14. SEAPORT: THE QUEEN OF SHEBA
This seaport – inscribed in the right corner La Reine de Saba va trouver Salamon, – is one of Claude's masterpieces. Like its companion, the picture was painted in 1648 for the Duke of Bouillon. "The spectator," says Sir Edward Poynter, "may almost imagine that he feels the freshness of the early morning, and the breeze which sends the crisp waves rolling in from the open sea, while the limpid purity of the sunlit atmosphere and the sparkle of the sun on the water, not only invite sympathy with the more exquisite aspects of nature, which is, perhaps, the highest achievement of this art, but are expressed with a simplicity and perfection of execution which surpass all the works of other painters in which similar effects have been attempted" (The National Gallery, i. 192). The picture which Turner selected to vie with this is not one of his best, but Ruskin makes a point out of Claude's poverty of invention in the details. The queen is starting for a distant expedition, and was going in great state (she went "with a very great company, and camels that bare spices, and gold in abundance, and precious stones"); yet the prominent incident in the picture is the carrying of one schoolgirl's trunk. She is going by sea, and is setting out in the early morning (for the sun is represented only a little above the horizon);55 yet has no wraps, nor even a head-dress. For the rest, Ruskin notices the tameness of Claude's waves and a certain conventionality in his treatment of ships and seaports generally. "A man accustomed to the broad, wild sea-shore, with its bright breakers, and free winds, and sounding rocks, and eternal sensation of tameless power, can scarcely but be angered when Claude bids him stand still on some paltry chipped and chiselled quay, with porters and wheel-barrows running against him, to watch a weak, rippling, bound and barriered water, that has not strength enough in one of its waves to upset the flower-pots on the wall, or even to fling one jet of spray over the confining stone"56 (Modern Painters, vol. i. pt. ii. sec. i. ch. vii. § 5). Claude's ships, too, and his conception of seaports generally, show a strange want of true imagination:
"His ships, having hulls of a shape something between a cocoanut and a high-heeled shoe, balanced on their keels on the top of the water, with some scaffolding and cross-sticks above, and a flag at the top of every stick, form perhaps the purest exhibition of human inanity and fatuity which the arts have yet produced. The harbours also, in which these model navies ride, are worthy of all observation for the intensity of the false taste which, endeavouring to unite in them the characters of pleasure-ground and port, destroys the veracity of both. There are many inlets of the Italian seas where sweet gardens and regular terraces descend to the water's edge; but these are not the spots where merchant vessels anchor, or where bales are disembarked. On the other hand, there are many busy quays and noisy arsenals upon the shores of Italy; but queens' palaces are not built upon the quays, nor are the docks in any wise adorned with conservatories or ruins. It was reserved for the genius of Claude to combine the luxurious with the lucrative, and rise to a commercial ideal, in which cables are fastened to temple pillars, and lighthouses adorned with rows of bean-pots" (Harbours of England, pp. 17, 18). Notice, lastly, the "atrocious error in ordinary perspective" in the quay on the left of which the figure is sitting with his hand at his eyes57 (Modern Painters, vol. i. pt. i. sec. i. ch. v. § 5, pt. ii. sec. vi. ch. ii. § 1).
15. ECCE HOMO!
"Then came Jesus forth, wearing the crown of thorns, and the purple robe. And Pilate saith unto them, Behold the Man!" —Ecce Homo! (John xix. 5). Over the domain of tragedy Correggio – with his pretty grace and sentimentality – had little sway. In this respect he has been called "the Rossini of painting. The melodies of the Stabat Mater are the exact analogues in music of Correggio's voluptuous renderings of grave or mysterious motives" (Symonds: Renaissance, iii. 248). Thus here it is rather a not-unpleasant feeling of grief than any profound sense of sorrow or resignation that the painter expresses; but within these limits the picture is a very effective one. "The features of Christ express pain without being in the least disfigured by it. How striking is the holding out of the fettered hands, as if to say, 'Behold, these are bound for you!' The Virgin Mary, who, in order to see her son, has held by the balustrade which separates him from her, sinks with grief into the arms of Mary Magdalene. Her lips still seem to tremble, but the corners of the mouth are already fixed, it is involuntarily open; the arched eyelids are on the point of covering the closing eyes; the hands with which she has held fast let go the balustrade" (Waagen: Treasures of Art in Great Britain, i. 327). To the right is a Roman soldier, robust and rugged, yet with a touch of pity in his look; whilst to the left, standing just within the judgment hall, is Pilate, the Roman proconsul, with a mild look of self-satisfaction on his face – as of the man who "washed his hands" of the affair and left the populace to do with Christ as they would.
This picture (which is supposed to have been painted in 1521) was formerly in the possession of the Counts Prati of Parma, and subsequently in the Colonna Palace at Rome. It was purchased of the Colonna family by Sir Simon Clarke, who, finding it impossible to take it out of Italy, sold it to Murat, then King of Naples. It was purchased, as already related, with No. 10 by Lord Londonderry in 1834.
16. ST. GEORGE AND THE DRAGON
Jacopo Robusti, called Tintoretto (the little dyer), from the trade of his father, is the last great master of the Venetian School and "the most imaginative of all painters." His artistic ambition was expressed in the line which he wrote on the wall of his studio: "The design of Michelangelo and the colouring of Titian." He engrafted (says Symonds) on the calm and natural Venetian manner "something of the Michelangelesque sublimity, and sought to sway by dramatic movement the romantic motives of the school." He conquers Michelangelo (says Ruskin) in his own field; "out-flies him in motion, outnumbers him in multitude, outwits him in fancy and out-flames him in rage." The imagination of Tintoret dwelt among the tragic and dramatic scenes in sacred history. While he conceived of these in the largest and most audacious spirit, his "imagination penetrative" extended to the minutest details, and his great works abound in those minor episodes which lend so much reality to a poet's conceptions. In his classical pictures, Tintoret combined with the sumptuous colour of Titian something of the mythopœic faculty which enabled him to inspire the tales of ancient Greece with an intense vitality of beauty. In other of his pictures, effects of light and shade are the vehicle of his imagination. It was Tintoret (says Symonds) "who brought to its perfection the poetry of chiaroscuro, expressing moods of passion and emotion by brusque lights, luminous half-shadows, by semi-opaque darkness, no less unmistakably than Beethoven by symphonic modulations" (Renaissance, iii. 270). The intense vitality which characterises Tintoret's subject-pictures is conspicuous also in his portraits. They "render the man at his best, full of health and determination, and make us look back with amazement to a state where the human plant was in such vigour" (Berenson's Venetian Painters, p. 59). The picture now before us (16) may give some idea of Tintoret's power of imagination; and the decorative piece lately added to the Gallery (1313) is exemplary of another side of his genius. The Galleries at Hampton Court should also be visited by all admirers of Tintoretto. But it is only in Venice that this great master can properly be studied, and only in the works of Ruskin that any full appreciation of his powers is to be found.58 One or two points, however, may profitably be mentioned which visitors who come across pictures by Tintoret in foreign galleries should bear in mind. First, he is the most unequal in execution of all painters. The Venetians used to say he had three pencils – one of gold, one of silver, and a third of iron. Annibale Carracci said of him that "if he was sometimes equal to Titian, he was often inferior to Tintoretto." Secondly, "when no one would pay for his colours (and sometimes nobody would even give him space of wall to paint on), he used cheap blue for ultramarine;" and he worked so rapidly, "and on such large spaces of canvas, that, between damp and dry, his colours must go, for the most part." Tintoret, from the rapidity of his execution,