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

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.

The influence of Dürer was strong on Hans Baldung, and a similar spirit is discernible in the works of both painters. This old man, strong and yet melancholy, is precisely true to Dürer's favourite type of human strength founded on labour and sorrow. And the choice of this type is characteristic of his mind. With the Reformation came, says Mr. Ruskin, "the Resurrection of Death. Never, since man first saw him face to face, had his terror been so great." Nothing shows the character of men of that time so clearly as the way in which they severally meet the King of Terror. "It haunted Dürer long; and the answer he gave to the question of the grave was that of patient hope; and twofold, consisting of one design in praise of Fortitude, and another in praise of Labour… The plate of 'Melancholia' is the history of the sorrowful toil of the earth, as the 'Knight and Death' is of its sorrowful patience under temptation" (Modern Painters, vol. v. pt. ix. ch. iv.).

246. MADONNA AND CHILD

Girolamo del Pacchia (Sienese: 1477-1535).

Pacchia, who is often confused with his fellow-countryman Pacchiarotto, was born at Siena, being the son of a cannon-founder from Croatia who had settled in that city. He first studied in his native town, but afterwards went to Florence. His works recall the style of the Florentine masters of the time. In 1500 he went to Rome, returning to Siena with an established reputation in 1508. Many of his works are to be seen in the churches and picture-gallery in that city, famous alike for its religious revivals, its artistic activity, and its civic turbulence. Pacchia, in company with Pacchiarotti, joined the revolutionary club of the Bardotti, and on its suppression in 1535 the two artists fled the city. After that date no record of Pacchia has been found.

This graceful picture resembles the style of Andrea del Sarto.

247. "ECCO HOMO!"

Matteo di Giovanni (Sienese: 1435-1495). See 1155.

"Then came Jesus forth, wearing the crown of thorns, and the purple robe. And Pilate saith unto them, Behold the man!" (Ecco Homo) (St. John xix. 5). In the "glory" around the head are the Latin letters signifying "Jesus Christ of Nazareth"; on the outer edge of the background, "at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things on earth, and things under the earth" (Philippians ii. 10).

248. THE VISION OF ST. BERNARD

Fra Filippo Lippi (Florentine: about 1406-1469). See 666.

"St. Bernard was remarkable for his devotion to the blessed Virgin; one of his most celebrated works, the Missus est, was composed in her honour as mother of the Redeemer; and in eighty sermons from the Song of Solomon he set forth her divine perfection. His health was extremely feeble; and once, when he was employed in writing his homilies, and was so ill that he could scarcely hold the pen, she graciously appeared to him, and comforted and restored him by her divine presence" (Mrs. Jameson: Legends of the Monastic Orders, p. 152). Notice the peculiar shape of the picture, the upper corners of the square being cut away. The picture was painted in 1447 (the artist receiving 40 lire, equal now perhaps to £60, for it and another work) to fit a space over the door of the Palazzo della Signoria at Florence. "Have you ever considered, in the early history of painting, how important is the history of the frame-maker? It is a matter, I assure you, needing your very best consideration, for the frame was made before the picture. The painted window is much, but the aperture it fills was thought of before it. The fresco by Giotto is much, but the vault it adorns was planned first … and in pointing out to you this fact, I may once for all prove to, you the essential unity of the arts" (Ariadne Florentina, §§ 59, 60).

249. THE MARRIAGE OF ST. CATHERINE OF SIENA

Lorenzo di San Severino (Umbrian: painted 1483-1496).

This picture is signed by the artist "Laurentius the second of Severino" – to distinguish himself from the earlier Lorenzo, who was born in 1374, and who painted some frescoes at Urbino in 1416. The date of this picture is approximately fixed by the fact that Catherine is described on her nimbus as "saint," and she was not canonised till 1461; and perhaps also by the influence on Lorenzo of Crivelli (painted 1468-1493), which has been traced in the execution of the details: see for instance the cucumber and apple on the step of the throne (cf. 724, etc).

