That the ancients cultivated this branch of painting, I have already mentioned, and given an example in Pyreicus, nick-named Rhyparographus, on account of his pictures of shops and booths, of markets, and those who supplied them, along with their beasts of burden. Callicles and Calaces were both painters of little pictures, exhibited along with plays and interludes, and no small number of painters caricatured the remarkable public and private men of their times, by representing them under the forms of animals and insects of different kinds.
Of the graver familiar life painters among the moderns, Ostade, Jan Stein, Gerard Dow, Metzu, Terburg, have left innumerable examples, nor have they failed in the class where Teniers holds the pre-eminence of broader farce.
Had I not resolved against naming our own living artists, I should have great examples to place in both these classes. In caricature, from the days of Patch and Bunbury to the present time, we have exceeded all times and nations.
Of the four distinct kinds of landscape, the Epic landscape in the hands of Titian or Poussin unites with the grandest subjects of painting. How admirably the landscape in the Peter Martyr aids the subject! and in Sebastian del Piombo’s altar-piece at Viterbo, how grand is the effect of that low horizon and rocky barren distance seen faintly by the moonlight! Poussin’s Deluge is of the same sublime character and hue, and as in the other two examples lends force to the figures to which it is subordinate.
Of a more cheerful character other landscapes of Titian, some of Mola, and many of Poussin, which I should call historical, divide the interest with the figures, or rather the figures gain by being placed in such scenes; Poussin’s Burial of Phocion[201], his two Israelites bearing the Bunch of Grapes from the promised Land[202], the Exposure and the Finding of Moses[203], are but a few of those he has painted of this character, in which he is the great master.
The Antique landscapes must sometimes have resembled these, or they would have been unsuitable to the subjects to which they formed backgrounds. Rocky, wild, and terrible must have been the island, and lurid the colour of the sea and sky, in which Apollodorus placed his Ajax. When gayer subjects peopled the scene, such as the young Satyrs watching the sleeping Cyclops, we learn that woody scenery was imitated, and painting for the theatre had accustomed the ancients to represent buildings and open country.
In the Imaginative, or poetic landscape, Titian claims the first place. It is enough to name the Feast of the Gods, began by John Bellini, but finished, and the whole landscape added, by Titian[204], or the landscape of the Bacchus and Ariadne[205], and those of the fine pictures in the Bridgewater Gallery, impressed as they are with the grandeur of the wild forests and bold mountains of his native province. Poussin follows him closely in this department, but his excellences are owing to careful choice and study, combining much of antique feeling with the rich sources he found in nature. His Calisto[206] is a very fine example: his Arcadia[207] another, and so, generally speaking, are all those where he has introduced Bacchanalian subjects.
Where the landscape itself without accompanying figures is considered, Claude Lorraine is unrivalled, whether he chooses the sober hue of the Enchanted Castle[208], or the glowing sunsets seen from the shores of Italy, with all the riches of architecture and shipping, or softened by inland landscape such as only Italy can suggest[209].
Highly imaginative also are the landscapes of Salvator Rosa, who is among painters, like the writers of romance among poets, bold, wild, and interesting. But I must only name Gaspar Poussin, Annibale Caracci, and Domenichino among the Italian landscape painters, and then hasten to Rembrandt, whose grand and characteristic landscapes equal in sentiment and effect his historical works and his portraits. Nor is Rubens less remarkable: witness his Saint George[210], and the landscapes of the Munich Gallery. Cuyp, whether representing the cattle and grazing grounds, or the busy river and canal scenes of his native country, is inimitable; and Ruysdael and Vanderveldt each stand at the head of a class far above the painters of mere views.
Yet views in some hands acquire value, if not dignity. The very truth of Canaletti’s Venice becomes poetical. And now and then Vernet has made a seaport fit to gratify the vanity of his master, Louis XIII., in more senses than one.
Thus have I endeavoured to distribute into classes that charming department of the art which the poet loved who hung his bower of enchantment with
It now only remains to speak of the painters of animals. Every body will at once feel, that if the Greeks counted Apelles, and Pausias, and Nicias, among their best animal painters, that if Polygnotus chose to introduce a dog even into the Battle of Marathon, and that if part of the great fame of Protogenes arose from the manner in which he painted the dogs and the game in his Ialysus, the moderns have to boast of Rubens, whose various excellences would have been incomplete without his hunts of the lion and the boar; and Snyders, though professing little else, raised his animals to the dignity of history, by his manner of treating them. I might quote the pampered lap-dogs of Titian[211], and the graceful favourites of Paul Veronese[212], and even the tame partridge of the grave John Bellini[213], as well as the horses of Vandyke and Velasquez, as instances of occasional success in these things.
