757. CHRIST BLESSING LITTLE CHILDREN.
Unknown (Dutch: School of Rembrandt).
This is one of the nation's conspicuously bad bargains. It was bought in 1866 as a Rembrandt and at a Rembrandt price (£7000), but was soon recognised as being only a work by some pupil. It is easy to be wise after the event, but it certainly seems strange that the connoisseurs of the time, even if technical differences had escaped them, should not have seen a lack of Rembrandt's power about this work. A writer in the Times (June 24, 1888) has no hesitation in ascribing the picture to Nicolas Maes. He says: "If it was painted by Maes it would probably have been after the series of small works, mostly dating about 1656. Maes was a pupil of Rembrandt in 1650, at the time when the master's treatment of sacred subjects was more direct than in his earlier years. In this picture fanciful costume is discarded, and the figures are painted straight from the life. The figure of Christ is, indeed, weak and conventional, but it is not to be expected that a young man would here be successful in a figure so foreign to his general practice; and, if we admit the supposition that the composition followed the small panels, the relaxation of style pervading the entire work tallies with the known facts of the career of Maes, who between 1660 and 1670 appears to have devoted himself almost entirely to portrait painting; these representations of Dutch and Antwerp burghers, though solid and respectable, possess none of the charm and interest of the earlier works owing their inspiration to the direct influence of Rembrandt." (See, for instance, No. 1277.) Some ascribe the picture with equal assurance to Lievens (see 1095); see an article by Ford Madox Brown in the Magazine of Art, Feb. 1890; others to Eeckhout (see The Athenæum, Jan. 19, 1907).
758. PORTRAIT OF THE COUNTESS PALMA OF URBINO.
Piero della Francesca (Umbrian: 1416-1492). See 665.
Ascribed by Morelli to Paolo Uccello. "The treatment of the hair recalls that of one of the portraits in Paolo's battle-piece (583), while Piero used to represent curls in a thin and thread-like shape. The ornament on the left sleeve of the lady also reminds one of the decoration on the standard" (Richter's Italian Art in the National Gallery, p. 17). "Of purely Florentine origin, and with its hardness of outline and modelling, and its severity of aspect, resembles a Pesellino writ large" (Claude Phillips in the Academy, Sept. 28, 1889).
This and the other profile head once ascribed to Piero (585) "are probably the earliest specimens we have in the National Gallery of pure portraits, i.e. pictures devoted simply to record the likeness of an individual, first introduced as donors into votive pictures, and next as actors in scenes from sacred history and legend. Portraits have at length made good their claim to a separate existence in pictorial art" (Monkhouse: The Italian Pre-Raphaelites, p. 41). To Piero della Francesca also we owe "most precious portraits (at Rimini and in the Uffizi) of two Italian princes, Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta and Federigo of Urbino, masterpieces of fidelity to nature and sound workmanship" (Symonds).
766, 767. HEADS OF SAINTS.
Domenico Veneziano (died 1461).
Though Domenico describes himself as Venetian (as on the signature to 1215), he worked at Perugia and Florence, and his works belie any connection with Venetian art. Between 1439 and 1445 he was engaged in the church of S. Maria Nuova, in which work he was assisted by his pupil Piero della Francesca. These pictures have perished. The works by his hand we possess give no evidence of his being an oil painter, but he is known to have used oil, and indeed was celebrated as one of the earliest Italian painters in that medium. Vasari's story about Andrea del Castagno's jealousy, and his murder of Domenico in consequence, is disproved by documentary evidence showing that Domenico survived his alleged murderer by five years. Domenico's only known works, now extant, are an altar-piece in the Uffizi and the work described below.