Cano was, perhaps, even greater in sculpture than in painting; and so fond of the former art, that, when wearied of pencil and brush, he would call for his chisel, and work at a statue by way of rest to his hands. On one of these occasions, a pupil venturing to remark, that to substitute a mallet for a pencil was an odd sort of repose, was silenced by Cano's philosophical reply,—"Blockhead, don't you perceive that to create form and relief on a flat surface is a greater labour than to fashion one shape into another?" An image of the Blessed Virgin in the parish church at Lebrija, and another in the sacristy of the Grenada cathedral, are said to be triumphs of Spanish painted statuary.—(Vol. iii., p. 805) After a life of strange vicissitudes, in the course of which, on suspicion of having murdered his wife, he underwent the examination by torture, he died, honoured and beloved for his magnificent charities, and religious hatred of the Jews, in his native city, on the 3d of October 1667.
The old Valencian town of Xativa claims the honour of producing Josè de Ribera, el Spagnoletto; but though Spain gave him birth, Italy gave him instruction, wealth, fame; and although in style he is thoroughly Spanish, we feel some difficulty in writing of him as belonging wholly to the Spanish school of art, so completely Italian was he by nurture, long residence, and in his death.
Bred up in squalid penury, he appears to have looked upon the world as not his friend, and in his subsequent good fortunes to have revelled in describing with ghastly minuteness, and repulsive force, all "the worst ills that flesh is heir to." We well recollect the horror with which we gazed spell-bound on a series of his horrors in the Louvre—faugh! At Gosford House are a series of Franciscan monks, such as only a Spanish cloister could contain, painted with an evident fidelity to nature, and the minutest details of dress that is almost offensive—even the black dirt under the unwashed thumb nail is carefully represented by his odiously-accurate and powerful pencil.
"Non ragioniam di lor
Ma guada e passa."
Had the bold buccaneers of the seventeenth century required the services of a painter to perpetuate the memory of their inventive brutality, and inconceivable atrocities, they would have found in El Spagnoletto an artist capable of delineating the agonies of their victims, and by taste and disposition not indisposed to their way of life. Yet in his own peculiar line he was unequalled, and his merits as a painter will always be recognised by every judge of art. He died at Naples, the scene of his triumphs, in 1656.
The name of Claudio Coello is associated with the Escurial, and should have been introduced into the sketch we were giving of its artists, when the mighty reputation of Velasquez and Murillo broke in upon our order. He was born at Madrid about the middle of the seventeenth century, and studied in the school of the younger Rigi. In 1686 he succeeded Herrera as painter in ordinary to Charles II. This monarch had erected an altar in the great sacristy of the Escurial, to the miraculous bleeding wafer known as the Santa Forma; and on the death of its designer, Rigi, Coello was called upon to paint a picture that should serve as a veil for the host. On a canvass six yards high, by three wide, he executed an excellent work, representing the king and his court adoring the miraculous wafer, which is held aloft by the prior. This picture established his reputation, and in 1691 the chapter of Toledo, still the great patrons of art, appointed him painter to their cathedral. Coello was a most careful and painstaking painter, and his pictures, says our author, (vol. iii., p. 1018) "with much of Cano's grace of drawing, have also somewhat of the rich tones of Murillo, and the magical effect of Velasquez." He died, it is said, of disappointment at the success of his foreign rival, Luca Giordano, in 1693.
With Charles II. passed away the Spanish sceptre from the house of Austria, nor, according to Mr Stirling, would the Genius of Painting remain to welcome the intrusive Bourbons:—
Old times were changed, old manners gone,
A stranger filled the Philips' throne;
And art, neglected and oppressed,
Wished to be with them, and at rest.
But we must say that Mr Stirling, in his honest indignation against France and Frenchmen, has exaggerated the demerits of the Bourbon kings. Spanish art had been steadily declining for years before they, with ill-omened feet, crossed the Pyrenees. It was no Bourbon prince that brought Luca da Presto from Naples to teach the painters of Spain "how to be content with their faults, and get rid of their scruples;" and if the schools of Castile and Andalusia had ceased to produce such artists as those whose praises Mr Stirling has so worthily recorded, it appears scant justice to lay the blame on the new royal family. Pictor nascitur, non fit—no, not even by the wielders of the Spanish sceptre. In a desire to patronise art, and in munificence towards its possessors, Philip V., Ferdinand VI., and Charles III., fell little short of their Hapsburg predecessors, but they had no longer the same material to work upon. The post which Titian had filled could find no worthier holder under Charles III., than Rafael Mengs, whom not only ignorant Bourbons, but the conoscenti of Europe regarded as the mighty Venetian's equal; and Philip V. not only invited Hovasse, Vanloo, Procaccini, and other foreign artists to his court, but added the famous collection of marbles belonging to Christina of Sweden to those acquired by Velasquez, at an expense of twelve thousand doubloons. To him, also, is due the completion of the palace of Aranjuez, and the design of La Granja; nor, when fire destroyed the Alcazar, did Philip V. spare his diminished treasures, in raising up on its time-hallowed site a palace which, in Mr Stirling's own words, "in spite of its narrowed proportions, is still one of the largest and most imposing in Europe."—(Vol. iii., p. 1163.)
Ferdinand VI. built, at the enormous expense of nineteen millions of reals the convent of nuns of the order of St Vincent de Sales, and employed in its decoration all the artistic talent that Spain then could boast of. Nor can he be blamed if that was but little; for if royal patronage can produce painters of merit, this monarch, by endowing the Academy of St Ferdinand with large revenues, and housing it in a palace, would have revived the glories of Spanish art.