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Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 06

by Elbert Hubbard · English · Gutenberg #6306 · 437,145 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 06

Author: Elbert Hubbard


        
Release date: August 1, 2004 [eBook #6306]
                Most recently updated: December 29, 2020

Language: English

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LITTLE JOURNEYS TO THE HOMES OF THE GREAT, VOLUME 6

Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists

ELBERT HUBBARD

MEMORIAL EDITION




CONTENTS


RAPHAEL

LEONARDO

BOTTICELLI

THORWALDSEN

GAINSBOROUGH

VELASQUEZ

COROT

CORREGGIO

BELLINI

CELLINI

ABBEY

WHISTLER




RAPHAEL

And with all this vast creative activity, he recognized only one
self-imposed limitation--beauty. Hence, though his span of life was
short, his work is imperishable. He steadily progressed: but he was
ever true, beautiful and pure, and freer than any other master from
superficiality and mannerism. He produced a vast number of pictures,
elevating to men of every race and of every age, and before whose
immortal beauty artists of every school unite in common homage.
  --_Wilhelm Lubke_

[Illustration: Raphael]


The term "Preraphaelite" traces a royal lineage to William Morris.
Just what the word really meant, William Morris was not sure, yet he
once expressed the hope that he would some day know, as a thousand
industrious writers were laboring to make the matter plain.

Seven men helped William Morris to launch the phrase, by forming
themselves into an organization which they were pleased to call the
"Preraphaelite Brotherhood."

The word "brotherhood" has a lure and a promise for every lonely and
tired son of earth. And Burne-Jones pleaded for the prefix because
it was like holy writ: it gave everybody an opportunity to read
anything into it that he desired.

Of this I am very sure, in the Preraphaelite Brotherhood there was
no lack of appreciation for Raphael. In fact, there is proof
positive that Burne-Jones and Madox Brown studied him with profit,
and loved him so wisely and well that they laid impression-paper on
his poses. This would have been good and sufficient reason for
hating the man; and possibly this accounts for their luminous
flashes of silence concerning him. The Preraphaelite Brotherhood,
like all other liberal organizations, was quite inclined to be
illiberal. And the prejudice of this clanship, avowedly founded
without prejudice, lay in the assumption that life and art suffered
a degeneration from the rise of Raphael. In art, as in literature,
there is overmuch tilting with names--so the Preraphaelites enlisted
under the banner of Botticelli.

Raphael marks an epoch. He did what no man before him had ever done,
and by the sublimity of his genius placed the world forever under
obligations to him. In fact, the art of the Preraphaelites was built
on Raphael, with an attempt to revive the atmosphere and environment
that belonged to another. Raphael mirrored the soul of things--he
used the human form and the whole natural world as symbols of
spirit. And this is exactly what Burne-Jones did, and the rest of
the Brotherhood tried to do. The thought of Raphael and of Burne-
Jones often seems identical; in temperament, disposition and
aspiration they were one. That poetic and fervid statement of Mrs.
Jameson, that Burne-Jones is the avatar of Raphael, contains the
germ of truth. The dream-women of Burne-Jones have the same haunting
and subtle spiritual wistfulness that is to be seen in the Madonnas
of Raphael. Each of these men loved a woman--and each pictured her
again and again. Whether this woman had an existence outside the
figment of the brain matters not: both painted her as they saw her--
tender, gentle and trustful.

When jealous and o'erzealous competitors made the charge against
Raphael that he was lax in his religious duties, Pope Leo the Tenth
waived the matter by saying, "Well, well, well!--he is an artistic
Christian!" As much as to say, he works his religion up into art,
and therefore we grant him absolution for failure to attend mass: he
paints and you pray--it is really all the same thing. Good work and
religion are one.

The busy and captious critics went away, but came back next day with
the startling information that Raphael's pictures were more Pagan
than Christian. Pope Leo heard the charge, and then with Lincoln-
like wit said that Raphael was doing this on his order, as the
desire of the Mother Church was to annex the Pagan art-world, in
order to Christianize it.

The charges of Paganism and Infidelity are classic accusations. The
gentle Burne-Jones was stoutly denounced by his enemies as a Pagan
Greek. I think he rather gloried in the contumely, but fifty years
earlier he might have been visited by a "lettre de cachet," instead
of a knighthood; for we can not forget how, in Eighteen Hundred
Fifteen, Parliament refused to pay for the Elgin Marbles because, as
Lord Falmouth put it, "These relics will tend to prostitute England
to the depth of unbelief that engulfed Pagan Greece." The attitude
of Parliament on the question of Paganism finds voice occasionally
even yet by Protestant England making darkness dense with the
asseveration that Catholics idolatrously worship the pictures and
statues in their churches.

The Romans tumbled the Athenian marbles from their pedestals, on the
assumption that the statues represented gods that were idolatrously
worshiped by the Greeks. And they continued their work of
destruction until a certain Roman general (who surely was from
County Cork) stopped the vandalism by issuing an order, coupled with
the dire threat that any soldier who stole or destroyed a statue
should replace it with another equally good.

Lord Elgin bankrupted himself in order to supply the British Museum
its crowning glory, and for this he achieved the honor of getting
himself poetically damned by Lord Byron. Monarchies, like republics,
are ungrateful. Lord Elgin defended himself vigorously against the
charge of Paganism, just as Raphael had done three hundred years
before. But Burne-Jones was silent in the presence of his accusers,
for the world of buyers besieged his doors with bank-notes in hand,
demanding pictures. And now today we find Alma-Tadema openly and
avowedly Pagan, and with a grace and loveliness that compel the glad
acclaim of every lover of beautiful things.

We are making head. We have ceased to believe that Paganism is
"bad." All the men and women who have ever lived and loved and hoped
and died, were God's children, and we are no more. With the nations
dead and turned to dust, we reach out through the darkness of
forgotten days and touch friendly hands. Some of these people that
existed two, three or four thousand years ago did things so
marvelously grand and great that in presence of the broken fragments
of their work we stand silent, o'erawed and abashed. We realize,
too, that long before the nations lived that have left a meager and
scattered history hewn in stone, lived still other men, possibly
greater far than we; and no sign or signal comes to us from those
whose history, like ours, is writ in water.

Yet we are one with them all. The same Power that brought them upon
this stage of Time brought us. As we were called into existence
without our consent, so are we being sent out of it, day by day,
against our will. The destiny of all who live or have lived, is one;
and no taunt of "paganism," "heathenism" or "infidelity" escapes our
lips. With love and sympathy, we salute the eternity that lies
behind, realizing that we ourselves are the oldest people that have
tasted existence--the newest nation lingers away behind Assyria and
Egypt, back of the Mayas, lost in continents sunken in shoreless
seas that hold their secrets inviolate. Yes, we are brothers to all
that have trod the earth; brothers and heirs to dust and shade--
mayhap to immortality!


In the story of "John Ball," William Morris pictured what to him was
the Ideal Life. And Morris was certainly right in this: The Ideal
Life is only the normal or natural life as we shall some day know
it. The scene of Morris' story was essentially a Preraphaelite one.
It was the great virtue (or limitation) of William Morris that the
Dark Ages were to him a time of special light and illumination. Life
then was simple. Men worked for the love of it, and if they wanted
things they made them. "Every trade exclusively followed means a
deformity," says Ruskin. Division of labor had not yet come, and men
were skilled in many ways. There was neither poverty nor riches, and
the idea of brotherhood was firmly fixed in the minds of men. The
feverish desire for place, pelf and power was not upon them. The
rise of the barons and an entailed aristocracy were yet to come.

Governments grant men immunity from danger on payment of a tax. Thus
men cease protecting themselves, and so in the course of time lose
the ability to protect themselves, because the faculty of courage
has atrophied through disuse. Brooding apprehension and crouching
fear are the properties of civilized men--men who are protected by
the State. The joy of reveling in life is not possible in cities.
Bolts and bars, locks and keys, soldiers and police, and a hundred
other symbols of distrust, suspicion and hate, are on every hand,
reminding us that man is the enemy of man, and must be protected
from his brothers. Protection and slavery are near of kin.

Before Raphael, art was not a profession--the man did things to the
glory of God. When he painted a picture of the Holy Family, his wife
served as his model, and he grouped his children in their proper
order, and made the picture to hang on a certain spot on the walls
of his village church. No payment was expected nor fee demanded--it
was a love-offering. It was not until ecclesiastics grew ambitious
and asked for more pictures that bargains were struck. Did ever a
painter of that far-off day marry a maid, and in time were they
blessed with a babe, then straightway the painter worked his joy up
into art by painting the Mother and Child, and presenting the
picture as a thank-offering to God. The immaculate conception of
love and the miracle of birth are recurring themes in the symphony
of life. Love, religion and art have ever walked and ever will walk
hand in hand. Art is the expression of man's joy in his work; and
art is the beautiful way of doing things. Pope Julius was right--
work is religion when you put your soul into your task.

Giotto painted the "Mother and Child," and the mother was his wife,
and the child theirs. Another child came to them, and Giotto painted
another picture, calling the older boy Saint John, and the wee baby
Jesus. The years went by and we find still another picture of the
Holy Family by this same artist, in which five children are shown,
while back in the shadow is the artist himself, posed as Joseph. And
with a beautiful contempt for anachronism, the elder children are
called Isaiah, Ezekiel and Elijah. This fusing of work, love and
religion gives us a glimpse into the only paradise mortals know. It
is the Ideal--and the Natural.


The swift-passing years have lightly touched the little city of
Urbino, in Umbria. The place is sleepy and quiet, and you seek the
shade of friendly awnings to shield you from the fierce glare of the
sun. Standing there you hear the bells chime the hours, as they have
done for four hundred years; and you watch the flocks of wheeling
pigeons, the same pigeons that Vasari saw when he came here in
Fifteen Hundred Forty-one, for the birds never grow old. Vasari
tells of the pigeons, the old cathedral--old even then--the flower-
girls and fruit-sellers, the passing black-robed priests, the
occasional soldier, and the cobbler who sits on the curbstone and
offers to mend your shoes while you wait.

The world is debtor to Vasari. He was not much of a painter and he
failed at architecture, but he made up for lack of skill by telling
all about what others were doing; and if his facts ever faltered,
his imagination bridged the break. He is as interesting as Plutarch,
as gossipy as Pepys, and as luring as Boswell.

A slim slip of a girl, selling thyme and mignonette out of a reed
basket, offered to show Vasari the birthplace of Raphael; and a
brown-cheeked, barefoot boy, selling roses on which the dew yet
lingered, volunteered a like service for me, three hundred years
later.

The house is one of a long row of low stone structures, with the
red-tile roof everywhere to be seen. Above the door is a bronze
tablet which informs the traveler that Raphael Sanzio was born here,
April Sixth, Fourteen Hundred Eighty-three. Herman Grimm takes three
chapters to prove that Raphael was not born in this house, and that
nothing is so unreliable as a bronze tablet, except figures. Grimm
is a painstaking biographer, but he fails to distinguish between
fact and truth. Of this we are sure, Giovanni di Sanzio, the father
of Raphael, lived in this house. There are church records to show
that here other children of Giovanni were born, and this very
naturally led to the assumption that Raphael was born here, also.

Just one thing of touching interest is to be seen in this house, and
that is a picture of a Mother and Child painted on the wall. For
many years this picture was said to be the work of Raphael; but
there is now very good reason to believe it was the work of
Raphael's father, and that the figures represent the baby Raphael
and his mother. The picture is faded and dim, like the history of
this sainted woman who gave to earth one of the gentlest, greatest
and best men that ever lived. Mystery enshrouds the early days of
Raphael. There is no record of his birth. His father we know was a
man of decided power, and might yet rank as a great artist, had he
not been so unfortunate as to have had a son that outclassed him.
But now Giovanni Sanzio's only claim to fame rests on his being the
father of his son. Of the boy's mother we have only obstructed
glances and glimpses through half-flung lattices in the gloaming.
Raphael was her only child. She was scarce twenty when she bore him.
In a sonnet written to her, on the back of a painting, Raphael's
father speaks of her wondrous eyes, slender neck, and the form too
frail for earth's rough buffets. Mention is also made of "this child
born in purest love, and sent by God to comfort and caress."

The mother grew aweary and passed away when her boy was scarce eight
years old, but his memories of her were deeply etched. She told him
of Cimabue, Giotto, Ghirlandajo, Leonardo and Perugino, and
especially of the last two, who were living and working only a few
miles away. It was this spiritual and loving mother who infused into
his soul the desire to do and to become. That hunger for harmony
which marked his life was the heritage of mother to child.

When an artist paints a portrait, he paints two--himself and the
sitter. Raphael gave himself; and as his father more than once said
the boy was the image of his mother, we have her picture, too.
Father and son painted the same woman. Their hearts went out to her
with a sort of idolatrous love. The sonnets indited to her by her
husband were written after her death, and after his second marriage.
Do then men love dead women better than they do the living? Perhaps.
And then a certain writer has said: "To have known a great and
exalted love, and have had it flee from your grasp--flee as a shadow
before it is sullied by selfishness or misunderstanding--is the
highest good. The memory of such a love can not die from out the
heart. It affords a ballast 'gainst all the sordid impulses of life,
and though it gives an unutterable sadness, it imparts an
unspeakable peace."


Raphael's father followed the boy's mother when the lad was eleven
years old. We know the tender, poetic love this father had for the
child, and we realize somewhat of the mystical mingling in the man's
heart of the love for the woman dead and her child alive.
Reverencing the mother's wish that the boy should be an artist,
Giovanni Sanzio, proud of his delicate and spiritual beauty, took
the lad to visit all the other artists in the vicinity. They also
visited the ducal palace, built by Federigo the Second, and lingered
there for hours, viewing the paintings, statuary, carvings,
tapestries and panelings.

The palace still stands, and is yet one of the most noble in Italy,
vying in picturesqueness with those marble piles that line the Grand
Canal at Venice. We know that Giovanni Sanzio contributed by his
advice and skill to the wealth of beauty in the palace, and we know
that he was always a welcome visitor there. From his boyhood Raphael
was familiar with these artistic splendors, and how much this early
environment contributed to his correct taste and habit of subdued
elegance, no man can say. When Giovanni Sanzio realized that death
was at his door, he gave Raphael into the keeping of the priest
Bartolomeo and the boy's stepmother. The typical stepmother lives,
moves and has her being in neurotic novels written by very young
ladies.

Instances can be cited of great men who were loved and nurtured and
ministered to by their stepmothers. I think well of womankind. The
woman who abuses a waif that Fate has sent into her care would
mistreat her own children, and is a living libel on her sex.

Let Lincoln and Raphael stand as types of men who were loved with
infinite tenderness by stepmothers. And then we must not forget
Leonardo da Vinci, who never knew a mother, and had no business to
have a father, but who held averages good with four successive
stepmothers, all of whom loved him with a tender, jealous and proud
devotion.

Bartolomeo, following the wish of the father, continued to give the
boy lessons in drawing and sketching. This Bartolomeo must not be
confused with the Bartolomeo, friend of Savonarola, who was largely
to influence Raphael later on. It was Bartolomeo, the priest, that
took Raphael to Perugino, who lived in Perugia. Perugino, although
he was a comparatively young man, was bigger than the town in which
he lived. His own name got blown away by a high wind, and he was
plain Perugino--as if there was only one man in Perugia, and he were
that one. "Here is a boy I have brought you as a pupil," said the
priest to Perugino. And Perugino glancing up from his easel
answered, "I thought it was a girl!"

The priest continued, "Here is a boy I have brought you for a pupil,
and your chief claim to fame may yet be that he worked here with you
in your studio." Perugino parried the thrust with a smile. He looked
at the boy and was impressed with his beauty. Perugino afterwards
acknowledged that the only reason he took him was because he thought
he would work in well as a model.

Perugino was the greatest master of technique of his time. He had
life, and life in abundance. He reveled in his work, and his
enthusiasm ran over, inundating all those who were near. Courage is
a matter of the red corpuscle. It is oxygen that makes every attack;
without oxygen in his blood to back him, a man attacks nothing--not
even a pie, much less a blank canvas. Perugino was a success; he had
orders ahead; he matched his talent against titles; power flowed his
way. Raphael's serious, sober manner and spiritual beauty appealed
to him. They became as father and son. The methodical business plan,
which is a prime aid to inspiration; the habit of laying out work
and completing it; the high estimate of self; the supreme animation
and belief in the divinity within--all these Raphael caught from
Perugino. Both men were egotists, as are all men who do things. They
had heard the voice--they had had a "call." The talent is the call,
and if a man fails to do his work in a masterly way, make sure he
has mistaken a lazy wish for a divine passion. There is a difference
between loving the muse and lusting after her.

Perugino had been called, and before Raphael had worked with him a
year, he was sure he had been called, too. The days in Perugia for
Raphael were full of quiet joy and growing power. He was in the
actual living world of men, and things, and useful work. Afternoons,
when the sun's shadows began to lengthen towards the east, Perugino
would often call to his helpers, especially Raphael, and
Pinturicchio, another fine spirit, and off they would go for a
tramp, each with a stout staff and the inevitable portfolio. Out
along the narrow streets of the town, across the Roman arched
bridge, by the market-place to the terraced hillside that overlooked
the Umbrian plain, they went; Perugino stout, strong, smooth-faced,
with dark, swarthy features; Pinturicchio with downy beard, merry
eyes and tall, able form; and lingering behind, came Raphael. His
small black cap fitted closely on his long bronze-gold hair; his
slight, slender and graceful figure barely suggested its silken
strength held in fine reserve--and all the time the great brown
eyes, which looked as if they had seen celestial things, scanned the
sky, saw the tall cedars of Lebanon, the flocks on the slopes across
the valley, the scattered stone cottages, the fleecy clouds that
faintly flecked the deep blue of the sky, the distant spire of a
church. All these treasures of the Umbrian landscape were his. Well
might he have anticipated, four hundred years before he was born,
that greatest of American writers, and said, "I own the landscape!"
In frescos signed by Perugino in the year Fourteen Hundred Ninety-
two--a date we can not forget--we see a certain style. In the same
design duplicated in Fourteen Hundred Ninety-eight, we behold a new
and subtle touch--it is the stroke and line of Raphael.

The "Resurrection" by Perugino, in the Vatican, and the "Diotalevi
Madonna" signed by the same artist, in the Berlin Museum, show the
touch of Raphael, unmistakably. The youth was barely seventeen, but
he was putting himself into Perugino's work--and Perugino was glad.
Raphael's first independent work was probably done when he was
nineteen, and was for the Citta di Castello. These frescos are
signed, "Raphael Urbinas, 1502." Other lesser pictures and panels
thus signed are found dated Fifteen Hundred Four. They are all the
designs of Perugino, but worked out with the painstaking care always
shown by very young artists; yet there is a subtle, spiritual style
that marks, unmistakably, Raphael's Perugino period.

The "Sposalizio," done in Fifteen Hundred Four, now in the Brera at
Milan, is the first really important work of Raphael. Next to this
is the "Connestabile Madonna," which was painted at Perugia and
remained there until Eighteen Hundred Seventy-one, when it was sold
by a degenerate descendant of the original owner to the Emperor of
Russia for sixty-five thousand dollars. Since then a law has been
passed forbidding any one on serious penalty to remove a "Raphael"
from Italy. But for this law, that threat of a Chicago syndicate to
buy the Pitti Gallery and move its contents to the "lake front"
might have been carried out.


The Second Period of Raphael's life opens with his visit to Florence
in Fifteen Hundred Four. He was now twenty-one years of age,
handsome, proud, reserved. Stories of his power had preceded him,
and the fact that for six years he had worked with Perugino and been
his confidant and friend made his welcome sure.

Leonardo and Michelangelo were at the height of their fame, and no
doubt they stimulated the ambition of Raphael more than he ever
admitted. He considered Leonardo the more finished artist of the
two. Michelangelo's heroic strength and sweep of power failed to win
him. The frescos of Masaccio in the Church of Santa Carmine in
Florence he considered better than any performance of Michelangelo:
and as a Roland to this Oliver, we have a legend to the effect that
Raphael once called upon Michelangelo and the master sent down word
from the scaffold, where he was at work, that he was too busy to see
visitors, and anyway, he had all the apprentices that he could look
after!

How much this little incident biased Raphael's opinion concerning
Michelangelo's art we can not say: possibly Raphael could not have
told, either. But such things count, I am told, for even Doctor
Johnson thought better of Reynolds' work after they had dined
together.

It seems that Fra Bartolomeo was one of the first and best friends
Raphael had at Florence. The monk's gentle spirit and his modest
views of men and things won the young Umbrian; and between these two
there sprang up a friendship so firm and true that death alone could
sever it.

The deep religious devotion of Bartolomeo set the key for the first
work done by Raphael at Florence. Most of the time the young man and
the monk lived and worked in the same studio. It was a wonderfully
prolific period for Raphael; from Fifteen Hundred Four to Fifteen
Hundred Eight he pushed forward with a zest and an earnestness he
never again quite equaled. Most of his beautiful Madonnas belong to
this period, and in them all are a dignity, grace and grandeur that
lift them out of ecclesiastic art, and place them in the category of
living portraits.

