Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) by S. Spooner (best ebook reader under 100 TXT) 📖
- Author: S. Spooner
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youthful, the painter replied by seizing his pencil, and with four
strokes so seamed the face with wrinkles, and so entirely altered its
air, that the royal critic once more "remained stupid," hardly knowing
whether he had judged amiss, or the change had been effected by magic.
By means of thus painting at full speed, frequently without sketches,
and sometimes with both hands at once, Cambiaso clothed the vault with
its immense fresco in about fifteen months. The coloring is still fresh,
and many of the forms are fine and the figures noble; but the
composition cannot be called pleasing. The failure must be mainly
attributed to the unlucky meddling of the friars, who have marshalled
"The helmed Cherubim,
And sworded Seraphim,"
with exact military precision, ranged the celestial choir in rows like
the fiddlers of a sublunary orchestra, and accommodated the congregation
of the righteous with long benches, like those of a Methodist
meeting-house! However, the king was so well pleased with the work, that
he rewarded Cambiaso with 12,000 ducats.
CAMBIASO'S ARTISTIC MERITS.
In the earlier part of his career, the impetuosity of his genius led him
astray; he usually painted his pictures in oil or fresco without
preparing either drawing or cartoon; and his first style was gigantic
and unnatural. Subsequently, however, he checked this impetuosity, and
it was in the middle of his life that he produced his best works. His
fertility of invention was wonderful; his genius grappled with and
conquered the most arduous difficulties of the art, and he shows his
powers in foreshortening in the most daring variety. He was rapid and
bold in design, yet was selected by Boschini as a model of correctness;
hence his drawings, though numerous, are highly esteemed. His Rape of
the Sabines, in the Palazzo Imperiali at Terralba, near Genoa, has been
highly extolled. It is a large work full of life and motion, passionate
ravishers and reluctant damsels, fine horses and glimpses of noble
architecture, with several episodes heightening the effect of the main
story. Mengs declared he had seen nothing out of Rome that so vividly
reminded him of the chambers of the Vatican.
RARITY OF FEMALE PORTRAITS IN SPAIN.
Very few female portraits are found in the Spanish collections. Their
painters were seldom brought in professional contact with the beauty of
high-born women--the finest touchstone of professional skill--and their
great portrait painters lived in an age of jealous husbands, who cared
not to set off to public admiration the charms of their spouses.
Velasquez came to reside at court about the same time that Madrid was
visited by Sir Kenelm Digby, who had like to have been slain the first
night of his arrival, for merely looking at a lady. Returning with two
friends from supper at Lord Bristol's, the adventurous knight relates in
his Private Memoirs, how they came beneath a balcony where a love-lorn
fair one stood touching her lute, and how they loitered awhile to admire
her beauty, and listen to her "soul-ravishing harmony." Their delightful
contemplations, however, were soon arrested by a sudden attack from
several armed men, who precipitated themselves upon the three Britons.
Their swords were instantly drawn, and a fierce combat ensued; but the
valiant Digby slew the leader of the band, and finally succeeded in
escaping with his companions.
Of the sixty-two works by Velasquez in the Royal Gallery at Madrid,
there are only four female portraits; and of these, two represent
children, another an ancient matron, and a fourth his own wife! The Duke
of Abuquerque, who at the door of his own palace waylaid and
horsewhipped Philip IV., and his minister Olivarez, feigning ignorance
of their persons, as the monarch came to pay a nocturnal visit to the
Duchess, was not very likely to call in the court painter to take her
Grace's portrait. Ladies lived for the most part in a sort of Oriental
seclusion, amongst duennas, waiting-women, and dwarfs; and going abroad
only to mass, or to take the air in curtained carriages on the Prado. In
such a state of things, the rarity of female portraits in the Spanish
collections was a natural consequence.
MURILLO'S PICTURES IN SPANISH AMERICA.
It is related that this great Spanish painter visited America in early
life, and painted there many works; but the later Spanish historians
have shown that he never quitted his native country; and the
circumstance of his pictures being found in America, is best accounted
for by the following narrative. After acquiring considerable knowledge
of the art under Juan del Castillo at Seville, he determined to travel
for improvement; but how to raise the necessary funds was a matter of
difficulty, for his parents had died leaving little behind them, and his
genius had not yet recommended him to the good offices of any wealthy
or powerful patron. But Murillo was not to be balked of his cherished
desires. Buying a large quantity of canvas, he divided it into squares
of various sizes, which he primed and prepared with his own hands for
the pencil, and then converted into pictures of the more popular saints,
landscapes, and flower-pieces. These he sold to the American traders for
exportation, and thus obtained a sum of money sufficient for his
purpose.
MURILLO'S "VIRGIN OF THE NAPKIN."
The small picture which once adorned the tabernacle of the Capuchin high
altar at Seville, is interesting on account of its legend, as well as
its extraordinary artistic merits. Murillo, whilst employed at the
convent, had formed a friendship with a lay brother, the cook of the
fraternity, who attended to his wants and waited on him with peculiar
assiduity. At the conclusion of his labors, this Capuchin of the kitchen
begged for some trifling memorial of his pencil. The painter was quite
willing to comply, but said that he had exhausted his stock of canvas.
"Never mind," said the ready cook, "take this napkin," offering him that
which he had used at dinner. The good-natured artist accordingly went to
work, and before evening he had converted the piece of coarse linen into
a picture compared to which cloth of gold or the finest tissue of the
East would be accounted worthless. The Virgin has a face in which
thought is happily blended with maidenly innocence; and the divine
infant, with his deep earnest eyes, leans forward in her arms,
struggling as it were almost out of the frame, as if to welcome the
carpenter Joseph home from his daily toil. The picture is colored with a
brilliancy which Murillo never excelled, glowing with a golden light, as
if the sun were always shining on the canvas. This admirable work is now
in the Museum of Seville.
