Continuing our parallel between a library and a picture gallery, history would comprise all pictures representing such actions and events as have been recorded by objective writers – classical and modern. Such are The Family of Darius at the feet of Alexander (from Grecian history), The Romans carrying off the Sabine Women (from Roman history), The Death of Lord Chatham (from English history), and so on; portraiture stands in the same relation to historical painting that biography bears to history. Is not the picture of Ippolito de’ Medici and Sebastian del Piombo a piece of biography? What about Julius the Second, that resolute old pope or Julia Gonzaga? Consider, too, Zurbaran’s Monk and Rembrandt’s Rabbi. Understanding the representation of history through art will provide an insight into the emotive character of the times, in a way that words cannot.
Christ Pantocrator, 12th century.
Mosaic. Apse of Monreale Cathedral, Monreale.
Poetry would comprise all subjects from poets both ancient and modern. Such are the Bacchus and Ariadne, the Yenus and Adonis, Mercury teaching Cupid to read, the Judgment of Paris (all taken from the classics); Erminia and the Shepherds (from Tasso); the Rescue of Serena (from Spenser). These are poetry, regardless of whether each in itself is a poem. Then, correlative with fiction and drama, domestic or romantic, we have the style of painting, called genre, which deals with the scenes and incidents of familiar life, which may be of a very high moral significance, as in the Marriage a-la-Mode; or of the lowest, as in the Woman Peeling Carrots, or the Drinking Boors; whatever the significance, it may be ennobled by the perfect execution. Some modern novels, in which the most commonplace events of everyday life are treated with the most exquisite grace, delicacy, and knowledge of human nature, may be likened to those Dutch pictures in which two misers counting their gold, a lady reading a letter, or a woman bargaining for a fowl, shall be treated with such consummate elegance of execution, and even power of character, that at once, they delight the eye and fancy.
But genre painting was unknown in the early schools of Italian art; the concerts and conversazioni of Giorgione and the other Venetians are too poetic to fall under this designation, so I shall say no more of it here. Animal painting, as a special class of art as Rubens, Snyders, and Landseer have made it, was also unknown. At the same time, we must acknowledge that when the old Italians introduced animals into their pictures, they showed themselves capable of excelling in imitative as well as ideal art. What can exceed the little birds on the steps of the throne in Benozzo Gozzoli’s Madonna, or the fish in Perugino’s picture Raphael and Tobit, for exquisite truth of nature? To be sure, we cannot say the same of Paolo Uccello’s horses, yet it is interesting to observe the first efforts in this way of a school which afterwards produced Andrea Verrocchio’s equestrian statue of Colleone and Lionardo’s Battle of the Standard.
Landscape painting, which may be likened to books of travels and descriptions of scenery, was unknown as a separate class of art until the middle of the sixteenth century; however, some of the early painters, particularly the Venetians, give us a lovely background in their religious scenes. That intense sympathy with natural scenery which we find in the works of Thomson and Wordsworth as poets and Cuyp and Hobbema as painters, seems to have been the growth of modern times.
Lastly, to continue our parallel, we have a scientific class of art as of books. Painting, when called in to illustrate the discoveries and triumphs of science, as in geology, botany, architectural and technological innovations, and the like, may be called scientific art. A collection of this kind of picture, where beauty of treatment is combined with exact truth, might be made very attractive as well as interesting and profitable. Scientific art is chiefly employed in illustrating books, and is the handmaid rather than the priestess and interpreter of nature. But photography has taught us all the beauty and the poetry that may be found in the most literal transcripts of truth; like landscape and portraiture, scientific art will find a place for itself in our galleries in time.
When we know and thoroughly understand the subject of a picture, we may then inquire the name of the painter, the age, the country, the school of art in which he was reared, to which he belonged; hence we may derive the most various delight from the associations connected with this extended knowledge. These Memoirs of famous painters are intended to suggest such comparative and discriminating reflections. I will conclude with a passage written long ago by an almost-forgotten art critic, old Jonathan Richardson:
“When one sees an admirable piece of art, it is a part of the entertainment to know to whom to attribute it, and then to know his history; whence else is the custom of putting the author’s picture or life at the beginning of a book? When one is considering a picture or a drawing, and at the same time thinks that this was done by him who had many extraordinary endowments of body and mind, but was withal very capricious [Leonardo da Vinci]; who was honoured in life and death, expiring in the arms of one of the greatest princes of that age, Francis I, King of France, who loved him as a friend. Another is of he [Titian] who lived a long and happy life, beloved of Charles V, Emperor, and many others of the first princes of Europe. When one has another in his hand, and thinks this was done by him [Michelangelo] who so excelled in three arts as that any of them in that degree had rendered him worthy of immortality, and one that, moreover, durst contend with his sovereign (one of the haughtiest popes that ever was) upon a slight offered to him, and extricated himself with honour. Another is the work of he [Correggio] who, without any one exterior advantage, by mere strength of genius, had the most sublime imaginations, and executed them accordingly, yet lived and died obscurely. Another we shall consider as the work of he [Annibal Carracci] who restored painting when it was almost sunk; of him whose art made honourable, but, neglecting and despising greatness with a sort of cynical pride, was treated suitably to the figure he gave himself, not his intrinsic merit; which, not having philosophy enough to bear it, broke his heart. Another is done by one [Rubens] who (on the contrary) was a fine gentleman, and lived in great magnificence, and was much honoured by his own and foreign princes; who was a courtier, a statesman, and a painter, and so much all these, that, when he acted in either character, that seemed his business, and the others his diversion. I say, that when one thus reflects, besides the pleasure arising from the beauties and excellencies of the work, the fine ideas it gives us of natural things, the noble way of thinking one finds in it, and the pleasing thoughts it may suggest to us, an additional pleasure results from these reflections.
“But, the pleasure! when a connoisseur and lover of art has before him a picture or a drawing of which he can say, this is the hand, there are the thoughts, of him [Raphael] who was one of the politest, best-natured gentlemen that ever was; and beloved and assisted by the greatest wits and the greatest men then in Rome; of him who lived in great fame, honour, and magnificence, and died extremely lamented, and missed a Cardinal’s hat only by dying a few months too soon, particularly esteemed and favoured by two popes [Julius II and Leo X], the only ones who filled the chair of St. Peter in his time, and as great men as ever sat there since that apostle, – if at least he ever did; one, in short, who could have been a Leonardo, a Michaelangelo, a Titian, a Correggio, an Annibale, a Rubens, or any other he pleased, but none of them could ever have been a Raphael. And when we compare the hand and manner of one master with another, and those of the same man in different times, when we see the various turns of mind and various excellencies, and, above all, when we observe what is well or ill in their works, as it is a worthy, so it is also a very delightful exercise of our rational faculties.”
It is to enlarge this sphere of rational pleasure in the contemplation of works of art that the following Memoirs were written. [May, 1859]
Cimabue, Crucifixion, c. 1280.
Fresco. Left transept of the
Upper Basilica of San Francesco, Assisi.
Pietro Lorenzetti, Christ of Compassion (facing right), between 1340–1345.
Lindenau-Museum, Altenburg.