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Read Ebook: Visits and Sketches at Home and Abroad Vol. 1 (of 3) With Tales and Miscellanies Now First Collected by Jameson Mrs Anna
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Ebook has 490 lines and 54798 words, and 10 pages
MEDON.
ALDA.
Not much; but I have learned to sweep my mind of some ill-conditioned cobwebs. I have learned to consider my own acquired knowledge but as a torch flung into an abyss, making the darkness visible, and showing me the extent of my own ignorance.
MEDON.
ALDA.
You make me smile; after all, 'tis only going over old ground, and I know not what pleasure, what interest it can impart, beyond half an hour's amusement.
MEDON.
Sceptic! is that nothing? In this harsh, cold, working-day world, is half an hour's amusement nothing? Old ground!--as if you did not know the pleasure of going over old ground with a new companion to refresh half-faded recollections--to compare impressions--to correct old ideas and acquire new ones? O I can suck knowledge out of ignorance, as a weazel sucks eggs!--Begin.
ALDA.
Where shall I begin?
MEDON.
Where, but at the beginning? and then diverge as you will. Your first journey was one of mere amusement?
ALDA.
MEDON.
Admirable--and English!
ALDA.
MEDON.
Stay--stay. This is galloping on at the rate of Lenora, and her phantom lover--
"Tramp, tramp across the land we go, Splash, splash across the sea!"
Take me with you, and a little more leisurely.
ALDA.
MEDON.
And learned to be homely--but the result?
ALDA.
I can scarce express the surprise I felt at the time, though it has since diminished on reflection. All the attempts at historical painting were bad, without exception. There was the usual assortment of Virgins, St. Cecilias, Cupids and Psyches, Zephyrs and Floras;--but such incomparable atrocities! There were some cabinet pictures in the same style in which their Flemish ancestors excelled--such as small interior conversation pieces, battle pieces, and flowers and fruit; some of these were really excellent, but the proportion of bad to good was certainly fifty to one.
MEDON.
Something like our own Royal Academy.
ALDA.
No; because with much which was quite as bad, quite as insipid, as coarse in taste, as stupidly presumptuous in attempt, and ridiculous in failure, as ever shocked me on the walls of Somerset House, there was nothing to be compared to the best pictures I have seen there. As I looked and listened to the remarks of the crowd around me, I perceived that the taste for art is even as low in the Netherlands as it is here and elsewhere.
MEDON.
And, surely, not from the want of models, nor from the want of facility in the means of studying them. You visited, of course, Schamp's collection?
ALDA.
Surely; there were miracles of art crowded together like goods in a counting-house, with wondrous economy of space, and more lamentable economy of light. Some were nailed against doors, inside and out, or suspended from screens and window-shutters. Here I saw Rubens' picture of Father Rutseli, the confessor of Albert and Isabella: one of those heads more suited to the crown than to the cowl--grand, sagacious, intellectual, with such a world of meaning in the eye, that one almost shrunk away from the expression. Here, too, I found that remarkable picture of Charles the First, painted by Lely during the king's imprisonment at Windsor--the only one for which he sat between his dethronement and his death: he is still melancholy and gentlemanlike, but not quite so dignified as on the canvass of Vandyke. This is the very picture that Horace Walpole mentions as lost or abstracted from the collection at Windsor. How it came into Schamp's collection, I could not learn. A very small head of an Italian girl by Correggio, or in his manner, hung close beside a Dutch girl by Mieris: equally exquisite as paintings, they gave me an opportunity of contrasting two styles, both founded in nature--but the nature, how different! the one all life, the other life and soul. Schamp's collection is liberally open to the public, as well as many others; if artists fail, it is not for want of models.
MEDON.
Perhaps for want of patronage? Yet I hear that the late king of the Netherlands sent several young artists to Italy at his own expense, and that the Prince of Orange was liberal and even munificent in his purchases--particularly of the old masters.
ALDA.
When I went to see the collection of the Prince of Orange at Brussels, I stepped from the room in which hung the glorious Vandykes, perhaps unequalled in the world, into the adjoining apartment, in which were two unfinished portraits disposed upon easels. They represented members of the prince's family; and were painted by a native artist of fashionable fame, and royally patronised. These were pointed out to my admiration as universally approved. What shall I say of them? Believe me, that they were contemptible beyond all terms of contempt! Can you tell me why the Prince of Orange should have sufficient taste to select and appropriate the finest specimens of art, and yet purchase and patronize the vilest daubs ever perpetrated by imbecility and presumption?
MEDON.
I know not, unless it be that in the former case he made use of others' eyes and judgment, and in the latter, of his own.
ALDA.
I must tell you, however, that there were two most curious old pictures in the Orange Gallery, which arrested my attention, and of which I have retained a very distinct and vivid recollection; and that is more than I can say of many better pictures. They tell, in a striking manner, a very interesting story: the circumstances are said to have occurred about the year 985, but I cannot say that they rest on any very credible authority.
Of these two pictures, each exhibits two scenes. A certain nobleman, a favourite of the Emperor Otho, is condemned to death by his master on the false testimony of the Empress , who has accused him of having tempted her to break her marriage vow. In the back-ground we see the unfortunate man led to judgment; he is in his shirt, bare-footed and bare-headed. His wife walks at his side, to whom he appears to be speaking earnestly, and endeavouring to persuade her of his innocence. A friar precedes them, and a crowd of people follow after. On the walls of the city stand the Emperor and his wicked Empress, looking down on the melancholy procession. In the foreground, we have the dead body of the victim, stretched upon the earth, and the executioner is in the act of delivering the head to his wife, who looks grim with despair. The severed head and flowing blood are painted with such a horrid and literal fidelity to nature, that it has been found advisable to cover this portion of the picture.
In the foreground of the second picture, the Emperor Otho is represented on his throne surrounded by his counsellors and courtiers. Before him kneels the widow of the Count: she has the ghastly head of her husband in her lap, and in her left-hand she holds firmly and unhurt the red-hot iron, the fiery ordeal by which she proves to the satisfaction of all present the innocence of her murdered lord. The Emperor looks thunderstruck; the Empress stands convicted, and is condemned to death; and in the back-ground, we have the catastrophe. She is bound to a stake, the fire is kindled, and she suffers the terrible penalty of her crime. These pictures, in subject and execution, might be termed tragico-comico-historical; but in spite of the harshness of the drawing, and the thousand defects of style and taste, they fix the attention by the vigour of the colouring and the expression of the heads, many of which are evidently from the life. The story is told in a very complete though very inartificial manner. The painter, Derick Steuerbout, was one of the very earliest of the Flemish masters, and lived about 1468, many years before Albert Durer and Holbein. I have heard that they were painted for the city of Lorraine, and until the invasion of the French, they remained undisturbed, and almost unnoticed, in the Hotel-de-Ville.
MEDON.
Does this collection of the Prince of Orange still exist at Brussels?
ALDA.
I am told that it does--that the whole palace, the furniture, the pictures, remain precisely as the prince and his family left them: that even down to the princess's work-box, and the portraits of her children which hang in her boudoir, nothing has been touched. This does not speak well for king Leopold's gallantry; and, in his place, I think I would have sent the private property of my rival after him.
MEDON.
So would not I, for this is not the age of chivalry, but of common sense. As to the pictures, the Belgians might plead that they were purchased with the public money, therefore justly public property. No, no; he should not have a picture of them--"If a Vandyke would save his soul, he should not; I'd keep them, by this hand!" that is, as long as I had a plausible excuse for keeping them; but the princess should have had her work-box and her children by the first courier. What more at Brussels?
ALDA.
MEDON.
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