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

The other pictures by Botticelli in the National Gallery (see 275, 1126, and 915) adequately represent his earlier phases; this one completes the story of his life – painted as it was under Savonarola's influence —

Wrought in the troublous times of ItalyBy Sandro Botticelli, when for fearOf that last judgment, and last day drawn nearTo end all labour and all revelry,He worked and prayed in silence.Andrew Lang: Ballads and Lyrics, etc.

This beautiful and curious picture is very characteristic of Botticelli's genius. It is full of highly wrought emotion – note "the fervour of the still Madonna as she kneels before the Child, the extraordinary nervous tension which the artist has managed to suggest in the seated figure of Joseph, the rapture and ecstasy of the angels"; the picture is full also, as we shall see, of mystic symbolism, but all is crowned and harmonised by a sense of pictorial daintiness and beauty. The centre of the picture is occupied by the familiar subject of the Nativity, and the accessories suggest in symbolic fashion the effects of Christ's Advent upon the good and the evil respectively. The theological symbolism may be seen in the gesture of the divine Child pointing to his mouth – typifying that he was the Word of God. So at the bottom of the picture there are devils running, at Christ's coming, into chinks of the rocks (those who are Christ's must put away "the works of darkness"); whilst the shepherds and angels embracing signify the reconciliation such as Savonarola wished to effect between heaven and earth. On either side of the central group angels are telling the glad tidings "of peace on earth, goodwill towards men." Note the symmetry in this part of the picture; the three Magi on the left, the three shepherds in adoration on the right; and in colour, the red frock of the angel on the right, the red wings on the left. Meanwhile in the sky above is a lovely choir of Botticelli's floating angels, dancing between earth and heaven, on a golden background suffused with light. The picture is, says Ruskin, "a quite perfect example of what the masters of the pure Greek school did in Florence… The entire purpose of the picture is a mystic symbolism by motion and chiaroscuro. By motion, first. There is a dome of burning clouds in the upper heaven. Twelve angels half float, half dance, in a circle, round the lower vault of it. All their drapery is drifted so as to make you feel the whirlwind of their motion. They are seen by gleams of silvery or fiery light, relieved against an equally lighted blue of inimitable depth and loveliness. It is impossible for you ever to see a more noble work of passionate Greek chiaroscuro – rejoicing in light" (Lectures on Landscape, § 58). The introduction in the same picture of the solemn teaching below, with these beautiful angel forms above, suggests precisely what Ruskin has defined to be Botticelli's position among pictorial reformers. "He was what Luther wished to be, but could not be – a reformer still believing in the Church; his mind is at peace, and his art therefore can pursue the delight of beauty and yet remain prophetic." "He was not a preacher of new doctrines, but a witness against the betrayal of old ones."

The first and more obvious intention of Botticelli's painted sermon was, as we have seen, to show the effects of the Advent upon the good and the evil. But he has also a particular application, an esoteric meaning. The clue to this is afforded by the Greek inscription at the top, which, being interpreted, is —

"This picture I, Alexander, painted at the end of the year 1500, in the troubles of Italy, in the half-time after the time during the fulfilment of the eleventh of St. John, in the Second Woe of the Apocalypse, in the loosing of the devil for three years and a half. Afterwards he shall be confined, and we shall see him trodden down, as in this picture."

"In the troubles of Italy, at the end of the year 1500." Now, on May 12, 1497, exactly three years and a half before the date of Botticelli's inscription, Savonarola was burnt alive (as depicted on the little panel, No. 1301); and his death, says the historian, "meant for Florence the triumph of all that was most corrupt; vice was everywhere rampant, and virtuous living was utterly despised." But in the faith of Botticelli, the reverent disciple of Savonarola, this tyranny of the Evil One was doomed to pass away. He saw "in the troubles of Italy" a fulfilment of the awful words to which his inscription refers us in the eleventh chapter of the Revelation of St. John the Divine: —

The holy city shall they tread under foot forty and two months. And I will give power unto my two witnesses, and they shall prophesy. These are the two olive trees. And when they shall have finished their testimony, the beast that ascendeth out of the bottomless pit shall make war against them, and shall overcome them, and kill them. And they that dwell upon the earth shall rejoice over them, and make merry, and shall send gifts one to another; because these two prophets tormented them that dwelt on the earth. And after three days and an half the Spirit of life from God entered into them, and they stood upon their feet; and great fear fell upon them which saw them. And they heard a great voice from heaven saying unto them, Come up hither. And they ascended up to heaven in a cloud; and their enemies beheld them. The second woe is past. And there were great voices in heaven, saying, The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ; and he shall reign for ever and ever.

