Of all the great painters Rembrandt is perhaps least understood; the admiration bestowed on him, the enormous prices given for his pictures, is in general a fashion—a mere matter of convention—like the price of a diamond. To feel Rembrandt truly, it is not enough to be an artist or an amateur picture-fancier—one should be something of a poet too.
There are nineteen of his pictures here; of these "Jesus teaching the doctors in the temple," though a small picture, impressed me with awe,—the portraits of the painter Flinck and his wife, with wonder. All are ill-hung, with their backs against the light—for them the worst possible situation.
Van Dyck is here in all his glory: there are thirty-nine of his pictures. The celebrated full-length, "the burgomaster's wife in black," so often engraved, does not equal, in its inexpressible, unobtrusive elegance, the "Lady Wharton," at Devonshire House.[ 37] Then we have Wallenstein with his ample kingly brow; fierce Tilly; the head of Snyders; the lovely head of the painter's wife, Maria Ruthven,—sweet-looking, delicate, golden-haired, and holding the theorbo, (she excelled in music, I believe,) and virgins, holy families, and other scriptural subjects. His famous picture of Susanna does not strike me much.
The four apostles of Albert Durer—wonderful! In expression, in calm religious majesty, in suavity of pencilling, and the grand, pure style of the heads and drapery, quite like Raffaelle. I compared, yesterday, the three portraits—that of Raffaelle, by himself; (the famous head once in the Altaviti palace, and engraved by Morghen;) Albert Durer, by himself; and Giorgione, by himself. Raffaelle is the least handsome, and rather disappointed me; the eyes, in particular, rather project, and have an expression which is not pleasing; the mouth and the brow are full of power and passion. Albert Durer is beautiful, like the old heads of our Saviour; and the predominant expression is calm, dignified, intellectual, with a tinge of melancholy. This picture was painted at the age of twenty-eight: he was then suffering from that bitter domestic curse, a shrewish, avaricious wife, who finally broke his heart. Giorgione is not handsome, but it is a sublime head, with such a large intellectual development, such a profound expression of sentiment! Giorgione died of a faithless mistress, as Albert Durer died of a scolding wife.[ 38]
By Paris Bordone, of Trevigi, there is a head of a Venetian lady, in a dress of crimson velvet, with dark splendid eyes which tell a whole history. By Murillo, there are eight pictures—not one in his most elevated style, but all perfect miracles of painting and of nature. There are thirty-three pictures of Vander Werff, a number sufficient to make one's blood run cold. One, a Magdalene, is of the size of life; the only large picture by this elegant, elaborate, soulless painter I ever saw: he is to me detestable.
By Joseph Vernet there are two delicious landscapes, a morning and an evening. I cannot farther particularize; but there are specimens of almost every known painter; those, however, of Titian, Correggio, Julio Romano, and Nicolo Poussin, are very few and not of a very high class, while those of the early German painters, and the Dutch, and the Flemish schools, are first-rate.
There is one English picture—Wilkie's "Opening of the Will:" it is very much admired here, and looked upon as a sort of curiosity. I wish the artists of the two countries were better known to each other: both would benefit by such an intercourse.
At the palace of Schleissheim[ 39] there are nearly two thousand pictures: of these some hundreds are positively bad; some hundreds are curious and valuable, as illustrating the history and progress of art; some few are really and intrinsically admirable.
But the grand attraction here is the far-famed Boisserée Gallery, which is arranged at Schleissheim, until the Pinakothek is ready for its reception. This is the collection about which so many volumes have been written, and which has excited such a general enthusiasm throughout Germany. This enthusiasm, as a fashion, a mania, is beginning to subside, but the impress it has left upon art, and the tone it has given to the pursuit, the feeling of art, will not so soon pass away. The gallery derives its name from two brothers, Sulpitz and Melchior Boisserée,[ 40] who, with a friend (Bertram) were employed for many years in collecting from various convents, and old churches, and obscure collections of family relics, the productions of the early painters of Germany, from William of Cologne, called by the Germans "Meister Wilhelm," down to Albert Durer and Holbein.