Part 16

His passion for art, and his eccentric notions respecting the Jews, were strongly manifested in his last sickness. He lived in the parish of the city which contained the prison of the Inquisition. The priest of the parish visited him upon his death-bed, and proposed to administer the sacraments to him after confession, when the artist quietly asked him whether he was in the habit of administering it to the Jews on whom penance was imposed by the Inquisition. The priest replying in the affirmative, Cano said, “Senor Licenciado, go your way, and do not trouble yourself to call again; for the priest who administers the sacraments to the Jews shall not administer them to me.” Accordingly he sent for the priest of the parish of St. Andrew. This last, however, gave offence in another form; he put into the artist’s hands a crucifix of indifferent execution, when Cano desired him to take it away. The priest was so shocked at this, that he thought him possessed, and was at the point of exorcising him. “My son,” he said, “what dost thou mean? this is the Lord who redeemed thee, and who must save thee.”--“I know that well,” replied Cano, “but do you want to provoke me with that wretched thing, so as to give me over to the devil? let me have a simple cross, for with that I can reverence Christ in faith; I can worship him as he is in himself, and as I contemplate him in my own mind.” This was accordingly done, so that the artist was no longer troubled by an indifferent specimen of sculpture.

RIBALTA’S MARRIAGE.

Francisco Ribalta, an eminent Spanish painter, studied first in Valencia, where he fell in love with the daughter of his instructor. The father refused his consent to the marriage; but the daughter promised to wait for her lover while he studied in Italy. Ribalta accordingly went thither and devoted himself to his art, studying particularly the works of Raffaelle and the Caracci, and returned, after a considerable time, to his native country. Quickened by love, he had attained a high degree of excellence. On arriving at the city of Valencia, he went to the house of his beloved, who meanwhile had proved faithful; and her father being away from home, he finished the sketch of a picture in his studio, in his mistress’ presence, and left it to produce its effect upon the hitherto inflexible parent. The latter, on returning, asked his daughter who had been there, adding, with a look at the picture, “This is the man to whom I would marry thee, and not to that dauber, Ribalta.” The marriage of course took place, immediately; and the fame of Ribalta soon procured him abundant employment.

APARICIO, CANOVA, AND THORWALDSEN.

Aparicio, a Spanish painter who died in 1838, possessed little merit, but great vanity. Among other works, he painted the Ransoming of 1700 slaves at Algiers, which occurred in 1768, by order of Charles III. When the picture was exhibited at Rome, Canova, who knew the man, told Aparicio, “This is the finest thing in the world, and you are the first of painters.” Soon after, Thorwaldsen came in and ventured a critique, whereupon the Don indignantly quoted Canova. “Sir, he has been laughing at you,” said the honest Dane, to whom Aparicio never spoke again.

BARTOLOME ESTEBAN MURILLO.

This preëminent Spanish painter was born at Pilas, near Seville, in 1613. There is a great deal of contradiction among writers as to his early history, but it has been proved that he never left his own country. He first studied under Don Juan del Castillo, an eminent historical painter at Seville, on leaving whom, he went to Cadiz. It was the custom of the young artists at that time to expose their works for sale at the annual fairs, and many of the earliest productions of Murillo were exported to South America, which gave rise to the tradition, that he had proceeded thither in person.

MURILLO AND VELASQUEZ.

The fame of Velasquez, then at its zenith, inspired Murillo with a desire to visit Madrid, in the hope to profit by his instruction. He accordingly proceeded thither in 1642, and paid his court to Velasquez, who received him with great kindness, admitted him into his academy, and procured for him the best means of improvement beyond his own instruction, by obtaining for him access to the rich treasures of art in the royal collections, where his attention was particularly directed to the works of Titian, Rubens, and Vandyck.

MURILLO’S RETURN TO SEVILLE.

After a residence of three years at Madrid, Murillo returned to Seville, where he was commissioned to paint his great fresco of St. Thomas of Villanuova distributing alms to the poor, in the convent of San Francisco, consisting of sixteen compartments.--The subject suited his genius, and gave full scope for the display of his powers, which were peculiarly adapted to the representation of nature in her most simple and unsophisticated forms. The Saint stands in a dignified posture, with a countenance beaming with benevolence and compassion, while he is surrounded by groups of paupers, eagerly pressing forward to receive his charity, whose varied character and wretchedness are portrayed with wonderful art and truthfulness of expression. This and other works produced emotions of the greatest astonishment among his countrymen, established his reputation as one of the greatest artists of his age, and procured him abundant employment.

MURILLO AND IRIARTE.

