Without the elevation and the training of the best Italian painters, Murillo has left abundant proofs of great original genius. The painter's works are widely circulated, but the chief are still in Seville. Six are in the church of the Caridad, and these six include his famous 'Moses striking the Rock,' and his 'Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes;' seven 'Murillos' are in the Convento de la Merced, among them Murillo's own favourite picture, which he called 'Mi Cicadro' of 'St Thomas of Villaneuva.' 'St Thomas was the favourite preacher of Charles V., and was created Archbishop of Valencia, where he seemed to spend the whole of his revenues in charity, yet never contracted any debt, so that his people used to believe that angels must minister to his temporal wants. He is represented at his cathedral door, distributing alms, robed in black, with a white mitre. A poor cripple kneels at his feet, and other mendicants are grouped around.'
In the cathedral, Seville, is Murillo's 'Angel de la Guarda,' 'in which a glorious seraph, with spreading wings, leads a little trustful child by the hand, and directs him to look beyond earth into the heavenly light;' and his 'St Antonio.' 'The saint is represented kneeling in a cell, of which all the poor details are faithfully given, while the long arcade of the cloister can be seen through the half-open door. Above, in a transparent light, which grows from himself, the Child Jesus appears, and descends, floating through wreaths of angels, drawn down by the power of prayer.' [30]
Another of Murillo's renowned pictures is that of the patron saints of Seville, 'Santa Rufina and Santa Justina,' who were stoned to death for refusing to bow down to the image of Venus.
With regard to Murillo's pictures of flower-girls and beggar-boys, I think my readers are sure to have seen an engraving of one of the former, 'The flower-Girl,' as it is called, with a face as fresh and radiant as her flowers. In the National Gallery there is a large Holy Family of Murillo's, and in Dulwich Gallery there is a laughing boy, an irresistible specimen of brown-cheeked, white-teethed drollery.
CHAPTER X.
ART—NICOLAS POUSSIN, 1594-1665—CLAUDE [31] LORRAINE, 1600-1682—CHARLES LE BRUN, 1619-1690—WATTEAU, 1684-1721—GREUZE, 1726-1805.
Nicolas Poussin was born at Andely in Normandy in 1594. Of his parentage little seems to have been ascertained, but it is believed that he was well educated, and his classical learning in after life was reckoned great. He was regularly trained to be a painter under a master in his native town, and afterwards in Paris.
Dissatisfied with the patronage which he received in Paris, Poussin went to Rome when he was about thirty years of age. In Rome he is said to have lived on familiar terms with a sculptor whose devotion to antique art influenced his taste, and lent it the strong classical bent which it retained. Poussin studied regularly in the school of Domenichino. After some delay in attracting public notice, 'The Death of Germanicus,' and 'The Capture of Jerusalem,' which Poussin painted for Cardinal Barberini, won general approval. In 1629, when Nicolas Poussin was in his thirty-fifth year, he married the sister of his pupil, Gaspar Dughet, who took Poussin's name, and is known as a painter, inferior to his master, by the name of Gaspar Poussin.
Nicolas Poussin returned to Paris when he was a middle-aged man, was presented to the king, Louis XIII., by Cardinal Richelieu, and offered apartments in the Tuileries, with the title of painter in ordinary, and a salary of a hundred and twenty pounds a year. Poussin agreed to settle in Paris, but on his going back to Rome to fetch his wife, and on the King of France's dying, the attractions of the Eternal City proved too great for the painter, and in place of removing his household and studio to his native country, he lived for the rest of his years in Rome, and died there in 1665, when he was seventy-one years of age. Except what can be judged of him from his work, I do not know that much has been gathered of the private character and life of Nicolas Poussin, notwithstanding that there was a biography written of him fifty years ago by Lady Calcott, and that his letters have been published in Paris. In the absence of conclusive testimony one may conclude with some probability that he was 'quiet,' like his best paintings; a man who minded his own business, and did not trouble the world by astonishing actions, good or bad. [32]