This portrait, known as “The Straw Hat,” by Peter Paul Rubens, is of Suzanne Fourment, his wife’s sister
The Florentines never had the fine color sense of the Venetians, but from that you will not infer that they never painted fine pictures. They were different from the Venetians, were more intellectual or romantic or pathetic, cared more for linear drawing than for light, shade or color. The Botticellis in the gallery illustrate this distinction. There are a number of them, and they all carry by pathetic sentiment or romance, and exhibit linear drawing primarily. The famous “Mars and Venus” shows the drawing and the “Nativity,” the sentiment. The round picture of the “Madonna, Child and St. John,” shown in the illustrations, is a school piece, but gives the Botticelli pathos in the girlish types and the sad faces. Do you notice how cleverly the circle is filled with lines and forms? Filippino, contemporary of Botticelli, (botte-chél-lee) and much influenced by him, has here an altar-piece that is admired and copied by students as it deserves to be; and put down to Lorenzo di Credi is a portrait of “Costanza de Medici” that is supremely fine not only in color but in character. An early Florentine, Paolo Uccello, (Oo-chél-lo) famous for his study of perspective, is here shown in his masterpiece, “The Rout of San Romano,” and Antonio and Piero Pollajuolo (pol-la-you-oh´-lo) by the “St. Sebastian,” their most important work. These are only the pictures that may justly be called great masterpieces. It is astonishing what a list may be made. The list should include the two wonderful panels by Piero della Francesca—the very noblest kind of fine art,—all the pictures by Cosimo Tura, the “Madonna” by Verrocchio, (ver-ro´-kee-o) though it is merely a school piece, the “Agony in the Garden” by Mantegna, and many another panel by Fra Filippo, or Pisanello, or Benozzo.
THE VIRGIN AND CHILD
By Sandro Botticelli
The Florentine trio—Michelangelo, Raphael and Leonardo—are represented here in rather dubious examples. The two Michelangelos are school pieces, though very good work, and the genuineness of the Leonardo da Vinci (vín-chee) “Madonna of the Rocks” is disputed by a similar picture in the Louvre. The London picture has much beauty about it, and no doubt Leonardo had some hand in its production, but he was probably assisted in it by a pupil. As for Raphael, there are several pictures assigned to him, but none of them gives much of an idea of that great artist. The “Ansidei Madonna” cost a great deal of money, and has renown; but it is a thin, cold work of Raphael’s youth. If you would see Raphael and judge him justly, you must go to Florence and Rome. Florence, too, is the proper place to see painters such as Andrea del Sarto, while Perugia is the spot for Perugino, and Parma for Correggio (kor-red´-jo). One’s opinion of an Italian painter is not to be formed from seeing one or more isolated examples of him in the northern galleries.
FLEMISH MASTERS
PORTRAIT OF AN OLD LADY
By Rembrandt