About this time, Murillo was employed by the Marquis of Villamanrique, to paint a series of pictures from the life of David, in which the backgrounds were to be painted by Ignacio Iriarte, an eminent landscape painter of Seville. Murillo rightly proposed that the landscape parts should be first painted, and that he should afterwards put in the figures; but Iriarte contended that the historical part ought to be first finished, to which he would adapt the backgrounds. To put an end to the dispute, Murillo undertook to execute the whole, and changing the History of David to that of Jacob, he produced the famous series of five pictures, now in the possession of the Marquis de Santiago at Madrid, in which the beauty of the landscapes contends with that of the figures, and which remain a monument of his powers in these different departments of the art.

MURILLO’S DEATH.

The last work which Murillo painted was a picture of St. Catherine, in the convent of the Capuchins at Seville, his death being hastened by a fall from the scaffold. He died at Seville in 1685, universally deplored--for he was greatly beloved, not merely for his extraordinary talents, but for the generous qualities of his heart. Such was his noble and charitable disposition, that he is said to have left but little property, though he received large prices for his works.

MURILLO’S STYLE.

Few painters have a juster claim to originality of style than Murillo, and his works show an incontestible proof of the perfection to which the Spanish school attained, and the real character of its artists; for he was never out of his native country, and could have borrowed little from foreign artists; and this originality places him in the first rank among the painters of every school. All his works are distinguished by a close and lively imitation of nature. His pictures of the Virgin, Saints, Magdalens, and even of the Saviour, are stamped with a characteristic expression of the eye, and have a national peculiarity of countenance and habiliments, which are very remarkable. There is little of the academy discernible in his design or his composition. It is a chaste and faithful representation of what he saw or conceived; truth and simplicity are never lost sight of; his coloring is clear, tender, and harmonious, and though it possesses the truth of Titian, and the sweetness of Vandyck, it has nothing of the appearance of imitation. There is little of the ideal in his forms or heads, and though he frequently adopts a beautiful expression, there is usually a portrait-like simplicity in his countenances. In short, his pictures are said to hold a middle rank between the unpolished naturalness of the Flemish, and the graceful and dignified taste of the Italian schools.

MURILLO’S WORKS.

The works of Murillo are numerous, and widely scattered over the world. Most of his greatest works are in the churches of Spain; some are in the Royal collections at Madrid, some in France and Flanders, many in England, and a few in the United States. They now command enormous prices. The National Gallery of London paid four thousand guineas for a picture of the Holy Family, and two thousand for one of St. John with the Lamb. The late Marshal Soult’s collection was very rich in Murillos--the fruits of his campaigns in Spain. The famous Assumption of the Virgin, considered the chef d’œuvre of the master, brought the enormous sum of five hundred and eighty-six thousand francs, and was bought by the French government to adorn the Louvre; but it should be recollected that the heads of three governments--those of France, Russia, and Spain--and an English Marquis, competed for it. Such works, too, are esteemed above all price, as models of art, in a national collection of pictures. Of the other Murillos in the Soult collection, the principal brought the following prices: “The Ravages of the Plague,” twenty thousand francs; “The Miracle of St. Diego,” eighty-five thousand francs; “The Flight into Egypt,” fifty-one thousand francs; “The Nativity of the Virgin,” ninety thousand francs; “The Repentance of St. Peter,” fifty-five thousand francs; “Christ on the Cross,” thirty-one thousand francs; “St. Peter in Prison,” one hundred and fifty-one thousand francs; “Jesus and St. John--children,” fifty-one thousand seven hundred and fifty francs. The two last were purchased for the Emperor of Russia. The collection was sold in May, 1852.

The works of Murillo have been largely copied and imitated, and so successfully as to deceive even connoisseurs.

MURILLO’S ASSUMPTION OF THE VIRGIN.

The Assumption of the Virgin is considered by all the Spanish writers as the masterpiece of Murillo, and never, perhaps, did that great master attain such sublimity of expression and such magnificent coloring, as in this almost divine picture. It represents the Virgin in the act of being carried up into Heaven. Her golden hair floats on her shoulders, and her white robe gently swells in the breeze, while a mantle of blue gracefully falls from her left shoulder. Groups of angels and cherubim of extraordinary beauty, sport around her in the most evident admiration, those below thronging closely together, while those above open their ranks, as if not in any way to conceal the glory shed around the ascending Virgin. The size of the picture is eight feet six inches in height, by six feet broad, French measure. This picture was the gem of the famous collection made by Marshal Soult, during his campaigns in Spain, who used humorously to relate that it cost him _two monks_, which he thus explained. One morning two of his soldiers were found with their throats cut, and the deed being traced to the instigation of the monks, near whose convent they had encamped, he immediately arraigned them before a court-martial, sentenced two of the fraternity to expiate the deed, and compelled them to designate the victims by lot. One of the chances fell to the Prior, who offered Soult this peerless picture as the price of their redemption.

CASTILLO’S TRIBUTE TO MURILLO.

