CLOUET, FRANÇOIS, ELIZABETH OF AUSTRIA, WIFE OF CHARLES IX (LOUVRE)
Holbein executed portraits of many of the prominent nobility of England, and after two happy years returned to Basel, taking to Erasmus the sketch of More's family, which is still to be seen in the gallery of that city, being indeed one of the precious treasures of it. With the money made in London, Holbein purchased a house and made the charming portraits of his wife and children for it, but the next year witnessed the fury of the Iconoclasts, who, in their so-called reforming zeal, destroyed in one day almost all the religious pictures at Basel. It is not surprising to find him two years later back in England, where the merchants of the Steel Yard gave him a series [{79}] of commissions to paint portraits and he was employed also by the Court to provide the famous series of portraits of prospective Queens for Henry VIII. Some of these make it very dear that he could do portraits absolutely without flattery. [{80}] The series of drawings by him at Windsor form one of the most precious treasures of the English Crown. He was busy painting a picture of Henry VIII, "Confirming the Privileges of the Barber Surgeons," still to be seen in their building in London, when he sickened of the plague and died in 1543. Crowe says, "Had he lived his last years in Germany he would not have changed the current which decided the fate of painting in that country; he would but have shared the fate of Dürer and others, who merely prolonged the agony of art amidst the troubles of the Reformation."
Everywhere a great spirit entered into art and produced a series of artists with an originality and a power of expression that has given them a place in the history of art. The first important development of the modern period in France came among the illuminators of books and is well illustrated by the work of Jean Fouquet of Tours, the Court Painter of Louis XI. I have mentioned some of the books illuminated by him in the chapter on Books and Prints, and a copy of one of his illuminations from the famous Livy manuscript will be found there. He did a series of larger works which entitles him to the name of painter, and his portraits are worthy of the time. Bourdischon and Perreal, the first a painter of historical subjects and portraits in the reign of Louis XI, and the second, attached to the army of Charles VIII in his Italian expedition, painted many battle scenes. These first French artists were little influenced by Italian art, and then come a group, Jean Cousin and the Clouets, especially François, who is often called Janet, who, though under Italian influence to some extent, yet showed, especially taken in connection with the sculptors Colombe and Jean Goujon, that France possessed artists capable of forming a native school. Clouet's portrait of Elizabeth of Austria, wife of Charles IX, is worthy of the great portrait painters of this time.
NAVARRETE, ST. PETER AND ST. PAUL (ESCURIAL)
In Spain, as in France, there was a development of art in Columbus' Century that owes nothing to external influence and shows the originality of the time. As early as 1454 one Sanchez de Castro, "the Morning Star" of Andalusia, painted a retablo in the Cathedral of Seville and a fresco of St. Julian in the Church of the same city. He was still painting in 1516, so [{82}] that he must have enjoyed as long a life as many of the great Italian artists of the time. Juan de Borgona was working at Toledo in 1495 at a series of paintings which recall Perugino, yet have an originality of their own. It is not surprising, then, to find Luis de Morales, born about the beginning of the sixteenth century, called "the Divine" and hailed as the first Spaniard whose genius and good fortune have obtained him a place among the great painters of Europe. One of the master painters of this time is Juan Fernandez Navarrete, most of whose pictures were painted after the close of our century, but who had passed some twenty-five years of his life in it and been subjected to its influence and received his education from it. He is extremely interesting, because his nickname el Mudo, the Dumb, recalls the fact that he was one of the unfortunate deaf who, for lack of hearing, cannot speak, and yet succeeded in developing a great mode of expression for himself. Such opportunities for the defective are supposed to be quite modern, but as a matter of fact, in spite of difficulties and obstacles, genius usually finds a mode of expression. Like Italy, Spain has its schools of painting, and the school of Andalusia came into prominence under Luis de Vargas, "the best painter of the Sevillan line from Sanchez de Castro to Velasquez" (Sterling, "The Artists of Spain"). His earliest known work was completed just about the end of Columbus' Century. It is the altar-piece of the Chapel of the Nativity in the Cathedral at Seville, so often admired. Vargas is famous for his portraits, "for the grandeur and simplicity of his design, his correct drawing and fresh coloring and the great purity and grace in his female heads." [Footnote 9] Pablo de Cespedes, born toward the end of our period, doing his work afterwards, is very well known.
[Footnote 9: Painting, Spanish and French, Gerard W. Smith, among the Art Handbooks.]