Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art by Shearjashub Spooner (good fiction books to read txt) 📖

the Mamelukes," in tapestry, which we would, for itself, have preferred to the original. But the latter four battles, notwithstanding the disadvantage of costume and arrangement necessarily imposed by the difference of time and country, produce far more satisfactory works of Art, and come much nearer to historical painting. They are painted without pretension, without exaggeration. The details are faithfully and carefully, though evidently rapidly, executed. The generals and personages in the front are speaking portraits; and the whole scene is full of that sort of life and action which impresses one at once as the very sort of action that must have taken place. Now it is a battery of artillery backed against a wood,—now it is a plain over which dense ranks of infantry march in succession to the front of the fire. Here it is a scene where in the full sunlight shows the whole details of the action; there it is night—and a night of cloud and storm, draws her sombre veil over the dead and wounded covering the field. A historian might find on these canvasses, far better than in stores of manuscript, wherewith to fill many a page of history with accurate and vivid details of these bloody days; or rather, many a page of history would not present so accurate and vivid a conception of what is a field of battle.

In 1822, entry to the exhibition at the Louvre being refused to his works, Horace Vernet made an exhibition-room of his atelier, had a catalogue made out (for what with battles, hunts, landscapes, portraits, he had a numerous collection), and the public were admitted. In 1826 he was admitted a Member of the Institute, and in 1830 was appointed Director of the Academy at Rome, so that the young man who could not so far decline his antiques as to treat the classic subject of the Royal Academy, and thus gain the Academy at Rome, now went there as chief of the school, and as one of the most distinguished artists of his time. This residence for five years among the best works of the great masters of Italy naturally inspired him with ideas and desires which it had not been hitherto in his circumstances to gratify. And once installed in the Villa Medici, which he made to resound with the voices of joy and revelry, splendid fêtes and balls, he set himself to study the Italian school.

A series of pictures somewhat new in subject and manner of treatment was the result of this change of circumstances and ideas. To the Paris Exhibition of 1831 he sent a "Judith and Holofernes," which is one of the least successful of his pictures in the Luxembourg, where it hangs still, with another sent two years after, "Raffaelle and Michael Angelo in the Vatican." This is perhaps the best of his works at the Luxembourg, all being inferior; but it has a certain dry gaudiness of color, and a want of seriousness of design, which render it unfit to be considered a master-work. One unquestionably preferable, the "Arresting of the Princes at the Palais Royal by order of Anne of Austria," found its way to the Palais Royal, so that in this, as in the other we have remarked, the king seemed to know how to choose better than the Art-authorities of the "Gallery of Living Painters." A number of other pictures testified to the activity of the artist's pencil at Rome:—"Combat of Brigands against the Pope's Riflemen," "Confession of the Dying Brigand," also at the Palais Royal, but also we fear destroyed by the popular vandalism of the 24th February; a "Chase in the Pontine Marshes," "Pope Leo XII. carried into St. Peter's." The favor of the public, however, still turned to the usual subject of Horace Vernet—the French soldier's life; finding which, on his return from Rome, he recurred to his original study. In 1836 he exhibited four new battle-pieces, "Friedland," "Wagram," "Jena," and "Fontenoy," in which were apparent all his usual excellencies.

The occupation of the Algerine territory by the French troops afforded the artist an opportunity of exhibiting his powers in that department most suited to them. A whole gallery at Versailles was set apart for the battle-painter, called the Constantine Gallery, after the most important feat of arms yet performed by the French troops in Africa, the Taking of the town of Constantine. Some of the solitary and extraordinary, we might say accidental, military exploits in Europe of Louis Philippe's reign, are also commemorated there. The "Occupation of Ancona," the "Entry of the Army into Belgium," the "Attack of the Citadel of Antwerp," the "Fleet forcing the Tagus," show that nothing is forgotten of the Continental doings. The African feats are almost too many to enumerate. In a "Sortie of the Arab Garrison of Constantine," the Duke de Nemours is made to figure in person. Then we have the Troops of Assault receiving the Signal to leave the Trenches, and "The Scaling of the Breach." There are the "Occupation of the Defile of Teniah," "Combat of the Habrah, of the Sickak, of Samah, of Afzoum." In fine, there is the largest canvass in existence, it is said, the "Taking of the Smalah," that renowned occasion when the army was so very near taking Abd-el-Kader; and the "Battle of Isly," which gained that splendid trophy, the parasol of command. Besides these great subjects there are decorations of military trophies and allegorical figures, which seem to have been painted by some pupil of Vernet. These battles were first of all exhibited to the admiration of Paris in the various salons after their execution, and were then sent off to decorate Versailles. There are also, in the Gallery of French History, at Versailles, several others of his, such as the "Battle of Bouvines;" "Charles X. reviewing the National Guard;" the "Marshal St. Cyr," and some others among those we have already named. In them the qualities of the artist are manifested more fully, we think, than in any others of his works. They are full of that energy, vivacity, and daguerreotypic verity which he so eminently displays. There is none of that pretension after "high Art" which has injured the effect of some of his pictures. The rapidity of their execution too in general was such, that the public had hardly finished reading the last news of the combats, when the artist, returned in many cases from witnessing the scenes, had placed them on the canvass, and offered them to popular gaze. Yet the canvasses are in many cases of great extent, and often, the figures of life-size. But the artist rarely employs the model, painting mostly from memory, a faculty most astonishingly developed in him. He generally also saves himself the trouble of preparing a smaller sketch to paint after, working out his subject at once in the definitive size. Of course with more serious and elevated subjects, worked out in a more serious and elevated spirit, such a system would not do. But for the style of subject and execution required by Horace Vernet's artistic organization, these careful preparations would not answer. They would only tend to diminish the sweeping passion of the fiery melée, and freeze the swift impulsive rush of the attack or flight.

