterruptedly until 1815.
In the year 1780 he proposed a series of pictures on the progress of
revealed religion, of which there were thirty-six subjects in all,
but he never executed but twenty-eight of these, owing to the mental
trouble which befell the king. He then commenced a new series of
important works, of which "Christ Healing the Sick" was purchased by
an institution in Great Britain for £3,000, and was subsequently
copied for the Pennsylvania Hospital. "Penn's Treaty with the Indians"
was painted for Granville Penn, the scene representing the founding of
Pennsylvania. West wrote to one of his family that he had taken the
liberty of introducing in this painting the likeness of his father and
his brother Thomas. "That is the likeness of our brother," he says,
"standing immediately behind Penn, leaning on his cane. I need not
point out the picture of our father, as I believe you will find it in
the print from memory." Tuckerman says that the work which, in the
opinion of many critics, best illustrates the skill of West in
composition, drawing, expression, and dramatic effect, is his "Death
on the Pale Horse." His "Cupid," owned in Philadelphia, is one of his
most effective pictures as to color.
The full-length portrait of West, by Sir Thomas Lawrence, P.R.A.,
represents the great artist in his character as president of the Royal
Academy, delivering a lecture on "coloring" to the students. Under his
right hand may be noticed, standing on an easel, a copy of Raphael's
cartoon of the "Death of Ananias." The picture of West's face has been
considered a perfect likeness, but the figure somewhat too large and
too tall in its effects. A copy of this portrait was made by Charles
R. Leslie; and Washington Allston also painted a portrait of the
artist. There exists, it is said, a portrait of West from his own
hand, taken apparently at about the age of forty, three-quarter
length, in Quaker costume.
[Illustration: Benjamin West, President of the Royal Academy.]
THORWALDSEN
By HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN
(1770-1844)
It was in Copenhagen, on November 19, 1770, that a carver of figures
for ships' heads, by name Gottskalk Thorwaldsen, was presented by his
wife, Karen Grönlund, the daughter of a clergyman in Jutland, with a
son, who at his baptism received the name of Bertel, or Albert.
The father had come from Iceland, and lived in poor circumstances.
They dwelt in _Lille Grönnegade_ (Little Green Street), not far from
the Academy of Arts. The moon has often peeped into their poor room;
she has told us about it in "A Picture-book without Pictures":
[Illustration: Thorwaldsen.]
"The father and mother slept, but their little son did not sleep;
where the flowered cotton bed-curtains moved I saw the child peep out.
I thought at first that he looked at the Bornholm clock, for it was
finely painted with red and green, and there was a cuckoo on the top;
it had heavy leaden weights, and the pendulum with its shining brass
plate went to and fro with a 'tick! tick!' But it was not that he
looked at; no, it was his mother's spinning-wheel, which stood
directly under the clock; this was the dearest piece of furniture in
the whole house for the boy; but he dared not touch it, for if he did,
he got a rap over the fingers. While his mother spun, he would sit for
hours together looking at the buzzing spindle and the revolving wheel,
and then he had his own thoughts. Oh! if he only durst spin that
wheel! His father and mother slept; he looked at them, he looked at
the wheel, and then by degrees a little naked foot was stuck out of
bed, and then another naked foot, then there came two small legs, and,
with a jump, he stood on the floor. He turned round once more, to see
if his parents slept; yes, they did, and so he went softly, quite
softly, only in his little shirt, up to the wheel, and began to spin.
The cord flew off, and the wheel then ran much quicker. His mother
awoke at the same moment; the curtains moved; she looked out and
thought of the brownie, or another little spectral being. 'Have mercy
on us!' said she, and in her fear she struck her husband in the side;
he opened his eyes, rubbed them with his hands, and looked at the busy
little fellow. 'It is Bertel, woman,' said he."
What the moon relates we see here as the first picture in
Thorwaldsen's life's gallery; for it is a reflection of the reality.