Before this, Raphael belonged to the Umbrian School, but now his
work must be classed, if classed at all, as Florentine. The handling
is freer, the nude more in evidence, and the anatomy shows that the
artist is working from life.

Bartolomeo used to speak of Raphael affectionately as "my son," and
called the attention of Bramante, the architect, to his work. The
beauty of his Madonnas was being discussed in every studio, and when
the "Ansidei" was exhibited in the Church of Santa Croce, such a
crowd flocked to see the picture that services had to be dismissed.
The rush continued until a thrifty priest bethought him to stand at
the main entrance with a contribution-box and a stout stick, and
allow no one to enter who did not contribute good silver for "the
worthy poor."

Bartolomeo acknowledged that his "pupil" was beyond him. He was
invited to add a finishing touch to the Masaccio frescos; Leonardo,
the courtly, had smiled a gracious recognition, and Michelangelo had
sneezed at mention of his name. Bramante, back at Rome, told Pope
Julius the Second, "There is a young Umbrian at Florence we must
send for."


Great things were happening at Rome about this time: all roads led
thitherward. Pope Julius had just laid the cornerstone of Saint
Peter's, and full of ambition was carrying out the dictum of Pope
Nicholas the Fifth, that "the Church should array herself in all the
beauteous spoils of the world, in order to win the minds of men."

The Renaissance was fairly begun, fostered and sustained by the
Church alone. The Quattrocento--that time of homely peace and the
simple quiet of John Ball and his fellows--lay behind.

Raphael had begun his Roman Period, which was to round out his
working life of barely eighteen years, ere the rest of the Pantheon
was to be his.

Before this his time had been his own, but now the Church was his
mistress. But it was a great honor that had come to him, greater far
than had ever before been bestowed on any living artist. Barely
twenty-five years of age, the Pope treated him as an equal, and
worked him like a packhorse. "He has the face of an angel," cried
Julius, "and the soul of a god!"--when some one suggested his youth.

Pope Leo the Tenth, of the Medici family, succeeded Julius. He sent
Michelangelo to Florence to employ his talents upon the Medicean
church of San Lorenzo. He dismissed Perugino, Pinturicchio and Piero
Delia Francesca, although Raphael in tears pleaded for them all.
Their frescos were destroyed, and Raphael was told to go ahead and
make the Vatican what it should be.

His first large work was to decorate the Hall of the Signatures
(Stanza della Segnatura), where we today see the "Dispute." Near at
hand is the famous "School of Athens." In this picture his own
famous portrait is to be seen with that of Perugino. The first place
is given to Perugino, and the faces affectionately side by side are
posed in a way that has given a cue to ten thousand photographers.

The attitude is especially valuable, as a bit of history showing
Raphael's sterling attachment to his old teacher. The Vatican is
filled with the work of Raphael, and aside from the galleries to
which the general public is admitted, studies and frescos are to be
seen in many rooms that are closed unless, say, Archbishop Ireland
be with you, when all doors fly open at your touch. The seven
Raphael tapestries are shown at the Vatican an hour each day; the
rest of the time the room is closed to protect them from the light.
However, the original cartoons at South Kensington reveal the sweep
and scope of Raphael's genius better than the tapestries themselves.

Work, unceasing work, filled his days. The ingenuity and industry of
the man were marvelous. Upwards of eighty portraits were painted
during the Roman Period, besides designs innumerable for engravings,
and even for silver and iron ornaments required by the Church.
Pupils helped him much, of course, and among these must be mentioned
Giulio Romano and Gianfrancesco Penni. These young men lived with
Raphael in his splendid house that stood halfway between Saint
Peter's and the Castle Angelo. Fire swept the space a hundred years
later, and the magnificence it once knew has never been replaced.
Today, hovels built from stone quarried from the ruins mark the
spot. But as one follows this white, dusty road, it is well to
remember that the feet of Raphael, passing and repassing, have, more
than any other one street of Rome, made it sacred soil.

We have seen that Bramante brought Raphael to Rome, and Pope Leo the
Tenth remembered this when the first architect of Saint Peter's
passed away. Raphael was appointed his successor. The honor was
merited, but the place should have gone to one not already
overworked. In Fifteen Hundred Fifteen Raphael was made Director of
Excavations, another office for which his esthetic and delicate
nature was not fitted. In sympathy, of course, his heart went out to
the antique workers of the ancient world, on whose ruins the Eternal
City is built; but the drudgery of overseeing and superintendence
belonged to another type of man.

The stress of the times had told on Raphael; he was thirty-five,
rich beyond all Umbrian dreams of avarice, on an equality with the
greatest and noblest men of his time, honored above all other living
artists. But life began to pall; he had won all--and thereby had
learned the worthlessness of what the world has to offer. Dreams of
rest, of love and a quiet country home, came to him. He was
betrothed to Maria di Bibbiena, a niece of Cardinal Bibbiena. The
day of the wedding had been set, and the Pope was to perform the
ceremony.

But the Pope regarded Raphael as a servant of the Church: he had
work for him to do, and moreover he had fixed ideas concerning the
glamour of sentimentalism, so he requested that the wedding be
postponed for a space.

A request from the Pope was an order, and so the country house was
packed away with other dreams that were to come true all in God's
good time.

But the realization of love's dream did not come true, for Raphael
had a rival. Death claimed his bride.

She was buried in the Pantheon, where within a year Raphael's
wornout body was placed beside hers; and there the dust of both
mingle.

The history of this love-tragedy has never been written; it lies
buried there with the lovers. But a contemporary said that the fear
of an enforced separation broke the young woman's heart; and this we
know, that after her death, Raphael's hand forgot its cunning, and
his frame was ripe for the fever that was so soon to burn out the
strands of his life.

Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Perugino and Fra Bartolomeo had all
made names for themselves before Raphael appeared upon the scene.
Yet they one and all profited by his example, and were the richer in
that he had lived.

Michelangelo was born nine years before Raphael and survived him
forty-three years.

Titian was six years old when Raphael was born, and he continued to
live and work for fifty-six years after Raphael had passed away.

It was a cause of grief to Michelangelo, even to the day of his
death, that he and Raphael had not been close, personal and loving
friends, as indeed they should have been.

The art-world was big enough for both. Yet Rome was divided into two
hostile camps: those who favored Raphael; and those who had but one
prophet, Michelangelo. Busybodies rushed back and forth, carrying
foolish and inconsequential messages; and these strong yet gentle
men, both hungering for sympathy and love, were thrust apart.

When Raphael realized the end was nigh, he sent for Perugino, and
directed that he should complete certain work. His career had begun
by working with Perugino, and now this friend of a lifetime must
finish the broken task and make good the whole. He bade his beloved
pupils, one by one, farewell; signed his will, which gave most of
his valuable property to his fellow-workers; and commended his soul
to the God who gave it. He died on his birthday, Good Friday, April
Sixth, Fifteen Hundred Twenty, aged thirty-seven years. Michelangelo
wore mourning upon his sleeve for a year after Raphael's death. And
once Michelangelo said, "Raphael was a child, a beautiful child, and
if he had only lived a little longer, he and I would have grasped
hands as men and worked together as brothers."




LEONARDO

The world, perhaps, contains no other example of a genius so
universal as Leonardo's, so creative, so incapable of self-
contentment, so athirst for the infinite, so naturally refined, so
far in advance of his own and subsequent ages. His pictures express
incredible sensibility and mental power; they overflow with
unexpressed ideas and emotions. Alongside of his portraits
Michelangelo's personages are simply heroic athletes; Raphael's
virgins are only placid children whose souls are still asleep. His
beings feel and think through every line and trait of their
physiognomy. Time is necessary to enter into communion with them;
not that their sentiment is too slightly marked, for, on the
contrary, it emerges from the whole investiture; but it is too
subtle, too complicated, too far above and beyond the ordinary, too
dreamlike and inexplicable.
  --_Taine in "A Journey Through Italy"_

[Illustration: Leonardo]


There is a little book by George B. Rose, entitled, "Renaissance
Masters," which is quite worth your while to read. I carried a copy,
for company, in the side-pocket of my coat for a week, and just
peeped into it at odd times. I remember that I thought so little of
the volume that I read it with a lead-pencil and marked it all up
and down and over, and filled the fly-leaves with random thoughts,
and disfigured the margins with a few foolish sketches.

Then one fine day White Pigeon came out to the Roycroft Shop from
Buffalo, as she was passing through. She came on the two-o'clock
train and went away on the four-o'clock, and her visit was like a
window flung open to the azure.

White Pigeon remained at East Aurora only two hours--"not long
enough" she said, "to knock the gold and emerald off the butterfly's
beautiful wings."

White Pigeon saw the little book I have mentioned, on my table in
the tower-room. She picked it up and turned the leaves aimlessly;
then she opened her Boston bag and slipped the book inside, saying
as she did so:

"You do not mind?"

And I said, "Certainly not!"

Then she added, "I like to follow in the pathway you have blazed."

That closed the matter so far as the little book was concerned.
Save, perhaps, that after I had walked to the station with White
Pigeon and she had boarded the car, she stepped out upon the rear
platform, and as I stood there at the station watching the train
disappear around the curve, White Pigeon reached into the Boston
bag, took out the little book and held it up.

That was the last time I saw White Pigeon. She was looking well and
strong, and her step, I noticed, was firm and sure, and she carried
the crown of her head high and her chin in. It made me carry my chin
in, too, just by force of example, I suppose--so easily are we
influenced. When you walk with some folks you slouch along, but
others there be who make you feel an upward lift and skyey
gravitation--it is very curious!

Yet I do really believe White Pigeon is forty, or awfully close to
it. There are silver streaks among her brown braids, and surely the
peachblow has long gone from her cheek. Then she was awfully tanned
--and that little mole on her forehead, and its mate on her chin,
stand out more than ever, like the freckles on the face of
Alcibiades Roycroft when he has taken on his August russet.

I think White Pigeon must be near forty! That is the second book she
has stolen from me; the other was Max Muller's "Memories"--it was at
the Louvre in Paris, August the Fourteenth, Eighteen Hundred Ninety-
five, as we sat on a bench, silent before the "Mona Lisa" of
Leonardo.

This book, "Renaissance Masters," I didn't care much for, anyway. I
got no information from it, yet it gave me a sort o' glow--that is
all--like that lecture which I heard in my boyhood by Wendell
Phillips.

There is only one thing in the book I remember, but that stands out
as clearly as the little mole on White Pigeon's forehead. The author
said that Leonardo da Vinci invented more useful appliances than any
other man who ever lived, except our own Edison.

I know Edison: he is a most lovable man (because he is himself),
very deaf--and glad of it, he says, because it saves him from
hearing a lot of things he doesn't wish to hear. "It is like this,"
he once said to me: "deafness gives you a needed isolation; reduces
your sensitiveness so things do not disturb or distract; allows you
to concentrate and focus on a thought until you run it down--see?"

Edison is a great Philistine--reads everything I write--has a
complete file of the little brownie magazine; and some of the
"Little Journeys" I saw he had interlined and marked. I think Edison
is one of the greatest men I ever met--he appreciates Good Things.

I told Edison how this writer, Rose, had compared him with Leonardo.
He smiled and said, "Who is Rose?" Then after a little pause he
continued, "The Great Man is one who has been a long time dead--the
woods are full of wizards, but not many of them know that"; and the
Wizard laughed softly at his own joke.

What kind of a man was Leonardo? Why, he was the same kind of a man
as Edison--only Leonardo was thin and tall, while Edison is stout.
But you and I would be at home with either. Both are classics and
therefore essentially modern. Leonardo studied Nature at first hand
--he took nothing for granted--Nature was his one book. Stuffy,
fussy, indoor professors--men of awful dignity--frighten folks,
cause children to scream, and ladies to gaze in awe; but Leonardo
was simple and unpretentious. He was at home in any society, high or
low, rich or poor, learned or unlearned--and was quite content to be
himself. It's a fine thing to be yourself!

Thackeray once said, "If I had met Shakespeare on the stairs, I know
I should have fainted dead away!" I do not believe Shakespeare's
presence ever made anybody faint. He was so big that he could well
afford to put folks at their ease.

If Leonardo should come to East Aurora, Bertie, Oliver, Lyle and I
would tramp with him across the fields, and he would carry that
leather bag strung across his shoulder, just as he ever did when in
the country. He was a geologist and a botanist, and was always
collecting things (and forgetting where they were).

We would tramp with him, I say, and if the season were right we
would go through orchards, sit under the trees and eat apples. And
Leonardo would talk, as he liked to do, and tell why the side of
fruit that was towards the sun took on a beautiful color first; and
when an apple fell from the tree he would, so to speak, anticipate
Sir Isaac Newton and explain why it fell down and not up.

That leather bag of his, I fear, would get rather heavy before we
got back, and probably Oliver and Lyle would dispute the honor of
carrying it for him.

Leonardo was once engaged by Cesare Borgia to fortify the kingdom of
Romagna. It was a brand-new kingdom, presented to the young man by
Pope Alexander the Sixth. It was really the Pope who ordered
Leonardo to survey the tract and make plans for the fortifications
and canals and all that--so Leonardo didn't like to refuse. Cesare
Borgia had the felicity of being the son of the Pope, but the Pope
used to refer to him as his nephew--it was a habit that Popes once
had. Pope Alexander also had a daughter--by name, Lucrezia Borgia--
sister to Cesare and very much like him, for they took their
diversion in the same way.

Leonardo started in to do the work and make plans for fortifications
that should be impregnable. He looked the ground over thoroughly,
traveling on horseback, and his two servants followed him up in a
cart drawn by a bull, which Leonardo calmly explains was a "side-
wheeler."

Leonardo carried a big sketchbook, and as he made plans for
redoubts, he made notes to the effect that crows fly in flocks
without a leader, and wild ducks have a system and fly V shape, with
a leader that changes off from time to time with the privates. Also,
a waterfall runs the musical gamut, and the water might be separated
so as to play a tune. Also, the leaves turn to gold through
oxidation, and robins pair for life.

Leonardo also wrote at this time on the movements of the clouds, the
broken strata of rocks, the fertilization of flowers, the habits of
bees, and a hundred other themes which fill the library of notebooks
that he left.

Meanwhile, Cesare Borgia was getting a trifle impatient about the
building of his forts. Two years had passed when Cesare and his
father met with an accident not uncommon in those times. The
precious pair had indulged in their Borgian specialty for the
benefit of a certain cardinal, whom they did not warmly admire,
though the plot seems to have been chiefly the work of Cesare. By
mistake they drank the poisoned wine prepared for the cardinal, and
the Pope was cut off amidst a life of usefulness, his son surviving
for a worse fate. Pope Julius the Second coming upon the scene,
speedily dispossessed the Borgias, and the idea of the new kingdom
was abandoned.

Leonardo evidently did not go into mourning for the Pope. He had a
bullock-cart loaded with specimens, sketches and notebooks, and he
set to work to sort them out. He was very happy in this employment--
being essentially a man of peace--and while he made forts and
planned siege-guns he was a deal more interested in certain swallows
that made nests and glued the work into a most curious and beautiful
structure, and when the birds were old enough to fly, tore up the
nest, pushing the wee birds out to "swim in the air" or perish.

I made some notes about Leonardo's bird observations in the back of
that "Renaissance" book that White Pigeon appropriated. I can not
recall just what they were--I think I'll hunt White Pigeon up the
next time I am in Paris, and get the book back.


When that painstaking biographer, Arsene Houssaye, was endeavoring
to fix the date of Leonardo da Vinci's birth, he interviewed a
certain bishop, who waived the matter thus: "Surely what difference
does it make, since he had no business to be born at all?"--a very
Milesian-like reply. Houssaye is too sensible a man to waste words
with the spiritually obese, and so merely answered in the language
of Terence, "I am a man and nothing that is human is alien to me!"

The gentle Erasmus when a boy was once taunted by a schoolfellow
with having "no name." And Erasmus replied, "Then, I'll make one for
myself." And he did.

No record of Leonardo's birth exists, but the year is fixed upon in
a very curious way. Caterina, his mother, was married one year after
his birth. The date of this marriage is proven, and the fact that
the son of Piero da Vinci was then a year old is also shown. As the
marriage occurred in Fourteen Hundred Fifty-three, we simply go back
one year and say that Leonardo da Vinci was born in Fourteen Hundred
Fifty-two.

Most accounts say that Caterina was a servant in the Da Vinci
family, but a later and seemingly more authentic writer informs us
that she was a governess and a teacher of needlework. That her
kinsmen hastened her marriage with the peasant, Vacca Accattabriga,
seems quite certain: they sought to establish her in a respectable
position. And so she acquiesced, and avoided society's displeasure,
very much as Lord Bacon escaped disgrace by leaving "Hamlet" upon
Shakespeare's doorstep.

This child of Caterina's found a warm welcome in the noble family of
his father. From his babyhood he seems to have had the power of
winning hearts--he came fresh from God and brought love with him. We
even hear a little rustle of dissent from grandmother and aunts when
his father, Piero da Vinci, married, and started housekeeping as did
Benjamin Franklin "with a wife and a bouncing boy."

The charm of the child is again revealed in the fact that his
stepmother treated him as her own babe, and lavished her love upon
him even from her very wedding morn.

Perhaps the compliment should go to her, as well as to the child,
for the woman whose heart goes out to another woman's babe is surely
good quality. And this was the only taste of motherhood that this
brave woman knew, for she passed out in a few months.

Fate decreed that Leonardo should have successively four
stepmothers, and should live with all of them in happiness and
harmony, for he always made his father's house his own.

Leonardo was the idol of his father and all these stepmothers. He
had ten half-brothers, who alternately boasted of his kinship and
flouted him. Yet nothing could seriously disturb the serenity of his
mind. When his father died, without a will, the brothers sought to
dispossess Leonardo of his rights, and we hear of a lawsuit, which
was finally compromised. Yet note the magnanimity of Leonardo--in
his will he leaves bequests to these brothers who had sought to undo
him!

Of the life of the mother after her marriage we know nothing. There
is a vague reference in Vasari's book to her "large family and
growing cares," but whether she knew of her son's career, we can not
say. Leonardo never mentions her, yet one writer has attempted to
show that the rare beauty of that mysterious face shown in so many
of Leonardo's pictures was modeled from the face of his mother.

No love-story comes to us in Leonardo's own life--he never married.
Ventura suggests that "on account of his birth, he was indifferent
to the divine institution of marriage." But this is pure conjecture.
We know that his great contemporaries, Michelangelo, Raphael, Titian
and Giorgione, never married; and we know further that there was a
sentiment in the air at that time, that an artist belonged to the
Church, and his life, like that of the priest, was sacred to her
service.

Like Sir William Davenant, Leonardo was always proud of the mystery
that surrounded his birth--it differentiated him from the mass, and
placed him as one set apart. Well might he have used the language
put into the mouth of Edmund in "King Lear." In one of Leonardo's
manuscripts is found an interjected prayer of thankfulness for "the
divinity of my birth, and the angels that have guarded my life and
guided my feet"

This idea of "divinity" is strong in the mind of every great man. He
recognizes his sonship, and claims his divine parentage. The man of
masterly mind is perforce an Egotist. When he speaks he says, "Thus
saith the Lord." If he did not believe in himself, how could he make
others believe in him? Small men are apologetic and give excuses for
being on earth, and reasons for staying here so long, and run and
peek about to find themselves dishonorable graves. Not so the Great
Souls--the fact that they are here is proof that God sent them.
Their actions are regal, their language oracular, their manner
affirmative. Leonardo's mental attitude was sublimely gracious--he
had no grievance or quarrel with his Maker--he accepted life, and
ever found it good. "We are all sons of God and it doth not yet
appear what we shall be."


Philip Gilbert Hamerton, who wrote "The Intellectual Life," names
Leonardo da Vinci as having lived the richest, fullest and best-
rounded life of which we know. Yet while Leonardo lived, there also
lived Shakespeare, Loyola, Cervantes, Columbus, Martin Luther,
Savonarola, Erasmus, Michelangelo, Titian and Raphael. Titans all--
giants in intellect and performance, doing and daring, and working
such wonders as men never worked before: writing plays, without
thought of posterity, that are today the mine from which men work
their poetry; producing comedies that are classic; sailing trackless
seas and discovering continents; tacking proclamations of defiance
on church-doors; hunted and exiled for the right of honest speech;
welcoming fierce flames of fagots; falling upon blocks of marble and
liberating angels; painting pictures that have inspired millions!
But not one touched life at so many points, or reveled so in
existence, or was so captain of his soul as was Leonardo da Vinci.

Vasari calls him the "divinely endowed," "showered with the richest
gifts as by celestial munificence" and speaks of his countenance
thus: "The radiance of his face was so splendidly beautiful that it
brought cheerfulness to the hearts of the most melancholy, and his
presence was such that his lightest word would move the most
obstinate to say 'Yes' or 'No.'"

