Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) by S. Spooner (best ebook reader under 100 TXT) 📖

a likeness so just to a hair,

That they came as Apollyon himself had been there,

     To pay their respects to their king.

 

Every child on beholding it, shivered with dread,

     And screamed, as he turned away quick;

Not an old woman saw it, but raising her head,

Dropp'd a bead, made a cross on her wrinkles, and said,

     "God help me from ugly old Nick!"

 

What the Painter so earnestly thought on by day,

     He sometimes would dream of by night;

But once he was started as sleeping he lay,

'Twas no fancy, no dream--he could plainly survey

     That the devil himself was in sight.

 

"You rascally dauber," old Beelzebub cries,

     "Take heed how you wrong me, again!

Though your caricatures for myself I despise,

Make me handsomer now in the multitude's eyes,

     Or see if I threaten in vain."

 

Now the painter was bold and religious beside,

     And on faith he had certain reliance,

So earnestly he all his countenance eyed,

And thanked him for sitting with Catholic pride,

     And sturdily bid him defiance.

 

Betimes in the morning, the Painter arose,

     He is ready as soon as 'tis light;

Every look, every line, every feature he knows,

'Twas fresh to his eye, to his labor he goes,

     And he has the wicked old one quite.

 

Happy man, he is sure the resemblance can't fail,

     The tip of his nose is red hot,

There's his grin and his fangs, his skin cover'd with scales

And that--the identical curl of the tail,

     Not a mark--not a claw is forgot.

 

He looks and retouches again with delight;

     'Tis a portrait complete to his mind!

He touches again, and again feeds his sight,

He looks around for applause, and he sees with affright,

     The original standing behind.

 

"Fool! idiot!" old Beelzebub grinned as he spoke,

     And stamp'd on the scaffold in ire;

The painter grew pale, for he knew it no joke,

'Twas a terrible height, and the scaffolding broke;

     And the devil could wish it no higher.

 

"Help! help me, O Mary," he cried in alarm,

     As the scaffold sank under his feet,

From the canvas the Virgin extended her arm,

She caught the good painter, she saved him from harm,

     There were thousands who saw in the street.

 

The old dragon fled when the wonder he spied,

     And curs'd his own fruitless endeavor:

While the Painter called after, his rage to deride,

Shook his palette and brushes in triumph, and cried,

     "Now I'll paint thee more ugly than ever!"

 

 

 

 

LEGEND OF THE PAINTER-FRIAR, THE DEVIL AND THE VIRGIN.

 

 

Don José de Valdivielso, one of the chaplains of the gay Cardinal Infant

Ferdinand of Austria, relates the following legend in his paper on the

Tax on Pictures, appended to Carducho's Dialogos de la Pintura. A

certain young friar was famous amongst his order, for his skill in

painting; and he took peculiar delight in drawing the Virgin and the

Devil. To heighten the divine beauty of the one, and to devise new and

extravagant forms of ugliness for the other, were the chief recreations

for his leisure hours. Vexed at last by the variety and vigor of his

sketches, Beelzebub, to be revenged, assumed the form of a lovely

maiden, and crossed under this guise the path of the friar, who being of

an amorous disposition, fell at once into the trap. The seeming damsel

smiled on her shaven wooer, but though nothing loth to be won, would not

surrender her charms at a less price than certain reliquaries and jewels

in the convent treasury--a price which the friar in an evil hour

consented to pay. He admitted her at midnight within the convent walls,

and leading her to the sacristy, took from its antique cabinet the

things for which she had asked. Then came the moment of vengeance.

Passing in their return through the moonlit cloister as the friar stole

along, embracing the booty with one arm, and his false Duessa with the

other, the demon-lady suddenly cried out "Thieves!" with diabolical

energy, and instantly vanished. The snoring monks rushed disordered from

their cells and detected their unlucky brother making off with their

plate. Excuse being impossible, they tied the culprit to a column, and

leaving him till matins, when his punishment was to be determined, went

back to their slumbers. When all was quiet, the Devil reappeared, but

this time in his most hideous shape. Half dead with cold and terror, the

discomfited caricaturist stood shivering at his column, while his

tormentor made unmercifully merry with him; twitting him with his

amorous overtures, mocking his stammered prayers, and irreverently

suggesting an appeal for aid to the beauty he so loved to delineate. The

penitent wretch at last took the advice thus jeeringly given--when lo!

the Virgin descended, radiant in heavenly loveliness, loosened his

cords, and bade him bind the Evil One to the column in his place--an

order which he obeyed through her strength, with no less alacrity than

astonishment. She further ordered him to appear among the other monks at

table, and charged herself with the task of restoring the stolen plate

to its place. Thus the tables were suddenly turned. The friar presented

himself among his brethren in the morning, to their no small

astonishment, and voted with much contrition for his own condemnation--a

sentence which was reversed when they came to examine the contents of

the sacristy, and found everything correct. As to the Devil, who

remained fast bound to the pillar, he was soundly flogged, and so fell

into the pit which he had digged for another. His dupe, on the other

hand, gathered new strength from his fall, and became not only a wiser

and a better man, but also an abler artist; for the experience of that

terrible night had supplied all that was wanting to complete the ideal

of his favorite subjects. Thenceforth, he followed no more after

enticing damsels, but remained in his cloister, painting the Madonna

more serenely beautiful, and the Arch Enemy more curiously appalling

than ever.