But I cannot regard the diligent Paul Potter as more than a very excellent cattle portrait painter, so unequal are his choice of subject and his treatment to his exquisite execution. Of Cuyp’s animals, I can only repeat what I have said as to his landscape, with which they are so intimately connected, that they form a part of it; and the same is true of Adrian Vanderveldt’s.
This essay has grown to great length, because I have been tempted to a larger list of instances and examples than I intended; but yet I have abstained from naming many others well suited to my purpose. Of those I have quoted, with the exception of antique works, there are not six of which I have not myself seen the originals.
[142] Fuseli felt the incongruity and inconvenience of throwing together all the variety of pictures which commonly take the name of historical paintings, and has judiciously divided, and eloquently supported the division of that class of pictures into nearly the same sections as I have proposed. But he looked too disdainfully on all art which he did not practise, to have great weight; and is on that account, as well as on some others, less followed than he deserves; he has not condescended to notice any other branch of painting except the historical portrait.
[143] For the truth of this, see any catalogue of either ancient or modern masters.
[144] Pliny says, b. xxv. ch. 2, that the Greek authors on Physic, Cratevus, Dionysius, and Metrodorus, painted every herb in colours; and under their portraits they couched and subscribed their several names and effects.—Holland’s Trans.
[145] Reynolds for instance. But Fuseli more particularly, as I have mentioned in a former note.
[146] It is worth the reader’s while to turn to an abridged account of this curious table in Moor’s three Essays. Cebes himself, seated by the death-bed of Socrates, and learning to hope with something like confidence for the immortality of the soul, furnishes a beautiful moral picture, which even the disagreeable translation of the Phædo, by Taylor, cannot spoil.
[147] From MS. notes on the old pictures of Italy. Of this class, there is a magnificent early Flemish picture, of which I never saw the original: it is Van Eyck’s worship of the Lamb. There is an excellent description of it in Madame Schopfenhauer’s pleasant volumes on the ancient Flemish schools of art; and one in a periodical work published at Brussels, in which there is an etching of the whole subject.
[148] If painting were not exclusively my subject, I might here mention a number of ingenious allegorical prints, especially the various dances of death.
[149] About the year 1345. I shall have occasion hereafter to notice these pictures again. But I here subjoin a literal translation of the description of the first of them. “In the second place the aforesaid [150]Cola admonished the governors and people to do well by an allegory, which he caused to be painted on the Palace of the Capitol opposite the market, on the outer wall above the chamber; the painted allegory was in this form. There was painted a vast sea, the waves horrid and much troubled; in the midst thereof was a ship little less than foundered, without a rudder, without a sail; in this ship, so dangerously placed, there was a widow woman, clad in black, girded with the girdle of grief; loose her scarf from her bosom, and her hair dishevelled as if she wept; she was on her knees, her hands crossed and pressed to her breast as in prayer, as she were perishing, for such was her danger; above was written this is Rome. Around this ship, below the water, there were four sunken ships, their sails fallen, their masts broken, their rudders lost; in every one a drowned woman, dead. The first was called Babylon; the second, Carthage; the third, Troy; the fourth, Jerusalem. The superscription bore, that these cities had been brought by injustice, first to danger and then to destruction. A label from the mouths of these four women was inscribed—
On the left hand were two islands, on the one a woman sitting in a posture of shame, with the superscription, this is Italy; her label of speech bore—
In the other island were four women, their cheeks on their hands, their elbows on their knees, in most sorrowful action, and saying,—
These were the four cardinal virtues, Temperance, Prudence, Justice, and Fortitude.
On the right was a little island in which was a kneeling woman; her hand stretched to heaven, as in prayer; she was dressed in white, her name was Christian Faith, and her verse was—
Above all this, on the right hand, were four orders of animals, with horns at their mouths, blowing like winds and causing tempests on the sea, and helping to increase the danger of the ship. The first order was of lions, wolves, and bears. The inscription bore, these are the potent Barons and unjust Governors.
The second order were dogs, pigs, and he-goats; their inscription was, These are evil councillors, the parasites of the nobles. The third order were rams, dragons, and foxes; their inscription was, These are the false officers, judges, and notaries. The fourth order consisted of hares, cats, goats, and apes; their superscription bore, that they were the populace, thieves, murderers, adulterers, and spoilers.
Above all was painted heaven; in the midst of which was the divine Majesty coming to judgment; out of his mouth proceeded two swords, one pointing one way, the other, the other: on one hand was St. Peter, on the other St Paul, in prayer.
And when the people saw this allegory every one marvelled.”
[150] Rienzi’s nick-name, from Nicolo Rienzi.
[151] Reynold’s, in his Fifth Discourse, says that Michael Angelo “never needed, or seemed to disdain, to look abroad for foreign help,” and contrasts this originality with Raffaelle’s practice of using occasionally the inventions of his predecessors. But Reynolds, if he had been acquainted with the work of Signorelli, would have seen that Michael Angelo took from him, not only single figures of great power, but at least one group of importance, which he used with little change in the Last Judgment.
