698, ‘The Death of Procris,’ is a masterly study of a satyr; the other portions of this picture are also fine, particularly the landscape behind.
There are two specimens of Tiepolo, Nos. 1192 and 1193, sketches for altar-pieces, than which no works in the Gallery are more useful to the young painter. His scheme of colour is low-toned and restrained, yet delightfully good and pure, while his handling is masterly and free.
Tintoretto and Titian come next; the latter is the most lavishly represented, and the former not seen at his best, even in the three specimens we have, yet they are worth looking at. Titian of course is always masterly, both in his landscape and in his figures. Tintoretto unfortunately was forced by necessity to paint too many pot-boilers, and his fame suffers accordingly.
Amongst the many masterpieces in the Gallery, for majestic composition or fine colouring, I place Fra Filippo Lippi’s ‘Vision of St. Bernard,’ 248; ‘The Circumcision of Christ,’ 1128, by Luca Signorelli; ‘Venus and Adonis,’ 34, by Titian; ‘The Crucifixion,’ 1107, by Niccolo of Fuligno; ‘The Marriage of St. Catherine,’ by Lorenzo da San Severino; ‘The Virgin and Child, with Saints and Angels,’ 1103, by Fiorenzo di Lorenzo (I name this early painting for its exquisite decorative qualities and its harmonious combination of carving, gold and paint, as well as for the general design); ‘Bacchus and Ariadne,’ No. 35, by Titian; ‘Mercury, Venus, and Cupid,’ No. 10, by Correggio, for its fine drawing and colour; ‘San Arnolfina and his Wife,’ No. 186, by Jan van Eyck, for its minute detail and realism; ‘The Virgin and Child,’ 274, by Mantegna; ‘Madonna and Child, with Saints,’ 1119, by Ercole de Giulio Grandi, another rich and decorative combination of gold leaf, colour, and carving; ‘Christ at the Column,’ 1148, by Velasquez; ‘The Nursing of Hercules,’ 1313, by Tintoretto; and ‘The Raising of Lazarus,’ by Sebastiano del Piombo and Michael Angelo, No. 1. This last picture is one of the most vigorous in design and execution in the whole Gallery.
About the landscape-work of the old masters there is not very much to be said, as they are mostly conventional, and were painted in the studio from studies; therefore, nature was always falsified and improved (?) upon.
Hobbema ranks first amongst the old landscape painters for fresh, pure colour, and close adherence to nature. ‘The Avenue, Middelharnis,’ 830, is as fine a piece of work as any modern work; it is true and rigid to facts, with a fine command of drawing, perspective and colour—one of the few landscapes really worth copying in the Gallery.
Salvator Rosa is perhaps one of the most spontaneous amongst these early landscapists, and the most reckless. He painted a picture at the one working, and composed a poem afterwards by way of relaxation, and although almost as exaggerated and theatrical in his effects as Gustave Doré, yet his works have an appearance of nature about them, even if it is nature convulsed, which is often lacking about the manufactured efforts of his contemporaries, Claude Lorraine and Gaspard Poussin. ‘Mercury and the Woodman,’ 84; ‘Tobias and the Angel,’ 811; and ‘A River Scene,’ 935, are fair examples of this vigorous artist and versifier. That of ‘Mercury and the Woodman’ I like the best. Gaspard Poussin ranks between Salvator Rosa and Claude, not because he was not so good a workman, but because he was not so original in his style as either. His two best examples in the Gallery are ‘The Sacrifice of Isaac,’ 31, and ‘A Land Storm,’ 36. ‘Dido and Æneas taking shelter from the Storm,’ 95, is also a fine work.
Everyone who admires Turner must certainly honour Claude Lorraine; and as I am one of those admirers, I look upon the earlier painter of sunsets, classical temples, and artistically arranged trees with much interest. He does not, of course, paint atmosphere; only one master did this properly, and that was Turner, but he presents to us a placid and smiling world which promotes comforting thoughts of rest and joy, and so I give him all due honour as a pretty landscape painter and also an original master. What he did came from his own invention, and if Turner painted better, that was only because he commenced where Claude, his first master, had left off.
The ‘Landscape with Figures,’ 12, and ‘Seaport with the Embarkation of the Queen of Sheba,’ 14, are two of Claude’s best examples. Turner was a daring man to risk the test of Time with the four pictures; at present his two look the best, but in another hundred years, while Claude’s will still appear almost as fresh, Turner’s will have vanished, as all his pictures must, and leave only a few stains and cracks behind. So much for the modern masters when they try to compete with their manufactured tube colours against the wise men of old, who ground their own paints, studied the chemistry of colours, and knew how to prepare their own canvases. A century after this, readers of old books will wonder what John Ruskin meant by praising Turner so extravagantly, when they go down to the vaults where the Trustees are vainly trying to keep the remains of those fugitive masterpieces, by secluding them from the light, while Claude Lorraine will still hang on in his old places, calm, fresh, sunny and metallic. So much for atmosphere against artifice.