Bandello, the story-teller who was made a Bishop on account of his
peculiar talent, had the effrontery to put one of his worst stories,
that about the adventures of Fra Lippo Lippi, into the mouth of
Leonardo. This rough-cast tale, somewhat softened down and hand-
polished, served for one of Browning's best-known poems. Had
Bandello allowed Botticelli to tell the tale, it would have been
much more in keeping. Leonardo's days were too full of work to
permit of his indulging in the society of roysterers--his life was
singularly dignified and upright.

When about twenty years old Leonardo was a fellow-student with
Perugino in the bottega of good old Andrea del Verrocchio. It seems
the master painted a group and gave Leonardo the task of drawing in
one figure. Leonardo painted in an angel--an angel whose grace and
subtle beauty stand out, even today, like a ray of light. The story
runs that good old Verrocchio wept on first seeing it--wept
unselfish tears of joy, touched with a very human pathos--his pupil
had far surpassed him, and never again did Verrocchio attempt to
paint.

In physical strength Leonardo surpassed all his comrades. "He could
twist horseshoes between his fingers, bend bars of iron across his
knees, disarm every adversary, and in wrestling, running, vaulting
and swimming he had no equals. He was especially fond of horses, and
in the joust often rode animals that had never before been ridden,
winning prizes from the most daring." Brawn is usually purchased at
the expense of brain, but not so in this case. Leonardo was the
courtier and diplomat, and all the finer graces were in his keeping,
even from boyhood. And a recent biographer has made the discovery
that he was called from Florence to the Court of Milan "because he
was such an adept harpist, playing and singing his own
compositions."

Yet we have the letter written by Leonardo to the Duke of Milan,
wherein he commends himself, and in humility tells of a few things
he can do. This most precious document is now in the Ambrosian
Library at Milan. After naming nine items in the way of constructing
bridges, tunnels, canals, fortifications, the making of cannon, use
of combustibles and explosives--known to him alone--he gets down to
things of peace and says: "I believe I am equaled by no one in
architecture in constructing public and private buildings, and in
conducting water from one place to another. I can execute sculpture,
whether in marble, bronze or terra cotta, and in drawing and
painting I believe I can do as much as any other man, be he who he
may. Further, I could engage to execute the bronze statue in memory
of your honored father. And again, if any of the above-mentioned
things should appear impossible or overstated, I am ready to make
such performance in any place or at any time to prove to you my
power. In humility I thus commend myself to your illustrious house,
and am your servant, Leonardo da Vinci."

And the strange part of all this is that Leonardo could do all he
claimed--or he might, if there were a hundred hours in a day and man
did not grow old.

The things he predicted and planned have mostly been done. He knew
the earth was round, and understood the orbits of the planets--
Columbus knew no more. His scheme of building a canal from Pisa to
Florence and diverting the waters of the Arno, was carried out
exactly as he had planned, two hundred years after his death. He
knew the expansive quality of steam, the right systems of dredging,
the action of the tides, the proper use of levers, screws and
cranes, and how immense weights could be raised and lowered. He
placed a new foundation under a church that was sinking in the sand
and elevated the whole stone structure several feet. But when Vasari
seriously says he had a plan for moving mountains (aside from
faith), I think we had better step aside and talk of other things.

And all this time that he was working at physics and mathematics, he
was painting and modeling in clay, just for recreation.

Then behold the Duke of Milan, the ascetic and profligate, libertine
and dreamer, hearing of him and sending straightway for Leonardo
because he is "the most accomplished harpist in Italy"!

So Leonardo came and led the dance and the tourney, improvised songs
and planned the fetes and festivals where strange animals turned
into birds and gigantic flowers opened, disclosing beautiful girls.

Yet Leonardo found time to plan the equestrian statue of Francisco
Sporza, the Duke's father, and finding the subject so interesting he
took up the systematic study of the horse, and dived to the depths
of horse anatomy in a way that no living man had done before. He
dissected the horse, articulated the skeletons of different breeds
for comparison, and then wrote a book upon the subject which is a
textbook yet; and meanwhile he let the statue wait. He discovered
that in the horse there are rudimentary muscles, and unused organs--
the "water-stomach" for instance--thus showing that the horse
evolved from a lower form of life--anticipating Darwin by three
hundred years.

The Duke was interested in statues and pictures--what he called
"results"--he didn't care for speculations or theories, and only a
live horse that could run fast interested him. So to keep the peace,
the gracious Leonardo painted portraits of the Duke's mistress,
posing her as the Blessed Virgin, thus winning the royal favor and
getting carte-blanche orders on the Keeper of the Exchequer. As a
result of this Milan period we have the superb portrait, now in the
Louvre, of Lucrezia Crivelli, who was supposed to be the favorite of
the Duke.

But the Duke was a married man, and the good wife must be placated.
She had turned to religion when her lover's love grew cold, just as
women always do; and for her Leonardo painted the "Last Supper" in
the dining-room of the monastery which was under her especial
protection, and where she often dined.

The devout lady found much satisfaction in directing the work, which
was to be rather general and simply decorative. But the heart of
Leonardo warmed to the task and as he worked he planned the most
famous painting in the world. All this time Leonardo had many pupils
in painting and sculpture. Soon he founded the Milan Academy of Art.
At odd times he made designs for the Duke's workers in silver and
gold, drew patterns for the nuns to embroider from, and gave them
and the assembled ladies, invited on the order of the Duke's wife,
lessons in literature and the gentle art of writing poetry.

The Prior of the monastery watched the work of the "Last Supper"
with impatient eyes. He had given up the room to the lumbering
scaffolds, hoping to have all cleaned up and tidy in a month, come
Michaelmas. But the month had passed and only blotches of color and
black, curious outlines marred the walls. Once the Prior threatened
to remove the lumber by force and wipe the walls clean, but Leonardo
looked at him and he retreated.

Now he complained to the Duke about the slowness of the task.
Leonardo worked alone, allowing no pupil or helper to touch the
picture. Five good, lively men could do the job in a week--"I could
do it myself, if allowed," the good Prior said. Often Leonardo would
stand with folded arms and survey the work for an hour at a time and
not lift a brush; the Prior had seen it all through the keyhole!

The Duke listened patiently and then summoned Leonardo. The
painter's gracious speech soon convinced the Duke that men of genius
do not work like hired laborers. This painting was to be a
masterpiece, fit monument to a wise and virtuous ruler. So
consummate a performance must not be hastened; besides there was no
one to pose for either the head of Christ or of Judas. The Christ
must be ideal and the face could only be conjured forth from the
painter's own soul, in moments of inspiration. As for Judas, "Why,
if nothing better can be found--and I doubt it much--I believe I
will take as model for Judas our friend the Prior!" And Leonardo
turned to the Prior, who fled and never again showed his face in the
room until the picture was finished.

The Prior's complaint, that Leonardo had too many irons in the fire,
was the universal cry the groundlings raised against him. "He begins
things, but never completes them," they said.

The man of genius conceives things; the man of talent carries them
forward to completion. This the critics did not know. It is too much
to expect the equal balance of genius and talent in one individual.
Leonardo had great talent, but his genius outstripped it, for he
planned what twenty lifetimes could not complete. He was indeed the
endless experimenter--his was in very truth the Experimental Life.
His incentive was self-development--to conceive was enough--common
men could complete. To try many things means Power: to finish a few
is Immortality.


God's masterpiece is the human face. A woman's smile may have in it
more sublimity than a sunset; more pathos than a battle-scarred
landscape; more warmth than the sun's bright ray; more love than
words can say.

The human face is the masterpiece of God.

The eyes reveal the soul, the mouth the flesh, the chin stands for
purpose, the nose means will. But over and behind all is that
fleeting Something we call "expression." This Something is not set
or fixed, it is fluid as the ether, changeful as the clouds that
move in mysterious majesty across the surface of a summer sky,
subtle as the sob of rustling leaves--too faint at times for human
ears--elusive as the ripples that play hide-and-seek over the bosom
of a placid lake.

And yet men have caught expression and held it captive. On the walls
of the Louvre hangs the "Mona Lisa" of Leonardo da Vinci. This
picture has been for four hundred years an exasperation and an
inspiration to every portrait-painter who has put brush to palette.
Well does Walter Pater call it, "The Despair of Painters." The
artist was over fifty years of age when he began the work, and he
was four years in completing the task.

Completing, did I say? Leonardo's dying regret was that he had not
completed this picture. And yet we might say of it, as Ruskin said
of Turner's work, "By no conceivable stretch of imagination can we
say where this picture could be bettered or improved upon."

Leonardo did not paint this portrait for the woman who sat for it,
nor for the woman's husband, who we know was not interested in the
matter. The painter made the picture for himself, but succumbing to
temptation, sold it to the King of France for a sum equal to
something over eighty thousand dollars--an enormous amount at that
time to be paid for a single canvas. The picture was not for sale,
which accounts for the tremendous price that it brought.

Unlike so many other works attributed to Leonardo, no doubt exists
as to the authenticity of "La Gioconda." The correspondence relative
to its sale yet exists, and even the voucher proving its payment may
still be seen. Fate and fortune have guarded the "Mona Lisa"; and
neither thief nor vandal, nor impious infidel nor unappreciative
stupidity, nor time itself has done it harm. France bought the
picture; France has always owned and housed it; it still belongs to
France.

We call the "Mona Lisa" a portrait, and we have been told how La
Gioconda sat for the picture, and how the artist invented ways of
amusing her, by stories, recitations, the luring strain of hidden
lutes, and strange flowers and rare pictures brought in as surprises
to animate and cheer.

That Leonardo loved this woman we are sure, and that their
friendship was close and intimate the world has guessed; but the
picture is not her portrait--it is himself whom the artist reveals.

Away back in his youth, when Leonardo was a student with Verrocchio,
he gave us glimpses of this same face. He showed this woman's
mysterious smile in the Madonna, in Saint Anne, Mary Magdalen, and
the outlines of the features are suggested in the Christ and the
Saint John of the "Last Supper." But not until La Gioconda had posed
for him did the consummate beauty and mysterious intellect of this
ideal countenance find expression.

There is in the face all you can read into it, and nothing more. It
gives you what you bring, and nothing else. It is as silent as the
lips of Memnon, as voiceless as the Sphinx. It suggests to you every
joy that you have ever felt, every sorrow you have ever known, every
triumph you have ever experienced.

This woman is beautiful, just as all life is beautiful when we are
in health. She has no quarrel with the world--she loves and she is
loved again. No vain longing fills her heart, no feverish unrest
disturbs her dreams, for her no crouching fear haunts the passing
hours--that ineffable smile which plays around her mouth says
plainly that life is good. And yet the circles about the eyes and
the drooping lids hint of world-weariness, and speak the message of
Koheleth and say, "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity."

La Gioconda is infinitely wise, for she has lived. That supreme
poise is only possible to one who knows. All the experiences and
emotions of manifold existence have etched and molded that form and
face until the body has become the perfect instrument of the soul.

Like every piece of intense personality, this picture has power both
to repel and to attract. To this woman nothing is either necessarily
good or bad. She has known strange woodland loves in far-off eons
when the world was young. She is familiar with the nights and days
of Cleopatra, for they were hers--the lavish luxury, the animalism
of a soul on fire, the smoke of curious incense that brought poppy-
like repose, the satiety that sickens--all these were her portion;
the sting of the asp yet lingers in her memory, and the faint scar
from its fangs is upon her white breast, known and wondered at by
Leonardo who loved her. Back of her stretches her life, a
mysterious, purple shadow. Do you not see the palaces turned to
dust, the broken columns, the sunken treasures, the creeping mosses
and the rank ooze of fretted waters that have undermined cities and
turned kingdoms into desert seas? The galleys of Pagan Greece have
swung wide for her on the unforgetting tide, for her soul dwelt in
the body of Helen of Troy, and Pallas Athene has followed her ways
and whispered to her the secrets even of the gods.

Aye! not only was she Helen, but she was Leda, the mother of Helen.
Then she was Saint Anne, mother of Mary; and next she was Mary,
visited by an Angel in a dream, and followed by the Wise Men who had
seen the Star in the East.

The centuries, that are but thoughts, found her a Vestal Virgin in
Pagan Rome when brutes were kings, and lust stalked rampant through
the streets. She was the bride of Christ, and her fair, frail body
was flung to the wild beasts, and torn limb from limb while the
multitude feasted on the sight.

True to the central impulse of her soul the Dark Ages rightly called
her Cecilia, and then Saint Cecilia, mother of sacred music, and
later she ministered to men as Melania, the Nun of Tagaste; next as
that daughter of William the Conqueror, the Sister of Charity who
went throughout Italy, Spain and France and taught the women of the
nunneries how to sew, to weave, to embroider, to illuminate books,
and make beauty, truth and harmony manifest to human eyes. And so
this Lady of the Beautiful Hands stood to Leonardo as the embodiment
of a perpetual life; moving in a constantly ascending scale,
gathering wisdom, graciousness, love, even as he himself in this
life met every experience halfway and counted it joy, knowing that
experience is the germ of power. Life writes its history upon the
face, so that all those who have had a like experience read and
understand. The human face is the masterpiece of God.




BOTTICELLI

In Leonardo's "Treatise on Painting," only one contemporary is
named--Sandro Botticelli.... The Pagan and Christian world mingle in
the work of Botticelli; but the man himself belonged to an age that
is past and gone--an age that flourished long before men recorded
history. His best efforts seem to spring out of a heart that forgot
all precedent, and arose, Venus-like, perfect and complete, from the
unfathomable Sea of Existence.
  --_Walter Pater_

[Illustration: Botticelli]


One Professor Max Lautner has recently placed a small petard under
the European world of Art, and given it a hoist to starboard, by
asserting that Rembrandt did not paint Rembrandt's best pictures.
The Professor makes his point luminous by a cryptogram he has
invented and for which he has filed a caveat. It is a very useful
cryptogram; no well-regulated family should be without it--for by it
you can prove any proposition you may make, even to establishing
that Hopkinson Smith is America's only stylist. My opinion is that
this cryptogram is an infringement on that of our lamented
countryman, Ignatius Donnelly.

But letting that pass, the statement that Rembrandt could not have
painted the pictures that are ascribed to him, "because the man was
low, vulgar and untaught," commands respect on account of the
extreme crudity of the thought involved. Lautner is so dull that he
is entertaining.

"I have the capacity in me for every crime," wrote that gentlest of
gentle men, Ralph Waldo Emerson. Of course he hadn't, and in making
this assertion Emerson pulled toward him a little more credit than
was his due. That is, he overstated a great classic truth.

"If Rembrandt painted the 'Christ at Emmaus' and the 'Sortie of the
Civic Guard,' then Rembrandt had two souls," exclaims Professor
Lautner.

And the simple answer of Emerson would have been, "He had."

That is just the difference between Rembrandt and Professor Lautner.
Lautner has one flat, dead-level, unprofitable soul that neither
soars high nor dives deep; and his mind reasons unobjectionable
things out syllogistically, in a manner perfectly inconsequential.
He is icily regular, splendidly null.

Every man measures others by himself--he has only one standard. When
a man ridicules certain traits in other men, he ridicules himself.
How would he know that other men were contemptible, did he not look
into his own heart and there see the hateful things? Thackeray wrote
his book on Snobs, because he was a Snob--which is not to say that
he was a Snob all the time. When you recognize a thing, good or bad,
in the outside world, it is because it was yours already.

"I carry the world in my heart," said the Prophet of old.  All the
universe you have is the universe you have within.

Old Walt Whitman, when he saw the wounded soldier, exclaimed, "I am
that man!" And two thousand years before this, Terence said, "I am a
man, and nothing that is human is alien to me."

I know just why Professor Lautner believes that Rembrandt never
could have painted a picture with a deep, tender, subtle and
spiritual significance. Professor Lautner averages fairly well, he
labors hard to be consistent, but his thought gamut runs just from
Bottom the weaver to Dogberry the judge. He is a cauliflower--that
is to say, a cabbage with a college education.

Yes, I understand him, because for most of the time I myself am
supremely dull, childishly dogmatic, beautifully self-complacent.

I am Lautner.

Lautner says that Rembrandt was "untaught," and Donnelly said the
same of Shakespeare, and each critic gives this as a reason why the
man could not have done a sublime performance. Yet since "Hamlet"
was never equaled, who could have taught its author how? And since
Rembrandt at his best was never surpassed, who could have instructed
him?

Rembrandt sold his wife's wedding-garments, and spent the money for
strong drink.

The woman was dead.

And then there came to him days of anguish, and nights of grim,
grinding pain. He paced the echoing halls, as did Robert Browning
after the death of Elizabeth Barrett when he cried aloud, "I want
her! I want her!". The cold gray light of morning came creeping into
the sky. Rembrandt was fevered, restless, sleepless. He sat by the
window and watched the day unfold. And as he sat there looking out
to the east, the light of love gradually drove the darkness from his
heart. He grew strangely calm--he listened, he thought he heard the
rustle of a woman's garments; he caught the smell of her hair--he
imagined Saskia was at his elbow. He took up the palette and brushes
that for weeks had lain idle, and he outlined the "Christ at
Emmaus"--the gentle, loving, sympathetic Christ--the worn,
emaciated, thorn-crowned, bleeding Christ, whom the Pharisees
misunderstood, and the soldiers spat upon.

Don't you know how Rembrandt painted the "Christ at Emmaus"? I do. I
am that man.


Shortly after Sandro Botticelli had painted that distinctly pagan
picture, "The Birth of Venus," he equalized matters, eased
conscience and silenced the critics, by producing a beautiful
Madonna, surrounded by a circle of singing angels. Yet George Eliot
writes that there were wiseacres who shook their heads and said:
"This Madonna is the work of some good monk--only a man who is
deeply religious could put that look of exquisite tenderness and
sympathy in a woman's face. Some one is trying to save Sandro's
reputation, and win him back from his wayward ways."

In the lives of Botticelli and Rembrandt there is a close
similarity. In temperament as well as in experience they seem to
parallel each other. In boyhood Botticelli and Rembrandt were dull,
perverse, wilful. Both were given up by teachers and parents as
hopelessly handicapped by stupidity. Botticelli's father, seeing
that the boy made no progress at school, apprenticed him to a
metalworker. The lad showed the esteem in which he held his parent
by dropping the family name of Filipepi and assuming the name of
Botticelli, the name of his employer.

Rembrandt's father thought his boy might make a fair miller, but
beyond this his ambition never soared. Botticelli and Rembrandt were
splendid animals. The many pictures of Rembrandt, painted by
himself, show great physical vigor and vital power.

The picture of Botticelli, by himself, in the "Adoration of the
Magi," reveals a powerful physique and a striking personality. The
man is as fine as an Aztec, as strong and self-reliant as a cliff-
dweller. Character and habit are revealed in the jaw--the teeth of
the Aztecs were made to grind corn in the kernel, and as long as
they continued grinding dried corn in the kernel, they had good
teeth. Dentists were not required until men began to feed on mush.

Botticelli had broad, strong, square jaws, wide nostrils, full lips,
large eyes set wide apart, forehead rather low and sloping, and a
columnar neck that rose right out of his spine. A man with such a
neck can "stand punishment"--and give it. Such a neck is only seen
once in a thousand times. Men with such necks have been mothered by
women who bore burdens balanced on their heads, boycotted the
corsetier, and eschewed all deadly French heels.

Do you know the face of Oliver Goldsmith, the droop of the head, the
receding chin and the bulging forehead? Well, Botticelli's face was
the antithesis of this.

Most of the truly great artists have been men of this Stone Age--
quality men who dared. Michelangelo was the pure type: Titian who
lived a century (lacking one year) was another. Leonardo was the
same fine savage (who in some miraculous way also possessed the
grace of a courtier). Franz Hals, Van Dyck, Rembrandt and Botticelli
were all men of fierce appetites and heroic physiques. They had
animality plus that would have carried them across the century-mark,
had they not drawn checks on futurity, in a belief that their bank-
balance was unlimited.

Botticelli and Rembrandt kept step in their history, both receiving
instant recognition in early life and becoming rich. Then fashion
and society turned against them--the tide of popularity began to
ebb. One reinforced his genius with strong drink, and the other
became intoxicated with religious enthusiasm. Finally, both begged
alms in the public streets; and the bones of each filled a pauper's
grave.

Ruskin unearthed Botticelli (Just as he discovered Turner), and gave
him to the Preraphaelites, who fell down and worshiped him. Whether
we would have had Burne-Jones without Botticelli is a grave
question, and anyway it would have been another Burne-Jones. There
would have been no processions of tall, lissome, melancholy beauties
wending their way to nowhere, were it not for the "Spring." Ruskin
held up the picture, and the Preraphaelites got them to their
easels. At once all original "Botticellis" were gotten out,
"restored" and reframed. The prices doubled, trebled, quadrupled, as
the brokers scoured Europe. By the year Eighteen Hundred Eighty-six
every "Botticelli" had found a home in some public institution or
gallery, and no lure of gold could bring one forth.

