A Popular Handbook to the National Gallery, Volume I, Foreign Schools

221. HIS OWN PORTRAIT

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

Compare No. 672. That was painted when he was about thirty; this, some thirty years later. We see here the same features, though worn by age; the same self-reliant expression, though broken down by care. "In manner," says Sir Walter Armstrong, "it is amazingly free, irresponsible, and what in any one but a stupendous master we should call careless. It looks as though he had taken up the first dirty palette on which he could lay his hands, and set himself to the making of a picture with no further thought. To those who put signs of mastery above all other qualities, it is one of the most attractive pictures in the whole Gallery" (Portfolio, September 1891).

222. A MAN'S PORTRAIT (dated 1433)

Jan van Eyck (Early Flemish: about 1390-1440). See 186. See also (p. xxi)

One of Van Eyck's obviously truthful portraits, so highly finished that the single hairs on the shaven chin are given. On the upper part of the frame is the inscription, "Als ich kan" – as I can, the first words of an old Flemish proverb, "As I can, but not as I will," – an inscription beautifully illustrative of a great man's modesty; accurately true also as a piece of criticism. No pictures are more finished than Van Eyck's, yet they are only "as he can," not as he would. "Let all the ingenuity and all the art of the human race he brought to bear upon the attainment of the utmost possible finish, and they could not do what is done in the foot of a fly, or the film of a bubble. God alone can finish; and the more intelligent the human mind becomes, the more the infiniteness of interval is felt between human and divine work in this respect" (Modern Painters, vol. iii. pt iv. ch. ix. § 5).

223. DUTCH SHIPPING

Bakhuizen (Dutch: 1631-1708). See 204.

224. THE TRIBUTE MONEY

School of Titian. See under 4.

The Pharisee, hoping to entrap Jesus into sedition, asks him whether it is lawful to give tribute unto Cæsar. "Show me the tribute money" is the answer. "Whose is this image and superscription?.. Render unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's, and unto God the things that are God's." Titian's great picture of this subject (painted about 1514) is at Dresden.

225. BEATIFIC VISION OF THE MAGDALEN

Giulio Romano (Roman: 1498-1546). See 624.

A semicircular fresco (formerly in the church of the Trinita de' Monti, Rome), showing the Magdalen borne upwards by angels to witness the joys of the blessed.

226. VIRGIN AND CHILD, WITH ST. JOHN AND ANGELS

School of Botticelli (1447-1510). See 1034.

This is a copy of a picture by Botticelli in the Rospigliosi Palace at Rome. In the background is a hedge of roses, Botticelli's favourite flower. "No man has ever yet drawn, and none is likely to draw for many a day, roses as well as Sandro has drawn them" (Fors Clavigera, 1872, xii. 2). And he painted them, just as he painted his Madonnas, from life, and from everyday life – for even as late as forty years ago, Florence was "yet encircled by a wilderness of wild rose." It should be noticed, further, that there was a constant Biblical reference in the flowers which the painters consecrated to their Madonnas – especially the rose, the emblem of love and beauty. The background in Madonna pictures is frequently, as here, a piece of garden trellis: "a garden enclosed is my sister, my spouse" (Song of Solomon, iv. 12).

227. ST. JEROME IN THE DESERT

Florentine School (15th century). See also (p. xix)

Kneeling below are Girolamo Rucellai and his son. The arms of the Rucellai family are at each end of the predella. The picture was originally an altar-piece in the Rucellai Chapel in the church of the Eremiti di San Girolamo at Fiesole. Formerly ascribed to Cosimo Rosselli, the picture is now conjecturally attributed to Botticini (for whom see under 1126).