Thorwaldsen has himself, when in familiar conversation at Nysöe, told
the author almost word for word what he, in his "Picture-book," lets
the moon say. It was one of his earliest remembrances, how he, in his
little short shirt, sat in the moonlight and spun his mother's wheel,
while she, dear soul, took him for a little spectre.
A few years ago there still lived an old ship-carpenter, who
remembered the little, light-haired, blue-eyed boy, that came to his
father in the carving-house at the dock-yard; he was to learn his
father's trade; and as the latter felt how bad it was not to be able
to draw, the boy, then eleven years of age, was sent to the
drawing-school at the Academy of Arts, where he made rapid progress.
Two years afterward, Bertel, or Albert, as we shall in future call
him, was of great assistance to his father; nay, he even improved his
work.
See the hovering ships on the wharves! The Dannebrog waves, the
workmen sit in circle under the shade at their frugal breakfasts; but
foremost stands the principal figure in this picture: it is a boy who
cuts with a bold hand the lifelike features in the wooden image for
the beak-head of the vessel. It is the ship's guardian spirit, and, as
the first image from the hand of Albert Thorwaldsen, it shall wander
out into the wide world. The eternally swelling sea should baptize it
with its waters, and hang its wreaths of wet plants around it.
Our next picture advances a step forward. Unobserved among the other
boys, he has now frequented the Academy's school for six years
already, where, always taciturn and silent, he stood by his
drawing-board. His answer was "yes" or "no," a nod or a shake of the
head; but mildness shone from his features, and good-nature was in
every expression. The picture shows us Albert as a candidate for
confirmation. He is now seventeen years of age--not a very young age
to ratify his baptismal compact; his place at the dean's house is the
last among the poor boys, for his knowledge is not sufficient to place
him higher. There had just at that time been an account in the
newspapers, that the pupil Thorwaldsen had gained the Academy's
smaller medal for a bas-relief representing a "Cupid Reposing." "Is it
your brother that has gained the medal?" inquired the dean. "It is
myself," said Albert, and the clergyman looked kindly on him, placed
him first among all the boys, and from that time always called him
Monsieur Thorwaldsen. Oh! how deeply did that "Monsieur" then sound in
his mind! As he has often said since, it sounded far more powerfully
than any title that kings could give him; he never afterward forgot
it.
In a small house in Aabeuraa--the street where Holberg lets his poor
poets dwell--lived Albert Thorwaldsen with his parents, and divided
his time between the study of art and assisting his father. The
Academy's lesser gold was then the prize to be obtained for sculpture.
Our artist was now twenty years of age; his friends knew his abilities
better than himself, and they compelled him to enter on the task. The
subject proposed was, "Heliodorus Driven out of the Temple."
We are now in Charlottenburg; but the little chamber in which
Thorwaldsen lately sat to make his sketch is empty, and he, chased by
the demons of fear and distrust, hastens down the narrow back-stairs
with the intention not to return. Nothing is accidental in the life of
a great genius; an apparent insignificance is a God's guiding finger.
Thorwaldsen was to complete his task. Who is it that stops him on the
dark stairs? One of the professors just comes that way, speaks to him,
questions, admonishes him. He returns, and in four hours the sketch is
finished, and the gold medal won. This was on August 15, 1791.
Count Ditlew de Reventlow, minister of state, saw the young artist's
work, and became his protector; he placed his own name at the head of
a subscription that enabled Thorwaldsen to devote his time to the
study of his art. Two years afterward the large gold medal was to be
contended for at the Academy, the successful candidate thereby gaining
the right to a travelling _stipendium_. Thorwaldsen was again the
first; but before he entered on his travels, it was deemed necessary
to extend that knowledge which an indifferent education at school had
left him in want of. He read, studied, and the Academy gave him its
support; acknowledgment smiled on him, a greater and more spiritual
sphere lay open to him.
