[141] Some readers may like to be referred to the passages in which Ruskin discusses the place of the dog in art, with special reference to Veronese. They are, Modern Painters, vol. v. pt. ix. ch. vi., and The Eagle's Nest, i. ch. viii.
[142] Richter (Italian Art in the National Gallery, p. 74) disputes this. The kneeling girls are, he believes, the artist's daughters, whom he has also introduced into a picture in the Louvre, and the courtier presenting them is Veronese himself.
[143] The pattern of the Madonna's robe in this picture is worth notice—"a good specimen of the treatment, probably taken from Persian examples, of a ground sprinkled with conventional sprays of flowers spaced regularly" (Vacher).
[144] The three portraits, 1022, 1023, and 1025, formerly in the Casa Fenaroli at Brescia, were there all attributed to Moretto. Signor Morelli was the first to recognise in the two former the hand and mind of Moroni, under whose name they were sold to the National Gallery.
[145] Mr. Dickes's ingenious and interesting explanation is now accepted by the authorities, and there can be little doubt of its correctness. The motto had previously been misread as του λιαν ποθω which was interpreted "by the desire of the extreme." The picture was for many years in the possession of the Martinengo Cesaresco family, and passed for a portrait of their ancestor Count Sciarra. The motto was interpreted as referring to the Count's desire to avenge the death of his father, who had been assassinated. The desire of the extreme, the activity of a restless spirit, was with the Count to the end, and he died fighting in France in the campaign which ended in a defeat of the Huguenots at the battle of Moncontour, October 3, 1569. But the Count Sciarra was a soldier-adventurer, showing no characteristics accordant with the nobleman before us other than that, according to a Brescian historian, "his eyes gleamed with an unconquerable desire." But the inscription is undoubtedly as given in the text, the accents being all clearly marked. The portrait is clearly not of a restless man of action, so much as of a dilettante. The dates of the Count Sciarra's career are also inconsistent with his being painted in this picture of Moretto's best period. The statements on behalf of the traditional identification made by the Contessa Evelyn Martinengo Cesaresco (Athenæum, Aug. 12, 1893) do not touch the points.
[146] The feeling which one may thus find in these paintings of four centuries ago still lingers amongst the Italian peasantry, as readers of Miss Alexander's Roadside Songs and Christ's Folk in the Apennine (both edited by Mr. Ruskin) will know.
[147] It may be worth noting that, according to the son of Turner's friend, Trimmer, this picture "had an entire new sky painted at the desire of Lawrence and other brother artists, who, when he had altered it, said the picture was ruined" (Thornbury's Life of Turner, i. 175).
[148] Dr. Richter, in laying down the law to the contrary, gives too narrow an interpretation to Vasari's words. The Margaritone is certainly inferior to the best Byzantine work, but it adheres to the characteristics noticed above. Dr. Richter says: "This curious, if uninteresting painter, in all probability would never have emerged from his modest sphere of awkward provincialism into the full light of history but for the special praise bestowed upon him by his obliging countryman, Vasari. The latter states definitely, among other things, that Margaritone painted in the maniera greca; nevertheless, a single glance at the picture in the National Gallery is sufficient to convince the beholder that in reality this is not the case. Margaritone's pictures appear to me to be drawn in the wild and grotesque style prevalent in Italy during the early middle ages" (Lectures on the National Gallery, p. 11).
[149] Dr. Richter ascribes all these pictures to the School of Duccio (see Lectures on the National Gallery, pp. 4-10.).
[150] So described in the Official Catalogue. But "is the female saint on the right wing of the triptych really St. Catherine of Alexandria? Only the beginning of the inscription on either side of the figure containing the name can here still be deciphered. It runs thus: SCA (Saint) AL. The reading 'Catherine' thus apparently becomes inadmissible. Besides, the emblems of this female saint are decidedly not those of Catherine of Alexandria, who is always represented with a wheel as the emblem of her martyrdom, while the saint in the picture before us holds in her right hand a palm branch (?) and in her left a small cross, the emblem of confessors" (Richter's Italian Art in the National Gallery, p. 9).