[105] Up to the time of the Van Eycks the general process of artistic painting for detached pictures was tempera. In this method the colours, after being ground with chalk, were laid on with a medium of water, white of eggs, juice of unripe figs, or some similar substance. Some kind of oil varnish was, however, often laid on afterwards, and a few Italian artists sometimes tried to mix their colours with oil in the first instance; but the results cannot have been satisfactory, for even Crivelli, who died in 1495, was still exclusively a painter in tempera. The objection to tempera, so far at any rate as northern countries were concerned, was that it suffered from the damp. Thus in an old retable in Westminster Abbey, so painted, the painting has flaked off. The objection to the early attempts at using oil as a medium was that it took a long time to dry. This caused Van Eyck incessant annoyance; his knowledge of chemistry led him to make experiments, and at last he obtained a medium which hastened the drying without the necessity of exposure to the sun. This medium was probably a mixture of linseed and nut oils. This method is different from that now called oil-painting. Now the colours are laid on by an oily medium, and when the picture is finished the whole surface is protected by a transparent varnish. Then the varnish was incorporated with the surface colours (see Conway's Early Flemish Artists, p. 119; and Wauters's Flemish School of Painting, p. 35).
[106] Arrows of the Chace, i. 66. "John Bellini is the only artist who appears to me to have united, in equal and magnificent measures, justness of drawing, nobleness of colouring, and perfect manliness of treatment, with the purest religious feeling. He did, as far as it is possible to do it, instinctively and unaffectedly, what the Carracci only pretended to do. Titian colours better, but has not his piety; Leonardo draws better, but has not his colour; Angelico is more heavenly, but has not his manliness, far less his powers of art" (Stones of Venice, Venetian Index). Morelli's estimate is the same; see German Galleries, p. 361.
[107] This letter of Dürer's gives an interesting glimpse into the art life of the time. "I have many good friends among the Italians, who warn me not to eat and drink with their painters. Many also of them are my enemies; they copy my things for the churches, picking them up whenever they can. Yet they abuse my style, saying that it is not antique art, and that therefore it is not good. But Giambellini has praised me much before many gentlemen; he wishes to have something of mine; he came to me and begged me to do something for him, and is quite willing to pay for it. And every one gives him such a good character that I feel an affection for him. He is very old, and is yet the best in painting; and the thing which pleased me so well eleven years ago has now no attractions for me" (Catalogue of Standard Series in the Ruskin Drawing School, P. 7).
[108] See Report of Select Committee on the National Gallery, 1853, p. 432, where the whole story will be found very frankly told in Sir C. Eastlake's evidence.
[109] Similarly Raphael Mengs, a later Spanish painter, said of Velazquez that he appeared to have painted with his will only, without the aid of his hand.
[110] I read the other day in an otherwise intelligent memoir of Ruskin that "a generation which admired Velazquez had outlived the art criticism of Ruskin." Not outlived, but absorbed, and so forgotten. It was Ruskin who, half a century before, proclaimed the consummate excellence of Velazquez—the "greatest artist of Spain," and "one of the great artists of the world"; the master to all schools in his "consummate ease"; the man who was "never wrong." In his admiration of Velazquez Ruskin never wavered. The citations above given are from his earlier books. In his later period, a picture by Velazquez was included among the "Four Lesson Photographs" as "an example of the highest reach of technical perfection yet reached in art; all effort and labour seeming to cease in the radiant peace and simplicity of consummated human power" (Fors Clavigera, 1876, p. 188).
[111] This was written in 1846. In 1853 some "horrible revelations" were made about the picture before the Select Committee on the National Gallery. Ruskin turned out to be curiously wrong, but also curiously right. He was wrong; for so far from the picture being "in genuine and perfect condition," a considerable portion of the canvas, as we now see it, turned out to be not by Velazquez's hand at all. Lord Cowley, its former owner, had sent it to a Mr. Thane, a picture dealer, to be relined. A too hot iron was used, and a portion of the paint entirely disappeared. Thane was in despair. The picture haunted him at nights. He saw the figure of it in his dreams becoming more and more attenuated until it appeared at length a skeleton. He was near going mad over it, when a good angel came to his rescue in the shape of Lance, the flower and fruit painter, who offered to restore the missing parts out of his head. So far Ruskin was decidedly wrong. But he was also right. The parts which Lance painted in "out of his head" were the groups on the left of the foreground, and some of the middle distance. "I endeavoured," he says, "to fill up the canvas, such as I supposed Velazquez would have done; and I had great facility in doing that, because if there was a man without a horse here, there was a horse without a man there, so I could easily take his execution as nearly as possible, and my own style of painting enabled me to keep pretty near the mark"(!). But the high lights of the sky, he particularly added, were untouched by him. So that there Ruskin was right. The picture, when restored to its owner, gave complete satisfaction, and Lance's share in it was kept a secret. A year or two later he must have felt a proud man. The picture was being exhibited at the British Gallery. In front of it Lance met two cognoscenti of his acquaintance. "It looks to me," he said, testing them, "as if it had been a good deal repainted."—"No! you're wrong there," they said; "it is remarkably free from repaints." It should be added that soon after the Parliamentary inquiry referred to above, a tracing of Goya's copy, procured from Madrid, showed in fact that the restored work differed but slightly from the copy, and Lance's work was probably far less important and extensive than he asserted. An idea of the original condition of the picture may be had from a reduced replica, or first sketch, now in the Wallace Collection.
[112] The view Diderot thus took of Greuze's art suggests the importance of historical perspective in criticism. Pictures, like everything else, should be judged with reference to contemporary circumstances, as well as by the standard of abstract principle. From the former point of view Greuze, as we have seen, is a moralist in painting. From the latter Ruskin suggests the consideration "how far the value of a girl's head by Greuze would be lowered in the market if the dress, which now leaves the bosom bare, were raised to the neck" (Modern Painters, vol. iii. pt. iv. chap. v. § 7).
[113] Another instance of this intimate union of art with business may be seen in the number of Dutch artists of the period who themselves held municipal office. See, for instance, Terburg (864) and Delen (1010). Many of the Italian painters also were men of business and of official standing. Thus Titian was a timber merchant; whilst Manni, Perugino, and Pinturicchio were all magistrates.
[114] "The bit of bluish ribbed paper on which he made his design in light and dark strokes, now gone brown, and which he had pricked through for the purpose of tracing the design on the panel, is framed beside it. He left it about, not thinking that in 350 years it would be under glass in the distant city of London, stared at by English roughs, who would say, "Sithee Bill, he's pricked it a' through with a pin, and spilt th' ile on it!" for there are two or three of these amber-coloured blurs which come from a sketch being inadvertently put down on a palette knife" (Letters of James Smetham, p. 168).