It Is Marvellous That Any Man Should So Master The
Habit And The Thought Of Two Artists So Widely Apart As Raphael And
Rubens, As To Produce Just Such Pictures As They Would Have Painted Upon
The Same Themes.
The halls and dark corridors of the Museum are filled
with Giordano's canvases.
In less than ten years' residence in Spain he
covered the walls of dozens of churches and palaces with his fatally
facile work. There are more than three hundred pictures recorded as
executed by him in that time. They are far from being without merit.
There is a singular slap-dash vigor about his drawing. His coloring,
except when he is imitating some earlier master, is usually thin and
poor. It is difficult to repress an emotion of regret in looking at his
laborious yet useless life. With great talents, with indefatigable
industry, he deluged Europe with paintings that no one cares for, and
passed into history simply as Luca Fa Presto, - Luke Work-Fast.
It is not by mere activity that great things are done in art. In the
great gallery we now enter we see the deathless work of the men who
wrought in faith. This is the grandest room in Christendom. It is about
three hundred and fifty feet long and thirty-five broad and high. It is
beautifully lighted from above. Its great length is broken here and
there by vases and statues, so placed between doors as nowhere to
embarrass the view. The northern half of the gallery is Spanish, and the
southern half Italian.
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