 

 

 

 

GERARD DOUW.

 

 

This extraordinary artist was born at Leyden, in 1613. He was the son of

a glazier, and early exhibited a passion for the fine arts, which his

father encouraged. He received his first instruction in drawing from

Dolendo, the engraver. He was afterwards placed with Peter Kowenhoorn,

to learn the trade of a glass-stainer or painter; but disliking this

business, he became the pupil of Rembrandt when only fifteen years of

age, in whose school be continued three years. From Rembrandt he learned

the true principles of coloring, to which he added a delicacy of

pencilling, and a patience in working up his pictures to the highest

degree of neatness and finish, superior to any other master. He was more

pleased with the earlier and more finished works of Rembrandt, than with

his later productions, executed with more boldness and freedom of

pencilling; he therefore conceived the project of combining the rich and

glowing colors of that master with the polish and suavity of extreme

finishing, and he adopted the method of uniting the powerful tunes and

the magical light and shadow of his instructor with a minuteness and

precision of pencilling that so nearly approached nature as to become

perfect illusion. But though his manner appears so totally different

from that of Rembrandt, yet it was to him he owed that excellence of

coloring which enabled him to triumph over all the artists of his time.

His pictures are usually of small size, with figures so exquisitely

touched, and with a coloring so harmonious, transparent, and delicate,

as to excite the astonishment and admiration of the beholder. Although

his pictures are wrought up beyond the works of any other artist, there

is still discoverable a spirited and characteristic touch that evinces

the hand of a consummate master, and a breadth of light and shadow which

is only to be found in the works of the greatest masters of the art of

chiaro-scuro. The fame acquired by Douw is a crowning proof that

excellence is not confined to any particular style or manner, and had

he attempted to arrive at distinction by a bolder and less finished

pencil, it is highly probable that his fame would not have been so

great. It has been truly said that there are no positive rules by which

genius must be bounded to arrive at excellence. Every intermediate

style, from the grand and daring handling of Michael Angelo to the

laborious and patient finishing of Douw, may conduct the painter to

distinction, provided he adapts his manner to the character of the

subjects he treats.

 

 

 

 

DOUW'S STYLE.

 

 

Douw designed everything from nature, and with such exactness that each

object appears as perfect as nature herself. He was incontestibly the

most wonderful in his finishing of all the Flemish masters, although the

number of artists of that school who have excelled in this particular

style are quite large. The pictures he first painted were portraits, and

he wrought by the aid of a concave mirror, and sometimes by looking at

the object through a frame of many squares of small silk thread. He

spent so much time in these works that, notwithstanding they were

extremely admired, his sitters became disgusted, and he was obliged to

abandon portrait painting entirely, and devote his attention to fancy

subjects, in the execution of which he could devote as much time as he

pleased. This will not appear surprising, when Sandrart informs us that,

on one occasion, in company with Peter de Laer, he visited Douw, and

found him at work on a picture, which they could not forbear admiring

for its extraordinary neatness, and on taking particular notice of a

broom, and expressing their surprise that he could devote so much time

in finishing so minute an object, Douw informed them that he should work

on it three days more before he should think it complete. The same

author also says that in a family picture of Mrs. Spiering, that lady

sat five days for the finishing of one of her hands, supporting it on

the arm of a chair.

 

 

 

 

DOUW'S METHOD OF PAINTING.

 

 

His mind was naturally turned to precision and exactness, and it is

evident that he would have shown this quality in any other profession,

had he practiced another. Methodical and regular in all his habits, he

prepared and ground his own colors, and made his own brushes of a

peculiar shape, and he kept them locked up in a case made for the

purpose, that they might be free from soil. He permitted no one to enter

his studio, save a very few friends, and when he entered himself, he

went as softly as he could tread, so as not to raise the dust, and after

taking his seat, waited some time till the air was settled before he

opened his box and went to work; scarcely a breath of air was allowed to

ventilate his painting-room.

 

 

 

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DOUW'S WORKS.

 

 

Everything that came from his pencil was precious, even in his

life-time. Houbraken says that his great patron, Mr. Spiering the

banker, allowed him one thousand guilders a year, and paid besides

whatever sum he pleased to ask for his pictures, some of which he

purchased for their weight in silver; but Sandrart informs us, with more

probability, that the thousand guilders were paid to Douw by Spiering on

condition that the artist should give him the choice of all the pictures

he painted. The following description of one of Gerhard's most capital

pictures, for a long time in the possession of the family of Van Hoek,

at Amsterdam, will serve to give a good idea of his method of treating

his subjects. The picture is much larger than his usual size, being

three feet long by two feet six inches wide, inside the frame. The room

is divided into two apartments by a curtain of curiously wrought

tapestry. In one apartment sits a woman giving suck to her child; at her

side is a cradle, and a table covered with tapestry, on which is placed

a gilt lamp which lights the room. In the second apartment is a surgeon

performing an operation upon a countryman, and by his side stands