Albert Durer represented an angel in a flounced petticoat, driving Adam and Eve from Paradise.
Lewis Cigoli painted a picture of the Circumcision of the Holy Child, Jesus, and drew the high priest, Simeon, with spectacles on his nose; upon a supposition, probably, that, in respect of his great age, that aid would be necessary. Spectacles, however, were not known for fourteen centuries afterwards.
In a picture painted by F. Chello della Puera, the Virgin Mary is placed on a velvet sofa, playing with a cat and a paroquet, and about to help herself to coffee from an engraved coffee-pot.
In another, painted by Peter of Cortona, representing the reconciliation of Jacob and Laban, (now in the French Museum), the painter has represented a steeple or belfry rising over the trees. A belfry in the mountains of Mesopotamia, in the time of Jacob!
N. Poussin's celebrated picture, at the same place, of Rebecca at the Well, has the whole back-ground decorated with Grecian architecture.
Paul Veronese placed Benedictine fathers and Swiss soldiers among his paintings from the Old Testament.
A painter, intending to describe the miracle of the fishes listening to the preaching of St. Anthony of Padua, painted the lobsters, who were stretching out of the water, red! probably having never seen them in their natural state. Being asked how he could justify this anachronism, he extricated himself by observing, that the whole affair was a miracle, and that thus the miracle was made still greater.
In the Notices des MSS. du Roi VI. 120, in the illuminations of a manuscript Bible at Paris, under the Psalms, are two persons playing at cards; and under Job and the Prophets are coats of arms and a windmill.
Poussin, in his picture of the Deluge has painted boats, not then invented. St. Jerome, in another place, with a clock by his side; a thing unknown in that saint's days.—Nous revenons.