To the elect, then, Botticelli meant his picture to show the fulfilment of the prophecy by the Second Advent of Christ, and the final triumph of Savonarola. The men embraced by angels are in this reading of the picture the "witnesses" to whom the spirit of life was returned; they are welcomed back to earth by angels, ere they are rapt heavenward. They bear olive boughs, because in the Apocalypse olive trees are symbolical of the Lord's anointed ones. "There is but one point which seems at variance with the Biblical text: in it two witnesses are spoken of, here there are three. This deviation was doubtless intentional. When Savonarola died, two others shared his palm of martyrdom, Fra Domenico Buonvicini and Fra Silvestre Marussi. The three figures crowned with myrtle represent the three risen and glorified martyrs" (Richter's Lectures on the National Gallery, p. 61. See also Mr. Sidney Colvin's article in the Portfolio, Feb. 1879).

1035. PORTRAIT OF A YOUNG MAN

Francia Bigio (Florentine: 1482-1525).

Francesco di Cristoforo Bigi (this picture is signed FRA CP = Franciscus Cristophori pinxit), commonly called Francia Bigio, was the son of a weaver at Milan, and "devoted himself to the art of painting, not so much (Vasari tells us) because he was desirous of fame, as that he might thus be enabled to render assistance to his indigent relations." He was at first the pupil of Albertinelli (645), and afterwards formed a close friendship with Andrea del Sarto, in conjunction with whom he produced his first important work in 1513, in the small cloister of the Servi. It was here that occurred the famous scene, described by Vasari, with the Friars, who, having uncovered Bigio's fresco of the Sposalizio before the painter considered it finished, so enraged him that he defaced some of the finest heads in it with a mason's hammer, and would have destroyed the whole but for forcible intervention. Neither he nor any other painter could be induced to repair the injuries, which remain to this day. Bigio was, as we may see from this picture, an admirable portrait-painter – an excellence which he owed, says Vasari, to his patient and modest industry. He was "a great lover of peace, and for that reason (adds Vasari drily) would never marry."

The young man wears on his breast the cross of the Knights of Malta. The letter in his hand bears the date 1514. On the parapet is an inscription: tar: vblia: chi: bien: eima (slowly forgets he who loves well) —

Dear as remember'd kisses after death,And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feign'dOn lips that are for others; deep as love,Deep as first love, and wild with all regret;O Death in Life, the days that are no more.Tennyson: The Princess.

1036. A MAN'S PORTRAIT

Unknown (Flemish: 15th-16th century).

A picture, it might be, of Hamlet with the skulls: "That skull had a tongue in it, and could sing once." In his left hand he holds a flower: "there's pansies, that's for thoughts."

1041. THE VISION OF ST. HELENA

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

St. Helena, the mother of Constantine, made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, when a victory was gained by the emperor, to recover the very cross of which she had seen a mysterious symbol. Having reached the sacred city, she caused the soil of Calvary to be excavated, because the Jews were accustomed to bury the instruments of execution upon the spot where they had been used. And there she found three crosses, and that one which was the holy cross was distinguished from the others by the healing of a lady of quality who was sick. The empress divided the true cross into three parts, giving one of them to the Bishop of Jerusalem, and another to the church at Constantinople. The third she brought to Rome, where she built for it the great basilica of S. Croce.

Here we see the saint in devout reverie, while through the open window two cherubim bear a cross through the air. This beautiful picture, in which Veronese gives us an ideal and mystic composition, treated with a simplicity unusual to him, seems to have been derived from a plate by Marc Antonio, the founder of Italian engraving (1480-1534), supposed to be after a drawing by Raphael. The design is identical, though an exquisitely airy angel with a slender cross in Marc Antonio's engraving is replaced in Veronese's picture by chubby cherubs with a more solid cross. (The engraving is reproduced in the Art Journal, 1891, p. 376, with some critical remarks. "This wonderful picture," says the writer, "is at once a delight and a puzzle. If Veronese was capable of efforts like the 'Vision of St. Helena,' why have we not more such, seeing how many treasures of his art have survived to us? The engraving offers an explanation, curiously exact, of this difficulty. Whatever in the 'Vision' is Veronese's own – the drapery and the colour – is not more remarkable than in many other pictures of his; on the other hand, whatever is not distinctively of Veronese is Marc Antonio's… What more natural than that Veronese should essay to clothe in the glory of his own colouring206 some creation of the great Italian who learnt from Dürer how to interpret the art of Raphael to Italy?") Veronese's picture once formed the altar-piece of a chapel dedicated to St. Helena at Venice, and was afterwards in the collection of the great Duke of Marlborough.

