A comparison of the various opinions expressed on this picture would form a diverting chapter in the history of art criticism. Thus in Kugler's Handbook we are told that it is "in many respects one of the noblest pictures existing"; Sir Henry Cole ("Felix Summerly") called it "doubtless the greatest Italian painting in this country"; Hazlitt said it was "one of the best pictures on so large a scale that he was acquainted with"; Waagen pronounced it to be "the most important specimen of Italian art in England"; Solly called it "the second picture in the world"; and Mrs. Jameson saw in it a combination of "the characteristic power and beauty of the finest school of design and the finest school of colouring in the world." For an equally uncompromising condemnation see Landseer's Catalogue, pp. 92-119. It is interesting to note that in some cases the admiration excited by the picture was due to the dirt with which by long neglect and lapse in time it had come to be discoloured. Thus Hazlitt says that "the figure of Lazarus is very fine and bold. The flesh is well-baked, dingy, and ready to crumble from the touch, when it is liberated from its dread confinement to have life and motion impressed on it again" (Criticisms on Art, 1843, p. 9). Thus it was inferred that Sebastiano stooped to the trivial artifice of imparting an appearance of half putrefaction to the exhumed corpse. The absurdity of this criticism is well exposed by Henry Merritt, the famous picture restorer, in his essay on "Dirt and Pictures Separated" (Art Criticism and Romance, i. 69). The fact is that the whole picture was sadly darkened with time, and that it had become "embedded beneath a thick covering, compounded of half opaque varnish, patches of modern paint, and dirt." It has only been found possible partly to remove this covering. It may not be uninteresting to add that the picture was a favourite with Charles Darwin. "Many of the pictures in the National Gallery," he wrote, "gave me much pleasure; that of Sebastian del Piombo exciting in me a sense of sublimity" (Life, i. 49).
The poet Tennyson was another great admirer of the picture. His son, describing visits with the poet to the National Gallery, says, "he always led the way first of all to the "Raising of Lazarus," by Sebastian del Piombo, and to Titian's "Bacchus and Ariadne."" "The Christ I call Christlike," said Tennyson on one occasion to Carlyle, "is Sebastian del Piombo's in the National Gallery" (Memoir, ii. 235). It is possible that the poet may have written the stanzas cited above with his eye on Sebastiano's picture.
[39] "When they went to nature, which I believe to have been a very much rarer practice with them than their biographers would have us suppose, they copied her like children, drawing what they knew to be there, but not what they saw there" (Modern Painters, vol. i. pt. ii. sec. ii. ch. iii. § 7).
[40] The "Claude Lorraine glass"—a convex dark, or coloured hand-mirror used to concentrate the features of a landscape in a subdued tone—"gives the objects of nature," says an old writer, "a soft mellow tinge like the colouring of that master."
[41] But Ruskin does not quite keep his promise. "If Claude had been a great man he would not have been so steadfastly set on painting effects of sun; he would have looked at all nature, and at all art, and would have painted sun effects somewhat worse, and nature universally much better" (Modern Painters, vol. iii. pt. iv. ch. xviii. § 23).
[42] The passages quoted from Sir F. Burton are to be found in his edition of the Official Catalogue (unabridged) of the Foreign Schools. That work, which occupied the late Director's leisure for many years, is a worthy monument of his wide learning and fastidious taste. A large-paper edition was issued by the Stationery Office in 1892.
[43] See, however, the sunset picture of his predecessor, Bellini (726). Connoisseurs should note that this picture is referred to by Richter as bearing on the vexed question of Palma Vecchio's relation with Titian, and showing that the latter imitated the former rather than vice versâ (Italian Art in the National Gallery, p. 85. See also Morelli's German Galleries, p. 25).
[44] Called also "Sinon before Priam" (Æneid, ii. 79).
[45] The two pictures were bought by the nation in 1834 for £11,550. The sum was then thought a very large one, and the trustees fortified themselves with the opinion of experts. Amongst these Sir David Wilkie, R.A., wrote, "It is certainly a large sum for two pictures; but giving this difficulty its due weight, I would decidedly concur in giving this sum rather than let them go out of the country, considering the rarity of such specimens even in foreign countries, and their excellence as examples of the high school to which they belong, to which it must be the aim of every other school to approach."
[46] The picture is inscribed "Mariage d'Isaac avec Rebecca," but it is a repetition with some variations in detail of the Claude known as Il Molino (The Mill) in the Doria palace at Rome. Ruskin characterises this version of the subject as a "villainous and unpalliated copy." "There is not," he adds, "one touch or line of even decent painting in the whole picture; but as connoisseurs have considered it a Claude, as it has been put in our Gallery for a Claude, and as people admire it every day for a Claude, I may at least presume it has those qualities of Claude in it which are wont to excite the public admiration, though it possesses none of those which sometimes give him claim to it; and I have so reasoned, and shall continue to reason upon it, especially with respect to facts of form, which cannot have been much altered by the copyist" (Modern Painters, vol. i. pt. ii. sec. iii. ch. i. § 9, sec. iv. ch. ii. § 8).