Part 5 (1/2)

The statue is not a masterpiece; but it is he, in his own ho but a painter, with the sole attributes of a painter, in perfect truth it personifies the sole Flenty which has neither been contested nor menaced, and which certainly never will be

[Illustration: THE DESCENT FROM THE CROSS

_Rubens_]

At the end of the square is seen Notre Da outlined by one of its lateral faces, the darkest one, on account of the rains beating on that side It is ht and low buildings With its carved stonework, its rusty tone, its blue and lustrous roof, its colossal tohere the golden disk and the golden needles of its dial glitter in the stone discoloured by the vapours from the Scheldt and by the winters, it assumes monstrous proportions When the sky is troubled, as it is to-day, it adds all its own strange caprices to the grandeur of the lines Ierated by the fancy of the North, wildly illuular blotches against the scenic background of a sky entirely black or entirely white, and full of tee-setting could not be contrived Thus it is vain for you to have coi_ and the _Calvary_, to have formed an exact and measured idea of Rubens, or even to have taken fa him that have set you at your ease with him, for you cannot enter Notre Dame as you enter a h up has just struck Scarcely even a sacristan makes a sound in the tranquil, clean and clear naves, as Pieter Neefs has represented therandeur It is raining and the light is fading Shadows and gleams succeed each other upon the two triptychs in their thin fra of broood fastened without any pomp to the cold and s only stands out thearound it German copyists have placed their easels before the _Descent from the Cross_; there is nobody before the _Elevation to the Cross_ This simple fact expresses the world's opinion as to these torks

They are greatly admired, almost unreservedly so, and the fact is rare in the case of Rubens, but the admiration is divided The chief renown has fallen upon the _Descent froift of touching still more the impassioned, or more deeply convinced, friends of Rubens No torks, in fact, could resemble each other less than these that were conceived at an interval of two years, that were inspired by the same effort of mind, and that, nevertheless, so plainly bear the marks of two separate tendencies The date of the _Descent from the Cross_ is 1612; that of the _Elevation to the Cross_ is 1610 I insist upon the date, for it is i to Antwerp, and it was on his disembarkation, so to speak, that he painted them His education was finished At that moment he had even an excess of studies that were so to et rid of almost immediately Of all the Italian ave him advice of a sufficiently exclusive nature The hot-headed reatly; the severerestraint

His nature, character, and native faculties all tended to a division

The task itself exacted that he should ifts He felt the expediency of this, took advantage of it, treated of the subjects in accordance with their spirit, and gave two contrary and two just ideas of hinificent example we possess of his wisdo visions of his fire and ardour To the personal inspiration of the painter add a very marked Italian influence and you will still better be able to explain to yourself the extraordinary value that posterity attaches to pages which arded as his diploma works and which were the first public acts of his life as the head of a school

I will tell you how this influence nized But first it is enough for nomy of the talent of Rubens may not lose any of its features at the moment e examine it This is not that he should be positively cramped in canonical formulae in which others would find themselves imprisoned

On the other hand, hat ease hethese formulae, hat freedouises or confesses the the well-informed man or the novice However, whatever he may do, we feel the _Roround, who has just arrived and has not yet changed his at with hin odour about his clothes It is certainly to this fine Italian scent that the _Descent from the Cross_ owes the extreme favour that it enjoys For those indeed ould like Rubens to be soine him, there is here a seriousness in youth, a frank and studious flower of maturity which is about to disappear and which is unique

I need not describe the composition You could not mention a more popular coious style There is nobody who has not in his reat central light cast against a dark background, its grandiose masses, its distinct and ot the first idea of it from Italy, and that he made no atterave It acts on one froly upon a wall: it is serious and enforces seriousness When we ree hich the work of Rubens is cri, and nize that here we have a noble _execution_ Everything in it is restrained, concise, and laconic, as in a page of Holy Writ

There are neither gesticulations, cries, horrors, nor too le sob, and the intense suffering of the draesture of inconsolable motherhood, a tearful face, or red eyes The Christ is one of the ined for the painting of a God It possesses sorace, that gives it every natural delicacy and all the distinction of a beautiful academic study It is subtly proportioned and in perfect taste: the drawing does not fall far short of the sentie and slightly hip-shot body, with its shtly fallen to one side, so livid and so perfectly limpid in its pallor, neither shrivelled nor drawn, and fro has disappeared, as it descends with so e beauties of the death of the just! Recollect how heavily it hangs and how precious it is to support, in what a lifeless attitude it glides along the sudariuonized affection it is received by the outstretched hands and ar? One of his feet, livid and pierced, encounters at the foot of the Cross the bare shoulder of Magdalen It does not rest upon it, but grazes it The contact is scarcely noticeable, we divine it rather than see it It would have been profane to insist upon it, it would have been cruel not to have made us believe in it All Rubens's furtive sensitiveness is in this is, respects the

