Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands, Volume 2

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

There is more pathos and beauty in those few words of the Scripture, "Now there stood by the cross of Jesus his mother," than in all these galleries put together. The soul that has learned to know her from the Bible, loving without idolizing, hoping for blest communion with her beyond the veil, seeking to imitate only the devotion which stood by the cross in the deepest hour of desertion, cannot be satisfied with these insipidities.

Only once or twice have I seen any thing like an approach towards the representations of the scriptural idea. One is this painting by Raphael. Another is by him, and is called Madonna Maison d'Alba: of this I have seen only a copy; it might have been painted on the words, "Now Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart." The figure is that of a young Jewess, between girl and womanhood, in whose air and eye are expressed at once the princess of the house of David, the poetess, and the thoughtful sequestered maiden. She is sitting on the ground, the book of the prophets in one hand, lying listless at her side; the other hand is placed beneath the chin of her infant son, who looks inquiringly into her face. She does not see him—her eye has a sorrowful, far-darting look, as if beyond this flowery childhood she saw the dim image of a cross and a sepulchre. This was Mary, I have often thought that, in the reaction from the idolatry of Romanism, we Protestants were in danger of forgetting the treasures of religious sweetness, which the Bible has given us in her brief history.

It seems to me the time demands the forming of a new school of art based upon Protestant principles. For whatever vigor and originality there might once be in art, based on Romanism, it has certainly been worn threadbare by repetition.

Apropos to this. During the time I was in Paris, I formed the acquaintance of Schoeffer, whose Christus Consolator and Remumrator and other works, have made him known in America. I went with a lady who has for many years been an intimate friend, and whose head has been introduced into several of his paintings. On the way she gave me some interesting particulars of him and his family. His mother was an artist—a woman of singularly ethereal and religious character. There are three brothers devoted to art; of these Ary is the one best known in America, and the most distinguished. For some time, while they were studying, they were obliged to be separated, and the mother, to keep up the sympathy between them, used to copy the design of the one with whom she resided for the other two. A singular strength of attachment unites the family.

We found Schoeffer in retired lodgings in the outskirts of Paris, and were presented to his very pretty and agreeable English wife. In his studio we saw a picture of his mother, a most lovely and delicate woman, dressed in white, like one of the saints in the Revelation.

Then we saw his celebrated picture, Francisca Rimini, representing a cloudy, dark, infernal region, in which two hapless lovers are whirled round and round in mazes of never-ending wrath and anguish. His face is hid from view; his attitude expresses the extreme of despair. But she clinging to his bosom—what words can tell the depths of love, of an anguish, and of endurance unconquerable, written in her pale sweet face! The picture smote to my heart like a dagger thrust; I felt its mournful, exquisite beauty as a libel on my Father in heaven.

No. It is not God who eternally pursues undying, patient love with storms of vindictive wrath. Alas! well said Jesus, "O righteous Father, the world hath not known thee." The day will come when it will appear that in earth's history the sorrowing, invincible tenderness has been all on his part and that the strange word, long-suffering, means just what it says.

Nevertheless, the power and pathos of this picture cannot be too much praised. The coloring is beautiful, and though it pained me so much, I felt that it was one of the most striking works of art I had seen.

Schoeffer showed us a large picture, about half finished, in which he represents the gradual rise of the soul through the sorrows of earth to heaven. It consisted of figures grouped together, those nearest earth bowed down and overwhelmed with the most crushing and hopeless sorrow; above them are those who are beginning to look upward, and the sorrow in their faces is subsiding into anxious inquiry; still above them are those who, having caught a gleam of the sources of consolation, express in their faces a solemn calmness; and still higher, rising in the air, figures with clasped hands, and absorbed, upward gaze, to whose eye the mystery has been unveiled, the enigma solved, and sorrow glorified. One among these, higher than the rest, with a face of rapt adoration, seems entering the very gate of heaven.

He also showed us an unfinished picture of the Temptation of Christ. Upon a clear aerial mountain top, Satan, a thunder-scarred, unearthly figure, kneeling, points earnestly to the distant view of the kingdoms of this world. There is a furtive and peculiar expression of eager anxiety betrayed in his face, as if the bitterness of his own blasted eternity could find a momentary consolation in this success. It is the expression of a general, who has staked all his fortune on one die. Of the figure of Jesus I could not judge, in its unfinished state. Whether the artist will solve the problem of uniting energy with sweetness, the Godhead with the manhood, remains to be seen.