1042. A MAN'S PORTRAIT

Catharina van Hemessen (Flemish: painted about 1550).

Catharina was the daughter of a painter named Jan Sanders, called Jan van Hemessen from his native village. She married a musician of repute in the Low Countries, and with him went to Madrid, where she acquired celebrity and favour through her ability in portraiture.

1045. A CANON AND HIS PATRON SAINT

Gerard David (Early Flemish: 1460-1523).

This remarkable painter, who has been rediscovered in recent years by the researches of Mr. Weale, was born in Oudewater, a small town in the south of Holland. He settled in Bruges in 1483, passing through the various grades of the Painters' Guild in that town, until he became its Dean in 1501. He was also connected with the Guild of Illuminators of Bruges, and with that of painters at Antwerp. In 1496 he married the daughter of a Bruges goldsmith. In 1509 he painted and presented to the Carmelites of Sion at Bruges a beautiful altar-piece, in which he introduced his own portrait in the background to the right, and that of his wife to the left. This altar-piece was sold by the Carmelites in 1785, and is now in the Museum of Rouen. Other important works by the painter are now in the Academy at Bruges, and in the church of St. Basil in that town there is a triptych by him. The present picture and No. 1432 were also painted for a church in the same place. David's works have often been confounded with those of Memlinc, and it is impossible to give them higher praise. He was a fine colourist. His faces show that he was an adequate interpreter of character. The details he executed with the utmost minuteness and skill; and he is remarkable also for his careful and truthful landscapes. In 1508 David entered a religious brotherhood; he was buried in Notre Dame at Bruges, where he was laid beneath the tower.

The canon kneels in adoration, with his patron saints around him – St. Bernardino of Siena behind, St. Donatian in advance of him, and St. Martin to the left. It was St. Martin who shared his cloak with the beggar, and here in the distance to the left – in compliment to the canon's generosity – is a beggar limping towards the group, asking alms. Notice the wood through which he walks. The subdued light beneath the thick foliage of the trees is admirably rendered. David "was the first painter to think of the shadow-giving nature of trees. Trees had for many years formed a favourite subject for backgrounds, but even by Memlinc they were rather conventionally rendered, one by one, not grouped into woods, and seldom brought into the foreground. Here we have a wood brought near us, with its domed canopy of foliage above, and its labyrinth of trunks buried in sylvan twilight below" (Conway's Early Flemish Artists, p. 298). Notice also the beautiful and elaborate work on the robes of St. Martin and St. Donatian. They are fully described in Mr. Weale's monograph referred to below. This will repay the most minute examination. The crimson-velvet cope of St. Martin is a masterpiece. The portrait of the donor is admirable.

The history of this beautiful picture, and of the changes and chances it went through before finding a permanent home in the National Gallery, is very curious. In 1501 a colleague of Richard van der Capelle (see 1432) and one of the executors of his will, namely, Canon Bernardin Salviati (illegitimate son of a rich Florentine merchant who traded or resided in Flanders), was secretary of the chapter of S. Donatian at Bruges. Having obtained leave to restore and embellish the altar of SS. John Baptist and Mary Magdalene, he commissioned Gerard David to paint the shutters of the reredos. These shutters, together with those of several other altar reredoses in the nave of the church, were, at the request of the sacristan, who complained that they were always breaking the wax candles, sold in a lot by order of the chapter in 1787 for an insignificant sum of money. What became of the others is not known, but the one before us was, as we learn from the letters of Horace Walpole, bought in 1792, by Mr. Thomas Barrett, of Lee Priory, Kent, and it figures in the catalogue of that collection as "a group of saints by John Gossart of Maubeuge." At the sale of the Lee Priory Collection in May 1859, it was knocked down to the late Mr. William Benoni White for 525 guineas. Sir J. C. Robinson drew Mr. Weale's attention to the picture, which he at once recognised as being the right-hand shutter of the reredos of Salviati's chantry altar. "I tried hard," says Mr. Weale, "but in vain, to persuade the late Sir Charles Eastlake to purchase it for the National Gallery, but Mr. White would not part with it for less than £1000. Oddly enough the latter, who bore the character of being a most penurious and miserly man, by his last will and testament proved a generous benefactor to the nation, and left this panel in July 1878 to the National Gallery" (W. H. James Weale: Portfolio monograph on Gerard David, 1895, p. 18).