St. Catherine of Siena (1347-1380) is one of the most remarkable figures of the Middle Ages. She was the daughter of a dyer, brought up in the humblest of surroundings, and wholly uneducated. When only thirteen she entered the monastic life as a nun of the Dominican order (St. Dominic is here present on the right), and at once became famous in the city for her good works. She tended the sick and plague-stricken, and was a minister of mercy to the worst and meanest of her fellow-creatures. On one occasion a hardened murderer, whom priests had visited in vain, was so subdued by her tenderness that he confessed his sins, begged her to wait for him by the scaffold, and died with the names of Jesus and Catherine on his lips. In addition to her piety and zeal she succeeded as a mediator between Florence and her native city, and between Florence and the Pope; she travelled to Avignon, and there induced Gregory XI. to return to Rome; she narrowly escaped political martyrdom during one of her embassies from Gregory to the Florentine republic; she preached a crusade against the Turks, and she aided, by her dying words, to keep Pope Urban on the throne. But "when she died she left behind her a memory of love more than of power, the fragrance of an unselfish and gentle life. Her place is in the heart of the humble. Her prayer is still whispered by poor children on their mother's knee, and her relics are kissed daily by the simple and devout."

The mystical marriage which forms the subject of this picture, where the infant Christ is placing the ring on her finger, suggests the secret of her power. Once when she was fasting and praying, Christ himself appeared to her, she said, and gave her his heart. For love was the keynote of her religion, and the mainspring of her life. In no merely figurative sense did she regard herself as the spouse of Christ; she dwelt upon the bliss, beyond all mortal happiness, which she enjoyed in supersensual communion with her Lord. The world has not lost its ladies of the race of St. Catherine, beautiful and pure and holy, who live lives of saintly mercy in the power of human and heavenly love. (See further, for St. Catherine of Siena, J. A. Symonds, Sketches in Italy (Siena), from which the above account is principally taken.)

250. FOUR SAINTS

The Meister von Werden (German: 15th Century).

The Meister von Werden, or the painter of this picture and of Nos. 251 and 253, which were found in the old Abbey of Werden, near Düsseldorf, is otherwise unknown. These three pictures probably formed folding wings of an altar-piece. A fourth panel, belonging to the same series, is in the National Gallery of Scotland.

The saints in this picture are Jerome (with his lion), Benedict (in the habit of his order), Giles (with his doe), and Romuald (founder of the eremite order of the Camaldoli).

251. FOUR SAINTS

The Meister von Werden. See under 250.

The saints in this picture are Augustine (with the heart transfixed with an arrow), Ludger (Bishop of Münster, Apostle of Saxony), Hubert (patron saint of the chase, see No. 783) and Maurice.

252. THE CONVERSION OF ST. HUBERT

The Meister von Werden. See under 250.

253. THE MASS OF ST. HUBERT

The Meister von Werden. See under 250.

For St. Hubert, see under 783. Here the saint, in his canonicals, is represented bending before the altar; while an angel from heaven is, according to the legend, descending with the stole.

254-261. FRAGMENTS OF AN ALTAR-PIECE

The Meister von Liesborn (German: about 1465).

The principal work of this master, whose name has not come down to us, was a high altar-piece for a convent church of the Benedictines at Liesborn, near Münster in Westphalia. This work was cut in pieces and sold in 1807, when the convent was suspended, and Napoleon established the modern kingdom of Westphalia. Some of the pieces were afterwards lost, some were obtained by different collectors, while others, which were acquired by Herr Krüger of Minden, were purchased in 1854 by the British Government. The sweet but feeble faces, with the gold background, recall the earliest Lower Rhine School, of which the Westphalian was an offshoot.

In 259 – a Head of Christ on the Cross – we have a fragment of the centre compartment of the altar-piece.

In 260 and 261 we have the saints who stood by the side of the Cross (hence their melancholy expression). In 260 the saints are St. John, St. Benedict, and St. Scholastica (the first Benedictine nun and the sister of St. Benedict himself). In 261 the saints are Sts. Cosmas and Damian (see under 594), and the Virgin.

In 254 and 255 we have other saints: in 254, St. Ambrose (see under 50), St. Exuperius (a Bishop of Toulouse), and St. Jerome (saying, as it were, "Down, down" to his lion); in 255, St. Gregory, St. Hilary, and St. Augustine.

