A Spring Walk in Provence

by Archibald Marshall

Page [94]

Though Ronzen came into Provence from Venice, it seems unlikely that he was an Italian. His name is Dutch, and so is his style of painting; and a striking resemblance has been pointed out between one of these paintings and an engraving of the same subject executed by Lucas van Leyden ten years before. Wherever he came from, Ronzen was a great artist, and left behind him at Saint-Maximin a great treasure.

The sixteen panels are of different scenes in the Passion. The light was not good when I was in the church, and some of them are too high to be seen easily; but most of them are wonderfully fresh and vivid and suggestive, crowded with figures, and creating that sense of intimacy which has always been the mark of the Dutch school. Each of the scenes is set in a characteristic landscape. You can pick out the Ducal Palace at Venice, the Palace of the Popes at Avignon, the Coliseum; and the figures include all the types of the period, from the aristocrat to the peasant. Many of them, no doubt, are portraits of people very well known in their time, who came in and out of the church, or wherever the artist did his work, to see how he was getting on, and had a great deal to say about the painting and about the magnificent present that the Seigneur de Semblançay was making to the church, and what a fortunate thing it was that so clever an artist had been available to undertake the commission. Perhaps they used a little flattery, so that he should offer to "put them in."

He was an important person, this Jacques de Beaune, Seigneur de Semblançay. He was superintendent of the finances of Francis I, whose finances wanted a good deal of looking after, and lived at this time chiefly in Paris. But previously he had been Treasurer-General of Provence, and it might have been well for him if he had stayed in his own country. For he fell into disgrace, and was put to death seven years after Ronzen had finished the pictures he had ordered from him. Probably he found time, during the period from the end of 1517 to July, 1520, when Ronzen was at Saint-Maximin, to pay him a few visits and see how he was progressing. According to the custom of the time his portrait would almost certainly have been included among the figures that still appear so lifelike after five hundred years, and remains there, if we could only tell which of them all it is. Did he have any premonition or dread of the fate that was hanging over him, and did the people who were taking such a lively interest in the work he was inaugurating think of him as having attained to the pinnacle of success, and much to be envied in comparison with themselves, living humdrum lives in their beautiful Provence?

Saint-Maximin has a fine Sacristy, furnished with presses and panelling of beautifully carved walnut, of the seventeenth century. Before the Revolution it contained many rich treasures, gold cups and chalices, silver reliquaries, ornaments jewelled and enamelled. Kings and Sovereign Pontiffs had showered gifts upon it; but in 1793 everything was rifled.

"Barras and Fréron came to carry out the spoliation. Barras presented himself to the Popular Assembly to announce his mission, and a simple peasant, Jean Saurin, who died in 1842, Member of the Club, alone rose before the representative of the Convention to protest against the act of vandalism. He spoke honourably and with energy, but without success: the church was despoiled. Some rare and precious fragments, however, were saved from the wreck by the care and devotion of the sub-sacristan, Joseph Bastide, whose name deserves to be held in grateful memory by archæologists; for besides the sacred bones that the Church of Saint-Maximin can still offer, thanks to him, to public veneration, he was able to withdraw from the revolutionary spoliation a few rich ornaments, some ancient reliquaries, and a textile specimen of great value, the cope of St. Louis d'Anjou, Bishop of Toulouse. This cope, of the end of the thirteenth century, left by the holy bishop to the convent founded by his father, is one of the most beautiful and curious ornaments of the period."

Thus M. Rostan, who proceeds to describe it. But alas! it is no longer there. The sacristan, worthy descendant of the pious Joseph Bastide, told me the sad story after he had made me admire the beautiful woodwork and shown me how the long drawers in the presses that held the vestments drew in and out, as if they had been made yesterday instead of two hundred and fifty years ago.

He had taken such care of the treasures under his charge, locking up everything whenever he left the church, and seeing that all was fast when he went home for the night. And often he would look out of his window, in the little ancient house in which he lived hard by, to satisfy himself that no marauders were about.