1047. A FAMILY GROUP

Lorenzo Lotto (Venetian: 1480-1555). See 699.

"Supposed," says the official catalogue, "to represent the painter, his wife, and two children." This cannot be the case, for Lotto seems to have had no close domestic ties. The picture is, however, full of interest for its own sake. "The man and the woman are, it is true, both looking out of the picture, but nevertheless the feeling we have is that the group before us is not, as is usual in Italian family pictures, a mere collection of portraits, but that it is composed of people who are intimately related to each other, constantly acting and reacting one upon the other, and that it is presented in a way which, while giving the individuality of each, makes it hard to think of them except as conditioned, and even determined, by each other's presence." We may in fact find in this domestic group an anticipation of the spirit of the modern psychological novel. "Far from being painted as such groups usually were in Italy – a mere collection of faces looking one like the other, but with no bond of sympathy or interest uniting them – it is in itself a family story, as modern almost as Tolstoi's Katia. Lotto makes it evident that the sensitiveness of the man's nature has brought him to understand and condone his wife's limitations, and that she, in her turn, has been refined and softened into sympathy with him; so that the impression the picture leaves is one of great kindliness, covering a multitude of small disappointments and incompatibilities" (B. Berenson: Lorenzo Lotto, pp. 194, 227, 322). Mr. Berenson calls attention further to the historical significance of this page from contemporary life and manners. The artist "opens our eyes to the existence in a time and in a country supposed to be wholly devoted to carnality and carnage, of gentle, sensitive people, who must have had many of our own social and ethical ideas." He "helps us to a truer and saner view of the sixteenth century in Italy than has been given by popular writers from Stendhal downwards, who too exclusively have devoted themselves to its lurid side. Lotto's charity helps us to restore that human balance without which the Italy of the sixteenth century would be a veritable pandemonium." The Venetian costumes, etc. may also be noticed. The little girl is dressed in as "grown-up" a way as her mother. On the table is a Turkey carpet, reminding us of Venetian commerce with the East. A Turkey carpet figures also in No. 1105.

1048. PORTRAIT OF A CARDINAL

Italian School (16th century). See also (p. xx)

Painted on copper, a material which seems first to have been used for painting in the School of Antwerp. M. Auguste Cartan, of Besançon, in a paper by him in the Courrier de l'Art (June 25, 1886), points out the resemblance between this portrait and one, also on copper, in the museum at Besançon, ascribed to Scipione Pulzone, surnamed Gaetano (1550-1558), a painter who has been called "the Van Dyck of the Roman School." A contemporary biographer speaks of Gaetano's portraits as being so conscientious that every hair is painted, and of his skill in rendering various stuffs; both these characteristics may be observed in the present picture. In the same paper M. Cartan identifies the Cardinal as Cardinal Sirleto, Librarian of the Vatican 1570-1585, and tutor of S. Carlo Borromeo. There is a bust of Cardinal Sirleto in the church of San Lorenzo at Rome, and M. Cartan declares the resemblance between the bust and this portrait to be unmistakable. There is also in the Corsini Palace at Rome a bust portrait of the same personage by Scipione Gaetano.

1049. THE CRUCIFIXION

Unknown (German-Westphalian: 15th century).

A good example of the strength and weakness of this German art. What is good are the clothes, which are very quaint and various. The figures show a ghastly enjoyment of horror and ugliness: notice especially the crucified thief on the left.

1050. A SEA VIEW

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

1051. OUR LORD, ST. THOMAS, AND ST. ANTHONY

Bertucci (Umbrian: 16th century). See 282.

Our Lord extends his hand and foot to the doubting St. Thomas: "Reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands; … and be not faithless, but believing." To the right, resting his hands on the shoulder of the donor of the picture, is St. Anthony of Padua, another saint who doubted "till" – as the legend (painted by Murillo) describes – "in his arms," so it is told, "The saint did his dear Lord enfold, And there appeared a light like gold From out the skies of Padua." This picture appears to be by the same painter as No. 282, and both are now ascribed to Bertucci.

