Other paintings of Leonardo's are: "Mona Lisa," "Head of Medusa," "Adoration of the Magi," and the "Madonna della Caraffa."
XLIV
JEAN ANTOINE WATTEAU
(Pronounced in French, Vaht-toh; English, Wot-toh)
French (Genre) School
1684-1721
Pupil of Gillot and Audran
Watteau's father was a tiler in a Flemish town--Valenciennes. He meant that his son should be a carpenter, but that son tramped from Valenciennes to Paris with the purpose of becoming a great painter. He did more, he became a "school" of painting, all by himself.
There is no sadder story among artists than that of this lowly born genius. He was not good to look upon, being the very opposite of all that he loved, having no grace or charm in appearance. He had a drooping mouth, red and bony hands, and a narrow chest with stooping shoulders. Because of a strange sensitiveness he lived all his life apart from those he would have been happy with, for he mistrusted his own ugliness, and thought he might be a burden to others.
Such a man has painted the gayest, gladdest, most delicate and exquisite pictures imaginable.
He entered Paris as a young man, without friends, without money or connections of any kind, and after wandering forlornly, about the great city, he found employment with a dealer who made hundreds of saints for out-of-town churches.
It is said that for this first employer Watteau made dozens and dozens of pictures of St. Nicholas; and when we think of the beautiful figures he was going to make, pictures that should delight all the world, there seems something tragic in the monotony and common-placeness of that first work he was forced by poverty to do. Certainly St. Nicholas brought one man bread and butter, even if he forgot him at Christmas time.