Vernet has several times attempted Biblical subjects, but they have never succeeded so well as to add anything to his fame as a battle-painter. "Judah and Tamar," "Agar dismissed by Abraham," "Rebecca at the Fountain," "Judith with the head of Holofernes," "The Good Samaritan," have rather served to illustrate Arab costume and manners, (which he makes out to be the same as, or very similar to, those of old Biblical times,) than to illustrate his own power in the higher range of Art.

In the midst of painting all these, Horace Vernet has found time, which for him is the smallest requisite in painting, to produce an innumerable mass of pictures for private galleries, or at the command of various crowned heads; which, with many of those already mentioned, are well known all over Europe by engravings. "The Post of the Desert," "The Prayer in the Desert," "The Lion Hunt in the Desert," "Council of Arabs," "Episode of the Pest of Barcelona," "The Breach of Constantine," "Mazeppa," and a host of others, together with landscapes, portraits, &c., have served both to multiply his works in the galleries of every country in Europe, and to make him one of the most popular of living artists.

THE COLOSSEUM.

The Colosseum, or Coliseum, was commenced by Vespasian, and completed by Titus, (A. D. 79.) This enormous building occupied only three years in its erection. Cassiodorus affirms that this magnificent monument of folly cost as much as would have been required to build a capital city. We have the means of distinctly ascertaining its dimensions and its accommodations from the great mass of wall that still remains entire; and although the very clamps of iron and brass that held together the ponderous stones of this wonderful edifice were removed by Gothic plunderers, and succeeding generations have resorted to it as to a quarry for their temples and their palaces—yet the "enormous skeleton" still stands to show what prodigious works may be raised by the skill and perseverance of man, and how vain are the mightiest displays of his physical power when compared with those intellectual efforts which have extended the empire of virtue and of science.

The Colosseum, which is of an oval form, occupies the space of nearly six acres. It may justly be said to have been the most imposing building, from its apparent magnitude, in the world; the Pyramids of Egypt can only be compared with it in the extent of their plan, as they each cover nearly the same surface. The greatest length, or major axis, is 620 feet; the greatest breadth, or minor axis, is 513 feet. The outer wall is 157 feet high in its whole extent. The exterior wall is divided into four stories, each ornamented with one of the orders of architecture. The cornice of the upper story is perforated for the purpose of inserting wooden masts, which passed also through the architrave and frieze, and descended to a row of corbels immediately above the upper range of windows, on which are holes to receive the masts. These masts were for the purpose of attaching cords to, for sustaining the awning which defended the spectators from the sun or rain. Two corridors ran all round the building, leading to staircases which ascended to the several stories; and the seats which descended towards the arena, supported throughout upon eighty arches, occupied so much of the space that the clear opening of the present inner wall next the arena is only 287 feet by 180 feet. Immediately above and around the arena was the podium, elevated about twelve or fifteen feet, on which were seated the emperor, senators, ambassadors of foreign nations, and other distinguished personages in that city of distinctions. From the podium to the top of the second story were seats of marble for the equestrian order; above the second story the seats appear to have been constructed of wood. In these various seats eighty thousand spectators might be arranged according to their respective ranks; and indeed it appears from inscriptions, as well as from expressions in Roman writers, that many of the places in this immense theatre were assigned to particular individuals, and that each might find his seat without confusion. On extraordinary occasions, 110,000 persons could crowd into it.

Gibbon has given a splendid description, in his twelfth book, of the exhibitions in the Colosseum; but he acknowledges his obligations to Montaigne, who, says the historian, "gives a very just and lively view of Roman magnificence in these spectacles." Our readers will, we