The Old Masters and Their Pictures

ping George'-was born at Castelfranco, in Treviso, about 1477, the same year in which Titian was born. Nothi

iorgione seems to have been one of those proud, shy, sensitive men-possibly morbidly sensitive, with whom it is always difficult to deal; but it is recor

ich was entirely successful in procuring him commissions; but unfortunately for posterity, these were frequently to paint other fa?ades, sometimes in company with Titian; g

in which musical performances are made prominent. In Giorgione, with his romantic, idealizing temperament, genre 18 pictures took this form, while he is known to have painted from Ovid and from the Italian tales of his time. He was employed frequently to paint scen

a sadder cause. He is said to have had a friend and fellow-painter who betrayed their friendship, and carried off the girl whom Giorgione loved.

it is that of a very handsome beardless lad, 'wi

a nice distinction between the two painters as colourists. That the colours of Giorgione 'appear as if lighted from wi

knights and ladies, stand around; on one side two lovers are seated on the grass; on the other are musicians and singers, pages with dogs. All the figures are in the Venetian costume; the colouring is splendid, and the grace and harmony of the whole composition is even the more enchanting from the na?veté of the conception. This picture, like many others

er 'Maestro di Capella giving a music lesson,' which Kugler assigns to Giorgione, though it has been given elsewhere to Titian. The 'refi

ce of Correggio, now called Reggio; although at one time there existed an impression that

Andrea Mantegna, who died when Correggio was still a young boy. Mantegna's son kept on his father's school, and from him Correggio might have received more regular instruction. He early attained excellence, and in the tee

d that of the 'Coronation of the Virgin,' painted over the high altar, Correggio got five hundred gold crowns, equivalent to ￡1500. He was invited to Mantua, where he painted from the mythology for the Duke of Mantua. Indeed, so far

r which he selected 'The Assumption of the Virgin.' A few of the cartoons for these frescoes were discovered th

e painter had engaged to paint an altar-piece for an employer, who paid Correggio in advance twenty-five gold crowns, but the latter dying very soon afterwards,

a man born in indigent circumstances, living obscurely in spite of his genius (there is a picture of Correggio's in England, which was said to have been given in payment for his entertainment at an inn), and leading to the end a life of such ill-requited labour, that having

omage paid to Dürer, Titian, and Holbein. I fancy the last-mentioned stories may have grown from small beginnings, and circulated purely in the artist world; but that the fo

After looking for the first time on the St Cecilia of Raphael, Correggio

great name. In the picture of Correggio in the attitude of painting, painted by himself, we se

from the painter's own quivering heart the very sharpness of anguish. The same authority tells us of Correggio, that he has painted 'the very heart-throbs of humanity.' But it seems as if such a nature, with its self-conscious veil of forced stillness, must have had a tendency to vehemence and excess; and so we hear that Correggio's fore-shortening was sometimes violent, and the energy of his actors spasmodic; thus the cruelly smart contemporary critic

predecessors, he was so great in one department, that in it he was held worthy, not onl

on, in melting softness of outline, fixed on a canvas, he surpassed all rivals, including Raphael; and this widely attractive quality ('luscious refinement,' Mr Ruskin terms it) in connection with Correggio's ardent, if undisciplined sensibility, has rendered him one of the most valued of painters; his best paintings being highly prized and costly as the easel

he picture (and doubtless in contrast to his famous 'Notte' or 'Night,' in the Dresden Gallery). Here is a Virgin and Child, with St Jer

te subject with Correggio; and another, the Magdalene reading, half shrouded with her flowing hair, so well known by engravings. I must say a few more words of the 'Notte,'-it is a nativity illuminated entirely by the unearthly glory shin

tening into pity, Pilate hardening in indifference, and the Virgin fainting with sorrow. There are also 'the Virgin with the Basket,' so named from the little basket in

uch more of the true painter in them than the fast degenerating scholars o

er by drawing all kinds of objects on the walls of his father's dye-house, an exercise which did not offend or dismay the elder Robusti, but, on the contrary, induced him to put the boy into the school of Titian, where Tintoretto only remained a short time. Titian did not choose to

taught himself from casts and theories since he left the school of Titian, and then, with worldly wisdom equal to his daring, he commenced his artistic career by accepting every commission, good or bad, and taking what pay he could get for his work; but, unfortunately for him and for the world, he executed hi

gh to be, and his fellow-citizens, who saw principally on the surface, 20 were charmed beyond measure by his tremendous capacity for invention, his dramatic vigour, his gorgeous, rampant richness and glare; or, by contrast, his dead dulness of ornament and colouring; and we