At Yale University there is a modest collection of good pictures.
Among them is a "Botticelli": not a great picture like the "Crowned
Madonna" of the Uffizi, or "The Nativity" of the National Gallery,
but still a picture painted by Sandro Botticelli, beyond a doubt.
Recently, J. Pierpont Morgan, alumnus of Harvard, conceived the idea
that the "Botticelli" at Yale would look quite as well and be safer
if it were hung on the walls of the new granite fireproof Art-
Gallery at Cambridge. Accordingly, he dispatched an agent to New
Haven to buy the "Botticelli." The agent offered fifty thousand
dollars, seventy-five, one hundred--no. Then he proposed to build
Yale a new art-gallery and stock it with Pan-American pictures, all
complete, in exchange for that little, insignificant and faded
"Botticelli.". But no trade was consummated, and on the walls of
Yale the picture still hangs. Each night a cot is carried in and
placed beneath the picture. And there a watchman sleeps and dreams
of that portrait of the Duchess of Devonshire by Gainsborough,
stolen from its frame, lost for a quarter of a century, and then
rescued by one Colonel Patrick Sheedy (philanthropist and friend of
art), for a consideration, and sold to J. Pierpont Morgan, alumnus
of Harvard (and a very alert, alive and active man).


A short time ago, there shot across the artistic firmament a comet
of daring and dazzling brightness. Every comet is hurling onward to
its death: destruction is its only end: and upon each line and
tracery of the work of Aubrey Beardsley is the taint of decay.

To deny the genius of the man were vain--he had elements in his
character that made him akin to Keats, Shelley, Burns, Byron, Chopin
and Stephen Crane. With these his name will in brotherhood be
forever linked. He was one made to suffer, sin and die--a few short
summers, and autumn came with yellow leaves and he was gone. And the
principal legacy he left us is the thought of wonder as to what he
might have been had he only lived!

Aubrey Beardsley's art was the art of the ugly. His countenances are
so repulsive that they attract. The psychology of the looks, and
leers, and grins, and hot, hectic desires on the faces of his women
is a puzzle that we can not lay aside--we want to solve the riddle
of this paradox of existence--the woman whose soul is mire and whose
heart is hell. Many men have tried to fathom it at close range, but
we devise a safer plan and follow the trail in books, art and
imagination. Art shows you the thing you might have done or been.
Burke says the ugly attracts us, because we congratulate ourselves
that we are not it.

The Madonna pictures, multiplied without end, stand for peace,
faith, hope, trustfulness and love. All that is fairest, holiest,
purest, noblest, best, men have tried to portray in the face of the
Madonna. All the good that is in the hearts of all the good women
they know, all the good that is in their own hearts, they have made
to shine forth from the "Mother of God." Woman has been the symbol
of righteousness and faith.

On the other hand, it was a woman--Louise de la Ramee--who said,
"Woman is the instrument of lust." Saint Chrysostom wrote, "She is
the snare the Devil uses to lure men to their doom." I am not quite
ready to accept the dictum of that old, old story that it was the
woman who collaborated with the serpent and first introduced sin and
sorrow into the world. Or, should I believe this, I wish to give
woman due credit for giving to man the Fruit of the Tree of
Knowledge--the best gift that ever came his way. But the first
thought holds true in a poetic way: it has always been, is yet, and
always will be true, that the very depths of degradation are sounded
only by woman. As poets, painters and sculptors have ever chosen a
woman to stand for what is best in humanity, so she has posed as
their model when they wanted to reveal the worst.

This desire to depict villainy on a human face seems to have found
its highest modern exponent in Aubrey Beardsley. With him man is an
animal, and woman a beast. Aye, she is worse than a beast--she is a
vampire. Kipling's summing up of woman as "a rag and a bone and a
hank of hair" gives no clue to the possibilities in way of subtle,
reckless reaches of deviltry compared with a single, simple, outline
drawing by Beardsley. Beardsley's heroines are the kind of women who
can kill a man with a million pin-pricks, so diabolically, subtly
and slyly administered that no one but the victim would be aware of
the martyrdom--and he could not explain it.

As you enter the main gallery of statuary at the Luxembourg, you
will see, on a slightly raised platform, at the opposite end of the
room, the nude figure of a man. The mold is heroic, and the strong
pose at once attracts your attention. As you approach closer you
will see, standing behind the man, the figure of a woman. Her form
is elevated so she is leaning over him and her face is turned so her
lips are about to be pressed upon his. You approach still closer,
and a feeling of horror flashes through you--you see that the
beautiful arms of the woman end in hairy claws. The claws embrace
the man in deadly grasp, and are digging deep into his vitals. On
his face is a look of fearful pain, and every splendid muscle is
tense with awful agony.

Now, if you do as I did, you will suddenly turn and go out into the
fresh air--the fearful realism of the marble will for the moment
unnerve you.

This is the piece of statuary that gave Philip Burne-Jones the cue
for his painting, "The Vampire," which picture suggested the poem,
by the same name, to Rudyard Kipling.

Aubrey Beardsley gloated on the Vampire--she was the sole goddess of
his idolatry.

No wonder it was that the story of Salome attracted him! Salome was
a woman so wantonly depraved that Beardsley, with a touch of pious
hypocrisy, said he dared not use her for dramatic purposes, save for
the fact that she was a Bible character.

You remember the story: John the Baptist, the strong, fine youth,
came up out of the wilderness crying in the streets of Jerusalem,
"Repent ye! Repent ye!" Salome heard the call and looked upon the
semi-naked young fanatic from her window, with half-closed, catlike
eyes. She smiled, did this idle creature of luxury, as she lay there
amid the cushions on her couch, arid gazed through the casement upon
the preacher in the street. Suddenly a thought came to her! She
arose on her elbow--she called her slaves.

They clothed her in a gaudy gown, dressed her hair, and led her
forth.

Salome followed the wild, weird, religious enthusiast. She pushed
through the crowd and placed herself near the man, so the smell of
her body would reach his nostrils, and his eyes would range the
swelling lines of her body.

Their eyes met. She half-smiled and gave him that look which had
snared the soul of many another. But he only gazed at her with
passionless, judging intensity, and repeated his cry, "Repent ye,
Repent ye, for the day is at hand!"

Her reply, uttered soft and low, was this: "I would kiss thy lips!"

He turned away and she reached to seize his garment, repeating, "I
would kiss thy lips--I would kiss thy lips!" He turned aside and
forgot her, as he continued his warning cry, and went his way.

The next day she waylaid the youth again; as he came near she
suddenly and softly stepped forth and said in that same low voice,
"I would kiss thy lips!"

He repulsed her with scorn. She threw her arms about him and sought
to draw his head down near hers. He pushed her from him with sinewy
hands, sprang as from a pestilence, and was lost in the pressing
throng.

That night she danced before Herod Antipas, and when the promise was
recalled that she should have anything she wished, she named the
head of the only man who had ever turned away from her--"The head of
John the Baptist on a charger!"

In an hour the wish is gratified. Two eunuchs stand before Salome
with a silver tray bearing its fearsome burden. The woman smiles--a
smile of triumph--as she steps forth with tinkling feet. A look of
pride comes over the painted face. Her jeweled fingers reach into
the blood-matted hair. She lifts the head aloft, and the bracelets
on her brown, bare arms fall to her shoulders, making strange music.
Her face presses the face of the dead. In exultation she exclaims,
"I have kissed thy lips!"


The most famous picture by Botticelli is the "Spring," now in the
Academy at Florence. The picture has given rise to endless inquiry,
and the explanation was made in the artist's day, and is still made,
that it was painted to illustrate a certain passage in Lucretius.
This innocent little subterfuge of giving a classic turn to things
in art and literature has allowed many a man to shield his
reputation and gloss his good name. When Art relied upon the
protecting wing of the Church, the poet-painters called their risky
little things, "Susannah and the Elders," "The Wife of Uriah," or
"Pharaoh's Daughter." Lucas van Leyden once pictured a Dutch wench
with such startling and realistic fidelity that he scandalized a
whole community, until he labeled the picture, "Potiphar's Wife."

When the taste for the classics began to be cultivated, we had "Leda
and the Swan," "Psyche," "Phryne Before the Judges," "Aphrodite
Rising From the Sea," and, later, England experienced quite an
artistic eruption of Lady Godivas. Literature is filled with many
such naive little disguises as "Sonnets From the Portuguese," and
Robert Browning himself caught the idea and put many a maxim into
the mouth of another, for which he preferred not to stand sponsor.

Botticelli painted the "Spring" for Lorenzo the Magnificent, to be
placed in the Medici villa at Castello. The picture, it will be
remembered, represents seven female figures, a flying cupid, and a
youth. The youth is a young man of splendid proportions; he stands
in calm indifference with his back to the sparsely clad beauties,
and reaches into the branches of a tree for the plenteous fruit.
This youth is a composite portrait of Botticelli and his benefactor,
Lorenzo. The women were painted from life, and represent various
favorites and beauties of the court. The drawing is faulty, the
center of gravity being lost in several of the figures, and the
anatomy is of a quality that must have given a severe shock to the
artist's friend, Leonardo. Yet the grace, the movement and the
joyous quality of Spring are in it all. It is a most fascinating
picture, and we can well imagine the flutter it produced when first
exhibited four hundred years ago.

Two figures in the picture challenge attention. One of these
represents approaching maternity--a most daring thing to attempt.
This feature seems to belong to the School of Hogarth alone--a
school which, let us pray, is hopelessly dead.

Cimabue and several of his pupils painted realistic pictures
representing Mary visiting Elizabeth, but the intense religious zeal
back of them was a salt that saved from offending. Occasionally, the
staid and sober Dutch successfully attempted the same theme, and
their stolidity stood for them as religious zeal had done for the
early Italians--we pardon them simply because they knew no better
than to choose a subject that is beyond the realm of art.

The restorers and engravers have softened down Botticelli's intent,
which was originally well defined, but we can easily see that the
effect was delicate and spiritual. The woman's downcast gaze is full
of tenderness and truth. That figure when it was painted was
history, and must have had a very tender interest for two persons at
least. Had the painter dared to suggest motherhood in that other
figure--the one with the flowered raiment--he would have offended
against decency, and the art-sense of the world would have stricken
his name from the roster of fame forever, and made him anathema.
More has been written and said, and more copies made of that woman
in the flowered dress in the "Spring" than of any other portrait I
can remember, save possibly the "Mona Lisa."

The face is not without a certain attractiveness; the high cheek-
bones, the narrow forehead, and the lines above her brow show that
this is no ideal sketch--it is the portrait of a woman who once
lived. But the peculiar mark of depravity is the eye: this woman
looks at you with a cold, calm, calculating, brazen leer. Hidden in
the folds of her dress or in the coil of her hair is a stiletto--she
can find it in an instant--and as she looks at you out of those
impudent eyes, she is mentally searching out your most vulnerable
spot. In this woman's face there is an entire absence of wonder,
curiosity, modesty or passion. All that we call the eternally
feminine is obliterated.

"Mona Lisa" is infinitely wise, while this woman is only cunning.
All the lure she possesses is the lure of warm, pulsing youth--grown
old she will be a repulsive hag. Speculation has made her one of the
Borgias, for in the days of Botticelli a Borgia was Pope, and Cesare
Borgia and his court were well known to Botticelli--from such a
group he could have picked his model, if anywhere. Ruskin has linked
this unknown wicked beauty with Machiavelli. But Machiavelli had a
head that outmatched hers, and he would certainly have left her to
the fool moths that fluttered around her candle. Machiavelli used
women, and this woman has only one ambition, and that is to use men.
She represents concrete selfishness--the mother-instinct swallowed
up in pride, and conscience smothered by hate. Certainly sex is not
dead in her, but it is perverted below the brute. Her passion would
be so intense and fierce that even as she caressed her lover, with
arm about his neck, she would feel softly for his jugular, mindful
the while of the stiletto hidden in her hair. And this is the
picture that fired the brain of Aubrey Beardsley, and caused him to
fix his ambition on becoming the Apostle of the Ugly.

To liken Beardsley to Botticelli, however, seems indeed a sin. The
master was an artist, but Beardsley only gave chalk talks. His work
is often crude, rude and raw. He is only a promise, turned to dust.
Yet let the simple fact stand for what it is worth, that Beardsley
had but one god, and that was Botticelli. Most of the things
Beardsley did were ugly; many of the things Botticelli did were
supremely beautiful.

Yet in all of Botticelli's work there is a tinge of melancholy--a
shade of disappointment. The "Spring" is a sad picture. On the faces
of all his tall, fine, graceful girls there is a hectic flush. Their
cheeks are hollow, and you feel that their beauty is already
beginning to fade. Like fruit too much loved by the sun, they are
ready to fall.

Botticelli had the true love nature. By instinct he was a lover,
proof of which lies in the fact that he was deeply religious. The
woman he loved he has pictured over and over again. The touch of
sorrow is ever in her wan face, but she possessed a silken strength,
a heroic nature, a love that knew no turning. She had faith in
Botticelli, and surely he had faith in her. For forty years she was
in his heart; at times he tried to dislodge her and replace her
image with another; but he never succeeded, and the last Madonna he
drew is the same wistful, loving, patient face--sad yet proud,
strong yet infinitely tender.


In that piece of lapidary work, "How Sandro Botticelli Saw Simonetta
in the Spring," is a bit of heart psychology which, I believe, has
never been surpassed in English.

Simonetta, of the noble house of Vespucci, was betrothed to
Giuliano, brother of Lorenzo the Magnificent. Simonetta was tall,
stately--beautiful as Venus, wise as Minerva and proud as Juno. She
knew her worth, realized her beauty, and feeling her power made
others feel it, too.

On a visit to the villa of the Medici at Fiesole she first saw
Sandro Botticelli at an evening assembly in the gardens. She had
heard of the man and knew his genius. When they suddenly met face to
face under the boughs, she noted how her beauty startled him. His
gaze ranged the exquisite lines of her tall form, then sought the
burnished gold of her hair. Their eyes met.

First of all this man was an artist: the art-instinct in him was
supreme: after that he was a lover.

Simonetta saw he had looked upon her merely as a "subject." She was
both pleased and angry. She, too, loved art, but she loved love
more. She was a woman. They separated, and Simonetta inwardly
compared the sallow, slavish scion of a proud name, to whom she was
betrothed, with this God's Nobleman whom she had just met.
Giuliano's words were full of soft flattery; this man uttered an
oath of surprise under his breath, on first seeing her, and treated
her almost with rudeness.

She fought the battle out there, alone, leaning against a tree,
listening to the monotonous voice of a poet who was reading from
Plato. She felt the disinterested greatness of Sandro, she knew the
grandeur of his intellect--she was filled with a desire to be of
service to him. Certainly she did not love him--a social abyss
separated them--but could not her beauty and power in some way be
allied with his, so that the world should be made better?

"Shame is of the brute dullard who thinks shame," came the resonant
voice of the reader. The words rang in her ears. Sandro was greater
than the mere flesh--she would be, too. She would pose for him, and
thus give her beautiful body to the world--beauty is eternal! Her
action would bless and benefit the centuries yet to come. She was
the most beautiful of women--he the greatest of artists. It was an
opportunity sent from the gods! Instantly she half-ran, seeking the
painter. She found him standing apart, alone. She spoke eagerly and
hotly, fearing her courage would falter before she could make known
her wish: "Ecco, Messer Sandro," she whispered, casting a furtive
look about--"who is there in Florence like me?"

"There is no one," calmly answered Sandro.

"I will be your Lady Venus," she went on breathlessly, stepping
closer--"You shall paint me rising from the sea!"

Very early the next morning, before the household was astir, Sandro
entered the apartments of the lady Simonetta. She was awaiting him,
leaning with feigned carelessness against the balustrade, arrayed
from head to toe in a rose-colored mantle. One bare foot peeped
forth from under the folds of the robe.

Neither spoke a word.

Sandro arranged his easel, spread his crayons on the table, and
looked about the room making calculations as to light.

He motioned her to a certain spot. She took the position, and as he
picked up a crayon and examined it carelessly she raised her arms
and the robe fell at her feet.

Sandro faced her, and saw the tall, delicate form, palpitating
before him. The rays of the morning sun swept in between the
lattices and kissed her shoulder, face and hair.

For an instant the artist was in abeyance. Then from under his
breath he exclaimed: "Holy Virgin! what a line! Stay as you are, I
implore you--swerve not a hair's breadth, and soon you shall be mine
forever!"

The pencil broke under his impetuous stroke. He seized another and
worked at headlong speed. The woman watched him with eyes dilated.
She was agitated, and the pink of her fair skin came and went. Her
face grew pale, and she swayed like a reed.

All the time she watched the artist, fearfully. She was at his
mercy!

Ah God! he was only an artist with the biggest mouth in all
Florence! She noted how he tossed the hair from his eyes every
moment. She saw the heavy jaw, the great, broad-spreading feet, the
powerful chest. His smothered exclamations as he worked filled her
with scorn. What had she done? Who was she, anyway, that she should
thus bare her beauty before such a creature? He had not even spoken
to her! Was she only a thing? She grew deadly pale and reeled as she
stood there. Two big tears chased each other down her cheeks. The
painter looking up saw other tears glistening on her lashes. He
noted her distress.

He dropped his crayon and made a motion as if to advance to her
relief.

A few moments before and he might have folded her mantle about her
and assisted her to a seat--then they would have talked, reassured
each other, and been mutually understood. To be understood--to be
appreciated--that is it!

It was too late, now--she hated him.

As he advanced she recovered herself.

She pointed her finger to the door, and bade him begone.

Hastily he huddled his belongings into a parcel, and without looking
up, passed out of the door. She heard his steps echoing down the
stairway, and soon from out the lattice she saw him walk across the
court and disappear. He did not look up!

She threw herself upon her couch, buried her face in the pillows and
burst into tears.

In one short week word came to Sandro that Simonetta was dead--a
mysterious quick fever of some kind--she had refused all food--the
doctors could not understand it--the fever had just burned her life
out!

Let Maurice Hewlett tell the rest:

"They carried dead Simonetta through the streets of Florence, with
her pale face uncovered and a crown of myrtle in her hair. People
thronging there held their breath, or wept to see such still
loveliness; and her poor parted lips wore a patient little smile,
and her eyelids were pale violet and lay heavy on her cheek. White,
like a bride, with a nosegay of orange-blossoms, and syringa at her
throat, she lay there on her bed, with lightly folded hands and the
strange aloofness and preoccupation all the dead have. Only her hair
burned about her like molten copper.

"The great procession swept forward; black brothers of Misericordia,
shrouded and awful, bore the bed or stalked before it with torches
that guttered and flared sootily in the dancing light of day.

"Santa Croce, the great church, stretched forward beyond her into
the distances of gray mist and cold spaces of light. Its bare
vastness was damp like a vault. And she lay in the midst listless,
heavy-lidded, apart, with the half-smile, as it seemed, of some
secret mirth. Round her the great candles smoked and flickered, and
mass was sung at the High Altar for her soul's repose. Sandro stood
alone, facing the shining altar, but looking fixedly at Simonetta on
her couch. He was white and dry--parched lips and eyes that ached
and smarted. Was this the end? Was it possible, my God! that the
transparent, unearthly thing lying there so prone and pale was dead?
Had such loveliness aught to do with life or death? Ah! sweet lady,
dear heart, how tired she was, how deadly tired! From where he stood
he could see with intolerable anguish the somber rings around her
eyes and the violet shadows on the lids, her folded hands and the
straight, meek line to the feet. And her poor wan face with its
wistful, pitiful little smile was turned half-aside on the delicate
throat, as if in a last appeal: Leave me now, O Florentines, to my
rest. Poor child! Poor child! Sandro was on his knees with his face
pressed against the pulpit and tears running through his fingers as
he prayed.

"As he had seen her, so he painted. As at the beginning of life in a
cold world, passively meeting the long trouble of it, he painted her
a rapt Presence floating evenly to our earth. A gray, translucent
sea laps silently upon a little creek, and in the hush of a still
dawn the myrtles and sedges on the water's brim are quiet. It is a
dream in halftones that he gives us, gray and green and steely blue;
and just that, and some homely magic of his own, hint the commerce
of another world with man's discarded domain. Men and women are
asleep, and as in an early walk you may startle the hares at their
play, or see the creatures of the darkness--owls and night-hawks and
heavy moths--flit with fantastic purpose over the familiar scene, so
here it comes upon you suddenly that you have surprised Nature's
self at her mysteries; you are let into the secret; you have caught
the spirit of the April woodland as she glides over the pasture to
the copse. And that, indeed, was Sandro's fortune. He caught her in
just such a propitious hour. He saw the sweet wild thing, pure and
undefiled by touch of earth; caught her in that pregnant pause of
time ere she had lighted. Another moment and a buxom nymph of the
grove would fold her in a rosy mantle, colored as the earliest wood-
anemones are. She would vanish, we know, into the daffodils or a
bank of violets. And you might tell her presence there, or in the
rustle of the myrtles, or coo of doves mating in the pines; you
might feel her genius in the scent of the earth or the kiss of the
west wind; but you could only see her in mid-April, and you should
look for her over the sea. She always comes with the first warmth of
the year. But daily, before he painted, Sandro knelt in a dark
chapel in Santa Croce, while a priest said mass for the repose of
Simonetta's soul."


