A less objectionable rendering than most, of the story of Susannah in the Apocrypha—a story for all time, setting forth as it does the way in which minions of the law too often prey upon the innocent, and the righteous condemnation that the people, when there are just judges in the land, mete out to the offenders. Two judges, "ancients of the people," approached Susannah and threatened to report her as guilty unless she consented to do their bidding. She refused, and was reported accordingly. Judgment had well-nigh gone against her, when Daniel arose to convict the elders of false-witness, and they were straightway put to death. It is the moment of Susannah's temptation that the artist here depicts. "It is," says Hazlitt (p. 5), "as if the young Jewish beauty had been just surprised in that unguarded spot—crouching down in one corner of the picture, the face turned back with a mingled expression of terror, shame, and unconquerable sweetness, and the whole figure, with the arms crossed, shrinking into itself with bewitching grace and modesty." But Hazlitt never took notes, and Susannah's arms are not crossed—nor is her expression quite so naïve as he describes.
29. "OUR LADY OF THE CAT."
Baroccio (Umbrian: 1528-1612).
Federigo Barocci, or Baroccio, is the best of the "Mannerists." "He feebly continued the style of Correggio," says Symonds, "with a certain hectic originality, infusing sentimental pietism into that great master's pagan sensuousness" (Renaissance, viii. 211). His colouring is peculiar: he used too much vermilion and ultramarine, and too few yellows. He was a native of Urbino, and the son of a sculptor. In 1548 he went to Rome and remained there some years, devoting his time to the study of Raphael. He then returned to Urbino, again visiting Rome in 1560, when he was employed in the Vatican. While there he was nearly poisoned, by some rival it is supposed, and for the rest of his long life he suffered from disease of the stomach, which rendered him unable to do much work. He died at Urbino at the age of eighty-four.
An admirable example of the decline of Italian art. The old religious spirit has entirely vanished, and the Holy Family is represented as worrying a bird with a cat! John the Baptist holds the little goldfinch; while the Madonna expressly directs the attention of the infant Christ to the fun. "See, the cat is trying to get at it," she seems to say. Behind the bird, the painter, in unconscious irony, has placed the Cross. The visitor who wishes to see how far Italian art has travelled in a hundred years should compare this picture with such an one as Bellini's (280), or with one of Raphael's, of whom Baroccio was a fellow-countryman. The connecting link should then be seen in Correggio (23). With Bellini or Perugino, the motive is wholly religious. With Raphael it is intermingled with artistic display. Correggio brings heaven wholly down to earth, but yet paints his domestic scene with lovely grace. Baroccio brings, one may almost say, heaven down to hell,[63] and uses all his skill to show the infant Saviour's pleasure in teasing a bird. But the artist only embodied the spirit of his time. Baroccio was one of the most celebrated painters of his day, and his biographer (Bellori) writes of him that "his pencil may be said to have been dedicated to religion: so devout, so tender, and so calculated to awaken feelings of piety, are the sentiments expressed in his pictures."
30. SEAPORT: ST. URSULA.
Claude (French: 1600-1682). See 2.
The best Claude in the Gallery, for it is a perfect example of his chief merit—the painting of quiet skies. Constable, in one of his lectures, refers to it as "probably the finest picture of middle-tint in the world. The sun is rising through a thin mist, which, like the effect of a gauze blind in a room, diffuses the light equally. There are no large dark masses, there is no evasion in any part of this admirable work, every object is fairly painted in a firm style of execution, yet in no other picture have I seen the evanescent character of light so well expressed" (Leslie's Life of Constable, p. 338). "The effect of the breeze upon the water and upon the trees," says Ottley, "and the freshness of the morning atmosphere, in this picture, are expressed with a closeness of imitation bordering on illusion" (Descriptive Catalogue of the National Gallery, 1826, p. 42).
As for the subject: St. Ursula, a beautiful and gifted Sicilian princess, was sought in marriage by a prince of Britain; but having already dedicated herself to Christ, she made a condition that before her marriage, she, with eleven thousand attendant virgins, should be permitted for the space of three years to visit the shrines of the Saints. This being permitted, the maidens started on a miraculous voyage. Guided by angels they proceeded as far as Rome, where pagans having plotted their death, on their further journey to Cologne they were martyred by the barbarians besieging that city. Here in the picture they are represented as embarking.