Castillo was educated in the school of Zurbaran. After returning to his native city, he flattered himself that he was the first Spanish painter of the day; but subsequently, on a visit to Seville, he was painfully undeceived. The works of Murillo struck him with astonishment, and when he saw the St. Leander and St. Isidore, as well as the St. Anthony of Padua by that master, he exclaimed, “It is all over with Castillo! Is it possible that Murillo can be the author of all this grace and beauty of coloring?” He returned to Cordova, and attempted to imitate and equal Murillo, but felt satisfied that he had failed; and it is said that he died in the following year, from the effects of envy and annoyance.

CORREGGIO.

The name of this great artist was Antonio Allegri, and he was born at Correggio, a small town in the Duchy of Modena, in 1494; hence his acquired name. It was for a long time the fashion to regard the divine creations of Correggio as the mere product of genius and accident; himself as a man born in the lowest grade of society; uneducated in the elements of his art, owing all to the wondrous resources of his own unassisted genius; living and dying in obscurity and poverty; ill paid for his pictures; and at length perishing tragically. It has been proved that there is no foundation for these popular fallacies. Correggio’s own pictures are a sufficient refutation of a part of them; they exhibit not only a classical and cultivated taste, but a profound knowledge of anatomy, and of the sciences of optics, perspective, and chemistry, as far as they were then carried. His exquisite chiaro-scuro and harmonious blending of colors were certainly not the result of mere chance: all his sensibility to these effects of nature would not have enabled him to render them, without the profoundest study of the mechanical means he employed. The great works on which he was employed--his lavish use of the rarest and most expensive colors, and the time and labor he bestowed in analyzing and refining them--the report that he worked on a ground overlaid with gold--all refute the idea of his being either an ignorant or a distressed man. Of the rank he held in the estimation of the princes of his country we have evidence in a curious document discovered in the archives of the city of Correggio--the marriage contract between Ippolito (the son of Giberto, Lord of Correggio, by his wife, the celebrated poetess Vittoria Gambara), and Chiara da Correggio, in which we find the signature of the great painter as one of the witnesses. Correggio was one of that splendid triumvirate of painters who, living at the same time, were working on different principles, and achieving, each in his own department, excellence hitherto unequalled; and if Correggio must be allowed to be inferior to Raffaelle in invention and expression, and to Titian in life-like color, he has united design and color with the illusion of light and shadow in a degree of perfection not then nor since approached by any painter. Hence Annibale Caracci, on seeing one of his great pictures, exclaimed in a transport that he was “the only _painter_!”

CORREGGIO’S GRAND CUPOLA OF THE CHURCH OF ST. JOHN AT PARMA.

The admiration which the works of Correggio excited, induced the monks of St. John to engage him in ornamenting the grand cupola, and other parts of their church. The original agreement has not been discovered, but various entries have been found in the books of the convent, between 1519 and 1536, which prove, that for adorning the cupola he received, as Tiraboschi asserts, two hundred and seventy-two gold ducats, and two hundred more for other parts of the fabric. The last payment of twenty seven gold ducats was made on the 23d of January, 1524, and the acknowledgment of the painter, under his own signature, is still extant.

The subject is the Ascension of Christ in glory, surrounded by the twelve Apostles, seated on the clouds; and in the lunettes the four Evangelists and four Doctors of the Church. The situation for the picture presented difficulties which none but so great an artist could have overcome; for the cupola has neither sky-light nor windows, and consequently the whole effect of the piece must depend on the light reflected from below. The figures of the Apostles are chiefly naked, gigantic, and in a style of peculiar grandeur.

Besides the cupola, various parts of the same church were adorned by his hand. He decorated the tribune, which was afterwards demolished to enlarge the choir; and it was so highly esteemed, that Cesare Aretusi was employed by the monks to copy it for the new tribune. He painted also in fresco, the two sides of the fifth chapel on the right hand, the first representing the Martyrdom of St. Placido and St. Flavia, and the second a dead Christ, with the Virgin Mary swooning at his feet. Of these paintings Mengs particularly admires the head of St. Placido and the exquisite figure of the Magdalen in the last mentioned picture.

CORREGGIO’S GRAND CUPOLA OF THE CATHEDRAL AT PARMA.

The grand fresco painting in the cupola of the Cathedral of Parma, is considered Correggio’s greatest work, and has ever been regarded as a most wonderful production.

The difficulties he had to encounter, were greater than those in the church of St. John, and in overcoming them he displayed the most consummate skill and judgment. This cupola, which is nearly thirty-nine feet in diameter, is octagonal, the compartments diminishing as it rises; and it is not surmounted with a lantern, but towards the lower part is lighted by windows, approaching to an oval form. On this surface he delineated numerous groups of figures, with extraordinary boldness and effect; though, for the sake of variety, he partially adopted a smaller scale than in the cupola of St. John. The subject is the Assumption of the Virgin Mary. She is represented with an air in the highest degree indicative of devotion and beatitude, as rising to meet Christ in the clouds, surrounded by the heavenly choir of saints and angels; while beneath, the apostles behold her reception into glory with the most dignified expression of reverence and astonishment. Over the whole is an effusion of light, which produces an impression truly celestial.

