Volume Ii Part 29 (1/2)
But to continue our walk. We entered another Dutch apartment, embellished with works by Dietrich, prettily colored, and laboriously minute; then into a corridor devoted chiefly to the works of Rembrandt and scholars. In this also were a number of those minute culinary paintings, in which cabbages, bra.s.s kettles, onions, potatoes, &c., are reproduced with praiseworthy industry. Many people are enraptured with these; but for my part I have but a very little more pleasure in a turnip, onion, or potato in a picture than out, and always wish that the industry and richness of color had been bestowed upon things in themselves beautiful. The great Master, it is true, gives these models, but he gives them not to be looked at, but eaten. If painters could only contrive to paint vegetables (cheaply) so that they could be eaten, I would be willing.
Two small saloons are next devoted to the modern Dutch and German school. In these is Denner's head of an old woman, which Cowper celebrates in a pretty poem--a marvel of faithful reproduction. One would think the old lady must have sat at least a year, till he had daguerreotyped every wrinkle and twinkle. How much better all this labor spent on the head of a good old woman than on the head of a cabbage!
And now come a set of Italian rooms, in which we have some curious specimens of the Romish development in religion; as, for instance, the fathers Gregory, Augustine, and Jerome, meditating on the immaculate conception of the Virgin. Think of a painter employing all his powers in representing such a fog bank!
Next comes a room dedicated to the works of t.i.tian, in which two nude Venuses, of a very different character from the de Milon, are too conspicuous. t.i.tian is sensuous; a Greek, but not of the highest cla.s.s.
The next room is devoted to Paul Veronese. This Paul has quite a character of his own--a grand old Venetian, with his head full of stateliness, and court ceremony, and gorgeous conventionality, half Oriental in his pa.s.sion for gold, and gems, and incense. As a specimen of the subjects in which his soul delights, take the following, which he has wrought up into a mammoth picture: Faith, Love, and Hope, presenting to the Virgin Mary a member of the old Venetian family of Concina, who, after having listened to the doctrines of the reformation, had become reconciled to the church. Here is Paul's piety, naively displayed by giving to the Virgin all the courtly graces of a high-born signorina. He paints, too, the Adoration of the Magi, because it gives such a good opportunity to deal with camels, jewels, turbans, and all the trappings of Oriental royalty. The Virgin and Child are a small part of the affair. I like Paul because he is so innocently unconscious of any thing _deep_ to be expressed; so honestly intent on clothes, jewels, and colors. He is a magnificent master of ceremonies, and ought to have been kept by some king desirous of going down to posterity, to celebrate his royal praise and glory.
Another room is devoted to the works of Guido. One or two of the Ecce h.o.m.o are much admired. To me they are, as compared with my conceptions of Jesus, more than inadequate. It seems to me that, if Jesus Christ should come again on earth, and walk through a gallery of paintings, and see the representations of sacred subjects, he would say again, as he did of old in the temple, ”Take these things hence!”
How could men who bowed down before art as an idol, and wors.h.i.+pped it as an ultimate end, and thus sensualized it, represent these holy mysteries, into which angels desired to look?
There are many representations of Christ here, set forth in the guide book as full of grace and majesty, which, any soul who has ever felt his infinite beauty would reject as a libel. And as to the Virgin Mother, one's eye becomes wearied in following the countless catalogue of the effeminate inane representations.
There is more pathos and beauty in those few words of the Scripture, ”Now there stood by the cross of Jesus his mother,” than in all these galleries put together. The soul that has learned to know her from the Bible, loving without idolizing, hoping for blest communion with her beyond the veil, seeking to imitate only the devotion which stood by the cross in the deepest hour of desertion, cannot be satisfied with these insipidities.
Only once or twice have I seen any thing like an approach towards the representations of the _scriptural_ idea. One is this painting by Raphael. Another is by him, and is called Madonna Maison d'Alba: of this I have seen only a copy; it might have been painted on the words, ”Now Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart.” The figure is that of a young Jewess, between girl and womanhood, in whose air and eye are expressed at once the princess of the house of David, the poetess, and the thoughtful sequestered maiden. She is sitting on the ground, the book of the prophets in one hand, lying listless at her side; the other hand is placed beneath the chin of her infant son, who looks inquiringly into her face. She does not see him--her eye has a sorrowful, far-darting look, as if beyond this flowery childhood she saw the dim image of a cross and a sepulchre. This was Mary, I have often thought that, in the reaction from the idolatry of Romanism, we Protestants were in danger of forgetting the treasures of religious sweetness, which the Bible has given us in her brief history.
It seems to me the time demands the forming of a new school of art based upon Protestant principles. For whatever vigor and originality there might once be in art, based on Romanism, it has certainly been worn threadbare by repet.i.tion.
