Henry Cornelius Vroom, the Dutchman, having painted a number of devout subjects, started for Spain to sell them; but was cast away upon a small island near the coast of Portugal. The painter and some of the crew were relieved by monks, who lived among the rocks, and they conducted them to Lisbon, where Vroom was engaged by a picture-dealer to paint the storm he had just escaped. In this picture he succeeded so well, that the Portuguese dealer continued to employ him. He improved so much in sea-pieces that he saved money, returned home, and applied himself exclusively to that class of painting. He then lived at Haerlem, where he was employed to design the suite of tapestry representing the Defeat of the Spanish Armada, which hung for many years upon the walls of the House of Lords, at Westminster. It had been bespoken by Lord Howard of Effingham, the Lord High Admiral of the English Fleet, which engaged the Armada; it was sold by him to James the First. It consisted originally of ten compartments, forming separate pictures, each of which was surrounded by a wrought border, including the portraits of the officers who held command in the English fleet. This tapestry was woven, according to Sandrart, by Francis Spiering: it was destroyed in the fire which consumed the two Houses of Parliament, in 1834. Fortunately, engravings from these hangings were executed by Mr. John Pine, and published in 1739, with illustrations from charters, medals, &c.
MELANCHOLY OF PAINTERS.
The following summary of the fortunes of painters is at once curious and interesting:—
“One must confess that if the poets were an order of beings of too great sensibility for this world, the painters laboured still more under this malady of genius. Zoppo, a sculptor, having accidentally broken the chef d’œuvre of his efforts, destroyed himself. Chendi poisoned himself, because he was only moderately applauded for the decorations of a tournament. Louis Caracci died of mortification because he could not set right a foot in a fresco, the wrong position of which he did not perceive till the scaffolding was taken away. Cavedone lost his talent from grief at his son’s death, and begged his bread from want of commissions. Schidone, inspired with the passion of play, died of despair to have lost all in one night. There was one who languished, and was no more from seeing the perfection of Raphael. Torrigini, to avoid death at the hands of the Spanish Inquisition, put an end to himself, having broken to pieces his own statue of the Virgin, an avaricious hidalgo, who had ordered it, higgling at the price. Bandinelli died, losing a commission for a statue; Daniel de Volterra, from anxiety to finish a monument to Henry IV. of France. Cellini frequently became unwell in the course of his studies, from the excitement of his feelings. When one sums up the history of painters with the furious and bloody passions of a Spagnoletto, and Caravaggio, Tempeste, and Calabrese, one must suppose all their sensibilities much stronger than those of the rest of mankind.”
THE CHANDOS PORTRAIT OF SHAKSPEARE.
This far-famed picture, believed to be the only genuine portrait of the poet, was bought at the sale at Stowe, in the autumn of 1848, by the Earl of Ellesmere, for 355 guineas. Its history, as stated in the Athenæum shortly after the period of the sale, is as follows:—“The Duke of Chandos obtained it by marriage with the daughter and heiress of a Mr. Nicholl, of Minchenden House, Southgate; Mr. Nicholl obtained it from a Mr. Robert Keck, of the Inner Temple, who gave (the first and best) Mrs. Barry, the actress, as Oldys tells us, forty guineas for it. Mrs. Barry had it from Betterton, and Betterton had it from Sir William Davenant, who was a professed admirer of Shakspeare, and not unwilling to be thought his son. Davenant was born in 1605, and died in 1668; and Betterton, (as every reader of Pepys will recollect,) was the great actor, belonging to the Duke’s Theatre, of which Davenant was the patentee. The elder brother of Davenant, (Parson Robert,) had been heard to relate, as Aubrey informs us, that Shakspeare had often kissed Sir William when a boy.
“Davenant lived quite near enough to Shakspeare’s time to have obtained a genuine portrait of the poet whom he admired—in an age, too, when the Shakspeare mania was not so strong as it is now. There is no doubt that this was the portrait which Davenant believed to be like Shakspeare, and which Kneller, before 1692, copied and presented to glorious John Dryden, who repaid the painter with one of the best of his admirable epistles.
“The Chandos Shakspeare is a small portrait on canvas, 22 inches long by 18 broad. The face is thoughtful, the eyes are expressive, and the hair is of a brown black. The dress is black, with a white turnover collar, the strings of which are loose. There is a small gold ring in the left ear. We have had an opportunity of inspecting it both before and after the sale, and in the very best light, and have no hesitation in saying that the copies we have seen of it are very far from like. It agrees in many respects—the short nose especially—with the Stratford bust, and is not more unlike the engraving before the first folio—or the Gerard Johnson bust on the Stratford monument—than Raeburn’s Sir Walter Scott is unlike Sir Thomas Lawrence’s—or West’s Lord Byron unlike the better known portrait by Phillips. It has evidently been touched upon; the yellow oval that surrounds it has a look of Kneller’s age.”