St. Jerome (A.D. 342-420) who first made the great Eastern book, the Bible, legible in the West, by translating the Hebrew into Latin, was one of the chief saints of the Latin or Western Church, and was a favourite subject in Christian art; there are a dozen pictures of him in the National Gallery alone. One of the chief events in his life is told in the left-hand compartment at the bottom of this picture. Jerome is tending a sick lion, and in all the pictures of him a lion appears as his constant companion. The story is that one evening a lion entered the monastery, limping as in pain, and all the brethren fled in terror, as we see one of them doing here, whilst the others are looking on safely behind a door; but Jerome went forward to meet the lion, as though he had been a guest. And the lion lifted up his paw, and Jerome, finding it was wounded by a thorn, tended the wild creature, which henceforward became his constant companion and friend. What did the Christian painters mean by their fond insistence on the constancy of the lion-friend? They meant to foretell a day "when the Fear of Man shall be laid in benediction, not enmity, on inferior beings, – when they shall not hurt or destroy in all the holy Mountain, and the Peace of the Earth shall be as far removed from its present sorrow, as the present gloriously animate universe from the nascent desert, whose deeps were the place of dragons, and its mountains, domes of fire. Of that day knoweth no man; but the Kingdom of God is already come to those who have tamed in their own hearts what was rampant of the lower nature, and have learned to cherish what is lovely and human, in the wandering children of the clouds and fields" (Bible of Amiens, ch. iii. § 54). The other compartments depict incidents in the lives of St. Damasus, St. Eusebius, St. Paula, and St. Eustache – saints associated with St. Jerome. The picture itself shows an earlier period of his life, when, before he settled in a monastery, but after a life of pleasure in Rome, he left (as he himself tells us) not only parents and kindred, but the accustomed luxuries of delicate life, and lived for ten years in the desert in the effort to obtain some closer knowledge of the Being and Will of God. The saints who are made by the painter to keep St. Jerome company below are in sorrow; the angels above, in joy. The other kneeling figures are portraits of the patron for whom the the picture was painted.

228. CHRIST AND THE MONEY-CHANGERS

Bassano (Venetian: 1510-1592). See 173.

Christ is driving out from the House of Prayer all those who had made it a den of thieves – money-changers, dealers in cattle, sheep, goats, birds, etc. A subject which lent itself conveniently to Bassano's characteristic genre style.

230. A FRANCISCAN MONK

Francisco Zurbaran (Spanish: 1598-1662).

Zurbaran – the contemporary of Velazquez – unites in a typical manner the two main characteristics of the Spanish School – asceticism in subject, realism in presentment. He is, says Stirling-Maxwell, the peculiar painter of monks, as Raphael is of Madonnas, and Ribera of martyrdoms; he studied the Spanish friar, and painted him with as high a relish as Titian painted the Venetian noble, and Vandyck the gentleman of England. In the Museum of Seville are several pictures which he painted for the Carthusians of that city. "The venerable friars seem portraits; each differs in feature from the other, yet all bear the impress of long years of solitary and silent penance; their white draperies chill the eye, as their cold hopeless faces chill the heart; and the whole scene is brought before us with a vivid fidelity, which shows that Zurbaran studied the Carthusian in his native cloisters with the like close and faithful attention that Velazquez bestowed on the courtier, strutting it in the corridors of the Alcazar or the alleys of Aranjuez" (Annals of the Artists of Spain, ch. xi.). Zurbaran was the son of a peasant, but having shown an early talent for drawing was released from the plough and sent to the studio of the painter-priest Juan de Roelas, at Seville. His abilities and his close study of nature soon gained him a high reputation; his forcible naturalistic style acquired for him the name of "the Caravaggio of Spain." He was employed in the cathedral of Seville, which remained his abode for the greater part of his life. In his picture of "St. Thomas Aquinas" in the museum there, the dark wild face, immediately behind the Imperial adorer, is traditionally held to be the portrait of Zurbaran himself. His habits were those of the recluse, but in 1650 he was, through the influence of Velazquez, called to Madrid. There he was set to a task little suited to his tastes – the production of a series of pictures (now in the Prado) to illustrate the labours of Hercules. Philip IV. used, we are told, to visit the artist whilst engaged on these pictures, and on one occasion expressed his admiration of his powers by laying his hand on his shoulder, and calling him "painter of the King, and king of the painters." "His best characteristic," says Burton, "is his power of imparting the sense of life to the heads of his figures. He was in fact a great, though not a professed, portrait painter."