1052. PORTRAIT OF A YOUNG MAN

Lombard School (15th or early 16th century).

1053. A CHURCH AT DELFT

Emanuel de Witte (Dutch: 1607-1692). Room X.

Witte was a native of Alkmaar, but settled at Delft, where he probably met another architectural painter, Dirk van Delen. "An exact knowledge of perspective, a perfect conception of light and shade, and a delicacy of execution which reveals every detail without degenerating into dryness, figures well drawn and sufficiently picturesque … are the qualities which distinguish his works" (Havard: The Dutch School, p. 245). The picture before us is not a very favourable specimen of the painter's skill. In the gallery at Hertford House one of his masterpieces may be seen. His style, says Mr. Phillips in his catalogue of that collection, "is absolutely opposed to that of the somewhat earlier painters of the Flemish School, Steenwyck the Younger and Pieter Neeffs the Elder, who obtained their chief effects by accuracy of linear perspective, while De Witte realised his by broad and masterly chiaroscuro. In his treatment of light and colour he shows some affinity to Pieter de Hooch." The date of his birth is uncertain; it should perhaps be 1617.

Notice the anti-Pauline practice of the worshippers ("Every man praying, having his head covered, dishonoureth his head. But every woman that prayeth with her head uncovered, dishonoureth her head" – 1 Corinthians xi. 4, 5). Here it is the women who are "uncovered," the men who are "covered."

1054. A VIEW IN VENICE

Francesco Guardi (Venetian: 1712-1793). See 210.

1055. A VILLAGE CARD PARTY

Hendrick Sorgh (Dutch: 1611-1670).

Hendrick Rokes, a painter of Rotterdam, was the son of Martin Rokes, the master of the passage-boat from Rotterdam to Dordrecht. On account of his care and attention to passengers, Martin acquired the appellation of Sorgh, or Careful; the name descended to and was adopted by the son. Having shown an early talent for art, Hendrick was sent to Antwerp, where he was placed under the tuition of the younger Teniers. His style, however, rather recalls that of Adrian Brouwer. He painted Biblical subjects in a familiar manner, indoor scenes of humble life, village fairs, and, later, river and sea views. Some of his best works are in the Dresden Gallery.

The game rests with the woman, who is not going to play, it would seem, till the score is settled.

1056. "A KISS IN THE CUP."

Hendrick Sorgh (Dutch: 1611-1670).Drink to me only with thine eyes,And I will pledge with mine;Or leave a kiss but in the cupAnd I'll not look for wine.Ben Jonson: To Celia.

1057. A RIVER SCENE

Claude Joseph Vernet (French: 1714-1789). See 236.

1058. VENICE: THE CANAL REGGIO

Canaletto (Venetian: 1697-1768). See 127.

One of the principal waterways, after the Grand Canal, in Venice. The picture is a good instance of this painter's method of representing water. He "covers the whole space of it with one monotonous ripple, composed of a coat of well-chosen, but perfectly opaque and smooth sea-green, covered with a certain number – I cannot state the exact average, but it varies from three hundred and fifty to four hundred and upwards, according to the extent of canvas to be covered, of white concave touches, which are very properly symbolical of ripple207… If it be but remembered that every one of the surfaces of those multitudinous ripples is in nature a mirror which catches, according to its position, either the image of the sky, or of the silver beaks of the gondolas, or of their black bodies and scarlet draperies, or of the white marble, or the green sea-weed on the low stones, it cannot but be felt that those waves would have something more of colour upon them than that opaque dead green… Venice is sad and silent now to what she was in his time; but even yet, could I but place the reader at early morning on the quay below the Rialto, when the market-boats, full-laden, float into groups of golden colour, and let him watch the dashing of the water about their glittering steely heads, and under the shadows of the vine leaves; and show him the purple of the grapes and the figs, and the glowing of the scarlet gourds, carried away in long streams upon the waves; and among them, the crimson fish-baskets, plashing and sparkling and flaming as the morning sun falls on their wet tawny sides; and above, the painted sails of the fishing-boats, orange and white, scarlet and blue, – he would not be merciful to Canaletto any more" (Modern Painters, vol. i. pt. ii. sec. v. ch. i. §§ 18, 19).