George Eliot gives many a side-glimpse of the art life of Florence
in the days of the luxury-loving Medici. She saturated herself in
Italian literature and history; and the days of Fra Angelico, Fra
Lippo Lippi and Fra Girolamo Savonarola are bodied forth from lines
deeply etched upon her heart.

When you go to Florence carry "Romola" in your side-pocket, just as
you take the "Marble Faun" to Rome. "Romola" will certainly make
history live again and pass before your gaze. The story is
unmistakably high art, for from the opening lines of the proem you
hear the slow, measured wing of death; and after you have read the
volume, forever, for you, will the smoke of martyr-fires hover about
the Piazza Signoria, and from the gates of San Marco you will see
emerge that little man in black robe and cowl--that homely,
repulsive man with the curved nose, the protruding lower lip, the
dark, leathery skin--that man who lured and fascinated by his poise
and power, whose words were whips of scorpions that stung his
enemies until they had to silence him with a rope; and as a warning
to those whom he had hypnotized, they burned his swart, shrunken
body in the public square, just as he had burned their books and
pictures.

Sandro Botticelli, the painter, who made sensuality beautiful,
ugliness seductive, and the sin-stained soul attractive, renounced
all and followed the Monk of San Marco--sensuality and asceticism at
the last are one. When the procession headed for the Piazza
Signoria, where the fagots were piled high, Sandro stood afar off
and his heart was wrung in anguish, as he saw the glare of the
flames gild the eastern sky. And this anguish was not for the
friends who had perished--no, no, it was for himself; the thought
that he was unworthy of martyrdom filled his mind--he had fallen at
the critical moment. Basely and cravenly he had saved himself. By
saving all he lost all. To lose one's self-respect is the only
calamity. Sandro Botticelli had failed to win the approval of his
Other Self--and this is defeat, and there is none other. He might
have sent his soul to God on the wings of victory, in glorious
company, but now it was too late--too late!

From this time forth he ceased to live--he merely existed. Into his
soul there occasionally shot gleams of sunshine, but his nerveless
hands refused to do the bidding of his brain. He stood on crutches,
hat in hand, at church-doors, and asked for alms. Sometimes he would
make bold to tell people of wonderful pictures within, over the
altar or upon the walls; and he would say that they were his, and
then his hearers would laugh aloud, and ask him to repeat his words,
that others, too, might laugh. Thus dwindled the passing days; and
for him who had painted the "Spring" there came the chilling neglect
of Winter, until Death in mercy laid an icy hand upon him, and he
was still.




THORSWALDSEN

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 beakhead 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 swelling sea shall
baptize it with its waters, and hang its wreaths of wet plants
around it; nor night, nor storm, nor icebergs, nor sunken rocks
shall lure it to its death, for the Good Angel that guards the boy
shall, too, guard the ship upon which with mallet and chisel he has
set his mark.
  --_Hans Christian Andersen_

[Illustration: Thorwaldsen]


The real businesslike biographer begins by telling when his subject
"first saw the light"--by which he means when the man was born. In
this instance we will go a bit further back and make note of the
interesting fact that Thorwaldsen was descended from an ancestor who
had the rare fortune to be born in Rhode Island, in the year Ten
Hundred Seven.

Wiggling, jiggling, piggling individuals with quibbling
proclivities, and an incapacity for distinguishing between fact and
truth, may maintain that there was no Rhode Island in the year Ten
Hundred Seven. Emerson has written, "Nothing is of less importance
on account of its being small." And so I maintain that, in the year
Ten Hundred Seven, Rhode Island was just where it is now, and the
Cosmos quite as important. Let Pawtucket protest and Providence bite
the thumb--no retraction will be made!

About the year Eighteen Hundred Fifteen the Secretary of the Rhode
Island Historical Society wrote Thorwaldsen, informing him that he
had been elected an honorary member of the Society, on account of
his being the only known living descendant of the first European
born in America. Thorwaldsen replied, expressing his great delight
in the honor conferred, and touched feelingly on the fact that while
he had been elected to membership in various societies in
consideration of what he had done, this was the first honor that had
come his way on account of his ancestry. To a friend he said, "How
would we ever know who we are, or where we come from, were it not
for the genealogical savants!" In a book called "American
Antiquities," now in the Library at Harvard College, and I suppose
accessible in various other libraries, there is a genealogical table
tracing the ancestry of Thorwaldsen. It seems that, in the year Ten
Hundred Six, one Thorfinne, an Icelandic whaler, commanded a ship
which traversed the broad Atlantic, and skirted the coast of New
England. Thorfinne wintered his craft in one of the little bays of
Rhode Island, and spent the Winter at Mount Hope, where the marks of
his habitat endure even unto this day.

The statement to the effect that when the Indians saw the ships of
Columbus, they cried out, "Alas, we are discovered!" goes back to a
much earlier period, like many another of Mark Twain's gladsome
scintillations. So little did Thorfinne and his hardy comrades think
of crossing the Atlantic in search of adventure, that they used to
take their families along, as though it were a picnic. And so Fate
ordered that Gudrid, the good wife of Thorfinne, should give birth
to a son, there at Mount Hope, Rhode Island, in the year Ten Hundred
Seven. And they called the baby boy Snome. And to Snome, the
American, the pedigree of Thorwaldsen traces. In a lecture on the
Icelandic Sagas, I once heard William Morris say that all really
respectable Icelanders traced their genealogy to a king, and many of
them to a god. Thorwaldsen did both--first to Harold Hildestand,
King of Denmark, and then, with the help of several kind old
gran'mamas, to the god Thor. His love for mythology was an atavism.
In childhood the good old aunties used to tell him how the god Thor
once trod the earth and shattered the mountains with his hammer.
From Thor and the World his first ancestor was born, so the family
name was Thor-vald. The appendix "sen," or son, means that the man
was the son of Thor-vald; and in some way the name got ossified,
like the name Robinson, Parkinson, Peterson or Albertson, and then
it was Thorwaldsen.

Men who are strong in their own natures are very apt to smile at the
good folk who chase the genealogical aniseed trail--it is a harmless
diversion with no game at the end of the route. And on the other
hand, all men, like Thorwaldsen, who teach cosmic consciousness,
recognize their Divine Sonship. Such men feel that their footsteps
are mortised and tenoned in granite; and the Power that holds the
worlds in space and guides the wheeling planets, also prompts their
thoughts and directs their devious way. They know that they are a
necessary part of the Whole. Small men are provincial, mediocre men
are cosmopolitan, but the great souls are Universal.


Two islands, one city and the open sea claim the honor of being the
birthplace of Bertel Thorwaldsen. The date of his birth ranges,
according to the authorities, from Seventeen Hundred Seventy to
Seventeen Hundred Seventy-three--take your choice. His father was an
Icelander who had worked his passage down to Copenhagen and had
found his stint as a wood-carver in a shipyard where it was his duty
to carve out wonderful figureheads, after designs made by others.
Gottschalk Thorwaldsen never thought to improve on a model, or
change it in any way, or to model a figurehead himself. The cold of
the North had chilled any ambition that was in his veins. Goodsooth!
Such work as designing figureheads was only for those who had been
to college, and who could read and write! So he worked away, day
after day, and with the help of the goodwife's foresight and
economy, managed to keep out of debt, pay his tithes at church and
lead a decent life.

Little Bertel used to remember when, like the Peggottys, they lived
in an abandoned canal-boat that had been tossed up on the beach.
Bertel carried chips and shavings from the shipyard for fuel, and
piled them against the "house." One night the tide came up in a very
unexpected manner and carried the chips away, for the sea is so very
hungry that it is always sending the tide in to shore after things.
It was quite a loss for the poor wood-carver and his wife to have
all their winter fuel carried away; so they cuffed little Bertel
soundly (for his own good) for not piling the chips up on the deck
of the boat, instead of leaving them on the shifting sand.

This was the first great cross that came to Bertel. He had a few
others afterwards, but he never forgot the night of anguish and the
feeling of guilt that followed the losing of the shavings and chips.

Some weeks after, another high tide came sweeping in, and lapped and
sniffed and sighed around the canal-boat as if it were trying to tug
it loose and carry the old craft and all the family out to sea.
Little Bertel hoped the tide would fetch it, for it would be kind o'
nice to get clear out away from everybody and everything--where
there were no chips to pick up. His mother could supply a quilt for
a mainsail and he would use his shirt for a jib, and they would
steer straight for America--or somewhere.

But lest the dream should come true, Gottschalk and his wife talked
the matter over and concluded to abandon the boat, before it got
sunk into the sand quite out of sight. So the family moved into a
little house on an alley, half a mile away from the shipyard--it was
an awful long way to carry chips.

The second calamity that came into the life of little Bertel was
when he was eight years old. He and several companions were playing
about the King's Market, where there was an equestrian statue of
Charles the Twelfth.

The boys climbed up on to the pedestal, cut various capers there,
and finally they challenged Bertel to mount the horse behind the
noble rider. By dint of much boosting from several boys older than
himself, he was at last perched on the horse. Then his companions
made hot haste to run away and leave him in his perilous position.
Just then, as unkind Fate would have it, a pair of gendarmes came
along on the lookout for anything that might savor of sedition,
contumacy or contravention. They found it in little Bertel clutching
tearfully to the royal person of Charles the Twelfth, twelve feet
above the ground. Quickly they rushed the lad off to the police-
station, between them, each with a firm grip upon his collar.

Victor Hugo once said, "The minions of the law go stolidly after
vice, and not finding it, they stolidly take virtue instead."

Besides an awful warning "never to do this thing again," from a
judge in a ferocious wig, the boy got a flogging at home (for his
own good), although his father first explained that it was a very
painful duty to himself to be obliged to punish his son. The son
volunteered to excuse his father, and this brought the youngster ten
extra lashes for being so smart.

Long years after, at Rome, Thorwaldsen told the story to Hans
Christian Andersen about being caught astride the great bronze horse
at Copenhagen, and of the awful reprimand of the judge bewigged.

"And honestly now: I'll never tell," said Andersen with a sly
twinkle in his blue eyes--"did you ever repeat the offense?"

"Since you promise not to divulge it, I'll confess that forty-three
years after my crime of mounting that horse, I had occasion to cross
King's Market Square at midnight. I had been out to a little social
gathering, and was on my way home alone. I saw the great horse and
rider gleaming in the pale moonlight. I recalled vividly how I had
occupied that elevated perch and been hauled down by the scandalized
and indignant officers. I remembered the warning of the judge as to
what would happen if I ever did it again. Hastily I removed my coat
and hat and clambered up on the pedestal. I seized a leg of the
royal person, and swung up behind. For five minutes I sat there
mentally defying the State, and saying unspeakable things about all
gendarmes and Copenhagen gendarmes in particular."


I have a profound respect for boys. Grimy, ragged, tousled boys in
the street often attract me strangely. A boy is a man in the cocoon
--you do not know what it is going to become--his life is big with
possibilities.

He may make or unmake kings, change boundary-lines between States,
write books that will mold characters, or invent machines that will
revolutionize the commerce of the world. Every man was a boy--I
trust I shall not be contradicted--it is really so. Wouldn't you
like to turn Time backward, and see Abraham Lincoln at twelve, when
he had never worn a pair of boots?--the lank, lean, yellow, hungry
boy--hungry for love, for learning, tramping off through the woods
for twenty miles to borrow a book, and spelling it out crouching
before the glare of the burning logs.

Then there was that Corsican boy, one of a goodly brood, who weighed
only fifty pounds when ten years old; who was thin and pale and
perverse, and had tantrums, and had to be sent supperless to bed, or
locked in a dark closet because he wouldn't "mind"! Who would have
thought that he would have mastered every phase of warfare at
twenty-six, and when told that the Exchequer of France was in dire
confusion, would say: "The finances? I will arrange them!"

Distinctly and vividly I remember a squat, freckled boy who was born
in the "Patch" and used to pick up coal along the railroad-tracks in
Buffalo. A few months ago I had a motion to make before the Court of
Appeals. That boy from the "Patch" was the judge who wrote the
opinion, granting my petition.

Yesterday I rode horseback past a field where a boy was plowing. The
lad's hair stuck out through the top of his hat; one suspender held
his trousers in place; his form was bony and awkward; his bare legs
and arms were brown and sunburned and briar-scratched. He swung his
horses around just as I passed by, and from under the flapping brim
of his hat he cast a quick glance out of dark, half-bashful eyes,
and modestly returned my salute. When his back was turned I took off
my hat and sent a God-bless-you down the furrow after him.

Who knows?--I may go to that boy to borrow money or to hear him
preach, or to beg him to defend me in a lawsuit; or he may stand
with pulse unhastened, bare of arm, in white apron, ready to do his
duty, while the cone is placed over my face, and Night and Death
come creeping into my veins. Be patient with the boys--you are
dealing with soul-stuff--Destiny awaits just around the corner. Be
patient with the boys!


Bertel Thorwaldsen was fourteen years old. He was pale and slender,
and had a sharp chin and a straight nose and hair the color of
sunburned tow. His eyes were large, set wide apart and bright blue;
and he looked out upon the world silently, with a sort o' wistful
melancholy. He helped his father carve out the wonderful figureheads
that were to pilot the ships across strange seas and bring good luck
to the owners.

"A boy like that should be sent to the Academy and taught
designing," said one of the shipowners one day as he watched the lad
at his work. Gottschalk shook his head dubiously. "How could a poor
man, with a family to support, and provisions so high, spare his boy
from work! Aye, wasn't he teaching the lad a trade himself, as it
was?"

But the shipowner fumbled his fob, and insisted, and to test the boy
he had him work with his designers. And he compromised with the
father by having Bertel sent to the Academy half a day at a time.

At the school one of the instructors remembered Bertel, on account
of his long yellow hair that hung down in his eyes when he leaned
over the desk; also his dulness in every line except drawing and
clay-modeling. The newspapers one day announced that a certain young
Master Thorwaldsen had been awarded a prize for clay-modeling.

"Is that your brother?" asked the teacher next day. "It is myself,
Herr Chaplain," replied the boy, blushing to the roots of his yellow
hair.

The Chaplain coughed to conceal his surprise. He had always thought
this boy incapable of anything. "Herr Thorwaldsen," he said,
severely, "you will please pass to the first grade!" And to be
addressed as "Herr" meant that you really were somebody. "He called
me 'Herr'!" said Bertel to his mother that night--"He called me
'Herr'!"

About this time we find the painter Abildgaard taking a special
interest in young Bertel, giving him lessons in drawing and
painting, and encouraging him in his modeling. In fact, Thorwaldsen
has himself explained that all of his "original" designs about this
time were supplied by Abildgaard. The interest of Abildgaard in the
boy was slightly resented by the young man's parents, who were
afraid that their son was getting above his station. Abildgaard has
left a record to the effect that at this time Thorwaldsen was very
self-contained, reticent, and seemingly without ambition. He used to
postpone every task, and would often shirk his duties until sharp
reminders came. Yet when he did begin, he would fall on the task
like one possessed, and finish it in an hour. This proved to
Abildgaard that the stuff was there, and down in his heart he
believed that this sleepy lad would some day awake from slumber.

Anyway, Abildgaard used to say, long years after, "What did I tell
you?" Gottschalk was paid by the piece for his carving; he was
getting better pay now, because he did better work, his employer
thought. Bertel was helping him. The family was getting quite
prosperous.


When Bertel had secured, between sleepy spells, about all the prizes
for clay-modeling and sketching that artistic Copenhagen had to
offer, he started for Rome, armed with a three-year traveling
scholarship. This prize proved to be a pivotal point. The young man
had done good work, and seemingly without effort; but he was sadly
lacking in general education--and worse, he apparently had no desire
to learn.

He was twenty-six years of age when he sailed for Rome on the good
ship "Thetis." The scholarship he had won four years before, but
through disinclination to press his claims, and the procrastination
of officialism, the matter was pigeonholed. It might have gone by
default had not Abildgaard said "Go!" and loudly.

Thorwaldsen was a sort of charity passenger on the ship--taken on
request of the owner--and it was assumed that he would make himself
useful. But the captain of the craft left him a recommendation to
the effect that "The young fellow Thorwaldsen is the laziest man I
ever saw." The ship was on a trading tour, and lingered along
various coasts and put into many harbors; so nine months went by
before Bertel Thorwaldsen found himself in the Eternal City.

"I was born March Eighth, Seventeen Hundred Ninety-seven,"
Thorwaldsen used to say. That was the day he reached Rome. Antonio
Canova, the sculptor, was then at the height of his popularity.
Thorwaldsen's first success was the model for a statue of Jason,
which was highly praised by Canova, and Bertel received the
commission to execute it in marble from Thomas Hope, a wealthy
English art patron. From this time forth, Thorwaldsen's success was
assured.

His scholarship provided only for three years' residence; but
twenty-three years were to elapse before he should again see his
childhood's home--as for his parents, he had looked into their eyes
for the last time.


The soul grows by leaps and bounds, by throes and throbs. A flash!
and a glory stands revealed for which you have been groping blindly
through the years. Well did Thorwaldsen call the day of his arrival
in Rome the day of his birth! For the first time the world seemed to
unfold before him. On the voyage thither, the captain of the
"Thetis" had offered to prepare him for his stay in Rome by teaching
him the Italian language; but the young sculptor was indifferent.
During the months he was on shipboard, he might have mastered the
language; this came back to him as he stood in the presence of Saint
Peter's, and realized that he was treading the streets once trod by
Michelangelo. He spoke only "Sailor's Latin," a composite of Danish,
Swedish, Norwegian and Icelandic. The waste of time of which he had
been guilty, and the extent of all that lay beyond, pressed home
upon him.

Of course we know that the fallow years are as good as the years of
plenty; the silent Winter prepares the soil for Spring; and we know,
too, that the sense of unworthiness and the discontent that
Thorwaldsen felt during his first few weeks at Rome were big with
promise.

The antique world was a new world to him; he knew nothing of
mythology, nothing of history, little of books. He began to thirst
for knowledge, and this being true, he drank it in. Little men spell
things out with sweat and lamp-smoke, but others there be who absorb
in the mass, read by the page, and grow great by simply letting down
their buckets.

This fair-haired descendant of a Viking bold had the usual
preliminary struggle, for the Established Order is always resentful
toward pressing youth. He worked incessantly: sketched, read,
studied, modeled, and to help out his finances copied pictures for
prosperous dealers who made it their business thus to employ
'prentice talent.

But a few years and we see Thorwaldsen occupying the studio of
Flaxman, and more than filling that strong man's place. For
specimens of Flaxman's work examine your "Wedgwood"; and then to see
Thorwaldsen's product, multiply Flaxman by one hundred. One worked
in the delicate and exquisite; the other had a taste for the heroic:
both found inspiration in the Greek.

It will not do to claim for Thorwaldsen that he was a great and
original genius. He lacked that hirsute, independent quality of
Michelangelo, and surely he lacked the Attic invention. He was
receptive as a woman, and he builded on what had been done. He moved
in the line of least resistance--made friends of Protestant and
Catholic alike; won the warm recognition of the Pope, who averred,
"Thorwaldsen is a good Catholic, only he does not know it." He kept
clear of all factions, and with a modicum more of will, might have
been a very prince of diplomats. But as it was, he evolved into a
prince of artists.


Soon after his advent in Rome, Thorwaldsen met, at the country-house
of his friend, critic and benefactor Zoega, a young woman who was
destined to have a profound influence upon his life. Anna Maria
Magnani was lady's maid and governess in the Zoega household. She
was a beautiful animal: dark, luminous, flashing eyes, hair black as
the raven's wing, and a form that palpitated with passion--a true
daughter of the warm, sun-kissed South.

The young sculptor of the yellow locks danced with the signorina at
the rustic fetes upon the lawn. She spoke no Danish, and his Italian
was exceedingly limited, but hand pressed hand and they contrived to
make themselves understood. She volunteered to give him lessons in
Italian; this went well, and then she posed for him as a model.

What should have been at best or worst a mere incident in the
artist's life ripened into something more. Intellectually and
spiritually they lived in different worlds, and in sober moments
both realized it. An arrangement was entered into of the same
quality and kind as Goethe and Christine Vulpius assumed. Only this
woman had moments of rebellion when she thirsted for social honors.
As his wife, Thorwaldsen knew that she would be a veritable dead-
weight, and he sought to loosen her grasp upon him. An offer of
marriage came to her from a man of means and social station.
Thorwaldsen favored the mating, and did what he could to hasten the
nuptials. But when the other man had actually married the girl and
carried her away, he had a sick spell to pay for it--he wasn't quite
so calloused in heart as he had believed. Like many other men,
Thorwaldsen found that such a tie is not easily broken.