[152] “Be still, and know that i am god.”
[153] At Dresden.
[154] In Venice.
[155] In Venice.
[156] In Rome.
[157] At Bologna.
[158] In Spain.
[159] In the possession of the Duke of Wellington.
[160] Raffaelle’s engraved designs of the same subject are still more charming than those of the Farnesina. The decorations of his own villa, near the Porta del Popolo, and those still existing in Mr. M——’s villa, on the Palatine Hill, yield to neither.
[161] Hans Hemelink is said to have been a soldier, who, after receiving a severe wound, was cured in the hospital at Bruges; and that the first of his pictures that attracted public attention, he painted in consequence of a vow made while under cure. Having recovered his health, and fulfilled his vow at home, he went on a pilgrimage to Saint Jago de Compostella, in Spain, and was heard no more of. The fine picture described formed part of the Boiserée collection. There are two exquisite heads in the Florence Gallery, by Hemelink.
[162] These designs are the originals of the set of prints usually called Raffaelle’s Bible.
[163] In our National Gallery.
[164] At Rome in the Borghese.
[165] In Spain.
[166] At Paris.
[167] At Dresden.
[168] At Vienna.
[169] At Rome, in the church of the Trinità del Monte.
[170] Florence Gallery.
[171] At Naples, in the church of San Martino.
[172] In the National Gallery. The expression in this picture makes me prefer it to the Woman taken in Adultery. I should have named the Blinding of Sampson in the Schœnborn collection at Vienna, but for the atrocious choice of the painter as to the time and action.
[173] A picture in brown and white, after Michael Angelo’s cartoon, exists at Holkham. A drawing was made by Rubens of part of the Battle of the Standard, from which the print published by Edelink was taken.
[174] This very beautiful work is in the Belvedere Gallery at Vienna. An excellent copy, by Rottenhamer, is in the King of Bavaria’s collection.
[175] At Dresden. When the Russian army was at Dresden, in 1814, this picture was borrowed for an altar-piece for Alexander’s temporary chapel: on removing, the picture was packed up and carried off as lawful plunder, but the curator of the Gallery chose his time and place of remonstrance so well that it was restored.
[176] In the church of St Paul’s, without the walls of Rome.
[177] Now in Russia.
[178] In the Florence Gallery.
[179] Both in the Pitti Palace, Florence.
[180] In the Pitti Palace.
[181] At Dresden.
[182] Marco Uggione, a contemporary, made an oil copy, thought very inferior at the time, but it is now the best memorial of the picture: it belongs to the Royal Academy. Some works in fresco, of great merit, by Uggione, are collected in the Brera at Milan.
[183] Of the innumerable “Last Suppers” painted after this, none reached this sublimity of expression. Gravity and dignity are the highest characteristics of the best, such as that of Andrea del Sarto. Many degenerated into the pure picturesque: and once in the hands of Tintoret, the subject became almost absurd.
[184] At Schleissheim.
[185] The picture was rolled up as it had come from Paris. The description is from the preface to the third book of the Lives of the Painters, where in many of the later editions the picture has been given to Palma.
[186] Particularly those in the Scuola di San Marco.
[187] Painted for the Carità, now in the Gallery of the Fine Arts, Venice.
[188] Gallery at Venice.
[189] Several of these are at Hampton Court, others at Munich.
[190] At Dulwich.
[191] In the Bridgewater collection.
[192] At Florence.
[193] Borghese palace, Rome.
[194] Vienna, and in Spain.
[195] Grimani palace, Venice.
[196] Doria palace, Rome.
[197] Doria palace, Rome. This pope was of the Panfili Doria family.
[198] Often repeated.
[199] Belonging to His Grace of Northumberland, who allows nobody to see it. The copy by Gainsborough is fine; and is in more liberal hands.
[200] Pisani palace, Venice.
[201] In France.
[202] In the possession of Earl Spencer.
[203] In the Louvre.
[204] In the collection of Camuccini, at Rome.
[205] In the National Gallery.
[206] In the possession of the Marquis of Westminster.
[207] In the possession of the Duke of Devonshire.
[208] In the possession of Mr. Wells of Redleaf.
[209] Some very fine ones of this description are in the National Gallery, and some in the Bridgewater Collection.
[210] In our National Gallery.
[211] Particularly in the picture of the Child in the Strozzi Palace at Florence.
[212] Those pretty greyhounds, which appear under the table in the Supper at the house of Simon, the study for which Mr. Rogers has, and which are often, repeated.
[213] The pretty bird is picking up the crumbs under the table at Emmaus.