A Popular Handbook to the National Gallery, Volume I, Foreign Schools. National Gallery (Great Britain)

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СКАЧАТЬ Blenheim pictures is more open to exception; but if the price was unprecedented, so also was the sale of so superb a Raphael in the present day unprecedented.

       Features of the Collection.– The result of the expenditure with which successive Parliaments have thus supplemented private gifts has been to raise the National Gallery to a position second to that of no single collection in the world. The number of pictures now on view in Trafalgar Square, exclusive of the water-colours, is about 1600.10 This number is very much smaller than that of the galleries at Dresden, Madrid, and Paris – the three largest in the world. On the other hand no foreign gallery has been so carefully acquired, or so wisely weeded, as ours. An Act was passed in 1856 authorising the sale of unsuitable works, whilst another passed in 1883 sanctioned the thinning of the Gallery in favour of Provincial collections. There are still many serious gaps. In the Italian School we have no work by Masaccio – the first of the naturalisers in landscape; only one doubtful example of Palma Vecchio, the greatest of the Bergamese painters; no first-rate portrait by Tintoret. The French School is little represented – an omission which is, however, splendidly supplied in the Wallace Collection at Hertford House, now the property of the nation. In the National Gallery itself there is no picture by "the incomparable Watteau," the "prince of Court painters." The specimens of the Spanish School are few in number, though Velazquez is now finely represented; whilst amongst the old masters of our own British School there are many gaps for some future Vernon or Tate to fill up. But on the other hand we can set against these deficiencies many painters who, and even schools which, can nowhere – in one place – be so well studied as in Trafalgar Square. The works of Crivelli – one of the quaintest and most charming of the earlier Venetians – which hang together in one room; the works of the Brescian School, including those of its splendid portrait painters – Moroni and Il Moretto; the series of Raphaels, showing each of his successive styles; and in the English School the unrivalled and incomparable collection of Turners, – are amongst the particular glories of the National Collection. Historically the collection is remarkably instructive. This is a point which successive Directors have, on the recommendation of Royal Commissions, kept steadily in view; and which has been very clearly shown since the successive re-arrangements of the Gallery after the extension in 1887.

      Scope of the Handbook.– It is in order to help visitors to take full advantage of the opportunities thus afforded for historical study that I have furnished some general introductions to the various Schools of Painting represented in the National Gallery. With regard to the notes in the Numerical Catalogue, my object has been to interest the daily increasing numbers of the general public who visit the National Gallery. The full inventories and other details, which are necessary for the identification of pictures, and which are most admirably given in the (unabridged) Official Catalogue – would obviously be out of place in a book designed for popular use. Nor, secondly, would any elaborate technical criticism have been in keeping – even had it been in my power to offer it – with a guide intended for unprofessional readers. C. R. Leslie, the father of the present Academician, tells how he "spoke one day to Stothard of his touching picture of a sailor taking leave of his wife or sweetheart. 'I am glad you like it, sir,' said Stothard; 'it was painted with japanner's gold size.'" I have been mainly concerned with the sentiment of the pictures, and have for the most part left the "japanner's gold size" alone.

      Mr. Ruskin's Notes.– It had often occurred to me, as a student of Mr. Ruskin's writings, that a collection of his scattered notes upon painters and pictures now in the National Gallery would be of great value. I applied to Mr. Ruskin in the matter, and he readily permitted me to make what use I liked of any, or all, of his writings. The generosity of this permission, which was supplemented by constant encouragement and counsel, makes me the more anxious to explain clearly the limits of his responsibility for the book. He did not attempt to revise, or correct, either my gleanings from his own books, or the notes added by myself from other sources. Beyond his general permission to me to reprint his past writings, Mr. Ruskin had, therefore, no responsibility for this compilation whatever. I should more particularly state that the pages upon the Turner Gallery in the Second Volume were not even glanced at by him. The criticisms from his books there collected represent, therefore, solely his attitude to Turner at the time they were severally written. But, subject to this deduction, the passages from Ruskin arranged throughout the following pages will, I hope, enable the Handbook to serve a second purpose. Any student who goes through the Gallery under Ruskin's guidance – even at second-hand – can hardly fail to obtain some insight into the system of art-teaching embodied in his works. The full exposition of that system must still be studied in the original text-books, but here the reader may find a series of examples and illustrations which will perhaps make the study more vivid and actual.

       Attribution of Pictures.– In the matter of attributions, the rule, in the successive editions of this Handbook, has been to follow the authority of the Official Labels and Catalogues. Criticism has been very busy of late years with the traditional attribution of pictures in our Gallery, and successive Directors introduce their several, and sometimes contradictory, opinions on such points. Thus more than One Old Master hitherto supposed to be represented in the Gallery has been banished, and others, whose fame had not previously been bruited abroad, have been credited with familiar masterpieces. Thus – to notice some of the changes made by Sir Edward Poynter (Catalogue of 1906) – among the Venetians, Bastiani and Catena have come into favour. To Bastiani was given the picture of "The Doge Giovanni Mocenigo" (750) which for forty years has been exhibited as a work by Carpaccio; that charming painter now disappears from the National Gallery. To Catena is attributed the "St. Jerome" (694), which for several decades had been cited as peculiarly characteristic of Bellini. To Catena also is given the "Warrior in Adoration" (234). In this case Catena's gain is Giorgione's loss. But elsewhere Giorgione has received compensation for disturbance. To him has been given the "Adoration of the Magi" (1160), which some critics attributed to Catena. The beautiful "Ecce Homo" (1310), which was sold as a Carlo Dolci and bought by Sir Frederick Burton as a Bellini, was ascribed by Sir Edward Poynter to Cima. One of the minor Venetians – Basaiti, who enjoyed a high reputation at the National Gallery – was deprived of the pretty "Madonna of the Meadow" (599), which went to swell the opulent record of Bellini. Among the Florentines, a newcomer is Zenobio Macchiavelli, to whom is attributed an altar-piece (586) formerly catalogued under the name of Fra Filippo Lippi. Cosimo Rosselli, hitherto credited with a large "St. Jerome in the Desert" (227), now disappears; it was labelled "Tuscan School," and was any one's picture. The attribution of pictures belonging to the group of the two Lippis and Botticelli is still very uncertain. A note on these critical diversities will be found under No. 293. Among alterations in other schools we may note the substitution of Zurbaran for Velazquez as the painter of "The Nativity," No. 232; the attribution to Patinir, the Fleming, of a landscape formerly labelled "Venetian School" (1298); and the discovery of Jacob van Oost as the painter of a charming "Portrait of a Boy" (1137), which, but for an impossibility in the dates, might well continue to pass as Isaac van Ostade's.

      Such were the principal changes made in the ascriptions of the pictures during Sir Edward Poynter's directorate. His successor, Sir Charles Holroyd, has recently made many others, as shown in the following list:

      97 (P. Veronese), now described as "after Veronese."

      215, 216 (School of T. Gaddi), now assigned to Lorenzo Monaco (see 1897).

      227 (Florentine School), now assigned to Francesco Botticini (a Tuscan painter of the 15th century).

      276 (School of Giotto), now assigned to Spinello Aretino; for whom, see 581.

      296 (Florentine School), now assigned to Verrocchio; see below, p. 262.

      568 (School of Giotto), now assigned to Angelo di Taddeo Gaddi, a pupil of Giotto's chief disciple, Taddeo Gaddi (for whom, see p. 211).

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