Part 12 (1/2)

At the end of the larger sacristy is the lunette which once decorated the toe Francesco Dandolo, and, at the side of it, one of the hly finished Tintoret's in Venice, nae in Cana_ An ih, and said by Lazari to be one of the fehich Tintoret signed with his na done so in this case

Evidently the work has been a favourite with him, and he has taken as th to take with anything The subject is not one which ady in composition It was always a favourite one with Veronese, because it gave draay costumes and of cheerful countenances; but one is surprised to find Tintoret, whose tone of rave, and who did not like tohis whole strength into the conception of a e feast; but so it is, and there are assuredly no female heads in any of his pictures in Venice elaborated so far as those which here forht Neither is it often that the works of this hty master conform themselves to any of the rules acted upon by ordinary painters; but in this instance the popular laws have been observed, and an acadehted to see hat severity the principal light is arranged in a central orous piece of shadow thrust into thetowards the extre by its composition as by its intensity The cicerone who escorts the stranger round the sacristy in the course of five minutes and allows him some forty seconds for the contemplation of a picture which the study of six months would not entirely fathom, directs his attention very carefully to the ”bell' effetto di prospettivo,” the whole ent public, that there is a long table in it, one end of which looks further off than the other; but there is more in the ”bell' effetto di prospettivo”

than the observance of the common law of optics The table is set in a spacious chaht from the horizon, and those in the side wall the intense blue of an Eastern sky The spectator looks all along the table, at the farther end of which are seated Christ and the Madonna, the uests on each side of it,--on one side men, on the other woht, which passing over their heads and glancing slightly on the table-cloth, falls in full length along the line of young Venetian women, who thus fill the whole centre of the picture with one broad sunbeaolden hair Close to the spectator a woman has risen in amazement, and stretches across the table to show the wine in her cup to those opposite; her dark red dress intercepts and enhances thethe subject of the picture, that one cannot distinguish either the bride or the bride-grooure from the Madonna in the line of women, ears a white head-dress of lace and rich chains of pearls in her hair, may well be accepted for the former, and I think that between her and the woman on the Madonna's left hand the unity of the line of woure: be this as it may, this fourth female face is the most beautiful, as far as I recollect, that occurs in the works of the painter, with the exception only of the Madonna in the _Flight into Egypt_ It is an ideal which occurs indeed elsewhere in many of his works, a face at once dark and delicate, the Italian cast of feature lish beauty soo; but I have never seen the ideal so completely worked out by the master The face may best be described as one of the purest and softest of Stothard's conceptions, executed with all the strength of Tintoret The other women are all made inferior to this one, but there are beautiful profiles and bendings of breasts and necks along the whole line Theportraits a that the faces are a little too conspicuous, seen like balls of light around of the picture The tone of the whole is sober and ree; the dresses are all broad masses of colour, and the only parts of the picture which lay claim to the expression of wealth or splendour are the head-dresses of the women In this respect the conception of the scene differs widely from that of Veronese, and approaches e is not an iround, forainst the distant sky Taken as a whole the picture is perhaps the most perfect example which human art has produced of the utmost possible force and sharpness of shadow united with richness of local colour In all the other works of Tintoret, and ht and shade or the local colour is predominant; in the one case the picture has a tendency to look as if painted by candle-light, in the other it becolass-painting This picture unites colour as rich as titian's with light and shade as forcible as Rembrandt's, and farpictures of the early Venetian school in this sacristy, and several i which that of Francesco Dandolo, transported here from the Church of the Frari, deserves especial attention

_Stones of Venice_ (London, 1853)

MADAME DE POMPADOUR

(_DE LA TOUR_)

CHARLES-AUGUSTIN SAINTE-BEUVE

Madarisette_, as her enemies affected to say and as Voltaire has said in a eoise_, a blossoant, adorned with a thousand gifts and a thousand talents, but with a way of feeling that did not have the grandeur and coldness of an aristocratic a for his own sake, as the handsomest man in his realm, as the one who had seemed the most amiable to her; she loved him sincerely, sentimentally, if not with a profound passion On her arrival at court, her ideal would have been to amuse him with a thousand entertainments borrowed from the arts, or even from matters of the intellect, to make him happy and constant in a circle of varied enchantments and pleasures A Watteau landscape, sports, comedies, pastorals in the shade, a continual Embarkation for Cythera, that would have been the round she would have preferred But once transported into the slippery enclosure of the court, she could realize her ideal very i by nature, she had to take up arainst en overthrown; necessity led her into politics and induced her to make herself Minister of State

She loved the arts and intellectual things far above the comprehension of any of the ladies of quality On her arrival at her eminent and dishonourable post--ht--she at first only thought of herself as destined to aid, to call to her side, and to encourage struggling lory, her best title, and her best excuse She did her best to advance Voltaire and to reeable to Louis XV, wholy repelled by the vivacity and even the faenius in Crebillon and honoured hily She showed favour to Gresset; she protected Marmontel; she welcomed Duclos; she admired Montesquieu and plainly showed it She would have liked to serve Jean-Jacques Rousseau When the King of Prussia ostentatiously gave d'Ale in her presence at the aenius_, for which it was given, she advised him to forbid the philosopher to accept it and to double it hiious principles would not permit it on account of the _Encyclopedie_ It was not her fault that we cannot say _the century of Louis XV_, as we say _the century of Louis XIV_

