Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) by S. Spooner (best ebook reader under 100 TXT) 📖
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voted it execrable, Carreño quietly remarked, "It at least has the merit
of showing that no man need despair of improving in art, for I painted
it myself when I was a beginner."
CARRENO'S ABSTRACTION OF MIND.
Being at his easel one morning with two friends, one of them, for a
jest, drank the cup of chocolate which stood untasted by his side. The
maid-servant removing the cup, Carreño remonstrated, saying that he had
not breakfasted, and on being shown that the contents were gone,
appealed to the visitors. Being gravely assured by them that he had
actually emptied the cup with his own lips, he replied, like Newton,
"Well really, I was so busy that I had entirely forgotten it."
ANECDOTE OF CESPEDES' LAST SUPPER.
The Cathedral of Cordova still possesses his famous Supper, but in so
faded and ruinous a condition that it is impossible to judge fairly of
its merits. Palomino extols the dignity and beauty of the Saviour's
head, and the masterly discrimination of character displayed in those of
the apostles. Of the jars and vases standing in the foreground, it is
related that while the picture was on the easel, these accessories
attracted, by their exquisite finish, the attention of some visitors, to
the exclusion of the higher parts of the composition, to the great
disgust of the artist. "Andres!" cried he, somewhat testily, to his
servant, "rub out these things, since after all my care and study, and
amongst so many heads, figures, hands, and expressions, people choose to
see nothing but these impertinences;" and much persuasion and entreaty
were needed to save the devoted pipkins from destruction.
ZUCCARO'S COMPLIMENT TO CESPEDES.
The reputation which the Spanish painter Cespedes enjoyed among his
cotemporaries, is proved by an anecdote of Federigo Zuccaro. On being
requested to paint a picture of St. Margaret for the Cathedral of
Cordova, he for some time refused to comply, asking, "Where is Cespedes,
that you send to Italy for pictures?"
DONA BARBARA MARIA DE HUEVA.
Doña Barbara Maria de Hueva was born at Madrid in 1733. Before she had
reached her twentieth year, according to Bermudez, she had acquired so
much skill in painting, that at the first meeting of the Academy of St.
Ferdinand in 1752, on the exhibition of some of her sketches, she was
immediately elected an honorary academician, and received the first
diploma issued under the royal charter. "This proud distinction," said
the president, "is conferred in the hope that the fair artist may be
encouraged to rival the fame of those ladies already illustrious in
art." How far this hope was realized, Bermudez has omitted to inform us.
THE MIRACULOUS PICTURE OF THE VIRGIN.
The eminent American sculptor Greenough, who has recently (1853)
departed this life, wrote several years ago a very interesting account
of a wonderful picture at Florence, from which the following is
extracted:
"When you enter the church of Santissima Annunziata, at Florence, your
attention is drawn at once to a sort of miniature temple on the left
hand. It is of white marble; but the glare and flash of crimson hangings
and silver lamps scarcely allow your eye the quiet necessary to
appreciate either form or material. A picture hangs there. It is the
_Miraculous Annunciation_. The artist who was employed to paint it, had
finished all except the head of the Virgin Mary, and fell asleep before
the easel while the work was in that condition. On awakening, he beheld
the picture finished; and the short time which had elapsed, and his own
position relative to the canvas, made it clear (so says the tradition)
that a divine hand had completed a task which, to say the least, a
mortal could only attempt with despair.
"Less than this has made many pictures in Italy the objects of
attentions which our Puritan fathers condemned as idolatrous. The
miraculous 'Annunziata' became, accordingly, the divinity of a splendid
shrine. The fame of her interposition spread far and wide, and her
tabernacle was filled with the costly offerings of the devout, the showy
tributes of the zealous. The prince gave of his abundance, nor was the
widow's mite refused; and to this day the reputation of this shrine
stands untouched among all papal devotees.
"The Santissima Annunziata is always veiled, unless her interposition is
urgently demanded by the apprehension of famine, plague, cholera, or
some other public calamity. During my own residence at Florence, I have
never known the miraculous picture to be uncovered during a drought,
without the desired result immediately following. In cases of long
continued rains, its intervention has been equally happy. I have heard
several persons, rather inclined to skepticism as to the miraculous
qualities of the picture, hint that the _barometer_ was consulted on
these occasions; else, say they, why was not the picture uncovered
before the mischief had gone so far? What an idea is suggested by the
bare hint!
"I stood on the pavement of the church, with an old man who had himself
been educated as a priest. He had a talent for drawing, and became a
painter. As a practical painter, he was mediocre; but he was learned in
everything relating to art. He gradually sank from history to portrait,
from portrait to miniature, from miniature to restoration; and had the
grim satisfaction, in his old age, of mending what in his best days he
never could make--good pictures. When I knew him, he was one of the
conservators of the Royal Gallery. He led me before the shrine, and
whispered, with much veneration, the story I have related of its origin.
When I had gazed long at the picture, I turned to speak to him, but he
had left the church. As I walked through the vestibule, however, I saw
him standing near one of the pillars that adorn the façade. He was
evidently waiting for me. Me-thinks I see him now, with his face of
seventy and his dress of twenty-five, his bright black wig, his velvet
waistcoat, and glittering gold chain--his snuff-box in his hand, and a
latent twinkle in his black eyes. 'What is really remarkable in that
miraculous picture,' said he, taking me by the button, and forcing me to
bend till his mouth and my ear were exactly on a line--'What is really
remarkable about it is, that the angel who painted that Virgin, so
completely adopted the style of that epoch! Same angular, incorrect
outline! Same opaque shadows! eh? eh?' He took a pinch, and wishing me a
good appetite, turned up the Via S. Sebastiano."
