The walls of the entrance hall or vestibule in the first floor are overlaid with red Pyrenean marble; the ceiling is metal made in the Cassetin pattern, so much used in the Dresden gallery, and is supported by four Ionic columns. On the left broad white marble stairs lead to the second floor. To the right is a large open space for statuary. The first hall runs obliquely, and rests upon twelve black Belgian marble pillars, with capital and base of gilded zinc. The walls are of a sombre yellow stucco, reflective as marble. Upon the arched ceiling is frescoed in grey the story of the “Niebelungen Lied,” which is exceedingly pretty, surrounded as it is by brilliant borders. Between the columns the wall rises in the form of arches, and in these arches the story of Siegfried is painted.
Leading from this first hall to the left is a room for statuary (II), two rooms beyond for pictures (III and IV), to the right four rooms (XIV, XIII, XII, XI,) for paintings. These again unite in an oblique hall for statuary which expands into five fan-like rooms for paintings. Ascending the stairs slowly, we can study a plaster frieze, extending around the wall from the first to the second story, representing the “Progress of Civilization in Germany.” All her great men are here, from St. Boniface and Charles the Great to Frederick William IV, and the distinguished men of his times, kings, princes, poets, scientists, philosophers, literateurs, philanthropists, historians, musicians, artists, architects, sculptors, all are here gracefully and ingeniously brought out with their own accessories, consciously or unconsciously working with their separate aims into one another’s hands. It is a succession of men one can well pause to study. Otho I, Ulrich von Hütten, Melancthon, Luther, Cranach, Holbein, Dürer, the great elector, Libnitz, Winkelmann, Mengs, Klopstock, Bach, Glück, Frederick the Great, Kant, Lessing, Schiller, Goethe, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Blücher, Stein, Schleiermacher, Hegel, the brothers Grimm, Humboldt, Weber, Schinkel, Tieck, Rauch, Overbeck, Kaulbach, Stüber, Cornelius, Meyerbeer, Mendelssohn, Rietichel Kiss, Hildebrandt—are only selected from the long list. Among all are the names of but two women! Sophia Charlotte, and Queen Louise, who make prominent the two monarchs standing by their sides. Is it not almost dazzling to see this nation growing by “its own genius into a civilization of its own?”
We must not forget, however, in the distraction of thought caused by the encounter of the representative men of eleven centuries that we are ascending the stairs of a modern gallery in search of the works of a single man, who stood at the head of his own department, and revived art in Germany in a century when the equipoise between it and other interests had been lost.
There has been much dissatisfaction expressed by critical people that the two handsomest rooms in the National Gallery have been devoted to the shadowy old cartoons of Cornelius. But we intend to enter these rooms, not with the complaints of many fresh in our memory, but in the spirit of Hermann Grimm—he who says of himself that he “regards art as the noblest fruit of human activity,” and who writes in his “Life of Michael Angelo:” “Since Michael Angelo’s death, no one has presented such vast problems to art as Cornelius, whose noble conceptions have been more powerfully and grandly embodied with increasing years. He is a painter in the highest sense. Like Michael Angelo and Raphael, he touches the intellectual life of the people on all points, and endeavors to represent that which most deeply affects their minds. Yet in spite of all, how do his efforts, and all that has resulted from them, tell upon the people? and what has been the end of the mighty power waited for through centuries? With deep shame I write the fate awarded to this man in Prussia. He is not, indeed, allowed to suffer want; an honorable, brilliant old age has fallen to his lot. But, while for that which is called official art, the greatest sums are fixed and given, not only are there none finished of the paintings ordered of Cornelius—the cartoons of which, whenever they appear, eclipse everything else, unsightly as is their gray paper and charcoal strokes—but so much can not even be obtained in Berlin as a couple of simple walls for the cartoons of the paintings executed by him in Munich, which are kept shut up there, or go traveling around the world, appearing in Belgium, Austria and England, acquiring in these places the notoriety to which he owes his late fame. Engravings are taken from them. As photographs, they are in every hand; and in this way their influence will endure, until, perhaps, some day a museum worthy of them may be achieved, where they may find their true place, not as the ornament of a Camposants, but as the memorials of a great man.”
