Formerly ascribed to Otto Marseus; but the defaced part of the signature has recently been deciphered as being that of Hondecoeter, dated 1668.
1227. VIRGIN AND CHILD
Marcello Venusti (Florentine: 1515-1579). See 1194.
Also St. Joseph and St. John the Baptist, with the skin of a wild beast quaintly treated as a head-dress. A picture from a composition by Michael Angelo, known as "Il Silenzio."
1229. VIRGIN AND CHILD.
Luis de Morales (Spanish: 1509-1586).
Luis de Morales was born at Badajos, and is one of the most native of Spanish artists. He did not resort to Italy, such foreign influence as is discernible in him being rather that of the Flemings; and the religious sanctity of his work won him the surname of "the Divine." "His subjects, always devotional, were," we are told, "mostly of the saddest, as the Saviour in his hour of suffering, or dead in his mother's arms, or the weeping Madonna. His object was to excite devotion through images of pain, and to this end the forms are attenuated and the faces disfigured by the marks of past or present anguish." He was very largely commissioned by churches and convents, and his fame spread over Spain. He was called to the court of Philip II. in 1563, but was dismissed as soon as he had painted one picture, and thereafter he fell into great poverty. He had appeared at court, it is said, "in the style of a grand seigneur" which seemed to the king and his courtiers absurd in a mere painter, and was the cause of their disfavour. Some years later, however, the king, learning of his poverty, granted him a pension. In his earlier period, Morales painted crowded compositions with numerous figures; in his later, smaller pictures, such as the one before us.
1230. PORTRAIT OF A GIRL.
Domenico Ghirlandajo (Florentine: 1449-1494).
The name of Ghirlandajo is one of the great landmarks in the history of Florentine art. He was the first to introduce portraits into "historical" pictures for their own sake, and his series of frescoes in S. Maria Novella is particularly interesting for the numerous portraits of his friends and patrons, dressed in the costume of the period and introduced into scenes of Florentine life and architecture. "There is a bishop," says Vasari, "in his episcopal vestments and with spectacles on his nose"—Ghirlandajo was the first master who ventured to paint a figure wearing spectacles—"he is chanting the prayers for the dead; and the fact that we do not hear him alone demonstrates to us that he is not alive, but merely painted." These groups of men and women in Ghirlandajo's sacred compositions stand by in the costume of their day as spectators of the incidents represented. He introduced also the architecture of Florence in the richest display and in complete perspective; and thus in his subjects taken from sacred story he has left us "an exalted picture of life as it presented itself to him in that day." "In the technical management of fresco Ghirlandajo exhibits an unsurpassed finish, and worked in it with extraordinary facility. He is said to have expressed a wish that he might be allowed to paint in fresco the whole of the walls which enclosed the city of Florence." He was carried off by the plague in his forty-fifth year, but he had already completed a very large body of work. He was the son of a silk-broker named Bigordi. He and his brother David, who was also a painter, were apprenticed to a goldsmith. Their master probably manufactured the garlands of gold and silver which were so much in favour with the women of Florence, and the young men coming from his shop thus acquired the name of del Ghirlandajo. Domenico early showed his bent by the striking likenesses he drew of the people who passed by the goldsmith's shop. He remained to the end of his life, says Ruskin, "a goldsmith with a gift of portraiture." As early as 1475 his reputation was established, for in that year he was called to Rome to paint in the Sistine Chapel, where his "Calling of Peter and Andrew" is still well preserved. Among the frescoes executed after his return to Florence may be mentioned the "St. Jerome" in the church of the Ognissanti, the history of "St. Francis" in the Trinita, and the famous series in the choir of S. Maria Novella. Copies from several of these works may be seen in the Arundel Society's Collection. They are described by Ruskin in his Mornings in Florence (see also Praeterita, vol. ii., and numerous incidental references in Modern Painters). Ghirlandajo had not, perhaps, Giotto's dramatic instinct for the heart of his subjects, but his frescoes are remarkable, not only for their brilliantly decorative effect, but for their noble and dignified realism. In the Uffizi at Florence are his best easel pictures. There is also a fine "Visitation" in the Louvre. Ghirlandajo was celebrated further as a worker in mosaic (e.g. the mosaic over the north door of the Cathedral at Florence). He was twice married. The painter Ridolfo (1143) was a son by his first wife. Amongst his other pupils were Granacci and Michael Angelo.