It is a transcript from the religious life around him that Zurbaran here sets before us. Seville was the most orthodox city in the most Catholic country – at every corner of the streets there were Franciscan monks, with prayers or charms to sell in exchange for food or money. "For centuries in Spain country people bought up the monks' old garbs, to use them in dressing the dead, so that St. Peter might pass them into heaven thinking they were Franciscans." It was in the streets and convents of Seville therefore that Zurbaran found his models. This picture was bought for the National Gallery from the Louis Philippe sale in 1853. When the gallery of Spanish pictures to which it formerly belonged was inaugurated in the Louvre, "what remained most strongly in the Parisian mind, so impressionable and so blasé, was not the suavity of Murillo, nor the astonishing pencil of Velazquez, making the canvas speak and palpitate with life; it was a certain 'Monk in prayer' of Zurbaran, which it was impossible to forget, even if one had seen it only once" (C. Blanc, cited in W. B. Scott's Murillo, p. 55). "Of his gloomy monastic studies," says Stirling-Maxwell, "the kneeling Franciscan holding a skull is one of the ablest; the face, dimly seen beneath the brown hood, is turned to heaven; no trace of earthly expression is left on its pale features, but the wild eyes seem fixed on some dismal vision; and a single glance at the canvas imprints the figure on the memory for ever."

232. THE ADORATION OF THE SHEPHERDS

Francisco Zurbaran (Spanish: 1598-1662). See 230.

A characteristic and fine example of the naturalistic treatment of such subjects by the Spanish School; formerly supposed to be an early work of Velazquez, now attributed by the authorities of the Gallery, following M. de Beruete, to Zurbaran.116 The affinity of the Spanish School in this respect to the Italian naturalists may be seen by a glance at No. 172 in the late Italian Room. In the distance is the guiding angel as the star of the Epiphany. It is a pretty piece of observation of child nature that makes the painter show the boy offering his animals to the infant Christ. One remembers George Eliot's "young Daniel" (in Scenes of Clerical Life), who says to Mr. Gilfil, by way of making friends, "We've got two pups, shall I show 'em yer? One's got white spots." Zurbaran was noted for his successful delineation of animals. Palomino mentions with approbation his picture of an enraged dog from which chance observers used to run away, and of a yearling lamb, deemed by the possessor of more value than a hecatomb of full-grown sheep.

234. A WARRIOR ADORING THE INFANT CHRIST

Catena (Venetian: died 1531).

Of Vincenzo di Biagio, commonly called Catena (possibly from a partiality for jewellery), little is known, and until recently little was heard. Modern critics have, however, decided that he was one of the ablest of the School of Bellini, and have attributed to him many beautiful works, which have hitherto borne famous names.117 He was born at Treviso; his first master was probably the elder Girolamo da Treviso, but he must have finished his artistic education in the School of Bellini. Signed pictures from his hand are to be found in several of the Venetian churches and elsewhere. He was fond of introducing a partridge (as here and in 694) and a white poodle dog (as here) into his pictures, by which they may often be recognised. An altar-piece, representing S. Cristina in the church of S. Maria Mater Domini, and another of S. Giustina in S. Simpliciana are referred to as offering marked analogies with the work now before us. A letter is extant, dated April 11, 1520, when Raphael was just deceased and Michelangelo infirm, in which Catena is recommended to be on his guard, "since danger seems to be impending over all very excellent painters." He was famous for his portraits; the portrait of Count Raimund Fugger, specially praised by Vasari, is now at Berlin. He died in 1531, in which year he made a will leaving legacies to a number of poor painters, and the greater part of his substance to the Guild of his art. In his later works the influence of Giorgione is strongly marked – as here in the rich full colour of the Kneeling Knight, and in other respects. "Giorgione," says Mr. Berenson, "created a demand which other painters were forced to supply. One of them, turning toward the new in a way that is full of singular charm, gave his later works all the beauty and softness of the first spring days in Italy. Upon hearing the title of one of Catena's works in the National Gallery, A Warrior Adoring the Infant Christ, who could imagine what a treat the picture itself had in store for him? It is a fragrant summer landscape enjoyed by a few quiet people, one of whom, in armour, with the glamour of the Orient about him, kneels at the Virgin's feet, while a romantic young page holds his horse's bridle. A good instance of the Giorgionesque way of treating a subject; not for the story, nor for the display of skill, nor for the obvious feeling, but for the lovely landscape, for the effects of light and colour, and for the sweetness of human relations" (The Venetian Painters of the Renaissance, p. 31).

