Tradition has persevered to give this admirable picture, known from the print in Crozat, to Raphael. It does not, however, require more than a comparison with his other portraits, from the first to that of Leo the Tenth, to see that the donation is gratuitous; if it were to be given to any other master, Giorgione has undoubtedly the first claim upon it, and there is no known work of his which can dispute its precedence, though it agrees with them in style. That conscious purity of touch which, exclusively, scorns all repetition, visible chiefly in the nose and nostrils of the Maitre d'Armes, the unity of tone in the whole of the colour, and that breadth, which, without impairing the peculiarity of character or the detail, presents the whole at once,—dualities never attained by the dry and punctiliory Roman principles, speak a Venetian pencil. The forefinger of the right arm is perhaps not designed, or foreshortened, with the energy or correctness which might be expected from the boldness of the conception, or from the power of either Raphael or Giorgione: but the character of the hand as well as its colour, is in unison with the head. Why the principal figure should be called a Maitre d'Armes is not easily conceived; it is certainly the most important of the two, and the leading figure of the picture. The second, although full-faced, is subordinate, and can by no courtesy of physiognomy be construed into the head of Raphael, unless the heads in the Tribuna at Florence, in this gallery, in Vasari, in the school of Athens, &c.; as well as the head of the figure wrapped in a Ferrajuolo, and sitting in a painter's study, as meditating, by M. Antonio, be spurious. It bears indeed some resemblance to a head etched by W. Hollar, and subscribed with his name; but the authority on which that appellation rests, is too futile to be admitted.
JOHN AB EYCK.
If these be the works of John ab Eyck, there is not only an additional proof, that he could not be the inventor of oil-painting, but likewise that, for near a century after him, the colour of the Flemings continued in the same retrograde taste which checked the Italian design, from the time of Lorenzo Ghiberti to that of Leonardo da Vinci. The pictures here exhibited as the works of Hemelinck, Metsis, Lucas of Holland, Albert Durer, and even Holbein, are inferior to those which are ascribed to Eyck, in colour, execution, and taste. Compared with their composition, the pictures of Andrea Mantegna are nearly reduced to apposition; and the draperies of the three figures on a gold ground, especially that of the middle figure, could not be improved in simplicity or elegance by the taste of Raphael himself. These three figures, indeed, are in a style far superior to the rest; but even these, whether we consider each figure individually, or relatively with each other, their masses, depth, and relief, cannot be surpassed by those which are ascribed to the German, Dutch, and Flemish masters of the succeeding century. The three heads of God the Father, the Virgin, and St. John the Baptist, are not inferior in roundness, force, or sweetness, to the heads of Leonardo da Vinci, and possess a more positive principle of colour; the harmony of chiar' oscuro, at which Leonardo aimed, admitted of no variety of tints than what might be obtained by the gradation of two colours. His carnations appear to have been added by glazing; such is the head of Mona Lisa.
PHILIPP DE CAMPAGNE—THE VISION OF ST. AMBROSE.
The title of this picture is not accurate. It is an intermediate figure of Apostolic gait, and in garments of legendary colours, that shews the saints arrayed in white, who themselves seem less occupied by the errand for which they came, than by the place which they had left. Whatever in this picture is not vision is admirably toned, solemn, dim, and yet rich, the colours of a sacred place, and cloistered, devout meditation. Of these, St. Ambrose himself partakes; but the Apostle who addresses the Bishop, and the two Saints themselves, are by far too ponderous, and their outlines far too much defined for celestial beings, and for the clouds on which they are placed: their drapery, although admirably folded, recalls in the saints too strongly marble, and in the Apostle too palpably reality.
A DEAD CHRIST.
This figure, which has much of the genuine stern Italian colour, resembles the Dead Christ, as he is called, in the library at Basle by Holbein, in attitude perhaps,—is inferior to it in truth, but certainly much superior in style: it has much of Carravaggio; the head in shade has a mysterious effect, but the fore-part of the arm with the hand wants the rigid truth of the Italian master whom he seems to have imitated.
LE BRUN—THE DEATH OF CATO.
The countenance of this figure is as unlike Cato, as the style of colour is to all other works of Le Brun: it is a common man with a beard, powerfully drawn, and painted in an austere Italian tone.