1014. THE MARTYRDOM OF ST. LAWRENCE.
Adam Elsheimer (German: 1578-1620).
Elsheimer was the son of a tailor at Frankfort-on-Maine. He himself settled in Rome. "He inherited with his northern blood an intense love of nature and her varied aspects. Upon this he engrafted a careful study of the human form, and in Italy he profited by the example of the great masters of preceding generations. Thus, aided by a certain homely imagination, he formed a style of his own, combining landscape and figure in such a manner that each was the necessary complement of the other, and that subject and situation were in perfect harmony. The lonely, and at that time, wooded, depressions of the Roman Campagna, and the hills of Albano and Tivoli, were his favourite haunts, and in their scenery his imagination placed events in biblical or mythological story. He loved especially to paint the strange effects produced by diverse sources of illumination. The novelty of his aims, the beauty of his execution, and the geniality of his disposition, gained him admirers and friends" (Official Catalogue). His contemporaries Sandrart and Cornelius de Bie describe him as an extraordinary artist who had "a peculiar manner of his own. He was, indeed, the first who invented a style of small sceneries, landscapes, and other curiosities." He possessed, we are told, so extraordinary a memory, that it was sufficient for him to have looked at an object or scene once to draw it with the utmost precision. The extreme patience and labour with which he finished his pictures were such that the prices he received never sufficiently repaid him. Had he been paid but a fourth part of what his works have since produced, he might have lived in affluence instead of indigence and distress. Elsheimer usually painted on copper (as is the case with this picture). His etchings and drawings are well known; in the Städel Institute of his native town there is a large collection of them. There are also some in the British Museum. Elsheimer's works had a considerable influence on many succeeding Dutch painters. "Elsheimer," says Mr. Colvin in his Guide to the British Museum Drawings, "fills a very important part in art as the forerunner on the one hand of Claude and his group, by his delight in the composition and massing of the forms of hill, plain, and grove in the country round Rome, and on the other hand of Rembrandt and his group, by his predilection for strong artificial contrasts of light, and for the dramatic and speaking action of his figures."
St. Lawrence (for whose legend see 747) is being prepared for martyrdom. Beside him there is an image of Cæsar, unto whom will be rendered Cæsar's due—the saint's life; but over his head is an angel from heaven, for unto God will go the saint's soul. The emperor is crowned on earth; the angel brings the saint a palm branch, an earnest of the martyr's crown in heaven.