Observe, for the technical merits of this picture, the horse-bridle: "An example of true painter's work in minor detail; unsurpassable, but not, by patience and modesty, inimitable" (Academy Notes, 1875, p. 48). As for the subject, the warrior portrayed is nameless. This is suggestive; it is not a peculiar picture, it is a type of what was the common method of Venetian portraiture. "An English gentleman, desiring his portrait, gives probably to the painter a choice of several actions, in any of which he is willing to be represented. As for instance, riding his best horse, shooting with his favourite pointer, manifesting himself in his robes of state on some great public occasion, meditating in his study, playing with his children, or visiting his tenants; in any of these or other such circumstances, he will give the artist free leave to paint him. But in one important action he would shrink even from the suggestion of being drawn. He will assuredly not let himself be painted praying. Strangely, this is the action which, of all others, a Venetian desires to be painted in. If they want a noble and complete portrait, they nearly all choose to be painted on their knees" (Modern Painters, vol. v. pt. ix. ch. iii. § 15). Notice also the little dog in the corner – "one of the little curly, short-nosed, fringy-pawed things which all Venetian ladies petted." "The dog is thus constantly introduced by the Venetians (in Madonna pictures) in order to give the fullest contrast to the highest tones of human thought and feeling… But they saw the noble qualities of the dog too – all his patience, love, and faithfulness …" and introduced him into their sacred pictures partly therefore in order to show that "all the lower creatures, who can love, have passed, through their love, into the guardianship and guidance of angels" (Modern Painters, vol. v. pt. ix. ch. iii. § 21, ch. vi. § 14; Fors Clavigera, 1877, p. 31).118

235. THE DEAD CHRIST

Giuseppe Ribera, called Spagnoletto (Spanish: 1598-1648).

Ribera is a leading artist amongst what are called the Naturalisti or Tenebrosi (an alternative title, curiously significant of the warped and degraded principle of the school, as if "nature" were indeed only another name for "darkness").119 His works show remarkable force and facility; his subjects were painful. As Byron says —

Spagnoletto taintedHis brush with all the blood of all the sainted.

"It is a curious example of the perversity of the human mind," says Stirling-Maxwell, "that subjects like these should have been the chosen recreations of an eye that opened in infancy on the palms and the fair women of Valencia, and rested for half a lifetime on the splendour of the Bay of Naples." His life was like his art, being "one long contrast between splendour and misery, black shadow and shining light" (Scott). He made his way when quite a youth to Rome, where one day, as he was sketching in the streets, dressed in rags and eating crusts, he was picked up by a cardinal and taken into his household. They called him in Italy, owing to his small stature, by the name Lo Spagnoletto, the little Spaniard. But Ribera could not brook the cardinal's livery, and stole away into poverty and independence again. He especially studied the works of Caravaggio, and went afterwards to Parma to study Correggio. Then he moved to Naples, where a picture-dealer discovered his talent and gave him his daughter in marriage. A large picture of the martyrdom of St. Bartholomew, which he painted about this time, was exhibited by the dealer on the balcony of his house, and created such a furore that the Spanish Viceroy, delighted at finding the painter to be a Spaniard, loaded him with appointments and commissions. This was the making of Ribera's fortune. He soon became very wealthy – never going out but in his carriage, and with an equerry to accompany him, and so hard had he to work to keep pace with his orders that his servants were instructed at last to interrupt him when working hours were fairly over. He kept open house – entertaining Velazquez, for instance, when the latter visited Naples in 1630; but though lavish he was yet mean. Ribera, Corenzio (a Greek), and Caracciolo (a Neapolitan), formed a memorable cabal, with the object of establishing a local monopoly in the artistic profession for themselves. In this object, by means of force and fraud, they succeeded for many years. Domenichino, Annibale Carracci, and Guido Reni were all more or less victims of the cabal. The story of the conspiracy of Ribera and his allies to get the commission for painting the chapel of St. Januarius, forms one of the most curious and disgraceful chapters in the history of art, and may be read in Lanzi's History of Painting (vol. ii. in Bohn's translation). Ribera's life ended like his pictures, in darkness. His daughter was carried off by one of his great friends, Don Juan of Austria, and Ribera was so overwhelmed with grief that he left Naples and was never more heard of.120

The Virgin, accompanied here by St. John and Mary Magdalen, is weeping over the dead Christ – the subject termed by the Italians a Pietà. It is instructive to compare this Spanish treatment of it with an Italian Pietà, such as Francia's No. 180. How much more ghastly is the dead Christ here! How much less tender are the ministering mourners!

236. CASTLE OF SANT' ANGELO, ROME

Claude Joseph Vernet (French: 1714-1789).