Anna Maria thought she loved the man she had married, and at least
she believed she could learn to do so. Alas! after six months of
married life she packed up and came back to Rome, declaring that,
though her husband was kind and always treated her well, she would
rather be the slave and servant of Thorwaldsen than the wife of any
man on earth. The sculptor hadn't the heart to turn her away. More
properly, her will was stronger than his conscience. Perhaps he was
glad, too, that she had come back! The injured husband followed, and
Anna Maria warned the man to be gone, and emphasized the suggestion
with the gleam of a pearl-handled stiletto; and by the same token
kept all gushing females away from the Thorwaldsen preserve.

Thorwaldsen never married, and there is no doubt that his engagement
to Miss Mackenzie, a most excellent English lady, was vetoed by Anna
Maria and her pearl-handled stiletto.

One child was born to Anna Maria and Thorwaldsen--a girl, who was
legally acknowledged by Thorwaldsen as his daughter. When prosperity
came his way some years later, he deposited in the Bank of
Copenhagen a sum equal to twenty thousand dollars, with orders that
the interest should be paid to her as long as she lived.

Unlike Byron's daughter Allegra, born the same year only a few miles
away, who died young and for whose grave at Harrow the poet had
carved the touching line, "I shall go to her, but she will not
return to me," the daughter of Thorwaldsen grew up, was happily
married and bore a son who achieved considerable distinction as an
artist. Thus the sculptor's good fortune attended him, even in
circumstances that work havoc in most men's lives--he disarmed the
Furies with a smile!


Many visitors daily thronged the studio of Thorwaldsen. He had one
general reception-room containing casts of his work, and many
curious things in the line of art. His servant greeted the callers
and made them at home, expressing much regret at the absence of his
master, who was "out of the city," etc. Meanwhile, Thorwaldsen was
hard at it in a back room, to which only the elect were admitted.
The King of Bavaria, a genuine artist himself in spirit, who spent
much time in Rome, conceived a great admiration for Thorwaldsen. He
walked into the atelier where the sculptor was at work one day and
hung around his neck by a gold chain the "Cross of the Commander," a
decoration never before given to any but great military commanders.

King Louis had a very unkinglike way of doing things, and used to go
by the studio and whistle for Thorwaldsen and call to him to come
out and walk, or drive, ride or dine.

"I wish that King would go off and reign--I have work to do," cried
the sculptor rather impatiently.

Envious critics used to maintain that there were ten men in Rome who
could model as well as Thorwaldsen, "but they haven't yellow hair
that falls to their shoulders, and heaven-blue eyes with which to
snare the ladies."

The fact must be admitted that the vogue of Thorwaldsen owed much to
the remarkable social qualities of the man. His handsome face and
fine form were supplemented by a manner most gentle and winning; and
whether his half-diffident ways and habit of reticence were natural
or the triumph of art was a vexing problem that never found
solution.

He was the social rage in every salon. And his ability to do the
right thing at the right time, seemingly without premeditation, made
him a general favorite. For instance, if he attended a fete given by
the King of Bavaria, he wore just one decoration--the decoration of
Bavaria. If he attended a ball given by the French Ambassador, in
the lapel of his modest black velvet coat he wore the red ribbon
that tokens the Legion of Honor. When he visited the Villa of the
Grand Duchess Helena of Russia, he wore no jewel save the diamond-
studded star presented to him by the Czar. At the reception given by
the "English Colony" to Sir Walter Scott, the great sculptor wore a
modest thistle-blossom in his lapel, which caused Lord Elgin to
offer odds that if O'Connell should appear in Rome, Thorwaldsen
would wear a sprig of shamrock in his hat and say nothing. The
thistle caught Sir Walter, and the next day when he came to call on
the sculptor he saw a tam-o-shanter hanging on the top of an easel
and a bit of plaid scarf thrown carelessly across the corner of the
picture below. The poet and the sculptor embraced, patting each
other on the back, called each other "Brother" and smiled good-will.
But as Thorwaldsen could not speak English and Sir Walter spoke
nothing else, they merely beamed and ran the scale of adjectives,
thus: Sublimissio! Hero! Precious! Plaisir! La Grande! Delighted!
Splendide! Honorable! Then they embraced again and backed away,
waving each other good-by.

Thorwaldsen had more medals, degrees and knighthoods than Sir Walter
ever saw, but he would allow no prefix to his name. Denmark, Russia,
Germany, Italy, France and the Pope had outdone themselves in doing
him honor. All these "trifles" in the way of decorations he kept in
a specially prepared case, which was opened occasionally for the
benefit of lady visitors. "The girls like such things," said
Thorwaldsen, and smiled in apology.

Shelley found his way to Thorwaldsen's studio, and made mention that
the Master was a bit of a poseur. Byron came, and as we know, sat
for that statue which is now at Cambridge. The artist sought to
beguile the melancholy sitter with pleasant conversation, but the
author of "Don Juan" would have none of it, and when the work was
completed and unveiled before him, he exclaimed in disappointment,
"I look far more unhappy than that!"

Thorwaldsen was a musician of no mean quality, and there was always
a piano in his studio, to which he often turned for rest. When Felix
Mendelssohn was in Rome he made the sculptor's workshop his
headquarters, and sometimes the two would play "four hands," or else
Thorwaldsen would accompany the "Song Without Words" upon his
violin.

Gradually the number of the "elect" seemed to grow. It was regarded
as a great sight to see the Master at his work. And by degrees
Thorwaldsen reached a point where he could keep right along at his
task and receive his friends at the same time.

The man at his work! There is nothing finer. I have seen men homely,
uncouth and awkward when "dressed up," who were superb when at their
work. Once I saw Augustus Saint Gaudens in blouse and overalls, well
plastered with mud, standing on a ladder hard at it on an equestrian
statue, lost to everything but the task in hand--intoxicated with a
thought, working like mad to materialize an idea. The sight gave me
a thrill!--one of those very few unforgetable thrills that Time
fixes ever the more firmly in one's memory.

To gain admittance to the workroom of Thorwaldsen was a thing to
boast of: proud ladies schemed and some sought to bribe the trusty
valet; but to these the door was politely barred. Yet the servant,
servantlike, was awed by titles and nobility.

"The Duchess of Parma!" whispered the valet one day in agitation--
"the Duchess of Parma--she has followed me in and is now standing
behind you!"

Thorwaldsen could not just place the lady: he turned, bowed, and
gazed upon a stout personage who was slightly overdressed. The lady
quite abruptly stated that she had called to make arrangements to
have a statue, or a bust at least, made of herself. That Thorwaldsen
would be proud to model her features seemed quite fixed in her mind.
The artist cast her a swift glance and noted that Nature had put
small trace of the classic in the lady's modeling. He mentally
declined the commission, and muttered something about being "so
delighted and honored, but unluckily I am so very busy," etc. "My
husband desires it," continued the lady, "and so does my son, the
King of Rome--a title, I hope, that is not strange to you!"

It swept over Thorwaldsen, like a winter's wave, that this big,
brusk, bizarre woman before him was Maria Louisa, the second wife of
Napoleon. He knew her history: wedded at nineteen to Napoleon--the
mother of L'Aiglon at twenty--married again in unbecoming haste to
Count Niepperg Nobody, with whom she had been on very intimate
terms, as soon as word arrived of Napoleon's death at Saint Helena,
and now raising a goodly brood of Nobodies! The artist grew faint
before this daughter of kings who had made a mesalliance with
Genius--he excused himself and left the room.

Thorwaldsen was a hero-worshiper by nature, and Napoleon's memory
loomed large to him on the horizon of the ideal. Needless to say, he
never modeled the features of Maria Louisa Hapsburg, but her visit
fired him with a desire to make a bust of Napoleon, and the desire
materialized is ours in heroic mold.

Some time after this, Thorwaldsen designed a monument to the Duke of
Leuchtenberg, Eugene de Beauharnais, son of the Empress Josephine.

The days went in their fashion, and the Count Niepperg passed away,
as even Counts do, for Death recognizes no title; and Maria Louisa
was again experiencing the pangs of widowhood. She sent word for
Thorwaldsen to come and design the late lamented a proper tomb,
something not unlike that which he had done for the son of
Josephine--money was no object in the Hapsburg family!

Very few commissions were declined by Thorwaldsen. He was a good
businessman and often had a dozen men quietly working out his
orders, but he wrote to Maria Louisa begging to be excused--and as a
relief to his feelings, straightway modeled another bust of
Napoleon. This bust was sold to Alexander Murray, Byron's publisher,
and is now to be seen in Edinburgh. Strange, is it not, that the
home of "The Scotch Greys," tumbled by Fate and Napoleon into an
open grave, should do the Little Man honor! And Thorwaldsen, the man
of peace, was bound to the man of war by the silken thread of
sentiment.

Thorwaldsen was the true successor of Canova--his career was
inaugurated when Canova gave him his blessing. The triumphs of the
lover of Pauline Bonaparte were transferred to him. He accepted the
situation with all of its precedents.


Thorwaldsen spent forty-two years of his life at Rome, but Denmark
never lost her hold upon him during this time. The King showered him
with honors and gave him every privilege at his command.

The Danish Ambassador always had special instructions "not to
neglect the interests and welfare of our brother, Chevalier
Thorwaldsen, Artist and Sculptor to the King."

For years, in the Academy at Copenhagen, rooms were set apart for
him, and he was solicited to return and occupy them, and by his
gracious presence honor the institution that had sent him forth.
Only once, however, did he return, and then his stay was brief. But
from time to time he presented specimens of his work to his native
city, and various casts and copies of his pieces found their way to
the "Thorwaldsen Room" at the Academy; so there gradually grew up
there a "Thorwaldsen Museum."

Now the shadows were lengthening toward the east. The Master had
turned his seventieth milestone, and he began to look backward to
his boyhood's home as a place of rest, as old men do. A Commissioner
was sent by the King of Denmark with orders to use his best offices
to the end that Thorwaldsen should return; and plans were made to
evolve the Thorwaldsen Room into a complete museum.

The result of these negotiations brought about the Thorwaldsen
Museum--that plainly simple, but solidly built structure at
Copenhagen, erected by the city, from plans made by the Master. Here
are shown over two hundred large statues and bas-reliefs, copies and
originals of the best things done in that long and busy life.

Thorwaldsen left his medals, decorations, pictures, books and
thousands of drawings and sketches to this Museum--the sole property
of the municipality. The building is arranged in the form of a
square, with a court, and here the dust of the Master rests. No
artist has ever had a more fitting tomb, designed by himself,
surrounded by the creations of his hand and brain. These chant his
elegy and there he sleeps.


Good looks, courtesy and social accomplishments are factors in our
artistic career that should not be lightly waived. Thorwaldsen won
every recognition that is possible for men to win from other men--
fame, honor, wealth. In way of success he tasted all the world can
offer. He built on Winckelmann, Mengs and Canova, inspired by a
classic environment, and examples of work done by men turned to dust
centuries before. In many instances Thorwaldsen followed the letter
and failed to catch the spirit of Greece; this is not to his
discredit--who has completely succeeded in revitalizing the breath
of ancient art?

Thorwaldsen won everything but immortality. It sounds harsh, but let
us admit it; he was at best a great imitator, however noble the
objects of his imitation. A recent writer has tried to put him in
the class with "John Rogers, the Pride of America," but this is
manifestly unfair. As an artist he ranks rather with Powers, Story
and Palmer.

Never for a moment can he be compared with Saint Gaudens, or our own
French; Bartlett and Ward surpass him in general skill and fertility
of resources. All is comparative--Thorwaldsen's fame floats upon the
wave, far astern. We are making head.

We have that superb "Night," so full of tenderness and spirit, done
in tears (as all the best things are). The "Night" is not to be
spoken of without its beautiful companion-piece, the "Morning." Each
was done at a sitting, in a passion of creative energy. Yet when the
roll of all Thorwaldsen's pieces is called, we see that his fame
centers and is chiefly embodied in "The Lion of Lucerne."


I suppose it need not longer be concealed that in Switzerland you
can purchase copies and models of Thorwaldsen's "Lion of Lucerne."
Some are in marble, some in granite, some in bronze, a great many
are in wood--carved while you wait--and at my hotel in Lucerne we
used to have the noble beast on the table every morning at
breakfast, done in butter.

The reproductions are of all sizes, from heroic mold to watch-charms
and bangles. Sculptors have carved this lion, painters have painted
it, artists have sketched it, but did you ever see a reproduction of
"The Lion of Lucerne"? No, dearie, you never did, and never will. No
copy has a trace of that indefinable look of mingled pain and
patience, which even the broken spear in his side can not disturb--
that soulful, human quality which the original has. No; every copy
is a caricature. It is a risky thing to try to put love in a lion's
face!

An intelligent young woman called my attention to the fact that the
psychological conditions under which we view "The Lion" are the most
subtle and complete that man can devise; and these are the things
that add the last touch to art and cause us to stand speechless, and
which make the unbidden tears start. The little lake at the foot of
the cliff prevents a too near approach; the overhanging vines and
melancholy boughs form a dim, subduing shade; the falling water
seems like the playing of an organ in a vast cathedral; and last,
the position of the lion itself, against the solid cliff, partakes
of the miraculous. It is not set up there for people to look at: it
is a part of the mountain, and the great seams of the strata running
through the figure lend the spirit of miracle to it all. It seems as
though God Himself had done the work, and the surprise and joy of
discovery are ours as we stand uncovered before it.

One must concede the masterly framing and hanging of the picture,
but beyond all this is the technical skill, giving the look of woe
that does not tell of weakness, as woe usually does, but strength
and loyalty and death without flinching in a righteous cause:
symbolic of the Swiss Guard that died at their post, not one of the
three hundred wavering, there at the King's palace at Paris--all
dead and turned to dust a century past, and this lion, mortally
wounded, mutely pleading for our tears!

We pay the tribute.

And the reason we are moved is because we partake of the emotions of
the artist when he did the work; and the reason we are not moved by
any models or copies or imitations is because there is small feeling
in the heart of an imitator. Great art is born of feeling! In order
to do, you must feel.

If Thorwaldsen had done nothing else, "The Lion" would be monument
enough. We remember William Cullen Bryant, like Dante Gabriel
Rossetti, for one poem; Poe for three. Thoreau wrote only one essay
the world will cherish; and "keeping Ruskin's 'Sesame and Lilies'
and 'The Golden River,' we can let the rest go," says Augustine
Birrell.

Thorwaldsen paid the penalty of success. He should have tasted
exile, poverty and heartbreak--not to have known these was his
misfortune. And perhaps his best work lay in keeping alive the
classic tradition; in educating whole nations to a taste for
sculpture; in turning the attention of society from strife to art,
from war to harmony. His were the serene successes of beauty, the
triumphs of peace.




GAINSBOROUGH

If ever this nation should produce a genius sufficient to acquire
to us the honorable distinction of an English School, the name of
Gainsborough will be transmitted to posterity, in this history of
art, among the very first of that rising name.
  --_Sir Joshua Reynolds_

[Illustration: Gainsborough]


Most biographies are written with intent either to make the man a
demigod or else to damn him as a rogue who has hoodwinked the world.
Of the first-mentioned class, Weems' "Life of Washington" must ever
stand as the true type. The author is so fearful that he will not
think well of his subject that he conceals every attribute of our
common humanity, and gives us a being almost devoid of eyes, ears,
organs, dimensions, passions. Next to Weems, in point of literary
atrocity, comes John S. C. Abbott, whose life of Napoleon is a
splendid concealment of the man.

Of those who have written biographies for the sake of belittling
their subject, John Gait's "Life of Byron" occupies a conspicuous
position. But for books written for the double purpose of downing
the subject and elevating the author, Philip Thicknesse's "Life of
Gainsborough" must stand first. The book is so bad that it is
interesting, and so stupid that it will never die. Thicknesse had a
quarrel with Gainsborough, and three-fourths of the volume is given
up to a minute recital of "says he" and "says I." It is really only
an extended pamphlet written by an arch-bore with intent to get even
with his man.

The writer regards his petty affairs as of prime importance to the
world, and he shows with great care, and not a single flash of wit,
how all of Thomas Gainsborough's success in life was brought about
by Thicknesse. And then, behold! after Thicknesse had made the man
by hand, all he received for pay was ingratitude and insolence!
Thicknesse was always good, kind, unselfish and disinterested; while
Gainsborough was ungrateful, procrastinating, absurd and malicious--
this according to Thicknesse, who was on the spot and knew. Well, I
guess so!

Brock-Arnold describes Thicknesse as "a fussy, ostentatious,
irrepressible busybody, without the faintest conception of delicacy
or modesty, who seems to think he has a heaven-born right to
patronize Gainsborough, and to take charge of his affairs."

The aristocratic and pompous Thicknesse presented the painter to his
friends, and also gave much advice about how he should conduct
himself. He also loaned him a fiddle and presented him a viola da
gamba, and often invited him to dinner. For these favors
Gainsborough promised to paint a portrait of Thicknesse, but never
got beyond washing in the background. During ten years he made
thirty-seven excuses for not doing the work, and as for Mrs.
Gainsborough, she once had the temerity to hand the redoubtable
Thicknesse his cocked hat and cane and show him the door. From this,
Thicknesse is emboldened to make certain remarks about Mrs.
Gainsborough's pedigree, and to suggest that if Thomas Gainsborough
had married a different woman he might have been a different
painter. Thicknesse, throughout the book, thrusts himself into the
breach and poses as the Injured One.

On reading "the work" it is hard to believe it was written in sober,
serious earnest--it contains such an intolerable deal of Thicknesse
and so little of Gainsborough. The Mother Gamp flavor is upon every
page. Andrew Lang might have written it to show the literary style
of a disgruntled dead author.

And the curious part is that, up to Eighteen Hundred Twenty-nine,
Thicknesse held the stage, and many people took his portrait of
Gainsborough as authentic. In that year Allan Cunningham put the
great painter in his proper light, and thanks to the minute
researches of Fulcher and others, we know the man as though he had
lived yesterday.


The father of Gainsborough was a tradesman of acute instincts. He
resided at Sudbury, in Suffolk, seventy miles from London. It was a
time when every thrifty merchant lived over his place of business,
so as to be on hand when buyers came; to ward off robbers; and to
sweep the sidewalk, making all tidy before breakfast. Gainsborough
pere was fairly prosperous, but not prosperous enough to support any
of his nine children in idleness. They all worked, took a Saturday
night "tub," and went to the Independent Church in decent attire on
Sunday.

Thomas Gainsborough was the youngest of the brood, the pet of his
parents, and the pride of his big sisters, who had nursed him and
brought him up in the way he should go. In babyhood he wasn't so
very strong; but love and freedom gradually did their perfect work,
and he evolved into a tall, handsome youth of gracious manner and
pleasing countenance. All the family were sure that Tom was going to
be "somebody."

The eldest boy, John, known to the town as "Scheming Jack," had
invented a cuckoo-clock, and this led to a self-rocking cradle that
wound up with a strong spring; next he made a flying-machine; and so
clever was he that he painted signs that swung on hinges, and in
several instances essayed to put a picture of the prosperous owner
on the sign.

The second son, Humphrey, was a brilliant fellow, too. He made the
model of a steam-engine and showed it to a man by the name of Watt,
who was greatly interested in it; and when Watt afterward took out a
patent on it, Humphrey's heart was nearly broken, and it might have
been quite, but he said he had in hand half a dozen things worth
more than the steam-engine. As tangible proof of his power, he won a
prize of fifty pounds from the London Society for the Encouragement
of Art, for a mill that was to be turned by the tides of the sea.
The steam-engine would require fuel, but this tide-engine would be
turned by Nature at her own expense. In the British Museum is a
sundial made by Humphrey Gainsborough, and it must stand to his
credit that he made the original fireproof safe. From a fireproof
safe to liberal theology is but a step, and Humphrey Gainsborough
became a Dissenting Clergyman, passing rich on forty pounds a year.

The hopes of the family finally centered on Thomas. He had assisted
his brother John at the sign-painting, and had done several
creditable little things in drawing 'scutcheons on coach-doors for
the gentry. Besides all this, once, while sketching in his father's
orchard, a face cautiously appeared above the stone wall and for a
single moment studied the situation. The boy caught the features on
his palette, and transferred them to his picture. The likeness was
so perfect that it led to the execution of the thief who had been
robbing the orchard, and also the execution of that famous picture,
finished many years after, known as "Tom Peartree."

The orchard episode pleased the Gainsboroughs greatly. A family
council was held, and it was voted that Thomas must be sent to
London to study art. The girls gave up a dress apiece, the mother
retrimmed her summer bonnet for the Winter, the boys contributed,
and there came a day when Tom was duly ticketed and placed on top of
the great coach bound for London. Good-bys were waved until only a
cloud of dust was seen in the distance.

