Jacob van Oost the Elder (Flemish: 1600-1671).
This painter was born at Bruges, and his pictures are very numerous in his native town. He painted principally religious subjects in the style of the Carracci, whose works he had studied in Italy. Of his portraits, this work—signed with his monogram,[221] and dated 1650—is the best.
A boy of eleven—so the inscription on the right-hand corner states—Mr. Pater's Sebastian van Storck, it might be.
"It was a winter scene, by Adrian van de Velde, or by Isaac van Ostade.... Sebastian van Storck, confessedly the most graceful performer in all the skating multitude moving in endless maze over the vast surface of the frozen water-meadow, liked best this season of the year for its expression of a perfect impassivity, or at least of a perfect repose. The earth was, or seemed to be, at rest, with a breathlessness of slumber which suited the young man's peculiar temper.... Yet with all his appreciation of the national winter, Sebastian was not altogether a Hollander. His mother, of Spanish descent and Catholic, had given a richness of tone and form to the healthy freshness of the Dutch physiognomy, apt to preserve its youthfulness of aspect far beyond the period of life usual with other peoples. This mixed expression charmed the eyes of Isaac van Ostade, who had painted his portrait at one of those skating parties, with his plume and squirrel's tail and fur muff, in all the modest pleasantness of boyhood" (Imaginary Portraits, p. 92).
1138. THE CRUCIFIXION.
Andrea del Castagno (Florentine: 1390-1457).
There is a rough vigour in this picture which agrees well with what we know of the painter. His father was a labouring man. Left an orphan in his boyhood, Andrea herded the cattle of an uncle at the hamlet of Castagno (whence the painter's name). He was first stimulated to study art by chancing to come across an itinerant painter at work on a rustic tabernacle. He began to draw upon the walls with charcoal or his knife, and showed therein so much ability that he attracted the notice of Benedetto de' Medici, who took the youth to Florence and placed him under proper tuition. Such is Vasari's story. But Benedetto's patronage did not save Andrea from a hard struggle with adversity. At the age of forty he is found declaring that he had neither bed, board, nor lodging in Florence, and was so poor that in illness he had to take shelter in a public hospital. These declarations were made, however, in a taxing return. Subsequently Andrea received various commissions in the palaces and churches of Florence, and from the Government. For the latter he painted on the wall of the palace of the Podestà the gibbeted bodies of those who were declared rebels on the recall from banishment of Cosimo de' Medici. Most of Andrea's works have perished; the few that remain in Florence display "a rude and coarse energy and an independent and original spirit, but are seldom attractive, either in form or colour" (Kugler). He is said to have painted in oil, but no work by him in that medium exists. Vasari's story in this connection, that he assassinated Domenico Veneziano, is demonstrably false (see under 766).
This picture is impressive in its solemn gloom. The impenitent thief writhes in agony, the suffering Christ casts his last glance at his mother, who, with St. John the beloved disciple, stands below in speechless grief. "The most beautiful in colour of all early works" (Ford Madox Brown in Magazine of Art, 1890, p. 134). Andrea's treatment of the subject, as also Antonello's (1166), is remarkable for simplicity and realism. In most representations of the Crucifixion the central tragedy is partially lost in the large groups of bystanders (e.g. 718, 1048, 1088), and various symbolical figures are introduced—as, for instance, flying angels around the cross. Even in Giotto's fresco at Padua this feature is introduced. Indeed "in all the pictures of the Crucifixion by the great masters, with the single exception perhaps of that by Tintoret in the church of San Cassiano at Venice, there is a tendency to treat the painting as a symmetrical image, or collective symbol of sacred mysteries, rather than as a dramatic representation" (Ruskin's Giotto, p. 149). For an example of a symbolic representation, in contrast to the severe simplicity of the picture before us, see No. 1478.