Vernet, one of the most celebrated of French landscape and marine painters, received his inspiration and lived a large part of his life in Italy. He was born at Avignon, and in 1732 went to Italy with a view of improving himself in historical painting, but the beautiful scenery of Genoa and Naples induced him to devote himself to marine landscape. One of his Mediterranean pictures is No. 1393 in this Gallery. It is said that on his first voyage he was so impressed with the effect of a stormy sea as to have himself tied to the mast in order to be able more accurately to observe it. For some time Vernet lived in poverty. He had to paint carriages, and a picture, afterwards sold for 5000 francs, procured him only a single suit of clothes. His subjects were now the rivers, landscapes, and costumes of Rome (as in this picture). In 1752 he was invited to Paris by Louis XV. In the following year he was elected a member of the French Academy of Arts, and was commissioned by the Government to paint his celebrated pictures, now in the Louvre, of the seaports of France. This task occupied him the greater part of the year. He died in the Louvre, where he had been given apartments by the king. His last years were embittered by the madness of his wife, a daughter of the Pope's naval commandant, whom he had married in 1745. He was the grandfather of the celebrated historical painter, Horace Vernet (see 1285).

Past and present in the eternal city, as it was in Vernet's day. Behind is the castle which the Emperor Hadrian had built for his family tomb, in which were buried several of the Emperors after him, and the history of which in the Middle Ages was almost the history of Rome itself. In front is a fête on the Tiber, with a fashionable crowd in crinolines watching the boats tilting on the river.

237. A WOMAN'S PORTRAIT

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

Of interest as being one of his last works: dated 1666.

238. DEAD GAME

Jan Weenix (Dutch: 1640-1719).

Jan Weenix, the younger, was born at Amsterdam – the son of Jan Baptista Weenix (see 1096) – and is usually considered the best of all Dutch artists in this style. For some years he was employed at the Court of John William, Elector of the Palatinate.

A stag, a couple of hares (a speciality with this artist), a heron, and a fowling-piece.

239. A MOONLIGHT SCENE

Aart van der Neer (Dutch: 1603-1677). See 152.

A good example of "the penetrating melancholy of moonlight" – an effect in which this painter excelled.

240. CROSSING THE FORD

Nicolas Berchem (Dutch: 1620-1683). See 78.

242. THE GAME OF BACKGAMMON

Teniers (Flemish: 1610-1694). See 154.

"An example," says Mr. J. T. Nettleship in a comparison between Morland and some of the Dutch masters, "not only of the works that Morland loved, but of the life (alas!) he best loved too. In one respect it at once takes rank above the English painter, for every man must be a portrait; the two playing might indeed be English as well as Dutch, the man looking on is a degraded boor. In the chimney-place are several men farther off – one with his back to you is seated on a bench with his head against the chimney-jamb, a 'poor drinker,' he seems. The standing man, standing with his back to the fire, smoking a long clay, looks half-pitying, half-scornful at the feebler sinner" (George Morland, p. 23).

243. AN OLD MAN

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

A noble picture of the dignity of old age (dated 1659).

244. A SHEPHERD WITH A LAMB

Spagnoletto (Spanish: 1598-1648). See 235.

245. PORTRAIT OF A SENATOR

Hans Baldung (German-Swabian: 1476-1545).

This portrait is dated 1514, and signed with the monogram of Albert Dürer, to whom it was formerly ascribed. But the monogram is now said to be a forgery, and the picture is identified as the work of Dürer's friend Baldung. On the death of Dürer (in 1528) Baldung received a lock of his hair (now preserved in the Library of the Academy of Arts at Vienna), and Dürer, in his Journal in the Low Countries, records having sold several of Baldung's engravings. Baldung, painter, engraver, and designer, was a native of Gmünd in Swabia, and his earliest works show the influence of Martin Schongauer (see 658). He lived at Freiburg-in-the-Breisgau (in the monastery at which place is his greatest work, a "Coronation of the Virgin"), and also at Strassburg, of which latter city he became a senator shortly before his death. Baldung's portraits, says the Official Catalogue, "are highly individual and full of character. When unsigned they have sometimes passed for the work of Dürer, but they want his searching modelling." Baldung acquired and adopted the name of Green or Grün, either from his habit of dressing in that colour or from his fondness for a peculiarly brilliant tint of green often found in his pictures.