THE CHAIR OF ST. PETER.
"La Festra di Cattreda, or commemoration of the placing of the chair of
St. Peter, on the 18th of January, is one of the most striking
ceremonies, at Rome, which follow Christmas and precede the holy week.
At the extremity of the great nave of St. Peter's, behind the high
altar, and mounted upon a tribune designed or ornamented by Michael
Angelo, stands a sort of throne, composed of precious materials, and
supported by four gigantic figures. A glory of seraphim, with groups of
angels, shed a brilliant light upon its splendors. This throne enshrines
the real, plain, worm-eaten wooden chair, on which St. Peter, the prince
of the apostles, is said to have pontificated; more precious than all
the bronze, gold, and gems with which it is hidden, not only from
impious, but holy eyes, and which once only, in the flight of ages, was
profaned by mortal inspection.
"The sacrilegious curiosity of the French, however, broke through all
obstacles to their seeing the chair of St. Peter. They actually removed
its superb casket, and discovered the relic. Upon its mouldering and
dusty surface were traced carvings, which bore the appearance of
letters. The chair was quickly brought into a better light, the dust and
cobwebs removed, and the inscription (for an inscription it was),
faithfully copied. The writing is in Arabic characters, and is the well
known confession of Mahometan faith--'There is but one God, and Mahomet
is his prophet.' It is supposed that this chair had been, among the
spoils of the Crusaders, offered to the church at a time when a taste
for antiquarian lore, and the deciphering of inscriptions, were not yet
in fashion. The story has been since hushed up, the chair replaced, and
none but the unhallowed remember the fact, and none but the audacious
repeat it. Yet such there are, even at Rome!"--_Ireland's Anecdotes of
Napoleon._
THE SAGRO CATINO, OR EMERALD DISH.
"The church of St. Lorenzo, at Genoa, is celebrated for containing a
most sacred relic, the 'Sagro Catino,' a dish of one entire and perfect
_emerald_, said to be that on which our Saviour ate his last supper.
Such a dish in the house of a Jewish publican was a miracle in itself.
Mr. Eustace says, he looked for this dish, but found that the French,
'whose delight is brutal violence, as it is that of the lion or the
tiger,' had carried it away. And so indeed they did. But that was
nothing. The carrying off relics--the robbing of Peter to pay Paul, and
spoliating one church to enrich another--was an old trick of legitimate
conquerors in all ages; for this very '_dish_' had been carried away by
the royal crusaders, when they took _Cesarea_ in Palestine, under
_Guillaume Embriaco_, in the twelfth century. In the division of spoils,
this emerald fell to the share of the _Genoese Crusaders_, into whose
holy vocation some of their old trading propensities evidently entered;
and they deemed the vulgar value, the profane price, of this treasure,
so high, that on an emergency, they pledged it for nine thousand five
hundred livres. Redeemed and replaced, it was guarded by the _knights of
honor_ called _Clavigeri_; and only escaped once a year! Millions knelt
before it, and the penalty on the bold but zealous hand that touched it
with a diamond, was a thousand golden ducats."
The French seized this relic, as the crusaders had done in the twelfth
century; but instead of conveying it from the church of San Lorenzo to
the abbey of St. Denis (_selon les règles_), they most sacrilegiously
sent it to a _laboratory_. Instead of submitting it, with a traditional
story, to a _council of Trent_, they handed it over to the _institute of
Paris_; and chemists, geologists, and philosophers, were called on to
decide the fate of that relic which bishops, priests and deacons had
pronounced to be too sacred for human investigation, or even for human
touch. _The result of the scientific investigation was, that the emerald
dish was a piece of green glass!_
When England made the King of Sardinia a present of the dukedom of one
of the oldest republics in Europe, and restitutions were making "_de
part et d'autre_;" _Victor Emmanuel_ insisted upon having his emerald
dish; not for the purpose of putting it in a cabinet of curiosities, as
they had done at Paris, to serve as a curious monument of the remote
epoch in which the art of making colored glass was known--(of its great
antiquity there is no doubt)--but of restoring it to its shrine at San
Lorenzo--to its guard of knights servitors--to the homage, offerings,
and bigotry of the people! with a republished assurance that this is the
invaluable _emerald dish_, the '_Sagro Catino_,' which _Queen Sheba_
offered, with other gems, to King Solomon (who deposited it, where all
gems should be, in his church), and which afterwards was reserved for a
higher destiny than even that assigned to it in the gorgeous temple of
Jerusalem. The story of the analysis by the institute of Paris is hushed
up, and those who would revive it would be branded with the odium of
blasphemy and sedition; none now remember such things, but those who are
the determined enemies of social order, or as the Genoese Royal Journal
would call them, '_the radicals of the age_.'--_Italy, by Lady
Morning_.
"THE PAINTER OF FLORENCE."
There is an old painting in the church of the Holy Virgin at Florence,
representing the Virgin with the infant Jesus in her arms, trampling the
dragon under her feet, about which is the following curious legend, thus
humorously described by Southey, in the Annals of the Fine Arts:
There once was a Painter in Catholic days,
Like Job who eschewed all evil,
Still on his Madonnas the curious may gaze
With applause and amazement; but chiefly his praise
And delight was in painting the devil.
They were angels compared to the devils he drew,
Who besieged poor St. Anthony's cell,
Such burning hot eyes, such a _d----mnable_ hue,
You could even smell brimstone, their breath was so blue
He painted his devils so well.
And now had the artist a picture begun,
'Twas over the Virgin's church door;
She stood on the dragon embracing her son,
Many devils already the artist had done,
But this must outdo all before.
The old dragon's imps as they fled through the air,
At seeing it paused on the wing,
For he had
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