Apropos to this. During the time I was in Paris, I formed the acquaintance of Schoeffer, whose _Christus Consolator_ and Remumrator and other works, have made him known in America. I went with a lady who has for many years been an intimate friend, and whose head has been introduced into several of his paintings. On the way she gave me some interesting particulars of him and his family. His mother was an artist--a woman of singularly ethereal and religious character.
There are three brothers devoted to art; of these Ary is the one best known in America, and the most distinguished. For some time, while they were studying, they were obliged to be separated, and the mother, to keep up the sympathy between them, used to copy the design of the one with whom she resided for the other two. A singular strength of attachment unites the family.
We found Schoeffer in retired lodgings in the outskirts of Paris, and were presented to his very pretty and agreeable English wife. In his studio we saw a picture of his mother, a most lovely and delicate woman, dressed in white, like one of the saints in the Revelation.
Then we saw his celebrated picture, Francisca Rimini, representing a cloudy, dark, infernal region, in which two hapless lovers are whirled round and round in mazes of never-ending wrath and anguish. _His_ face is hid from view; his att.i.tude expresses the extreme of despair.
But she clinging to his bosom--what words can tell the depths of love, of an anguish, and of endurance unconquerable, written in her pale sweet face! The picture smote to my heart like a dagger thrust; I felt its mournful, exquisite beauty as a libel on my Father in heaven.
No. It is _not_ G.o.d who eternally pursues undying, patient love with storms of vindictive wrath. Alas! well said Jesus, ”O righteous Father, the world hath not known thee.” The day will come when it will appear that in earth's history the sorrowing, invincible tenderness has been all on his part and that the strange word, _long-suffering_, means just what it says.
Nevertheless, the power and pathos of this picture cannot be too much praised. The coloring is beautiful, and though it pained me so much, I felt that it was one of the most striking works of art I had seen.
Schoeffer showed us a large picture, about half finished, in which he represents the gradual rise of the soul through the sorrows of earth to heaven. It consisted of figures grouped together, those nearest earth bowed down and overwhelmed with the most crus.h.i.+ng and hopeless sorrow; above them are those who are beginning to look upward, and the sorrow in their faces is subsiding into anxious inquiry; still above them are those who, having caught a gleam of the sources of consolation, express in their faces a solemn calmness; and still higher, rising in the air, figures with clasped hands, and absorbed, upward gaze, to whose eye the mystery has been unveiled, the enigma solved, and sorrow glorified. One among these, higher than the rest, with a face of rapt adoration, seems entering the very gate of heaven.
He also showed us an unfinished picture of the Temptation of Christ.
Upon a clear aerial mountain top, Satan, a thunder-scarred, unearthly figure, kneeling, points earnestly to the distant view of the kingdoms of this world. There is a furtive and peculiar expression of eager anxiety betrayed in his face, as if the bitterness of his own blasted eternity could find a momentary consolation in this success. It is the expression of a general, who has staked all his fortune on one die. Of the figure of Jesus I could not judge, in its unfinished state.
Whether the artist will solve the problem of uniting energy with sweetness, the G.o.dhead with the manhood, remains to be seen.
The paintings of Jesus are generally unsatisfactory; but Schoefier has approached nearer towards expressing my idea than any artist I have yet seen.
The knowing ones are much divided about Schoeffer. Some say he is no painter. Nothing seems to me so utterly without rule or compa.s.s as this world of art Divided into little cliques, each with his s.h.i.+bboleth, artists excommunicate each other as heartily as theologians, and a neophyte who should attempt to make up a judgment by their help would be obliged to s.h.i.+ft opinions with every circle.
I therefore look with my own eyes, for if not the best that might be, they are the best that G.o.d has given me.
Schoeffer is certainly a poet of a high order. His ideas are beautiful and religious, and his power of expression quite equal to that of many old masters, who had nothing very particular to express.
I should think his chief danger lay in falling into mannerism, and too often repeating the same idea. He has a theory of coloring which is in danger of running out into coldness and poverty of effect. His idea seems to be, that in the representation of spiritual subjects the artist should avoid the sensualism of color, and give only the most chaste and severe tone. Hence he makes much use of white, pale blue, and cloudy grays, avoiding the gorgeousness of the old masters. But it seems probable that in the celestial regions there is more, rather than less, of brilliant coloring than on earth. What can be more brilliant than the rainbow, yet what more perfectly free from earthly grossness? Nevertheless, in looking at the pictures of Schoeffer there is such a serene and spiritual charm spread over them, that one is little inclined to wish them other than they are. No artist that I have ever seen, not even Raphael, has more power of glorifying the human face by an exalted and unearthly expression. His head of Joan of Arc, at Versailles, is a remarkable example. It is a commentary on that scripture--”And they beheld his face, as it were the face of an angel.”