A portrait figure stands now before us; it is that of a Dane, the
learned and severe Zoega, to whom the young artist is specially
recommended, but who only sees in him a common talent; whose words are
only those of censure, and whose eye sees only a servile imitation of
the antique in his works. Strictly honest in his judgment, according
to his own ideas, is this man, who should be Thorwaldsen's guide.
We let three years glide away after the arrival of Thorwaldsen, and
ask Zoega what he now says of Albert, or, as the Italians call him,
Alberto, and the severe man shakes his head and says: "There is much
to blame, little to be satisfied with, and diligent he is not!" Yet he
was diligent in a high degree; but genius is foreign to a foreign
mind. "The snow had just then thawed from my eyes," he has himself
often repeated. The drawings of the Danish painter Carstens formed one
of those spiritual books that shed its holy baptism over that growing
genius. The little _atelier_ looked like a battle-field, for
roundabout were broken statues. Genius formed them often in the
midnight hours; despondency over their faults broke them in the day.
The three years, for which he had received a _stipendium_, were as if
they had flown away, and as yet he had produced nothing. The time for
his return drew nigh. One work, however, he must complete, that it
might not with justice be said in Denmark, "Thorwaldsen has quite
wasted his time in Rome." Doubting his genius just when it embraced
him most affectionately; not expecting a victory, while he already
stood on its open road, he modelled "Jason who has Gained the Golden
Fleece." It was this that Thorwaldsen would have gained in the kingdom
of arts, and which he now thought he must resign. The figure stood
there in clay, many eyes looked carelessly on it, and--he broke it to
pieces!
It was in April, 1801, that his return home was fixed, in company with
Zoega. It was put off until the autumn. During this time "Jason"
occupied all his thoughts. A new, a larger figure of the hero was
formed, an immortal work; but it had not then been announced to the
world, nor understood by it. "Here is something more than common!" was
said by many. Even the man to whom all paid homage, the illustrious
Canova, started, and exclaimed: "Quest' opera di quel giovane Danese è
fatta in uno stilo nuovo, e grandioso!" Zoega smiled. "It is bravely
done!" said he. The Danish songstress, Frederikke Brunn, was then in
Rome and sang enthusiastically about Thorwaldsen's "Jason." She
assisted the artist, so that he was enabled to get this figure cast in
plaster; for he himself had no more money than was just sufficient for
his expenses home.
The last glass of wine had been already drunk as a farewell, the boxes
packed, and the _vetturino's_ carriage was before the door at daybreak;
the boxes were fastened behind. Then came a fellow-traveller--the
sculptor, Hagemann, who was returning to his native city, Berlin. His
passport was not ready. Their departure must be put off until the next
day; and Thorwaldsen promised, although the _vetturino_ complained and
abused him, to remain so long. He stayed--stayed to win an immortal name
on earth, and cast a lustre over Denmark.
Though forty years resident in Rome, rich and independent, he lived
and worked with the thought of once returning home to Denmark, there
to rest himself; unaccustomed to the great comforts of other rich
artists in Rome, he lived a bachelor's life. Was his heart, then, no
longer open to love since his first departure from Copenhagen? A
thousand beautiful Cupids in marble will tell us how warmly that heart
beat. Love belongs to life's mysteries.
We know that Thorwaldsen left a daughter in Rome, whose birth he
acknowledged; we also know that more than one female of quality would
willingly have given her hand to the great artist. The year before his
first return to Denmark he lay ill at Naples, and was nursed by an
English lady who felt the most ardent affection for him; and, from
that feeling of gratitude which was awakened in him, he immediately
consented to their union. When he had recovered and afterward returned
to Rome, this promise preyed on his mind, he felt that he was not now
formed to be a husband, acknowledged that gratitude was not love, and
that they were not suited for each other; after a long combat with
himself, he wrote and informed her of his determination. Thorwaldsen
was never married.
The following trait is as characteristic of his heart as of his whole
personality. One day, while in Rome, there came a poor countryman to
him, an artisan, who had long been ill. He came to say farewell, and
to thank him for the money that he and others of his countrymen had
subscribed together, with which he was to reach home.