On either side of the central groups in the altar-piece were represented various sacred subjects. No. 256, represents the Annunciation; No. 257, the Purification of the Virgin and the Presentation of Christ in the Temple; No. 258, The Adoration of the Magi.

262. THE CRUCIFIXION

School of the Meister von Liesborn. See under last pictures.

In the form of a predella or decoration of the base of the altar-piece. In the centre is Christ on the Cross; on either side are four Saints; on the left St. Scholastica, Mary Magdalen, St. Anne with the Virgin in her arms, who holds the Infant Christ; and the Virgin. On the right St. John the Evangelist, St. Andrew, St. Benedict, and St. Agnes with the Lamb. In the background is a representation of Jerusalem; here depicted as a little Westphalian town.

264. A COUNT OF HAINAULT AND HIS PATRON SAINT

Unknown (Early Flemish).

The count and the confessor. The count, attired as a monk, is praying. Behind him is his patron saint (St. Ambrose), holding a cross in one hand, a scourge in the other. More important, however, than the penitence of the count is the splendour of the robes. The picture is a good illustration of the love of jewellery characteristic of the time. "That this love of jewels was shared by the painters is sufficiently shown by the amount and beauty of the jewelled ornaments introduced by them into their pictures. Not only are brooches and clasps, sceptres and crowns, studded with precious stones, but the hems of garments are continually sewn with them, whilst gloves and shoes of state are likewise so adorned" (Conway, p. 121). This picture is by some ascribed to Gerard van der Meire (see under 1078).

265. THE VIRGIN AND CHILD

Unknown (Flemish School: Early 16th Century).

266. THE DEPOSITION FROM THE CROSS

Lambert Lombard (Flemish: 1505-1566).

Lambert Lombard of Liège was, says Vasari, "a distinguished man of letters, a most judicious painter, and an admirable architect." His pictures, which are scarce, are generally remarkable for correctness of drawing, but his colouring was thin and cold. Lombard, who was a pupil of Mabuse (see 656), travelled as a young man in Germany and France, and visited Italy in the suite of Cardinal Pole, when he became acquainted with Vasari. On his return he opened a school at Liège.

268. THE ADORATION OF THE MAGI

Paolo Veronese (Veronese: 1528-1588). See under 26.

A striking example of the old symbolical conception, according to which the adoration of the Magi – the tribute of the wise men from the East to the dawning star of Christianity – was represented as taking place in the ruins of an antique temple, signifying that Christianity was founded upon the ruins of Paganism. This picture was painted in 1573 for the church of San Silvestro in Venice, where it remained until 1835. It is mentioned in most of the guidebooks and descriptions of Venice. One of these published in 1792 says, in describing the church of San Silvestro: "Many are the pictures by Tintoretto, by scholars of Titian, by Palma Vecchio, etc.; but among them all the famous Adoration of the Magi by Paolo Veronese deserves especial attention." The picture has recently been covered with glass, an operation which is noteworthy on account of the great size of the pane required, 11 ft. 7 in. by 10 ft. 7 in. The pane had to be obtained in France.

269. A KNIGHT IN ARMOUR

Giorgione (Venetian: 1477-1510).