[Illustration: PORTRAIT OF MADAME DE POMPADOUR

_De la Tour_]

There are then in the career and power of Madame de Pompadour two distinct periods: the first, thethe peace of Aix-la-Chapelle (1748): in this, she completely played her role of a youthful favourite, fond of peace, the arts, the pleasures of the s happily There was a second period, greatly checkered, but more frequently disastrous and fatal; this was the whole period of the Seven Years' War, the attempted assassination by Damiens, the defeat of Rosbach, and the insults of the victorious Frederick These were harsh years which preraceful woth However, ht have been worse, and that, with the aid of M de Choiseul, by ain covered her own mistakes and the humiliation of the French e

It seems that the nation itself felt this and felt more especially that after this brilliant favourite there would be a greater fall; for when she died at Versailles, April 15, 1764, the regret of the Parisian populace, which some years before would have stoned her, was universal

The one who seeret her the least was Louis XV; it is related that seeing from athe hearse on its way fro dreadful, he only said:

”The Marquise will not have very fine weather for her journey”

All the masters of the French school of her time painted a portrait of Madame de Pompadour: we have one by Boucher, and another by Drouais which Grimm preferred to all others; but the most admirable of all is certainly La Tour's pastel owned by the Louvre To this we go in order to see _la e of her, or to form the least idea of her personality

She is represented as seated in an ar in one hand a book ofon a lobe and several volulobe, is Volume IV of the _Encyclopedie_; next to it in a row are the volumes of _L'Esprit des Lois_, _La Henriade_, and _Pastor Fido_, indicative of the tastes at once serious and sentimental of the queen of this spot Upon the table also and at the base of the globe is seen a blue book upside down, its cover is inscribed: _Pierres gravees_; this is her work Underneath it and hanging down over the table is a print representing an engraver of precious stones at ith these words: _Pompadour sculpsit_ On the floor, by the foot of the table, is a portfolio s; we have here a coround, between the feet of the consol-table, is seen a vase of japanese porcelain: why not of Sevres? Behind her arm-chair and on the side of the room opposite the table is another aruitar But it is the person herself who is in every respect nity, and exquisite beauty Holding her htly and carelessly, her attention is suddenly called away from it; she seems to have heard a noise and turns her head

Is it indeed the King who has arrived and is about to enter? She see with a smile Her head, thus turned aside, reveals the outline of the neck in all its grace, and her very short but deliciously-waved hair is arranged in rows of little curls, the blonde tint of whichof powder The head stands out against a light-blue background, which in general dohts the eye; it is a ht, sifting doards, falls across every object

There is nothing in this enchanted boudoir which does not see, not even _L'Esprit des Lois_ and _L'Encyclopedie_ The flowered satin robethe undulations of the breast for several rows of those bohich were called, I believe, _parfaits contentements_, and which are of a very pale lilac Her own flesh-tints and complexion are of a white lilac, delicately azured That breast, those ribbons, and that robe--all blend together harly Beauty shi+nes in all its brilliance and in full bloo; the temples have preserved their youth and freshness; the lips are also still fresh and have not yet withered as they are said to have beco been too frequently puckered or bitten in repressing anger and insults

Everything in the countenance and in the attitude expresses grace, supreme taste, and affability and amenity rather than sweetness, a queenly air which she had to assume but which sits naturally upon her and is sustained without too ht continue and describe many lovely details, but I prefer to stop and send the curious to the s that I scarcely dare to touch upon

Such in her best days was this ravishi+ng, ambitious, frail, but sincere woood, faithful (I love to believe) in her sin, obliging, so far as she could be, but vindictive when driven to it; as quite one of her own sex after all, and, finally, whose inti has been able to shoithout being too heavy or crushi+ng a witness against her

In spite of everything, she was exactly the n, the only one who could have succeeded in turning it to account in the sense of opinion, the only one who could lessen the crying discord between the least literary of kings and the e, loudly preferring the age of Louis XV to that of Louis XIV, has been able to say of this age of the hun will not betime,” Mme de Poraceful wo into it the vivacity of her thoroughly French tastes, tastes that were Parisian As mistress and friend of the Prince, as protectress of the arts, her mind found itself entirely on a level with her role and her rank: as a politician, she bent, she did ill, but perhaps not worse than any other favourite in her place would have done at that period when a real states after a reign of nineteen years; when at the age of forty-two years she had to leave these palaces, these riches, these marvels of art she had amassed, this power so envied and disputed, but which she kept entirely in her own hands to her last day, she did not say with a sigh, like Mazarin, ”So I lance, and as the _cure_ of the Madeleine, who had come to visit her at Versailles, was about to depart, she said: ”Wait a ether”