"But you will not walk the whole way?" said Thorwaldsen.
"I am obliged to do so," replied the man.
"But you are still too weak to walk--you cannot bear the fatigue, nor
must you do it!" said he.
The man assured him of the necessity of doing so.
Thorwaldsen went and opened a drawer, took out a handful of _scudi_
and gave them to him, saying, "See, now you will ride the whole way!"
The man thanked him, but assured him that his gift would not be more
than sufficient to carry him to Florence.
"Well!" said Thorwaldsen, clapping him on the shoulder, as he went a
second time to the drawer and took out another handful. The man was
grateful in the highest degree, and was going. "Now you can ride the
whole way home and be comfortable on the way," said he, as he followed
the man to the door.
"I am very glad," said the man. "God bless you for it! but to ride the
whole way requires a little capital."
"Well, then, tell me how great that must be," he asked, and looked
earnestly at him. The man in a modest manner named the requisite sum,
and Thorwaldsen went a third time to the drawer, counted out the sum,
accompanied him to the door, pressed his hand, and repeated, "But now
you will ride, for you have not strength to walk!"
Our artist did not belong to the class of great talkers; it was only
in a small circle that he could be brought to say anything, but then
it was always with humor and gayety. A few energetic exclamations of
his are preserved. A well-known sculptor, expressing himself one day
with much self-feeling, entered into a dispute with Thorwaldsen, and
set his own works over the latter's. "You may bind my hands behind
me," said Thorwaldsen, "and I will bite the marble out with my teeth
better than you can carve it."
Thorwaldsen possessed specimens in plaster of all his works; these,
together with the rich marble statues and bas-reliefs which he had
collected of his own accord, without orders, and the number of
paintings that he every year bought of young artists, formed a
treasure that he wished to have in his proper home, Copenhagen.
Therefore, when the Danish government sent vessels of war to the
Mediterranean, in order to fetch the works that were ready for the
palace or the churches, he always sent a number of his own things with
them. Denmark was to inherit these treasures of art; and, in order to
see them collected in a place worthy of them, a zeal was awakened in
the nation to build a museum for their reception. A committee of his
Danish admirers and friends sent out a requisition to the people, that
everyone might give their mite; many a poor servant-girl and many a
peasant gave theirs, so that a good sum was soon collected. Frederick
VI. gave ground for the building, and the erection thereof was
committed to the architect, Bindesbol.
Thorwaldsen, in 1838, had attained universal fame. The frigate Rota
was dispatched to bring a cargo of his works to Copenhagen, and he was
to arrive at the same time, perhaps to remain in Denmark. Close to
Presto Bay, surrounded by wood-grown banks, lies Nysöe, the principal
seat of the barony of Stampenborg, a place which, through Thorwaldsen,
has become remarkable in Denmark. The open strand, the beautiful beech
woods, even the little town seen through the orchards, at some few
hundred paces from the mansion, make the place worthy of a visit on
account of its truly Danish scenery. Here Thorwaldsen found his best
home in Denmark; here he seemed to increase his fame, and here a
series of his last beautiful bas-reliefs were produced.
Baron Stampe was one of nature's noblest-minded men; his hospitality
and his lady's daughterly affection for Thorwaldsen opened a home for
him here, a comfortable and good one. A great energetic power in the
baroness incited his activity; she attended him with a daughter's
care, elicited from him every little wish, and executed it. Directly
after his first visit to Nysöe, a short tour to Moen's chalk cliffs
was arranged, and during the few days that were passed there, a little
_atelier_ was erected in the garden at Nysöe, close to the canal which
half encircles the principal building; here, and in a corner room of
the mansion, on the first floor facing the sea, most of Thorwaldsen's
works, during the last years of his life, were executed: "Christ
Bearing the Cross," "The Entry into Jerusalem," "Rebecca at the Well,"
his own portrait-statue, Oehlenschlæger's and Holberg's busts, etc.