ANECDOTE OF AN ALTAR-PIECE BY MURILLO.
One of Murillo's pictures, in the possession of a society of friars in
Flanders, was bought by an Englishman for a considerable sum, and the
purchaser affixed his signature and seal to the back of the canvas, at
the desire of the venders. In due time it followed him to England, and
became the pride of his collection. Several years afterwards, however,
while passing through Belgium, the purchaser turned aside to visit his
friends the monks, when he was greatly surprised to find the beautiful
work which he had supposed was in his own possession, smiling in all its
original brightness on the very same wall where he had been first
smitten by its charms! The truth was, that the monks always kept under
the canvas an excellent copy, which they sold in the manner above
related, as often as they could find a purchaser.
MURILLO AND HIS SLAVE GOMEZ.
Sebastian Gomez, the mulatto slave of Murillo, is said to have become
enamored of art while performing the menial offices of his master's
studio. Like Erigonus, the color grinder of Nealces, or like Pareja, the
mulatto of Velasquez, he devoted his leisure to the secret study of the
principles of drawing, and in time acquired a skill with the brush
rivalled by few of the regular scholars of Murillo. There is a tradition
at Seville, that he took the opportunity one day, when the painting room
was empty, of giving the first proof of his abilities, by finishing the
head of a Virgin, that stood ready sketched on his master's easel.
Pleased with the beauty of this unexpected interpolation, Murillo, when
he discovered the author of it, immediately promoted Gomez to the use of
those colors which it had hitherto been his task to grind. "I am indeed
fortunate, Sebastian," said the good-natured artist, "for I have not
only created pictures, but a painter."
AN ARTIST'S LOVE ROMANCE.
Francisco Vieira, an eminent Portuguese painter, was still a child when
he became enamored of Doña Ignez Elena de Lima, the daughter of noble
parents, who lived on friendly terms with his own and permitted the
intercourse of their children. The thread of their loves was broken for
a while by the departure of the young wooer to Rome, in the suite of the
Marquis of Abrantes. There he applied himself diligently to the study of
painting, under Trevisani, and carried off the first prize in the
Academy of St. Luke. On returning to Portugal, although only in his 16th
year, he was immediately appointed by King John V. to paint a large
picture of the Mystery of the Eucharist, to be used at the approaching
feast of Corpus Christi; and he also painted the king's portrait.
An absence of seven years had not affected Vieira's constancy, and he
took the first opportunity of flying once more to Ignez. He was kindly
received by the Lima family, at their villa on the beautiful shores of
the Tagus, and was permitted to reside there for a while, painting the
scenery, and wooing his not unwilling mistress. When the maiden's heart
was fairly won, the parents at length interfered, and the lovers found
the old adage verified, that "the course of true love never did run
smooth." Vieira was ignominiously turned out of doors, and the fair
Ignez was shut up in the convent of St. Anna, and compelled to take the
veil.
The afflicted lover immediately laid his cause before the king, but
received an unfavorable answer. Nothing daunted, he then went to Rome,
and succeeded in obtaining from the Pope a commission to the Patriarch
of Lisbon, empowering him to inquire into the facts of the case; and
that prelate's report being favorable, the lover was made happy with a
bull annulling the religious vows of the nun, and authorizing their
marriage. It is uncertain how long this affair remained undecided; but a
Portuguese Jesuit having warned Vieira that at home he ran the risk of
being punished by confiscation of his property, for obtaining a bull
without the consent of the civil power, he prolonged his residence at
Rome to six years, that the affair might have time to be forgotten at
Lisbon. During this period he continued to exercise his pencil with so
much success that he was elected a member of the Academy of St. Luke.
After such a probation, the energy and perseverance of the lover is
almost unparalleled. He finally ventured to return to his native Tagus,
and accomplished the object of his life. Disguising himself as a
bricklayer, he skulked about the convent where Ignez lay immured,
mingling with the workmen employed there, till he found means to open a
communication with her and concert a plan of escape. He then furnished
her with male attire, and at last successfully carried her off on
horseback (though not without a severe wound from the brother of his
bride), to another bishopric, where they were married in virtue of the
Pope's bull. After residing for some time in Spain and Italy, however,
Vieira was commanded to return to Portugal, and appointed painter to the
king. Being the best artist in that kingdom, his talents soon
obliterated the remembrance of his somewhat irregular marriage, and
during forty years he painted with great reputation and success for the
royal palaces at Nafra and elsewhere, for the convents, and the
collections of the nobility. It will doubtless be pleasing to the fair
readers of these anecdotes, that all this long course of outward
prosperity was sweetened by the affection of his constant wife.
ESTEBAN MARCH'S STRANGE METHOD OF STUDY.
Estéban March, a distinguished Spanish painter of the 17th century, was
eccentric in character and violent in temperament. Battles being his
favorite subjects, his studio was hung round with pikes, cutlasses,
javelins, and other implements of war, which he used in a very peculiar
and boisterous manner. As the mild and saintly Joanes was wont to
prepare himself for his daily task by prayer and fasting, so his riotous
countryman used to excite his imagination to the proper creative pitch
by beating a drum, or blowing a trumpet, and then valiantly assaulting
the walls of his chamber with sword and buckler, laying about him, like
another Don Quixote, with a blind energy that told severely on the
plaster and furniture, and drove his terrified scholars or assistants to
seek safety
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