PORTRAIT OF A TAILOR
By Giambattista Moroni
A MAN’S PORTRAIT
By Jan Van Eyck
Titian was perhaps the master-painter of the craft in Italy, and the “Ariosto” is not his only masterpiece in the National Gallery. There is an early “Madonna” and a “Christ and the Magdalen,” both of them excellent, and yet giving way in interest to his large “Ariadne and Bacchus,” the most considerable of his figure pictures north of the Alps. It is a little cold in its blue color, but perfect in workmanship, and a marvel of life and movement. Tintoretto’s “St. George and the Dragon” is a romantic canvas that in life and spirit presses the Titian very hard. It is not possible to pick flaws in it, which cannot be said about every Tintoretto. The charging St. George, the hurrying princess, the dead body, the sea, the sky, the distance, are quite as they should be. And what a beautiful piece of color! Tintoretto was a genius of exalted rank, as was also Paolo Veronese, some of whose best canvases are here—notably the large “Family of Darius at the Feet of Alexander.”
The “St. Helena” (reproduced herewith) is put down to Paolo in the catalogue, and, though it may not be by him, is, nevertheless, a fine picture in decorative arrangement and color. Lotto in a superb “Family Group” and Paris Bordone (bor-do´-nee) in the “Portrait of a Lady,” of a patrician type, are both extremely well represented in the gallery; but perhaps they do not attract so much attention as a more commonplace portraitist—Moroni. The reason of this is that the National Gallery has two of the very best works by Moroni—the “Tailor” and the “Lawyer.” The “Tailor” is very much admired, and justly so. He is shown standing at his cutting board, shears in hand, and as the door opens he looks up to see who has entered. What a very natural action! And what a serene, even noble, type of man! The portrait is modern enough in method to have been done today, only there is no painter of today who could do it. It is not, however, in the class with the Titian “Ariosto.” Compare them and you will see that intellectually the Titian is the more profound, as technically it is the more subtle.
THE FLORENTINES
“CHAPEAU DE PAILLE”