Baroness Stampe was in faithful attendance on him, lent him a helping
hand, and read aloud for him from Holberg. Driving abroad, weekly
concerts, and in the evenings his fondest play, "The Lottery," were
what most easily excited him, and on these occasions he would say many
amusing things. He has represented the Stampe family in two
bas-reliefs: in the one, representing the mother, the two daughters,
and the youngest son, is the artist himself; the other exhibits the
father and the two eldest sons.
All circles sought to attract Thorwaldsen; he was at every great
festival, in every great society, and every evening in the theatre by
the side of Oehlenschlæger. His greatness was allied to a mildness, a
straightforwardness, that in the highest degree fascinated the
stranger who approached him for the first time. His _atelier_ in
Copenhagen was visited daily; he therefore felt himself more
comfortable and undisturbed at Nysöe. Baron Stampe and his family
accompanied him to Italy in 1841, when he again visited that country.
The whole journey, which was by way of Berlin, Dresden, Frankfort, the
Rhine towns, and Munich, was a continued triumphal procession. The
winter was passed in Rome, and the Danes there had a home in which
they found a welcome.
The following year Thorwaldsen was again in Denmark, and at his
favorite place, Nysöe. On Christmas eve he here formed his beautiful
bas-relief, "Christmas Joys in Heaven," which Oehlenschlæger
consecrated with a poem. The last birthday of his life was celebrated
here; the performance of one of Holberg's vaudevilles was arranged,
and strangers invited; yet the morning of that day was the homeliest,
when only the family and the author of this memoir, who had written a
merry song for the occasion, which was still wet on the paper, placed
themselves outside the artist's door, each with a pair of tongs, a
gong, or a bottle on which they rubbed a cork, as an accompaniment,
and sung the song as a morning greeting. Thorwaldsen, in his morning
gown, opened the door, laughing; he twirled his black Raphael's cap,
took a pair of tongs himself, and accompanied us, while he danced
round and joined the others in the loud "hurra!"
A charming bas-relief, "The Genius of Poetry," was just completed; it
was the same that Thorwaldsen, on the last day of his life, bequeathed
to Oehlenschlæger, and said, "It may serve as a medal for you."
On Sunday, March 24, 1844, a small party of friends were assembled at
the residence of Baron Stampe, in Copenhagen. Thorwaldsen was there
and was unusually lively, told stories, and spoke of a journey that he
intended to make to Italy in the course of the summer. Cahn's tragedy
of "Griseldis" was to be performed for the first time that evening at
the theatre. Tragedy was not his favorite subject, but comedy, and
particularly the comedies of Holberg; but it was something new that he
was to see, and it had become a sort of habit with him to pass the
evening in the theatre. About six o'clock, therefore, he went to the
theatre alone. The overture had begun; on entering he shook hands with
a few of his friends, took his usual seat, stood up again to allow one
to pass him, sat down again, bent his head, and was no more! The music
continued. Those nearest to him thought he was only in a swoon, and he
was borne out; but he was numbered with the dead.
The mournful intelligence of his death soon spread through the country
and through all lands; funeral dirges were sung and funeral festivals
were arranged in Berlin and Rome; in the Danish theatre, whence his
soul took its flight to God there was a festival; the place where he
sat was decorated with crape and laurel wreaths, and a poem by Heiberg
was recited, in which his greatness and his death were alluded to.
The day before Thorwaldsen's death the interior of his tomb was
finished, for it was his wish that his remains might rest in the
centre of the court-yard of the museum; it was then walled round, and
he begged that there might be a marble edge around it, and a few
rose-trees and flowers planted on it as his monument. The whole
building, with the rich treasures which he presented to his
fatherland, will be his monument; his works are to be placed in the
rooms of the square building that surrounds the open court-yard, and
which, both internally and externally, are painted in the Pompeian
style. His arrival in the roads of Copenhagen and landing at the
custom-house form the subjects depicted in the compartments unde
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