A Popular Handbook to the National Gallery, Volume I, Foreign Schools. National Gallery (Great Britain)
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СКАЧАТЬ with thus much of nature in your mind, go to Gaspard Poussin's 'View near Albano.' It is the very subject to unite all these effects, a sloping bank shaded with intertwined forest. And what has Gaspard given us? A mass of smooth, opaque, varnished brown, without one interstice, one change of hue, or any vestige of leafy structure, in its interior, or in those parts of it, I should say, which are intended to represent interior; but out of it, over it rather, at regular intervals, we have circular groups of greenish touches, always the same in size, shape, and distance from each other, containing so exactly the same number of touches each, that you cannot tell one from another. There are eight or nine and thirty of them, laid over each other like fish-scales; the shade being most carefully made darker and darker as it recedes from each until it comes to the edge of the next, against which it cuts in the same sharp circular line, and then begins to decline again, until the canvas is covered with about as much intelligence or feeling of art as a house-painter has in marbling a wainscot, or a weaver in repeating an ornamental pattern. What is there in this, which the most determined prejudice in favour of the old masters can for a moment suppose to resemble trees? It is exactly what the most ignorant beginner, trying to make a complete drawing, would lay down; exactly the conception of trees which we have in the works of our worst drawing-masters, where the shade is laid on with the black lead and stump, and every human power exerted to make it look like a kitchen grate well polished"89 (Modern Painters, vol. i. pt. ii. sec. vi. ch. i. §§ 16-19).

      A further "untruth of vegetation" is the perpetration of the bough at the left-hand upper corner. This is —

      "a representation of an ornamental group of elephants' tusks, with feathers tied to the end of them. Not the wildest imagination could ever conjure up in it the remotest resemblance to the bough of a tree. It might be the claws of a witch, the talons of an eagle, the horns of a fiend; but it is a full assemblage of every conceivable falsehood which can be told respecting foliage, a piece of work so barbarous in every way, that one glance at it ought to prove the complete charlatanism and trickery of the whole system of the old landscape painters" (ibid., § 7).

      69. ST. JOHN PREACHING IN THE WILDERNESS

Pietro Francesco Mola (Eclectic-Bologna: 1612-1668).

      Mola, a native of Milan, and the son of an architect, studied first at Rome and Venice, but afterwards at Bologna – returning ultimately to Rome, where he held the office of President of the Academy of St. Luke. "There is," says Sir Frederic Burton, "a certain idyllic character in Mola's works which renders them extremely attractive and of more artistic value than the majority of works produced in his day."

      The wild figure of the Baptist is well contrasted with the turbaned Pharisee and the rest of his audience: —

      The last, and greatest, herald of Heav'n's King,

      Girt with rough skins, hies to the desert wild:

      There burst he forth – "All ye whose hopes rely

      On God! with me amidst these deserts mourn;

      Repent! repent! and from old errors turn."

      Who listen'd to his voice, obey'd his cry?

      Only the echoes, which he made relent,

      Rung from their flinty caves – Repent! – repent!

Drummond of Hawthornden: Flowers of Zion.

      The preacher places his right hand on his heart as if to attest his own sincerity, while with his left he points to the Saviour, who is seen approaching in the distance: "This is he of whom I said, After me cometh a man which is preferred before me, for he was before me."

      70. CORNELIA AND HER JEWELS

Padovanino (Venetian: 1590-1650).

      Alessandro Varotari was born at Padua, from which town he derived the name by which he is generally known. He was the son of a Veronese painter, but went early to Venice, where he became a student and imitator of the works of Titian and Paolo Veronese. His masterpiece is the "Marriage at Cana" in the Academy at Venice. He painted children well, and often introduced them into his pictures.

      Cornelia, a noble Roman lady, daughter of the elder Scipio Africanus, and mother of the Gracchi, was visited by a friend, who ostentatiously exhibited her jewels. Cornelia being asked to show hers in turn, pointed to her two sons, just then returning from school, and said, "These are my jewels."

      71. A PARTY OF MULETEERS

Jan Both (Dutch: 1610-1662).

      Jan Both, born at Utrecht, was one of the first "Italianisers" in landscape. He was the son of a glass painter, who gave him his first lessons in drawing; he afterwards became the pupil of Abraham Bloemaert. As soon as he was old enough to travel, he set out with his brother Andries for Italy. Unlike Rubens, who even at Genoa painted only the Netherlands, Both adopted Italian scenery as his subject. At Rome he formed his style on that of Claude. The two brothers travelled, studied, and worked in Italy together. Jan excelled in landscape; the figures and cattle in his pictures were generally sketched by Andries. After some years at Rome, the brothers worked for a time at Venice; here Andries, having dined one evening not wisely but too well, fell from his gondola into the water and was drowned. This was a terrible blow to Jan, who returned to Utrecht in despair, where he survived his brother for some years, during which Poelenburgh took the place of Andries (see No. 209). In the year 1649 Jan was one of the chiefs of the Painters' Guild at Utrecht, and the inscription on an engraved portrait of him published in 1662 speaks of him as a "good and well-respected landscape painter." Both loved to paint abruptly-rising rocks, with mountain paths fringed with trees, and cascades or lakes in the foreground. His best works are distinguished by the soft golden tones of the declining day. Several good examples of this master are to be seen at the Dulwich Gallery.

      A reminiscence, doubtless, of one of Both's journeys in the Italian lake district. One may recall the reminiscence of Italy by another northern traveller —

      Know'st thou the mountain bridge that hangs on cloud?

      The mules in mist grope o'er the torrent loud,

      In caves lie coil'd the dragon's ancient brood,

      The crag leaps down and over it the flood:

      Know'st thou it, then?

      'Tis there! 'tis there

      Our way runs; O my father, wilt thou go?

Mignon's song in Wilhelm Meister: Carlyle's translation.

      72. LANDSCAPE WITH TOBIAS AND THE ANGEL

Rembrandt (Dutch: 1606-1669). See 45.

      73. THE CONVERSION OF ST. PAUL

Ascribed to Ercole di Giulio Grandi (Ferrarese: died 1531).

      The confused character of this picture is sufficiently shown by the fact that whilst the official designation is as above, other critics have called it the "Destruction of Sennacherib." For a masterpiece by Ercole, see 1119. The ascription to him of this inferior work is decidedly doubtful.

      74. A SPANISH PEASANT BOY

Murillo (Spanish: 1618-1682). See 13.

      Look at this and the other little boy near it (176), and you will see at once the secret of Murillo's popularity. "In a country like Spain he became easily the favourite of the crowd. He was one of themselves, and had all the gifts they valued. Not like Velazquez, reproducing by choice only the noble and dignified side of the national character, Murillo could paint to perfection either the precocious СКАЧАТЬ

<p>89</p>

See also No. 98, in which the tree is said by Ruskin to be "a mere jest" compared to this.