The sinner is admirable She is incontestably the best piece of work in the picture, the ures of women, moreover, that Rubens ever executed in his career that was so fertile in feend; how should it not have, its very perfection having becoendary! It is probable that this beautiful lance, with the clear-cut profile, is a portrait, and the portrait is that of Isabella Brandt, whom he had married two years before, and who had also sat for hi of the _Visitation_ However, while observing her aure, powdered hair, and plump proportions, we reflect what must some day be the splendid and individual charms of that beautiful Helen Fourment whom he is to marry twenty years later

From his earliest to his latest years, one tenacious type seems to have taken up its abode in Rubens's heart; one fixed idea haunted his ahts in it, he completes it, he achieves it; to soes, just as he never ceases to repeat it throughout his works There is always so both of Isabella and of Helen in the women whom Rubens painted from either one of them In the first he puts a sort of preconceived trait of the second; into the second glides a kind of ineffaceable memory of the first At the date of which we treat, he possesses the first and is inspired by her; the other is not yet born, and still he divines her The future already les with the present; the real with the ideal As soon as the ie appears it has this double for Does it not see it from the first day, Rubens intended that neither he nor anyone else should forget it?

As for the rest, this is the sole race hich he has ehtly elical in character, if by that is ravity of sentiours that such a spirit must ireat part of his reserve is as much the result of his Italian education as of the attention he gave to his subject

The canvas is sohts and the extraordinary whiteness of the winding-sheet In spite of its reliefs, the painting is _flat_ It is a picture of blackish grounds on which are disposed broad strong lights of no gradations The colouring is not very rich: it is full, well-sustained, and clearly calculated to be effective from a distance It makes the picture, frath, and makes no attereen, an absolute black, a rather heavy red, and a white These four tones are placed side by side as frankly as is possible with four notes of such violence The contact is brusque and yet they do not suffer In the great white, the corpse of Christ is draith a delicate and supple line and modelled by its own reliefs without any effort of _nuances_, thanks to deviations of ile division in the lights, and scarcely a detail in the dark parts All that is of a singular breadth and rigidity The outlines are narrow, the half-tints limited except in the Christ, where the under layer of ultrahtfully

At the distance from which we exauess that it is excellent and directed with full confidence by a ood habits, that conforms to them, applies itself, and wishes to do well Rubens remembers, observes, restrains himself, possesses all his forces, subordinates them, and only half makes use of theularly original, attractive, and strong work Van Dyck will derive his best religious inspirations frone will not imitate it, I am afraid, except in its weak points, and from it will compose his French style Otto Van Veen should certainly applaud it What should Van Oort think of it? As for Jordaens, he is waiting for his fellow student to beco him in these neays

_Les Maitres d' Autrefois_ (Paris, 1876)

BACCHUS AND ARIADNE

(_titIAN_)

CHARLES LAMB

Hogarth excepted, can we produce any one painter within the last fifty years, or since the huinatively_? By this we mean, upon whom has subject so acted that it has seeed by hi or collateral points have impressed themselves so tyrannically, that he dared not treat it otherwise, lest he should falsify a revelation? Any that has imparted to his coh to convey a story with clearness, but that individualizing property, which should keep the subject so treated distinct in feature from every other subject, however similar, and to coht say this and this part could have found an appropriate place in no other picture in the world but this? Is there anything in modern art--ill not deous to what titian has effected, in that wonderful bringing together of two times in the _Ariadne_, in the National Gallery? Precipitous, with his reeling Satyr rout about hi suddenly the waste places, drunk with a new fury beyond the grape, Bacchus, born in fire, fire-like flings himself at the Cretan This is the ti of the story an artist, and no ordinary one, ht remain richly proud Guido in his harmonious version of it, saw no farther But froinative spirit titian has recalled past time, and laid it contributory with the present to one si with the mad symbols of his followers, made lucid with the presence and new offers of a God,--as if unconscious of Bacchus, or but idly casting her eyes as upon soeant--her soul undistracted fro the solitary shore, in as much heart-silence, and in almost the same local solitude, hich she awoke at daybreak to catch the forlorn last glances of the sail that bore away the Athenian

Here are two pointsof solitude still absolute; noon-day revelations, with the accidents of the dull grey dawn unquenched and lingering; the _present_ Bacchus with the _past_ Ariadne; two stories, with double Ti Had the artist made the woman one shade less indifferent to the God; still more, had she expressed a rapture at his advent, where would have been the story of the ed in the insipid accident of a flattering offer met with a welcohtly to be pieced up by a God