se were, 'The Crucifixion,' and 'The Miracle of the Slave,' two of fifty-seven pictures which he painted for the schoo

d, so gifted a portrait painter, as to have been repeatedly invited to foreign courts to practise her art, invitations which she declined, because she would not be parted from her father. To Tintoret's great grief, this daughter died as she was thirty y

they count long-headedness not only an indication of self-esteem, but of practical shrewdness. Tintoret's power was native, and had received little training; it is a proof of the strength of that power that he could not quench it. His faults, as a painter, I have already had to chronicle in the sketch of the

which was largely lost sight of, and which might be freely tortured and twisted, falsified, well-nigh burlesqued, if, by so doing, painters could better display their originality, skill, and mastery of technicalities. Sacred subjects had become more and more human in the lower sense, and less and less divine. A man who had so little reverence as Tintoret showed for his own higher self, his fellow-me

argest work, seventy-four feet in length and thirty feet in height: The G

re, some naked, others draped, but draped uniformly in a staring red or a hard blue, which form as many spots, in some sort symmetrical. The manner is quick; a little loose, but confident. The models are neither taken from nature nor from the ideal, they are drawn from practice, and are in general only

osy islands like the white wakes of wandering ships; or watch beside the sleep of the disciples among those mossy leaves that lie so heavily on the dead of the night beneath the descent of the angel of the agony, and toss fearfully above the motion of the torches as the troop of the betrayer emerges out of the hollows of the olives; or wait through the hour of accusing beside the judgment-seat of Pilate, where all is unseen, unfelt, except the one figure that stands with its head bowed down, pale like the pil

firmament gathered into one white, ghastly cataract; the river of the wrath of God, roaring down into the gulf where the world has melted with its fervent heat, choked with the ruin of nations, and the limbs of its corpses tossed out of its whirling like water-wheels. Bat-like, out of the holes, and caverns, and shadows of the earth, the bones gather, and the clay-heaps heave, rattling and adhering into half-kneaded anatomies, that crawl, and startle, and struggle up among the putrid weeds, with the clay clinging to their clotted hair, and their heavy eyes sealed by the earth darkness yet, like his of old who went his way unseeing to the Siloam pool; shaking off one by one the dreams of the prison-house, hardly

other the 'Nine Muses.' With another 'Esther' I have been familiar from childhood by an old engraving. I think the subject must have been in some respects congenial to Tintoret, and he has certainly revelled in the sumptuousness of the mighty Eastern tyrant, in royal mantle and ermine tippet, seated on his throne, and stretchin

a sculptor. He was taught by his father to draw and model, but abandoned sculpture for the sister art of paint

rch of St Sebastian, with scenes from the history of Esther. Whether he chose the subject or whether it was assigned to him, it belonged even more to him than to Tintoret, for Veronese was the most magnificent of the magnificent Venetian painters. From that date he was kept in

s and canvas. For his fine picture now in the Louvre, the 'Marriage of Cana,' he is believed not to have had more than forty pounds in our money. He died when he was but fifty-eight years of age, in 1588. He had marr

s as well as intent expression of face; what of the dress is seen, being a plain doublet with turned-over collar, and a cloak arranged in a fold across the breast, and hanging over the right shoulder like a shepherd's 'maud' or plaid. Looking a

s sentiment, and to undervalue such proper painter's work, such breadth and affluence and glory of handling, as are to be met with on the canvases of painters like Veronese and Rubens. 'But I perceive a tendency among some of the more thoughtful critics of the day to forget the business of a painter is to paint, and so altogether to despise those men, Veronese and Rubens for instance, who were painters, par excellence, and in whom the ex

l painters, carried to an outrageous extent the practice, which I have defended in some degree, of painting sacred and historical subjects as if they had happened in his own day and city. He violated taste and even reason in painting every scene, lofty or humble

with a pomp worthy of "Ormuz or of Ind." A sumptuous hall of the richest architecture; lofty columns, long lines of marble balustrades rising against the sky; a crowd of guests splendidly attired, some wearing orders of knighthood, are seated at tables covered with gorgeous vases of gold and silver, attended by slaves, jesters, pages, and musicians. In the midst of all this dazzling pomp, this display of festive enjoyment, these moving figures, these lavish colours in glowing approximation, we begin after a while to dist

, called 'The Family of Darius before Alexander,' is understood to be family portraits of the Pisani family in the characters of Alexander