1036. A MAN'S PORTRAIT.
Unknown (Flemish: 15th-16th century).
A picture, it might be, of Hamlet with the skulls: "That skull had a tongue in it, and could sing once." In his left hand he holds a flower: "there's pansies, that's for thoughts."
1041. THE VISION OF ST. HELENA.
Paolo Veronese (Veronese: 1528-1588). See 26.
St. Helena, the mother of Constantine, made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, when a victory was gained by the emperor, to recover the very cross of which she had seen a mysterious symbol. Having reached the sacred city, she caused the soil of Calvary to be excavated, because the Jews were accustomed to bury the instruments of execution upon the spot where they had been used. And there she found three crosses, and that one which was the holy cross was distinguished from the others by the healing of a lady of quality who was sick. The empress divided the true cross into three parts, giving one of them to the Bishop of Jerusalem, and another to the church at Constantinople. The third she brought to Rome, where she built for it the great basilica of S. Croce.
Here we see the saint in devout reverie, while through the open window two cherubim bear a cross through the air. This beautiful picture, in which Veronese gives us an ideal and mystic composition, treated with a simplicity unusual to him, seems to have been derived from a plate by Marc Antonio, the founder of Italian engraving (1480-1534), supposed to be after a drawing by Raphael. The design is identical, though an exquisitely airy angel with a slender cross in Marc Antonio's engraving is replaced in Veronese's picture by chubby cherubs with a more solid cross. (The engraving is reproduced in the Art Journal, 1891, p. 376, with some critical remarks. "This wonderful picture," says the writer, "is at once a delight and a puzzle. If Veronese was capable of efforts like the 'Vision of St. Helena,' why have we not more such, seeing how many treasures of his art have survived to us? The engraving offers an explanation, curiously exact, of this difficulty. Whatever in the 'Vision' is Veronese's own—the drapery and the colour—is not more remarkable than in many other pictures of his; on the other hand, whatever is not distinctively of Veronese is Marc Antonio's.... What more natural than that Veronese should essay to clothe in the glory of his own colouring[206] some creation of the great Italian who learnt from Dürer how to interpret the art of Raphael to Italy?") Veronese's picture once formed the altar-piece of a chapel dedicated to St. Helena at Venice, and was afterwards in the collection of the great Duke of Marlborough.
1042. A MAN'S PORTRAIT.
Catharina van Hemessen (Flemish: painted about 1550).
Catharina was the daughter of a painter named Jan Sanders, called Jan van Hemessen from his native village. She married a musician of repute in the Low Countries, and with him went to Madrid, where she acquired celebrity and favour through her ability in portraiture.