The day has arrived! The words of Hermann Grimm for his friend have not been lost, but like Ruskin’s praise of Turner, have fallen into good ground. Before reaching the Cornelius Halls, the Cupola room, which is the most gorgeous in ornamental work, must be entered. At the top of nine pillars are the sitting figures of the nine muses in light polychromatic tints—so exquisitely delicate the shells of the sea seem to have furnished the colors. Between these figures the roof forms into shells, above which and encircling the dome, are painted the signs of the zodiac in brilliant colors upon a gold background. This “Cupola Saal” has four doors, one from the vestibule, the other opening into the Cornelius Halls, and the other two on either side leading into the long picture halls. I have said doors—but fortunately there are no doors in this tasteful building; costly tapestry, caught back in bewitching folds alone indicate the entrance from one room to another. The portraits of the emperor and empress are the only pictures in the Cupola Hall. Unfortunately they are not from Angelo’s brush. The artist Plockhorst is comparatively unknown, and these portraits are very conventional in style.
The frescoes on the ceiling in the Cornelius Halls were done under the direction of Professor E. Bendemann, by Ernst, Fritz, Röber and William Beckmann. The Germans call it wax color, after the receipt of Prof. Andreas Müller, of Düsseldorf. The subjects are only the long catalogue of beautiful abstractions as Prophecy, Science, Genius, etc., but the color and execution show the high degree of perfection of modern frescoes. In the second hall is depicted the myths of Prometheus in this same wax color. The drawing of Prometheus’ figure taken from one of Cornelius’ cartoons, in Munich, is especially fine—so full of strength and fortitude. He looks a splendid type of vicarious suffering and strength of will, resisting oppression, almost ready to exclaim in Lowell’s lines:
“I am still Prometheus, and foreknow
In my wise heart the end and doom of all.”
In looking at this figure, and in studying carefully the cartoons, we tried to come to an impartial conclusion between the opinions of German and French writers in regard to the school of Cornelius, or the revival of German art. This began twenty years later than that of the French, under Louis David, and is said to have been undertaken in an entirely different spirit. A French author says in regard to the Germans that “instead of carrying art forward they turned back, and being not bold enough to go on to the discovery of a new future they took refuge in archaism.” Every one knows that after the death of Albert Dürer, art in Germany fell asleep, that it was aroused by the rumors of a revival in France. Also that the little German colony with Overbeck directing it, did go to Rome to study the antique, but to go further with the Frenchman and say that all subsequent heads of schools—Peter Cornelius included—followed to the letter the paradoxical advice of Lanzi, “that modern artists should study the artists of the times preceding Raphael, for Raphael, springing from these painters, is superior to them, whilst those who followed him have not equalled him”—we can not, inasmuch as the statement includes Cornelius. If it had not been for the interest of Niebuhr, who was German ambassador at Rome when Cornelius was studying there, in exerting himself to get the Prussian government to give Cornelius commissions at home, he might have remained in Italy, and, like Overbeck and others, renounced the religion of his fathers, as well as all style but that anterior to the reformation. But he did go back to Germany. He may have gone to Italy with Van Eyck, Holbein, and Dürer in his mind; he may have returned with Michael Angelo and Raphael as ideals, but he certainly worked as Cornelius.
While not disagreeing with the French altogether, we can not unite with the Germans entirely in believing that “he drew the human body as though he saw it for the first time, and had never seen it painted or drawn by others.” He certainly received many impressions, before going to Rome, from the old German and Netherland masters, and adding to all what he learned in Rome, this idea of total individualism seems preposterous. What one must feel in studying his works is, that he did not obliterate from his memory what he had studied from Grecian, Roman, and German Art, but he reconciled them in his own mind, and worked out in his own way results from this reconciliation, giving to Germany productions as faithful to her own instincts as ever Albert Dürer or Lucas Cranach did.