On the same stand as the portrait of Julius II. is the much vaunted Correggio—the Christ in the Garden. We would not give a farthing for it. The drapery of the Christ is highly finished in a silver and azure tone—but high finishing is not all we ask from Correggio. It is more worthy of Carlo Dolce.—Lest we should forget it, we may mention here, that the admired portrait of Govarcius was gone to be copied at Somerset-house. The Academy have then, at length, fallen into the method pursued at the British Gallery, of recommending the students to copy from the Old Masters. Well—better late than never! This same portrait is not, we think, the truest specimen of Vandyke. It has not his mild, pensive, somewhat effeminate cast of colour and expression. His best portraits have an air of faded gentility about them. The Govarcius has too many streaks of blood-colour, too many marks of the pencil, to convey an exact idea of Vandyke’s characteristic excellence; though it is a fine imitation of Rubens’s florid manner. Vandyke’s most striking portraits are those which look just like a gentleman or lady seen in a looking-glass, and neither more nor less.
Of the Claudes, we prefer the St. Ursula—the Embarking of the Five thousand Virgins—to the others. The water is exquisite; and the sails of the vessels glittering in the morning sun, and the blue flags placed against the trees, which seem like an opening into the sky behind—so sparkling is the effect of this ambiguity in colouring—are in Claude’s most perfect manner. The Altieri Claude is one of his noblest and most classical compositions, with towers, and trees, and streams, and flocks, and herds, and distant sunny vales,
——‘Where universal Pan,
Knit with the Graces and the Hours in dance,
Leads on the eternal spring:—’
but the effect of the execution has been deadened and rendered flat by time or ill-usage. There is a dull, formal appearance, as if the different masses of sky, of water, &c., were laid on with plates of tin or lead. This is not a general defect in Claude: his landscapes have the greatest quantity of inflection, the most delicate brilliancy, of all others. A lady had been making a good copy of the Seaport, which is a companion to the one we have described. We do not think these Claudes, famous as they are, equal to Lord Egremont’s Jacob and Laban; to the Enchanted Castle; to a green vernal Landscape, which was in Walsh Porter’s Collection, and which was the very finest we ever saw; nor to some others that have appeared from time to time in the British Institution. We are sorry to make this, which may be thought an ill-natured, remark: but, though we have a great respect for Mr. Angerstein’s taste, we have a greater for Claude Lorraine’s reputation. Let any persons admire these specimens of his art as much as they will (and the more they admire them, the more we shall be gratified), and then we will tell them, he could do far finer things than these!
There is one Rembrandt, and one N. Poussin. The Rembrandt (the Woman taken in Adultery) is prodigious in colouring, in light and shade, in pencilling, in solemn effect; but that is nearly all—
‘Of outward show
Elaborate, of inward less exact.’
Nevertheless, it is worth any money. The Christ has considerable seriousness and dignity of aspect. The marble pavement, of which the light is even dazzling; the figures of the two Rabbis to the right, radiant with crimson, green, and azure; the back-ground, which seems like some rich oil-colour smeared over a ground of gold, and where the eye staggers on from one abyss of obscurity to another,—place this picture in the first rank of Rembrandt’s wonderful performances. If this extraordinary genius was the most literal and vulgar of draughtsmen, he was the most ideal of colourists. When Annibal Caracci vowed to God, that Titian and Correggio were the only true painters, he had not seen Rembrandt;—if he had, he would have added him to the list. The Poussin is a Dance of Bacchanals: theirs are not ‘pious orgies.’ It is, however, one of this master’s finest pictures, both in the spirit of the execution, and the ingenuity and equivoque of the invention. If the purity of the drawing will make amends for the impurity of the design, it may pass: assuredly the same subject, badly executed, would not be endured; but the life of mind, the dexterity of combination displayed in it, supply the want of decorum. The old adage, that ‘Vice, by losing all its grossness, loses half its evil,’ seems chiefly applicable to pictures. Thus a naked figure, that has nothing but its nakedness to recommend it, is not fit to be hung up in decent apartments. If it is a Nymph by Titian, Correggio’s Iö, we no longer think of its being naked; but merely of its sweetness, its beauty, its naturalness. So far art, as it is intellectual, has a refinement and extreme unction of its own. Indifferent pictures, like dull people, must absolutely be moral! We suggest this as a hint to those persons of more gallantry than discretion, who think that to have an indecent daub hanging up in one corner of the room, is proof of a liberality of gusto, and a considerable progress in virtù. Tout au contraire.