Gainsborough went to "Saint Martin's Drawing Academy" at London, and
the boys educated him. The art at the "Academy" seems to have been
very much akin to the art of the Writing Academies of America, where
learned bucolic professors used to teach us the mysteries of the
Spencerian System for a modest stipend. The humiliation of never
knowing "how to hold your pen" did much to send many budding
geniuses off on a tangent after grasshopper chirography, but those
who endured unto the end acquired the "wrist movement." They all
wrote alike. That is to say, they all wrote like the professor, who
wrote just like all Spencerian professors. So write the girls in
Melvil Dewey's Academy for Librarians, at Albany--God bless them
all!--they all write like Dewey.


Thomas Gainsborough at London seems to have haunted the theaters and
coffeehouses, and whenever there were pictures displayed, there was
Thomas to be found. To help out the expense-account, he worked at
engraving and made designs for a silversmith. The strong, receptive
nature of the boy showed itself, for he succeeded in getting a
goodly hold on the art of engraving, in a very short time. He
absorbed in the mass.

But he tired of the town--he wanted freedom, fresh air, the woods
and fields. Hogarth and Wilson were there in London, but the Academy
students never heard of them. And if Gainsborough ever listened to
Richardson's famous prophecy which inspired Hogarth and Reynolds, to
the effect that England would soon produce a great school of art, we
do not know it.

The young man grew homesick; he was doing nothing in London--no
career was open to him--he returned to Sudbury after an absence of
nearly two years. He thought it was defeat, but his family welcomed
him as a conquering hero. He was eighteen and looked twenty--tall,
strong, fair-haired, gentle in manner, gracious in speech.

Two of his sisters had married clergymen, and were happily situated
in neighboring towns; his brother Humphrey was "occupying the
pulpit," and causing certain local High Churchmen to have dreams of
things tumbling about their ears.

The sisters and mother wanted Tom to be a preacher, too--he was so
straight and handsome and fine, and his eyes were so tender and
blue!

But he preferred to paint. He painted in the woods and fields, by
streams and old mills, and got on good terms with all the flocks of
sheep and cattle in the neighborhood.

The art of landscape-painting developed from an accident. The early
Italian painters used landscape only as a background for figures.
All they pictured were men, women and children, and to bring these
out rightly they introduced scenery. Imagine a theater with scenes
set and no person on the stage, and you get the idea of landscape up
to the time of Gainsborough. Landscape! it was nothing--a blank.

Wilson first painted landscapes as backgrounds for other men to draw
portraits upon. A marine scene was made merely that a Commodore
might stand in cocked hat, a spyglass under his arm, in the
foreground, while the sun peeps over the horizon begging permission
to come up. Gradually these incomplete pictures were seen hanging in
shop-windows, but for them there was no market. They were merely
curios.

Gainsborough drew pictures of the landscape because he loved it. He
seems to be the first English artist who loved the country for its
own sake. Old bridges, winding roadways, gnarled oaks, cattle
grazing, and all the manifold beauties of quiet country life
fascinated him. He educated the collector, and educated the people
into a closer observation and study of Nature. Gainsborough stood at
the crossways of progress and pointed the way.

With Hogarth's idea that a picture should teach a lesson and have a
moral, he had no sympathy. And with Reynolds, who thought there was
nothing worth picturing but the human face, he took issue. Beauty to
him was its own excuse for being. However, in all of Gainsborough's
landscapes you find the human interest somewhere--man has not been
entirely left out. But from being the one important thing, he sinks
simply into a part of the view that lies before you. Turner's maxim,
"You can not leave man out," he annexed from Gainsborough. And
Corot's landscapes, where the dim, shadowy lovers sit on the
bankside under the great oaks--the most lovely pictures ever painted
by the hand of man--reveal the extreme evolution from a time when
the lovers occupied the center of the stage, and the landscape was
only an accessory.

And it is further interesting to note that the originator of English
landscape-painting was also a great portrait-painter, and yet he
dared paint portraits with absolutely no scenery back of them--a
thing which up to that time was done only by a man who hadn't the
ability to paint landscape. Thus do we prove Rabelais' proposition,
"The man who has a well-filled strongbox can surely afford to go
ragged."


Thomas Gainsborough, aged nineteen, was one day intently sketching
in a wood near Sudbury, when the branches suddenly parted and out
into a little open space stepped Margaret Burr. This young woman had
taken up her abode in Sudbury during the time the young man was in
London, and he had never met her, although he had probably heard her
praises sounded. Everybody around there had heard of her. She was
the handsomest woman in all Suffolk--and knew it. She lived with her
"uncle," and the gossips, who looked after these little things,
divided as to whether she was the daughter of one of the exiled
Stuarts, or the natural child of the Duke of Bedford. Anyway, she
was a true princess, in face, form and bearing, and had an income of
her own of two hundred pounds a year. Her pride was a thing so
potent that the rustic swains were chilled at the sight of her, and
the numerous suitors sighed and shot their lovesick glances from a
safe distance.

Let that pass: the branches parted and Margaret stepped out into the
open. She thought she was alone, when all at once her eyes looked
full into the eyes of the young artist--not a hundred feet away. She
was startled; she blushed, stammered and tried to apologize for the
intrusion. Her splendid self-possession had failed her for once--she
was going to flee by the way she had come. "Hold that position,
please--stand just as you are!" called the artist in a tone of
authority.

Even the proudest of women are willing to accept orders when the
time is ripe; and I am fully convinced that to be domineered over by
the right man is a thing all good women warmly desire.

Margaret Burr, the proud beauty, stood stock-still, and Thomas
Gainsborough admitted her into his landscape and his heart.

This is not a love-story, or we might begin here and extend our
booklet into a volume. Suffice it to say that within a few short
months after their first meeting the young woman, being of royal
blood, exercised her divine right and "proposed." She proposed just
as Queen Victoria did later. And then they were married--both under
twenty--and lived happily ever after.

It is a great mistake to assume that pride and a high degree of
commonsense can not go together. Margaret knew how to manage. After
a short stay in Sudbury the couple rented a cottage at Ipswich for
six pounds a year--a dovecot with three rooms. The proud beauty
would not let the place be profaned by a servant: she did all the
work herself; and if she wanted help, she called on her husband.
Base is the man who will not fetch and carry for the woman he loves.
They were accounted the handsomest and most distinguished couple in
all Sudbury; and when they attended church, there was so much
craning of necks and so many muffled exclamations of admiration,
that the clergyman made it a point not to begin the service until
they were safely seated.

They were very happy: they loved each other, and so loved life and
everything and everybody, and God's great green out-o'-doors was
their playhouse. Margaret's income was quite sufficient for their
needs, and mad ambition passed them by. Gainsborough drew pictures
and painted and sketched, and then gave his pictures away.

Music was his passion, and whenever at the concerts held round about
there the player did exceptionally well, Gainsborough would proffer
a picture in exchange for the instrument used. In this way the odd
corners of their house got filled with violins, lutes, hautboys,
kettledrums and curious stringed things that have died the death and
are now extinct. At this time, if any one had asked Gainsborough his
profession, he would have said, "I am a musician."

Fifteen years had slipped into the eternity that lies behind--"years
not lost, for we can turn the hourglass and live them all over in
sweet memory," once said Gainsborough to his wife. The constant
sketching had developed much skill in the artist's hand. Thicknesse
had come puffing alongside, and insisted out of pure friendliness on
taking the artist and wife in tow. They laughed at him behind his
back, and carried on conversation over his head, and dropped jokes
at his feet by looks and pantomime, and communicated in cipher--for
true lovers always evolve a code.

Thicknesse was sincere and serious, and surely was not wholly bad--
even Mephisto is not bad all of the time. Mrs. Gainsborough once
said she would prefer Mephisto to Thicknesse, because Mephisto had a
sense of humor. Very often they naturally referred to Thicknesse as
"Thickhead"--the joke was too obvious to let pass entirely, until
each "took the pledge," witnessed by Gainsborough's favorite
terrier, "Fox."

Thicknesse had a Summer House at Bath, and thither he insisted his
friends should go. He would vouch for them and introduce them into
the best society. He would even introduce them to Beau Nash, "the
King of Bath," and arrange to have Gainsborough do himself the honor
of painting the "King's" picture. Two daughters nearing womanhood
reminded Mr. and Mrs. Gainsborough that an increase in income would
be well; and Thicknesse promised many commissions from his friends,
the gentry.

The cheapest house they could find in Bath was fifty pounds a year.
"Do you want to go to jail?" asked Mrs. Gainsborough of her husband
when he proposed signing the lease. The worldly Thicknesse proposed
that they should take this house at fifty pounds a year, or else
take another at one hundred fifty at his expense. They decided to
risk it at the rate of fifty pounds a year for a few months, and
were duly settled.

Thicknesse was very proud of his art connections. He had but one
theme--Gainsborough! People of note began to find their way to the
studio of the painter-man in the Circus.

Gainsborough was gracious, handsome and healthy--fresh from the
country. He met all nobility on a frank equality--God had made him a
gentleman. His beautiful wife, now in her early thirties, was much
sought in local society circles.

Everybody of note who came to Bath visited Gainsborough's studio.

Garrick sat to him and played such pranks with his countenance that
each time the artist looked up from his easel he saw a new man. "You
have everybody's face but your own," said Gainsborough to Garrick,
and dismissing the man he completed the picture from memory. This
portrait and also pictures of General Honeywood, the Comedian Quin,
Lady Grosvenor, the Duke of Argyle, besides several landscapes, were
sent up to the Academy Exhibition at London.

George the Third saw them and sent word down that he wished
Gainsborough lived in London, so he could sit to him.

The carrier, Wiltshire, who packed the pictures and took them up to
London, had a passion for art that filled his heart, and he refused
to accept gold, that base and common drudge 'twixt man and man, for
his services in an art way. And so Gainsborough presented him with a
picture. In fact, during the term of years that Gainsborough lived
at Bath, he gave Wiltshire, the modest driver of an express-cart, a
dozen or more pictures and sketches. He gave him the finest picture
he ever painted: that portrait of the old Parish Clerk. Gainsborough
was not so good a judge of his own work as Wiltshire was. Wiltshire
kept all the "Gainsboroughs" he could get, reveled in them during
his long life, basked and bathed his soul in their beauty, and
dying, bequeathed them to his children.

Had Wiltshire been moved by nothing but keen, cold, worldly wisdom--
which he wasn't--he could not have done better. Even friendship,
love and beauty have their Rialto--the appraiser footed up the
Wiltshire estate at more than fifty thousand pounds.

Gainsborough found himself with more work than he could very well
care for, so he raised his prices for a "half-length" from five
pounds to forty; and for a "full-length" from ten pounds to one
hundred, in order to limit the number of his patrons. It doubled
them. His promised picture of Thicknesse was relegated behind the
door, and a check was sent the great man for five hundred pounds for
his borrowed viola da gamba and other favors.

But Thicknesse was not to be bought off. He took charge of the
studio, looked after the visitors, explaining this and that, telling
how he had discovered the artist and rescued him from obscurity,
giving scraps of his history, and presenting little impromptu
lectures on art as he had found it.

The fussy Thicknesse used to be funny to Mr. and Mrs. Gainsborough,
but now he had developed into a nuisance. To escape him, they
resolved to turn the pretty compliment of King George into a genuine
request. They packed up and moved to London.

The fifty pounds a year at Bath had seemed a great responsibility,
but when Gainsborough took Schomberg House in Pall Mall at three
hundred pounds, he boasts of his bargain. About this time "Scheming
Jack" turns up asking for a small loan to perfect a promising
scheme. The gracious brother replies that although his own expenses
are more than a thousand pounds a year, he is glad to accommodate
him, and hopes the scheme will prosper--which of course he knew it
would not, for success is a matter of red corpuscle.

Almost immediately on reaching London the Royal Academy recognized
Gainsborough's presence by electing him a member of its Council.
However, he never attended a single meeting. He did not need the
Academy. Royalty stood in line at his studio-doors, and he took his
pick of sitters. He painted five different portraits of the King,
various pictures of his children, did the rascally heir-apparent
ideally, and made a picture of Queen Charlotte that Goldsmith said
"looked like a sensible woman."

He painted portraits of his lovely wife, Richard Brinsley Sheridan,
Burke, Walpole, the dictator of Strawberry Hill, and immortalized
the hats worn by the smashing, dashing Duchess of Devonshire. One of
these pictures of Her Grace comes very close to us Americans, as it
was cut from the frame one dark, foggy night in London, sealed up in
the false bottom of a trunk and brought to New York. Here it lay for
more than twenty years, when Colonel Patricius Sheedy, connoisseur
and critic, arranged for its delivery to the heirs of the original
owners on payment of some such trifle as twenty-five thousand
dollars. This superb picture, with its romantic past, was not
destined to traverse the Atlantic again; for thanks to the
generosity of J. Pierpont Morgan, it has now found a permanent home
at Harvard College.


It is only a little way back from civilization to savagery. We live
in a wonderful time: the last twenty-five years have seen changes
that mark epochs in the onward and upward march. To mention but two,
we might name the almost complete evolution of our definition as to
what constitutes "Christianity"; and in material things, the use of
electricity, which has worked such a revolution as even Jules Verne
never conjured forth.

Americans are somewhat given to calling our country "The Land of the
Free"--as if there were no other. But the individual in England
today has greater freedom of speech and action than the individual
has in America. In every large city of America there is an extent of
petty officialism and dictation that the English people would not
for a day endure. Our policemen, following their Donnybrook
proclivities, are all armed with clubs, and allowing prenatal
influences to lead, they unlimber the motto, "Wherever you see a
head, hit it," on slight excuse. In Central Park, New York, for
instance, the citizen who "talks back" would speedily be clubbed
into silence--but try that thing in Hyde Park, London, if you
please, and see what would follow! But, thank heaven, we are working
out our salvation all the time--things are getting better, and it is
the "dissatisfied" who are making them go. Were we satisfied, there
would be no progress. During the sixty-one years of Gainsborough's
life, wondrous changes were made in the world of thought and
feeling. And the good natured but sturdy quality of such as he was
the one strong factor that worked for freedom. Gainsborough was
never a tuft-hunter: he toadied to no man, and his swinging
independence refused to see any special difference between himself
and the sleek, titled nobility. He asked no favors of the Academy,
no quarter from his rivals, no grants from royalty. This dissenting
attitude probably cost him the mate of the knighthood which went to
Sir Joshua, but behold the paradox! he was usually closer to the
throne than those who lay in wait for honors. Gainsborough sought
for nothing--he did his work, preserved the right mental attitude,
and all good things came to him.

It is a curious thing to note that while England was undergoing a
renaissance of art, and realizing a burst of freedom, Italy, that
land so long prolific in greatness, produced not a single artist who
rose above the dull and commonplace. Has Nature only just so much
genius at her disposal?

The reign of the Georges worked a blessed, bloodless revolution for
the people of England. They reigned better than they knew.
Gainsborough saw the power of the monarch transferred to the people,
and the King become the wooden figurehead of the ship, instead of
its Captain. So, thanks to the weakness of George the Third and the
short-sighted policy of Lord North, America achieved her
independence about the same time that England did hers.

Theological freedom and political freedom go hand in hand, for our
conception of Deity is always a pale reflection of our chief ruler.
Did not Thackeray say that the people of England regarded Jehovah as
an infinite George the Fourth?

Gainsborough saw Whitefield and Wesley entreating that we should go
to God direct; Howard was letting the sunshine into dark cells;
Clarkson, Sharp and Wilberforce had begun their crusade against
slavery, and their arms and arguments were to be transferred a
hundred years later to William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips and
Henry Ward Beecher, who bought "Beecher Bibles" for Old John Brown,
Osawatomie Brown, whose body, no longer needed, was hanged on a
sour-apple tree while his soul goes marching on.

In the realm of letters, Gainsborough saw changes occur no less
important than in the political field. Samuel Johnson bowled into
view, scolding and challenging the Ensconced Smug; Goldsmith scaled
the Richardson ghetto and wrote his touching and deathless verse;
Fielding's saffron comedies were produced at Drury Lane; Cowper,
nearly the same age as the artist, did his work and lapsed into
imbecility, surviving him sixteen years; Richardson became the happy
father of the English Novel; Sterne took his Sentimental Journey;
Chatterton, the meteor, flashed across the literary sky; Gray mused
in the churchyard and laid his head upon the lap of earth; Burns was
promoted from the Excise to be the idol of all Scotland. The year
that Gainsborough died, Napoleon, a slim slip of a youth seventeen
years old, was serving as a sub-lieutenant of artillery; while
Wellington had just received his first commission and was marching
zigzag, by the right oblique, to meet him eighteen miles from
Brussels on the night of a ball sung into immortality by Byron; Watt
had invented the steam-engine, thanks to Humphrey Gainsborough;
Arkwright had made his first spinning-frame; Humphrey Davy was
working at problems (with partial success) to be solved later by
Edison of Menlo Park; Lord Hastings was tried, and it was while
listening to the speech of Sheridan--the one speech of his life, the
best words of which, according to his butler, were, "My Lords, I am
done"--that Gainsborough caught his death o' cold.


Gainsborough never went abroad to study; he painted things at home,
and painted as he saw them. He never imagined he was a great artist,
so took no thought as to the future of his work. He set so little
store on his pictures that he did not think even to sign them. The
masterpiece that satisfied him was never done.

His was a happy life of work and love, with no cloud to obscure the
sun, save possibly now and then a bumptious reproof from Sir
Thicknesse or the occasional high-handed haughtiness of a Hanging
Committee. Thus passed his life in work, music, laughter and love;
but to music he ever turned for rest. He made more money than all of
his seven brothers and sisters combined, five times over, and
divided with them without stint. He educated several of his nieces
and nephews, and one nephew, Gainsborough Dupont, he adopted and
helped make an acceptable artist.

Of that peculiarly-to-be-dreaded malady, artistic jealousy,
Gainsborough had not a trace. His failure to court Sir Joshua's
smile led foolish folks to say he was jealous--not so! he was simply
able to get along without Sir Joshua, and he did. Yet he admired
Reynolds' works and admired the man, but was too wise to force any
close personal relationship.

He divided with West, the American, the favor of the Court, and with
Romney and Reynolds the favor of the town. He got his share, and
more, of all those things which the world counts worth while. The
gratitude of his heart was expressed by his life--generous, kind,
joyous--never cast down except when he thought he had spoken harshly
or acted unwisely-loyal to his friends, forgetting his enemies.

He did a deathless work, for it is a work upon which other men have
built. He prepared the way for those who were to come after.

It is a great privilege to live, to work, to feel, to endure, to
know: to realize that one is the instrument of Deity--being used by
the Maker to work out His inscrutable purposes; to see vast changes
occur in the social fabric and to know that men stop, pause and
consider: to comprehend that this world is a different place because
you have lived. Yes, it is a great privilege to live! Gainsborough
lived--he reveled in life, and filled his days to their brim, ever
and always grateful to the Unknown that had guided his hand and led
him forth upon his way.

It is a great privilege to live!




VELASQUEZ

Among the notable prophets of the new and true--Rubens, Rembrandt,
Claude Lorraine--Velasquez was the newest and certainly the truest
from our point of view. He showed us the mystery of light as God
made it.
  --_Stevenson_

[Illustration: Velasquez]


There be, among writing men, those who please the populace, and also
that Elect Few who inspire writers. When Horace Greeley gave his
daily message to the world, every editor of any power in America
paid good money for the privilege of being a subscriber to the
"Tribune." The "Tribune" had no exchange-list--if you wanted the
"Tribune" you had to buy it, and the writers bought it because it
wound up their clocks--set them agoing--and they either carefully
abstained from mentioning Greeley or else went in right valiantly
and exposed his vagaries.

Greeley may have been often right, and we now know he was often
wrong, but he infused the breath of life into his words--his
sentences were a challenge--he made men think. And the reason he
made men think was because he himself was a thinker.

Among modern literary men, the two English writers who have most
inspired writers are Carlyle and Emerson. They were writers'
writers. In the course of their work, they touched upon every phase
of man's experience and endeavor. You can not open their books
anywhere and read a page without casting about for your pencil and
pad. Strong men infuse into their work a deal of their own spirit,
and their words are charged with a suggestion and meaning beyond the
mere sound. There is a reverberation that thrills one. All art that
lives is thus vitalized with a spiritual essence: an essence that
ever escapes the analyst, but which is felt and known by all who
have hearts that throb and souls that feel.

Strong men make room for strong men. Emerson and Carlyle inspired
other men, and they inspired each other--but whether there be
warrant for that overworked reference to their "friendship" is a
question. Some other word surely ought to apply here, for their
relationship was largely a matter of the head, with a weather-eye on
Barabbas, and three thousand miles of very salt brine between them.
Carlyle never came to America: Emerson made three trips to England;
and often a year or more passed without a single letter on either
side. Tammas Carlyle, son of a stone-mason, with his crusty ways and
clay pipe, with personality plus, at close range would have been a
combination not entirely congenial to the culminating flower of
seven generations of New England clergymen--probably not more so
than was the shirt-sleeved and cravatless Walt, when they met that
memorable day by appointment at the Astor House.

Our first and last demand of Art is that it shall give us the
artist's best. Art is the mintage of the soul. All the whim, foible,
and rank personality are blown away on the winds of time--the good
remains.

