This and the companion picture, 158, are characteristic specimens of the painter. The human specimens are ugly and vulgar; the pottery is pretty, and beautifully painted.
155. THE MONEY CHANGERS
A man and his wife – usurers, we may suppose – counting their money. There is all the miser's misery in the withered careworn faces, all the miser's greed in the thin, tremulous hands. The man alone seems not quite to like some transaction which they are discussing; the woman – Portia's prerogative of mercy being reversed – seems to be thinking, "Come, man, don't be a fool: a bond is a bond."
156. A STUDY OF HORSES
An interesting sketch as illustrating Van Dyck's affection for the horse. "In painting, I find that no real interest is taken in the horse until Van Dyck's time, he and Rubens doing more for it than all previous painters put together. Rubens was a good rider, and rode nearly every day, as, I doubt not, Van Dyck also. The horse has never, I think, been painted worthily again, since he died" (Modern Painters, vol. v. pt. ix. ch. vi. § 22).
The particular choice of subject in this sketch shows further in its literary connection a lover of the horse. The subject, as we know from the words equi Achillis on a scroll in the left corner of the picture, is the horses of Achilles, said for their swiftness to be the sons of the wind Zephyrus: in the upper part of the picture is a sketch of a zephyr's head. "The gentleness of chivalry, properly so called, depends on the recognition of the order and awe of lower and loftier animal-life, … taught most perfectly by Homer in the fable of the horses of Achilles. There is, perhaps, in all the Iliad nothing more deep in significance – there is nothing in all literature more perfect in human tenderness, and honour for the mystery of inferior life, than the verses that describe the sorrow of the divine horses at the death of Patroclus, and the comfort given them by the greatest of the gods"98 (Fors Clavigera, 1871, ix. 13).
157. A LANDSCAPE: SUNSET
For Rubens's landscapes see under 66. "It is to be noted, however, that the licenses taken by Rubens in particular instances are as bold as his general statements are sincere… In the Sunset of our own Gallery many of the shadows fall at right angles to the light" (Modern Painters, vol. i. pt. ii. sec. i. ch. vii. § 15).
158. BOORS REGALING
159. THE DUTCH HOUSEWIFE
"There are few pictures in the National Gallery," says C. R. Leslie (Handbook for Young Painters, p. 243), "before which I find myself more often standing than at this." Its great attraction, he adds, is "the delight of seeing a trait of childhood we have often observed and been amused with in nature, for the first time so felicitously given by art." The Dutch housewife sits intently engaged in scraping a parsnip, whilst the child stands by her side "watching the process, as children will stand and watch the most ordinary operations, with an intensity of interest, as if the very existence of the whole world depended on the exact manner in which that parsnip was scraped." Note the Flemish kruik, or beer-jug, so often introduced into the pictures of Maes. Signed and dated 1655.
160. A "RIPOSO."
The Italians gave this title to the subject of the Holy Family resting on the way in their flight to Egypt, – "the angel of the Lord appeareth to Joseph in a dream, saying, Arise, and take the young child and his mother, and flee into Egypt."
161. AN ITALIAN LANDSCAPE
Gaspard travelled largely in Italy in search of the picturesque, and this striking landscape may be a recollection of the mountain scenery in the North – possibly near Bergamo. The spray of foliage prominent on the left is characteristic of Gaspard's method: —
"One of the most remarkable characters of natural leafage is the constancy with which, while the leaves are arranged on the spray with exquisite regularity, that regularity is modified in their actual effect. For as in every group of leaves some are seen sideways, forming merely long lines, some foreshortened, some crossing each other, every one differently turned and placed from all the others, the forms of the leaves, though in themselves similar, give rise to a thousand strange and differing forms in the group… Now go to Gaspard Poussin and take one of his sprays, where they come against the sky; you may count it all round: one, two, three, four, one bunch; five, six, seven, eight, two bunches; nine, ten, eleven, twelve, three bunches; with four leaves each; and such leaves! every one precisely the same as its neighbour, blunt and round at the end (where every forest leaf is sharp, except that of the fig-tree), tied together by the stalks, and so fastened on to the demoniacal claws above described (see under 68), one bunch to each claw" (Modern Painters, vol. i. pt. ii. sec. vi. ch. i. §§ 16, 17).
163. VENICE: A VIEW ON THE GRAND CANAL
The Church, that of S. Simeone Piccolo, was built in Canaletto's time. "One of the ugliest churches in Venice or elsewhere. Its black dome, like an unusual species of gasometer, is the admiration of modern Italian architects" (Stones of Venice, vol. iii. Venetian Index, s. v. Simeone).
165. THE PLAGUE AT ASHDOD
The Philistines having overcome the Israelites removed the ark of the Lord to Ashdod, and placed it in the temple of their god Dagon. "And when they of Ashdod arose early on the morrow, behold, Dagon was fallen upon his face to the earth before the ark …" (seen here in the temple to the right). "But the hand of the Lord was heavy upon them of Ashdod, and he smote them with a loathsome plague" (1 Samuel v. 4, 6).
The picture – a ghastly subject ghastlily treated – is yet a good instance of Poussin's learned treatment. Everywhere the intention to express alarm is obvious, and in the foreground are figures fleeing the infection, with nose and mouth muffled. Others are engaged removing the dead and dying, while in the centre are the dead bodies of a mother and child; another child approaches the mother's breast, but the father stoops down to avert it. A similar group to this occurs in a design by Raphael, "Il Morbetto," and was also in the celebrated picture by Aristides which Alexander the Great, at the sack of Thebes, claimed for himself and sent to his palace at Pella (Wornum: Epochs of Painting, p. 47, ed. 1864). This picture is a replica of one, now in the Louvre, which was painted in Rome in 1630 – Poussin receiving only 60 scudi (about 12 guineas) for it.
166. A CAPUCHIN FRIAR
Michel ascribes this portrait to the year of Rembrandt's tribulations. "At this period, when his emotions were so deeply stirred by the vision of a compassionate Saviour, he felt a kindred attraction for those mystic souls who sought in solitude and prayer a closer communion with the Christ to whom he felt himself drawn by his own sorrows. The 'Capuchin' in the National Gallery has suffered