VERNET'S PASSION FOR MUSIC
Vernet, notwithstanding he loved to depict the sea in its most convulsed and terrible aspects, was a perfect gentleman of the French school, whose manners were most amiable and engaging. What he most loved after painting was music. He had formed at Rome, an intimate friendship with Pergolesi, the composer, who afterwards became so celebrated, and they lived almost continually together. Vernet placed a harpsichord in his studio for the express use of his friend, and while the painter, carried away by his imagination, put the waters of the mighty main into commotion, or suspended persons on the towering waves, the grave composer sought, with the tips of his fingers, for the rudiments of his immortal melodies. It was thus that the melancholy stanzas of that chef d'œuvre of sadness and sorrow, the Stabat-Mater, were composed for a little convent in which one of Pergolesi's sisters resided. It seems to one that while listening to this plaintive music, Vernet must have given a more mellow tint to his painting; and it was, perhaps, while under its influence, that he worked at his calms and moonlights, or, making a truce with the roaring billows of the sea, painted it tranquil and smooth, and represented on the shore nothing but motionless fishermen, sailors seated between the carriages of two cannons, and whiling away the time by relating their travels to one another, or else stretched on the grass in so quiescent a state, that the spectator himself becomes motionless while gazing on them.
Pergolesi died in the arms of Joseph Vernet, who could never after hear the name of his friend pronounced, without being moved to tears. He religiously preserved the scraps of paper, on which he had seen the music of the Stabat-Mater dotted down before his eyes, and brought them with him to France in 1752, at which period he was sent for by the Marquis de Marigny, after an absence of twenty years. Vernet's love for music procured Grétry a hearty welcome, when the young composer came to Paris. Vernet discovered his talent, and predicted his success. Some of Grétry's features, his delicate constitution, and, above all, several of his simple and expressive airs, reminded the painter of the immortal man to whom music owes so large a portion of its present importance; for it was Pergolesi who first introduced in Italy the custom of paying such strict attention to the sense of the words and to the choice of the accompaniments.