Car-Racci And Guido Only Saved Their
Lives By Flight, And The Blameless And Gifted Domenichino, It Is Said,
Was Foully Murdered By His Order.
It is not to such a heart as this that
is given the ineffable raptures of Murillo or the positive revelations
of Velazquez.
These great souls were above cruelty or jealousy.
Velazquez never knew the storms of adversity. Safely anchored in the
royal favor, he passed his uneventful life in the calm of his beloved
work. But his hand and home were always open to the struggling artists
of Spain. He was the benefactor of Alonzo Cano; and when Murillo came up
to Madrid, weary and footsore with his long tramp from Andalusia,
sustained by an innate consciousness of power, all on fire with a
picture of Van Dyck he had seen in Seville, the rich and honored painter
of the court received with generous kindness the shabby young wanderer,
clothed him, and taught him, and watched with noble delight the first
flights of the young eagle whose strong wing was so soon to cleave the
empyrean. And when Murillo went back to Seville he paid his debt by
doing as much for others. These magnanimous hearts were fit company for
the saints they drew.
We have lingered so long with the native artists we shall have little to
say of the rest. There are ten fine Raphaels, but it is needless to
speak of them. They have been endlessly reproduced. Raphael is known and
judged by the world. After some centuries of discussion the scorners and
the critics are dumb. All men have learned the habit of Albani, who, in
a frivolous and unappreciative age, always uncovered his head at the
name of Raphael Sanzio. We look at his precious work with a mingled
feeling of gratitude for what we have, and of rebellious wonder that
lives like his and Shelley's should be extinguished in their glorious
dawn, while kings and country gentlemen live a hundred years. What
boundless possibilities of bright achievement these two divine youths
owed us in the forty years more they should have lived! Raphael's
greatest pictures in Madrid are the Spasimo di Sicilia, and the Holy
Family, called La Perla. The former has a singular history. It was
painted for a convent in Palermo, shipwrecked on the way, and thrown
ashore on the gulf of Genoa. It was again sent to Sicily, brought to
Spain by the Viceroy of Naples, stolen by Napoleon, and in Paris was
subjected to a brilliantly successful operation for transferring the
layer of paint from the worm-eaten wood to canvas. It came back to Spain
with other stolen goods from the Louvre. La Perla was bought by Philip
IV. at the sale of Charles I.'s effects after his decapitation. Philip
was fond of Charles, but could not resist the temptation to profit by
his death. This picture was the richest of the booty. It is, of all the
faces of the Virgin extant, the most perfectly beautiful and one of the
least spiritual.
There is another fine Madonna, commonly called La Virgen del Pez, from a
fish which young Tobit holds in his hand. It is rather tawny in color,
as if it had been painted on a pine board and the wood had asserted
itself from below. It is a charming picture, with all the great Roman's
inevitable perfection of design; but it is incomprehensible that
critics, M. Viardot among them, should call it the first in rank of
Raphael's Virgins in Glory. There are none which can dispute that title
with Our Lady of San Sisto, unearthly and supernatural in beauty and
majesty.
The school of Florence is represented by a charming Mona Lisa of
Leonardo da Vinci, almost identical with that of the Louvre; and six
admirable pictures of Andrea del Sarto. But the one which most attracts
and holds all those who regard the Faultless Painter with sympathy, and
who admiring his genius regret his errors, is a portrait of his wife
Lucrezia Fede, whose name, a French writer has said, is a double
epigram. It was this capricious and wilful beauty who made poor Andrea
break his word and embezzle the money King Francis had given him to
spend for works of art. Yet this dangerous face is his best excuse, - the
face of a man-snarer, subtle and passionate and cruel in its blind
selfishness, and yet so beautiful that any man might yield to it against
the cry of his own warning conscience. Browning must have seen it before
he wrote, in his pathetic poem, -
"Let my hands frame your face in your hair's gold,
You beautiful Lucrezia, that are mine!"
Nowhere, away from the Adriatic, is the Venetian school so richly
represented as in Madrid. Charles and Philip were the most munificent
friends and patrons of Titian, and the Royal Museum counts among its
treasures in consequence the enormous number of forty-three pictures by
the wonderful centenarian. Among these are two upon which he set great
value, - a Last Supper, which has unfortunately mouldered to ruin in the
humid refectory of the Escorial, equal in merit and destiny with that of
Leonardo; and the Gloria, or apotheosis of the imperial family, which,
after the death of Charles, was brought from Yuste to the Escorial, and
thence came to swell the treasures of the Museum. It is a grand and
masterly work. The vigorous genius of Titian has grappled with the
essential difficulties of a subject that trembles on the balance of
ridiculous and sublime, and has come out triumphant. The Father and the
Son sit on high. The Operating Spirit hovers above them. The Virgin in
robes of azure stands in the blaze of the Presence. The celestial army
is ranged around. Below, a little lower than the angels, are Charles and
Philip with their wives, on their knees, with white cowls and clasped
hands, - Charles in his premature age, with worn face and grizzled beard;
and Philip in his youth of unwholesome fairness, with red lips and pink
eyelids, such as Titian painted him in the Adonis.
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