Of artists who have inspired artists, and who being dead yet live,
Velasquez stands first.

"Velasquez was a painters' painter--the rest of us are only
painters." And when the man who painted "Symphonies in White"
further explained that a picture is finished when all traces of the
means used to bring about the end have disappeared--for work alone
will efface the footsteps of work--he had Velasquez in mind.


The subject of this sketch was born in the year Fifteen Hundred
Ninety-nine, and died in Sixteen Hundred Sixty. And while he lived
there also lived these: Shakespeare, Murillo, Cervantes, Rembrandt
and Rubens.

As an artist and a man Velasquez was the equal, in his way, of any
of the men just named. Ruskin has said, "Everything that Velasquez
does may be regarded as absolutely right." And Sir Joshua Reynolds
placed himself on record by saying, "The portrait of Pope Innocent
the Tenth by Velasquez, in the Doria Gallery, is the finest portrait
in all Rome." Yet until the year Seventeen Hundred Seventy-six, a
date Americans can easily remember, the work of Velasquez was
scarcely known outside of Spain. In that year Raphael Mengs wrote:
"How this painter, greater than Raphael or Titian, truer far than
Rubens or Van Dyck, should have been lost to view is more than I can
comprehend. I can not find words to describe the splendor of his
art!"

But enthusiasts who ebulliate at low temperature are plentiful. The
world wagged on in its sleepy way, and it was not until Eighteen
Hundred Twenty-eight that an Englishman, Sir David Wilkie, following
up the clue of Mengs, began quietly to buy up all the stray pictures
by Velasquez he could find in Spain. He sent them to England, and
the world one day awoke to the fact that Velasquez was one of the
greatest artists of all time. Curtis compiled a list of two hundred
seventy-four pictures by Velasquez, which he pronounces authentic.
Of these, one hundred twenty-one were owned in England, thirteen in
France, twelve in Austria and eight in Italy. At least fifteen of
the English 'oldings have since been transferred to America; so,
outside of England and Spain, America possesses more of the works of
this master than any other country. But of this be sure: no
"Velasquez" will ever leave Spain unless spirited out of the country
between two days--and if one is carried away, it will not be in the
false bottom of a trunk. Within a year one "Velasquez" was so found
secreted at Cadiz, and the owner escaped prison only by presenting
the picture, with his compliments, to the Prado Museum at Madrid.
The release of the prisoner, and the acceptance of the picture, were
both a bit irregular as a matter of jurisprudence; but I am told
that lawyers can usually arrange these little matters--Dame Justice
being blind in one eye.


There seems to have been some little discussion in the De Silva
family of Seville as to whether Diego should be a lawyer, and follow
in his father's footsteps, or become an artist and possibly a
vagrom. The father had hoped the boy would be his helper and
successor, and here the youngster was wasting his time drawing
pictures of water-jugs, baskets of flowers, old women and foolish
folk about the market!

Should it be the law-school or the studio of Herrera the painter?

To almost every fond father the idea of discipline is to have the
child act just as he does. But in this case the mother had her way,
or, more properly, she let the boy have his--as mothers do--and the
sequel shows that a woman's heart is sometimes nearer right than a
man's head.

The fact that "Velasquez" was the maiden name of his mother, and was
adopted by the young man, is a straw that tells which way the vane
of his affections turned. Diego was sixteen and troublesome. He
wasn't "bad"--only he had a rollicksome, flamboyant energy that
inundated everything, and made his absence often a blessing devoutly
to be wished. Herrera had fixed thoughts about art and deportment.
Diego failed to grasp the beauty and force of these ideas, and in
the course of a year he seems to have learned just one thing of
Herrera--to use brushes with very long handles and long bristles.
This peculiarity he clung to through life, and the way he floated
the color upon the canvas with those long, ungainly brushes, no one
understood; he really didn't know himself, and the world has long
since given up the riddle. But the scheme was Herrera's, improved
upon by Velasquez; yet not all men who paint with a brush that has a
handle eight feet long can paint like Velasquez.

In Herrera's studio there were often heated arguments as to merits
and demerits, flat contradictions as to facts, and wordy warfare
that occasionally resulted in broken furniture. On such occasions,
Herrera never hesitated to take a hand and soundly cuff a pupil's
ears, if the master thought the pupil needed it.

Velasquez has left on record the statement that Herrera was the most
dogmatic, pedantic, overbearing and quarrelsome man he ever knew.
Just what Herrera thought of the young man Velasquez, we
unfortunately do not know. But the belief is that Velasquez left
Herrera's studio on request of Herrera.

He next entered the studio of the rich and fashionable painter,
Pacheco. This man, like Macaulay, had so much learning that it ran
over and he stood in the slop. He wrote a book on painting, and
might also have carried on a Correspondence School wherein the art
of portraiture would be taught in ten easy lessons.

In Madrid and Seville are various specimens of work done by both
Herrera and Pacheco. Herrera had a certain style, and the early work
of Velasquez showed Herrera's earmarks plainly; but we look in vain
for a trace of influence that can be attributed to Pacheco.
Velasquez at eighteen could outstrip his master, and both knew it.
So Pacheco showed his good sense by letting the young man go his own
pace. He admired the dashing, handsome youth, and although Velasquez
broke every rule laid down in Pacheco's mighty tome, "Art As I Have
Found It," yet the master uttered no word of protest.

The boy was bigger than the book.

More than this, Pacheco invited the young man to come and make his
home with him, so as the better to avail himself of the master's
instruction. Now, Pacheco (like Brabantio in the play) had a
beautiful daughter--Juana by name. She was about the age of
Velasquez, gentle, refined and amiable. Love is largely a matter of
propinquity: and the world now regards Pacheco as a master
matchmaker as well as a master painter. Diego and Juana were
married, aged nineteen, and Pacheco breathed easier. He had attached
to himself the most daring and brilliant young man he had ever
known, and he had saved himself the annoyance of having his studio
thronged with a gang of suitors such as crowded the courts of
Ulysses.

Pacheco was pleased.

And why should Pacheco not have been pleased? He had linked his name
for all time with the History of Art. Had he not been the teacher
and father-in-law of Velasquez, his name would have been writ in
water, for in his own art there was not enough Attic salt to save
it; and his learning was a thing of dusty, musty books.

Pacheco's virtue consisted in recognizing the genius of Velasquez,
and hanging on to him closely, rubbing off all the glory that he
could make stick to himself.

To the day of his death Pacheco laid the flattering unction to his
soul that he had made Velasquez; but leaving this out of the
discussion, no one doubts that Velasquez plucked from oblivion the
name and fame of Pacheco.


"Those splendid blonde women of Rubens are the solaces of the
eternal fighting-man," writes Vance Thompson. The wife of Velasquez
was of the Rubens type: she looked upon her husband as the ideal.
She believed in him, ministered to him, and had no other gods before
him. She had but one ambition, and that was to serve her lord and
master.

Her faith in the man--in his power, in his integrity and in his art
--corroborated his faith in himself. We want One to believe in us,
and this being so, all else matters little.

Velasquez seems a type of the "eternal fighting-man"--not the
quarrelsome, quibbling man, who draws on slight excuse, but the man
with a message, who goes straight to his destination with a will
that breaks through every barrier, and pushes aside every obstacle.
With the savage type there is no progression: the noble red man is
content to be a noble red man all his days, and the result is that
in standing still he is retreating off the face of the earth. Not so
your "eternal fighting-man"--he is scourged by a restlessness that
allows him no rest nor respite save in his work.

Beware when a thinker and worker is let loose on the planet!

In the days of Velasquez, Spain had but two patrons for art: Royalty
and the Church.

Although nominally a Catholic, Velasquez had little sympathy with
the superstitions of the multitude. His religion was essentially a
Natural Religion: to love his friends, to bathe in the sunshine of
life, to preserve a right mental attitude--the receptive attitude,
the attitude of gratitude--and to do his work: these things were for
him the sum of life. His passion was art--to portray his feelings on
canvas and make manifest to others the things he himself saw. The
Church, he thought, did not afford sufficient outlet for his power.
Cherubs that could live only in the tropics, and wings without
muscles to manipulate them, did not mean much to him. The men and
women on earth appealed to him more than the angels in Heaven, and
he could not imagine a better paradise than this. So he painted what
he saw: old men, market-women, beggars, handsome boys and toddling
babies. These things did not appeal to prelates--they wanted
pictures of things a long way off. So from the Church Velasquez
turned his gaze toward the Court of Madrid.

Velasquez had been in the studio of Pacheco at Seville for five
years. During that time he filled the days with work--joyous, eager
work. He produced a good many valuable pictures and a great many
sketches, which were mostly given away. Yet today, Seville, with her
splendid art-gallery and her hundreds of palaces, contains not a
single specimen of the work of her greatest son.

It was a rather daring thing for a young man of twenty-four to knock
boldly at the gates of Royalty. But the application was made in
Velasquez's own way. All of his studies, which the critics
tauntingly called "tavern pieces," were a preparation for the life
and work before him. He had mastered the subtlety of the human face,
and had seen how the spirit shines through and reveals the soul.

To know how to write correctly is nothing--you must know something
worth recording. To paint is nothing--you must know what you are
portraying. Velasquez had become acquainted with humanity, and
gotten on intimate terms with life. He had haunted the waysides and
markets to good purpose; he had laid the foundation of those
qualities which characterize his best work: mastery of expression,
penetration into character, the ability to look upon a face and read
the thoughts that lurk behind, the crouching passions, and all the
aspirations too great for speech. To picture great men you must be a
great man.

Velasquez was twenty-four--dark, daring, silent, with a face and
form that proclaimed him a strong and valiant soul. Strong men can
well afford to be gentle--those who know can well cultivate silence.

The young man did not storm the doors of the Alcazar. No; at Madrid
he went quietly to work copying Titians in the gallery, and
incidentally painting portraits--Royalty must come to him. He had
faith in his power: he could wait. His wife knew the Court would
call him--he knew it, too--the Court of Spain needed Velasquez. It
is a fine thing to make yourself needed.

Nearly a year had passed, and Velasquez gave it out quietly that he
was about to return to his home in Seville. Artistic Madrid rubbed
its eyes. The Minister of State, the great Olivarez, came to him
with a commission from the King and a goodly payment in advance,
begging that, as soon as he had made a short visit to Seville, he
should return to Madrid. Apartments had already been set aside for
him in the Alcazar Palace. Would he not kindly comply?

Such a request from the King was really equal to an order. Velasquez
surely had no intention of declining the compliment, since he had
angled for it most ingeniously; but he took a little time to
consider it. Of course he talked it over with his wife and her
father, and we can imagine they had a quiet little supper by
themselves in honor of the event.

And so in the month of May, Sixteen Hundred Twenty-three, Diego de
Silva Velasquez duly became a member of the Royal Household, and
very soon was the companion, friend, adviser and attendant of the
King--that post which he was to hold for thirty-six years, ere Death
should call him hence.


"The farmer thinks that place and power are fine things, but let him
know that the President has paid dear for his White House," said the
sage of Concord.

The most miserable man I ever knew was one who married a rich woman,
managed her broad acres, looked after her bonds and made report of
her stocks. If the stocks failed to pay dividends, or the acres were
fallow, my friend had to explain why to the tearful wife and sundry
sarcastic next of kin.

The man was a Jeffersonian Democrat and preached the Life of
Simplicity, because we always preach about things that are not ours.
He rode behind horses that had docked tails, and apologized for
being on earth, to an awful butler in solemn black.

The man had married for a home--he got it. When he wanted funds for
himself, he was given dole, or else was put to the necessity of
juggling the Expense-Account.

If he wished to invite friends to his home, he had to prove them
standard-bred, morally sound in wind and limb, and free from fault
or blemish.

The good man might have lived a thoroughly happy life, with
everything supplied that he needed, but he acquired the Sanitarium
Habit, for which there is no cure but poverty. And this man could
not be poor even if he wanted to, for there were no grounds for
divorce. His wife loved him dearly, and her income of five thousand
dollars a month came along with startling regularity, willy-nilly.

Finally, at Hot Springs, Death gave him treatment and he was freed
from pain.

From this o'ertrue incident it must not be imagined that wealth and
position are bad things. Health is potential power. Wealth is an
engine that can be used for good if you are an engineer; but to be
tied to the flywheel of an engine is rather unfortunate. Had my
friend been big enough to rise supreme over horses with docked
tails, to subjugate a butler, to defy the next of kin and manage the
wife (without letting her know it), all would have been well.

But it is a Herculean task to cope with the handicap of wealth.
Mediocre men can endure failure; for, as Robert Louis the beloved
has pointed out, failure is natural, but worldly success is an
abnormal condition. In order to stand success you must be of very
stern fiber, with all the gods on your side.

The Alcazar Palace looked strong, solid and self-sufficient on the
outside. But inside, like every Court, it was a den of quibble,
quarrel, envy, and the hatred which, tinctured with fear, knocks an
anvil-chorus from day-dawn to dark.

A thousand people made up the household of Philip the Fourth. Any
one of these could be dismissed in an hour--the power of Olivarez,
the Minister, was absolute. Very naturally there were plottings and
counterplottings.

A Court is a prison to most of its inmates; no freedom is there--
thought is strangled and inspiration still-born. Yet life is always
breaking through. When locked in a cell in a Paris prison, Horace
Greeley wrote, "Thank God, at last I am free from intrusion."

"Stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage," laughed
Lovelace. Have not some of the great books of the world been written
in prison? Things work by antithesis; and if your discipline is too
severe, you get no discipline at all. Puritanical pretense,
hypocrisy and a life of repression, with "thou shalt not" set on a
hair-trigger, have made more than one man bold, genuine and honest.
Draw the bow far enough this way, and your arrow will go a long way
that. Forbid a man to think for himself or to act for himself, and
you may add the joy of piracy and the zest of smuggling to his life.
In the Spanish Court, Velasquez found life a lie, public manners an
exaggeration, etiquette a pretense, and all the emotions put up in
sealed cans. Fashionable Society is usually nothing but Canned Life.
Look out for explosions! Velasquez held the balance true by an
artistic courage and an audacity of private thought that might not
have been his in a freer atmosphere. He did not wear his art upon
his sleeve: he outwardly conformed, but inwardly his soul towered
over every petty annoyance, and all the vain power of the fearing
and quibbling little princes touched him not.


Spain, under the rule of Philip the Second, grew great. Her ships
sailed every sea--the world contributed to her wealth. Art comes
after a surplus has accumulated and the mere necessaries of life
have been provided. Philip built great palaces, founded schools,
gave encouragement to the handicrafts, and sent his embassies
scouring the world for the treasures of Art. The King was a
practical man, blunt, farseeing, direct. He knew the cost of things,
studied out the best ways, ascertained right methods. He had the red
corpuscle, the deep convolution, and so was King. His ministers did
his bidding.

The grim sarcasm of entailed power is a thing so obvious that one
marvels it has escaped the recognition of mankind until yesterday.
But stay! Men have always seen its monstrous absurdity--hence the
rack.

The Spanish Inquisition, in which Church and State combined against
God, seems an awful extreme to show the depths of iniquity to which
Pride married to Hypocrisy can sink. Yet martyrdom has its
compensation. The spirit flies home upon the wings of victory, and
in the very moment of so-called defeat, the man has the blessed
consolation that he is still master of his fate--captain of his
soul.

The lesson of the Inquisition was worth the price--the martyrs
bought freedom for us. The fanged dogs of war, once turned loose
upon the man who dared to think, have left as sole successor only a
fat and harmless poodle, known as Social Ostracism. This poodle is
old, toothless and given over to introspection; it has to be fed on
pap; its only exercise is to exploit the horse-blocks, doze in
milady's lap, and dream of a long-lost canine paradise. The dog-
catcher awaits around the corner.

Philip the Third was an etiolated and perfumed dandy. In him culture
had begun to turn yellow. Men who pride themselves upon their
culture haven't any of which to speak. All the beauties of art, this
man thought, were exclusively for him and his precious company of
lisping exquisites and giggling, mincing queans. The thought that
those who create beauty are also they who possess it, never dawned
upon this crack-pated son of tired sheets.

He lived to enjoy--and so he never enjoyed anything.

Surfeit and satiety overtook him in the royal hog-wallow; digestion
and zest took flight. Philip the Third speedily became a wooden
Indian on wheels, moved by his Minister of State, the Duke of Lerma.

Huge animals sustain huge parasites, and so the Court of Philip the
Third, with its fools, dwarfs, idiots and all of its dancing,
jiggling, juggling, wasteful folly, did not succeed in wrecking the
land. When Philip the Third traveled, he sent hundreds of men ahead
to beat the swamps, day and night, in the vicinity of his royal
presence, so as to silence the frogs. He thought their croaking was
a personal matter meant for him.

I think he was right.

How the Lords of Death must chuckle in defiant glee when they send
malaria and night into the palaces of the great through cracks and
crevices! Philip's bloated, unkingly body became full of disease and
pain; lingering unrest racked him; the unseen demons he could not
exorcise, danced on his bed, wrenched his members and played mad
havoc with each quivering nerve. And so he died. Then comes Philip
the Fourth, immortal through his forty portraits painted by
Velasquez. Philip was only fourteen when his father died. He was a
rareripe, and showed strength and decision far beyond his years. His
grandfather, Philip the Second, was his ideal, and he let it be
known right speedily that his reign was to be one of moderation and
simplicity, modeled along the lines of Philip the Great.

The Duke of Lerma, Minister of State, who had so long been the
actual ruler of Spain, was deposed, and into his place slipped the
suave and handsome Olivarez, Gentleman-in-Waiting to the young King.

Olivarez was from Seville, and had known the family of Velasquez. It
was through his influence that Diego so soon got the nod of Royalty.
The King was eighteen, Velasquez was twenty-four, and Olivarez not
much older--all boys together. And the fact that Velasquez secured
the appointment of Court Painter with such ease was probably owing
to his dashing horsemanship, as much as to his being a skilful
painter.

At Harvard once I saw a determined effort made to place a famous
"right tackle" in the chair of Assistant Professor of Rhetoric. The
plan was only given over with great reluctance, when it was
discovered that the "right tackle" was beautifully ignorant of the
subject he would have to tackle. Even then it was argued he could
"cram"--keeping one lesson in advance of his class.

But Olivarez knew Velasquez could paint, and the artist's handsome
face, stalwart frame and fearless riding did the rest. The young
King was considered the best horseman in Madrid: Velasquez and
Olivarez took pains never to outdo him in the joust.

The biography of Olivarez as a study of life is a better subject far
than either the life of Velasquez or the King. Their lives were too
successful to be interesting. Olivarez is a fine example of a man
growing great through exercise. Read history and behold how
commonplace men have often had greatness thrust upon them and met
the issue. I have seen an absurd Class B lawyer elevated into a
judgeship, and rise to the level of events, keeping silence, looking
wise, hugging his dignity hard, until there came a time when the
dignity really was a fair fit. Trotters often need toe-weights to
give them ballast and balance--so do men need responsibility. We
have had at least three commonplace men for President of the United
States, who live in history as adequately great--and they were.
Various and sundry good folk will here arise and say the germ of
greatness was in these men all the time, awaiting the opportunity to
unfold. And the answer is correct, right and proper; but a codicil
should then be added to the effect that the germ of greatness is in
every man, but we fall victims of arrested development, and success
or society, like a worm i' the bud, feeds on our damask cheek.

Philip was nipped in the bud by falling into the protecting shadow
of Olivarez. The Prime Minister provided boar-hunts and tourneys and
masquerades and fetes. Philip's life of simplicity faded off into
dressing in black--all else went on as before. Philip glided into
the line of least resistance and signed every paper that he was told
to sign by his gracious, winning, inflexible Minister--the true type
of the iron hand in the velvet glove. From his twentieth year, after
that first little flurry of pretended power, the novelty of ruling
wore away; and for more than forty years he never either vetoed an
act or initiated one. His ministers arranged his recreations, his
gallantries, his hours of sleep. He was ruled and never knew it, and
here the Richelieu-like Olivarez showed his power. It was anything
to keep the King from thinking, and Spain, the Mother of
Magnificence, went drifting to her death.

There were already three Court Painters when Velasquez received his
appointment. They were Italians appointed by Philip the Third. Their
heads were full of tradition and precedent, and they painted like
their masters, who had been pupils of men who had worked with
Titian--beautiful attenuations three times reduced. We only know
their names now because they raised a pretty chorus of protest when
Velasquez appeared at the palace. They worked all the wires they
knew to bring about his downfall, and then dwindled away into
chronic Artistic Jealousy, which finally struck in; and they were
buried. That the plots, challenges and constant knockings of these
underling court painters ever affected Velasquez, we can not see. He
swung right along at prodigious strides, living his own life--a life
outside and beyond all the pretense and vanity of place and power.

The King came by a secret passage daily to the studio to watch
Velasquez work. There was always a chair for him, and the King even
had an easel and sets of brushes and palette with which he played at
painting. Pacheco, who had come up to Madrid and buzzed 

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