The figures which are depicted in the upper part of the dome, are foreshortened with consummate skill. Mengs, who saw them near, and judged of them as an artist, appears astonished at their boldness, which he calls “sconcia terribile,” particularly that of Christ, which occupies the centre. But the effect, when seen from below, proves that the painter had deeply studied that delicate branch of the art; for nothing can exceed the bold and exquisite management of the light and shade, and the beautiful proportion in which the figures appear to the eye, except the life and spirit with which they are animated, and the general harmony of the whole.

In decorating the lower part of the cupola, Correggio displayed undiminished resources. He figured a species of socle, or cornice, which runs round the whole cupola, yet at such a distance as to afford a space between the windows for the apostles, who appear, some single, some in pairs, surrounded with angels, and delineated in the same grand style as those in the cupola of St. John. Yet, although placed on the very lines of the angles, formed in the dome, they are so artfully disposed and foreshortened, as to appear painted vertically on the cornice. To unite these with the principal figures, he distributed above and on the socle, between the gigantic figures of the apostles, and the light and airy forms of the celestial choir above, groups of angels, of an intermediate size, some with torches, and others bearing vases and censers.

But a striking proof of his taste and skill is manifested in the four lunettes between the arches supporting the cupola. Here he feigned the architecture to form four capacious niches or shells, in which he introduced the patrons of the city, St. John the Baptist, St. Hilary, St. Thomas, and St. Bernard degli Uberti, in magnitude equal to the Apostles, resting on clouds and attended by angels. In depicting the light as transmitted from the groups above, he has thrown it so naturally upon these figures and their angelic suite, that they appear as if detached from the wall, and animated with more than human spirit and grace.

This great work was commenced about 1523, and finished in 1530, as appears from the original agreements and receipts, preserved in the archives of the Chapter, which were published by his biographer Pungileoni, from a copy taken and authenticated by a Notary Public, in 1803. The work seems to have been delayed by the feuds and warfare which agitated Parma at that time, and perhaps by other engagements of the artist. The contract was signed on the 3d of November, 1522. In the plan or estimate which Correggio drew up at the desire of the Chapter, and which is still preserved in his own handwriting, he required twelve hundred gold ducats, and one hundred for gold leaf; the scaffolding, lime, and other requisites to be provided by the Chapter. But in the contract itself, the price was reduced to one thousand ducats, exclusive of the one hundred for gold leaf. For this sum he engaged to paint the choir, and the cupola with its arches and pillars, as far as the altar; also the lateral chapels, in imitation of living subjects, bronze and marble, according to the plan, and in conformity to the nature of the place, comprising in the whole a surface of one hundred and fifty-four square perches (perteche). The Chapter, on their part, were to provide the scaffolding and the lime, and to defray the expense of preparing the walls. Thus Correggio received the sum of one thousand gold ducats (about two thousand dollars) for his work, out of which he had to pay for his colors, and the labors of his assistants. What then becomes of the miserable story generally current, that this was his last work; that when he went to receive payment, that he might take home the price of his labors to his poverty-stricken family, the canons found fault with his picture, and refused to pay him more than half the paltry sum originally promised; that they paid him in copper coin; that he took the heavy burden upon his shoulders, and walked a distance of eight miles to his cottage, under the burning heat of an Italian sun, which together with his despair threw him into a fever, of which he died, on his bed of straw, in three days? It appears from the documents before cited, that Correggio received payment in instalments, as his work progressed.

CORREGGIO’S FATE.

Vasari commiserates the fate of Correggio, whom he represents as of a melancholy turn of mind timid and diffident of his own powers; burthened with a numerous family, which, with all his prodigious talents, he could scarcely support; illy recompensed for his works; and to crown the sad story, we are told that, having received at Parma a payment of sixty crowns in copper money, he caught a fever in the exertion of carrying it home on his shoulders, which occasioned his death.

This picture, however, according to Lanzi, is exaggerated; for although the situation of Correggio was far beneath his merits, yet it was by no means deplorable. His family was highly respectable, and possessed considerable landed property, which is said to have been augmented by his own earnings; and so far from his having died of the fatigue of carrying home copper money, he was usually paid in gold. For the cupola and tribune of the church of St. John, he received four hundred and seventy-two sequins; for that of the Cathedral, three hundred and fifty; payments by no means inconsiderable in those times. For his celebrated Notte he was paid forty sequins, and for the St. Jerome, which cost him six months’ labor, forty-seven. It does not appear probable that he acquired great riches, but there is no doubt that he was equally screened from the evils attendant on penury and affluence.