Giorgio121 of Castelfranco, called Giorgione, George the Great, – a name given him, according to Vasari, "because of the gifts of his person and the greatness of his mind," – is one of the most renowned of the old masters, and exercised a deeper influence upon the artists of his time than any other painter. He was the fellow-pupil with Titian of Bellini at Venice, and after executing works at his native place was employed in Venice. Here by way of exhibiting a specimen of his ability, he decorated the front of his house with frescoes. He was afterwards employed in conjunction with Titian there to decorate the façade of the Fondaco de' Tedeschi. These paintings have been destroyed by the sea-winds.122 But what was more original in Giorgione's work was his small subject pictures. He was, says Pater, "the inventor of genre, of those easily movable pictures which serve for uses neither of devotion, nor of allegorical or historical teaching – little groups of real men and women, amid congruous furniture or landscape – morsels of actual life, conversation or music or play, refined upon or idealised, till they come to seem like glimpses of life from afar." Some of Bellini's late works are already of this kind; but they were a little too austere and sober in colour for the taste of the time. Carpaccio was full of brilliancy, fancy, and gaiety, but he painted few easel pictures. Giorgione brought to the new style all the resources of a poetical imagination, of a happy temper, and of supreme gifts as a colourist. He was, says Ruskin, one of "the seven supreme colourists."123 The chief colour on his palette, it has been said, was sunlight. In the glowing colour with which he invested the human form "the sense of nudity is utterly lost, and there is no need nor desire of concealment any more, but his naked figures move among the trees like fiery pillars, and lie on the grass like flakes of sunshine" (Modern Painters, vol. ii. pt. iii. sec. i. ch. xiv. § 20). Giorgione, says Mr. Colvin, came to enrich Venetian painting further, with "a stronger sense of life and of the glory of the real world as distinguished from the solemn dreamland of the religious imagination. He had a power hitherto unknown of interpreting both the charm of merely human grace and distinction, and the natural joy of life in the golden sunlight among woods and meadows." Giorgione, by his originality and his exact correspondence with the spirit of the time, created a demand which other painters were forced to supply. His influence, says Morelli, is not only to be traced in the early work of Titian; it stands out broadly in the paintings of nearly all his Venetian contemporaries – Lotto, Palma, Pordenone, Bonifacio, Cariani, and many others, not to speak of his scholar, Sebastiano del Piombo. The surviving pictures which are undoubtedly by Giorgione's own hand are very few. This category hardly includes more than four, – the altar-piece at Castelfranco (see below), the so-called "Famiglia di Giorgione" (now identified as "Adrastus and Hypsipyle," in the Palazzo Giovanelli at Venice), the "Three Philosophers" (in the Belvedere at Vienna), and the lovely "Sleeping Venus," identified by Morelli, in the Dresden Gallery. Among pictures in a second and less certain category, may be mentioned the "Concert" in the Louvre (the "Venetian Pastoral" of Rossetti's sonnet), another "Concert" in the Pitti, the "Head of a Shepherd" at Hampton Court, and (more doubtfully) No. 1160 in this Gallery. The number of reputed Giorgiones is very large. His fame has been constant from his own day to ours, and as every gallery desired to have a Giorgione, the wish was freely gratified by dealers and cataloguers. Modern criticism has played havoc among most of these so-called Giorgiones;124 but the Giorgionesque spirit remains – unmistakable and distinct – in many works. Such in this Gallery are Nos. 930, 1123, and 1173, ascribed by the director to "the School of Giorgione." It is a school, as we have seen, of genre. It "employs itself mainly with painted idylls, but, in the production of this pictorial poetry, exercises a wonderful tact in the selecting of such matter as lends itself most readily and entirely to pictorial form, to complete expression by drawing and colour. For although its productions are painted poems, they belong to a sort of poetry which tells itself without an articulated story." Vasari remarked that it was difficult to give Giorgione's representations an explanatory name. As Morelli has well pointed out, the genius of Titian was wholly dramatic; Giorgione was a lyric poet, who gives us at most dramatic lyrics. A picture by Giorgione or in his style "presents us with a kind of profoundly significant and animated instant, a mere gesture, a look, a smile perhaps – some brief and wholly concrete moment – into which, however, all the motives, all the interests and effects of a long history, have condensed themselves, and which seem to absorb past and future in an intense consciousness of the present. Such ideal instants the school of Giorgione selects, with its admirable tact, from that feverish, tumultuously coloured life of the old citizens of Venice – exquisite pauses in Time, in which, arrested thus, we seem to be spectators of all the fulness of existence, and which are like some consummate extract or quintessence of life." Pictures in the Giorgionesque spirit are, as it were, "musical intervals in human existence – filled with people with intent faces listening to music, to the sound of water, to time as it flies" (Pater: "The School of Giorgione," Fortnightly Review, October 1877, reprinted in the third edition of The Renaissance). The landscapes of Giorgione have the same quality of quickened life. "Most painted landscapes leave little power to call up the actual physical sensations of the scenes themselves, but Giorgione's never fail to produce this effect; they speak directly to the sensations, making the beholder feel refreshed and soothed, as if actually reclining on the grass in the shade of the trees, with his mind free to muse on what delights it most. In so far as poetry may be compared to painting, Giorgione's feeling for landscape suggests Keats" (Mary Logan: Guide to the Italian Pictures at Hampton Court, p. 13).

Giorgione's pictures may be described as showing us golden moments of a golden age. His life, as told by Vasari and Ridolfi, corresponds with this ideal, which also was in exact accordance with the spirit of the times. Many readers will remember that it is with a mention of Giorgione that Ruskin prefaces his noble description of Venice in the days of the early Renaissance: "Born half-way between the mountains and the sea – that young George of Castelfranco – of the Brave Castle; stout George they called him, George of Georges, so goodly a boy he was – Giorgione. Have you ever thought what a world his eyes opened on – fair, searching eyes of youth? What a world of mighty life, from those mountain roots to the shore; of loveliest life, when he went down, yet so young, to the marble city, and became himself as a fiery heart to it?" (Modern Painters, vol. v. pt. ix. ch. ix. § 1). He spent his childhood at Castelfranco, "where the last crags of the Venetian Alps break down romantically with something of a park-like grace to the plain." "Giorgione's ideal of luxuriant pastoral scenery, the country of pleasant copses, glades and brooks, amid which his personages love to wander or recline with lute and pipe, was derived, no doubt, from these natural surroundings of his childhood." Close by his birthplace is Asolo, whence the word asolare, "to disport in the open air; to amuse oneself at random" (see Browning's Asolando). Giorgione "found his way early into a circle of notable persons – people of courtesy, and became initiated into those differences of personal type, manner, and even of dress, which are best understood there. Not far from his home lived Catherine of Cornaro, formerly Queen of Cyprus, and up in the towers which still remain, Tuzio Costanzo, the famous condottiére– a picturesque remnant of mediæval manners, in a civilisation rapidly changing" (Pater). In Venice Giorgione's gracious bearing and varied accomplishments introduced him into congenial company. "He took no small delight," says Vasari, "in love-passages and in the sound of the lute, to which he was so cordially devoted, and which he practised so constantly, that he played and sang with the most exquisite perfection, insomuch that he was for this cause frequently invited to musical assemblies and festivals by the most distinguished personages." "It happened, about his thirty-fourth year, that in one of those parties at which he entertained his friends with music, he met a certain lady of whom he became greatly enamoured, and 'they rejoiced greatly,' says Vasari, 'the one and the other in their love.' And two quite different legends concerning it agree in this, that it was through this lady he came by his death; Ridolfi relating that, being robbed of her by one of his pupils, he died of grief at the double treason; Vasari, that she being secretly stricken of the plague, and he making his visits to her as usual, he took the sickness from her mortally, along with her kisses, and so briefly departed" (Pater).125

This little panel is a study for the figure of San Liberale, the warrior-saint, in the altar-piece by Giorgione at Castelfranco – one of his acknowledged masterpieces, and according to Ruskin one of the two best pictures in the world.126 Notice "the bronzed, burning flesh" of the knight – "the right Giorgione colour on his brow" characteristic of a race of seamen (Modern Painters, vol. i. pt. ii. sec. v. ch. i. § 19). This "original little study in oil, with the delicately gleaming silver-grey armour is," says Mr. Pater, "one of the greatest treasures of the National Gallery, and in it, as in some other knightly personages attributed to Giorgione, people have supposed the likeness of his own presumably gracious presence." From a MS. memorandum on the back of the Castelfranco picture, it appears, however, that the warrior was said to represent Gaston de Foix. The only difference between this study and the picture is that in the altar-piece the warrior wears his helmet, while in the picture he is bareheaded. On this ground, and owing to the high finish of our picture, some have argued that it is not an original study for the picture, but a later copy from it (see e. g. Richter's Italian Art in the National Gallery, p. 86). The argument does not seem conclusive. Do artists never make elaborate studies? and is not an artist as likely to vary his design as a copyist his model? Our picture, which was formerly in the collection of Benjamin West, P.R.A., was bequeathed to the National Gallery by Samuel Rogers.