Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art Part 9

He then goes on to give a list of the works so seized. Be this as it may he certainly never derived any advantage from them. He had collected a great variety of old armor, sabres, flags, and fantastical vestments, ironically terming them his antiques, and frequently introducing them into his pictures.

Rembrandt had already brought both the arts of painting and engraving to very great perfection (in his own way), when a slight incident led him to fame and fortune. He was induced by a friend to take one of his choicest pictures to a picture-dealer at the Hague, who, being charmed with the performance, instantly gave him a hundred florins for it, and treated him with great respect. This occurrence served to convince the public of his merit, and contributed to make the artist sensible of his own abilities. In 1630 he went to Amsterdam, where he married a handsome peasant girl (frequently copied in his works), and settled there for life. His paintings were soon in extraordinary demand, and his fame spread far and wide; pupils flocked to his studio, and he received for the instruction of each a hundred florins a year. He was so excessively avaricious that he soon abandoned his former careful and finished style, for a rapid execution; also frequently retouched the pictures of his best pupils, and sold them as his own. His deceits in dating several of his etchings at Venice, to make them more saleable, led some of his biographers to believe that he visited Italy, and resided at Venice in 1635 and 1636; but it has been satisfactorily proved that he never left Holland, though he constantly threatened to do so, in order to increase the sale of his works. As early as 1628, he applied himself zealously to etching, and soon acquired great perfection in the art. His etchings were esteemed as highly as his paintings, and he had recourse to several artifices to raise their price and increase their sales. For example, he sold impressions from the unfinished plates, then finished them, and after having used them, made some slight alterations, and thus sold the same works three or four times; producing what connoisseurs term _variations_ in prints. By these practices, and his parsimonious manner of living, Rembrandt ama.s.sed a large fortune.

REMBRANDT'S WORKS.

His works are numerous, and are dispersed in various public and private collections of Europe; and when they are offered for sale they command enormous prices. There are eight of his pictures in the English National Gallery; one of these, the Woman taken in Adultery, formerly in the Orleans collection, sold for 5000. In Smith's Catalogue raisonne is a description of six hundred and forty pictures by him, the public and private galleries and collections in which they were located at the time of the publication of the work, together with a copious list of his drawings and etchings, and much other interesting information. He left many studies, sketches, and drawings, executed in a charming style, which are now scarce and valuable.

REMBRANDT AS AN ENGRAVER.

Rembrandt holds a distinguished rank among the engravers of his country; he established a more important epoch in this art than any other master.

He was indebted entirely to his own genius for the invention of a process which has thrown an indescribable charm over his plates. They are partly etched, frequently much a.s.sisted by the dry point, and occasionally, though rarely, finished with the graver; evincing the most extraordinary facility of hand, and displaying the most consummate knowledge of light and shadow. His free and playful point sports in picturesque disorder, producing the most surprising and enchanting effects, as if by accident; yet an examination will show that his motions are always regulated by a profound knowledge of the principles of light and shadow. His most admirable productions in both arts are his portraits, which are executed with unexampled expression and skill. For a full description of his prints, the reader is referred to Bartsch's Peintre Graveur.

His prints are very numerous, yet they command very high prices. The largest collection of his prints known, was made by M. de Burgy at the Hague, who died in 1755. This collection contained 665 prints with their variations, namely, 257 portraits, 161 histories, 155 figures, and 85 landscapes. There are no less than 27 portraits of Rembrandt by himself.

ANECDOTE OF SCHWARTS.

Sandrart relates the following anecdote of Christopher Schwarts, a famous German painter, which, if true, redounds more to his ingenuity than to his credit. Having been engaged to paint the ceiling of the Town Hall at Munich by the day, his love of dissipation induced him to neglect his work, so that the magistrates and overseers of the work were frequently obliged to hunt him out at the cabaret. As he could no longer drink in quiet, he stuffed an image of himself, left the legs hanging down between the staging where he was accustomed to work, and sent one of his boon companions to move the image a little two or three times a day, and to take it away at noon and night. By means of this deception, he drank without the least disturbance a whole fortnight together, the inn-keeper being privy to the plot. The officers came in twice a day to look after him, and seeing the well known stockings and shoes which he was accustomed to wear, suspected nothing wrong, and went their way, greatly extolling their own convert, as the most industrious and conscientious painter in the world.

JACQUES CALLOT.

This eminent French engraver was born at Nancy, in Lorraine, in 1593. He was the son of Jean Callot, a gentleman of n.o.ble family, who intended him for a very different profession, and endeavored to restrain his natural pa.s.sion for art; but when he was twelve years old, he left his home without money or resources, joined a company of wandering Bohemians, and found his way to Florence, where some officer of the court, discovering his inclination for drawing, placed him under Cantagallina. After pa.s.sing some time at Florence, he went to Rome, where he was recognized by some friends of his family, who persuaded him to return to his parents. Meeting with continual opposition, he again absconded, but was followed by his brother to Turin, and taken back to Nancy. His parents, at length finding his love of art too firmly implanted to be eradicated, concluded to allow him to follow the bent of his genius, and they sent him to Rome in the suite of the Envoy from the Duke of Lorraine to the Pope. Here he studied with the greatest a.s.siduity, and soon distinguished himself as a very skillful engraver.

From Rome he went to Florence, where his talents recommended him to the patronage of the Grand Duke Cosmo II., on whose death he returned to Nancy, where he was liberally patronized by Henry, Duke of Lorraine.

When misfortune overtook that prince, he went to Paris, whither his reputation had preceded him, where he was employed by Louis XIII. to engrave the successes of the French arms, particularly the siege of the Isle de Re, in sixteen sheets; the siege of Roch.e.l.le, do.; and the siege of Breda, in eight sheets. His prints are very numerous, and are highly esteemed; Heineken gives a full list of his prints, amounting to over fifteen hundred! The fertility of his invention and the facility of his hand were wonderful; yet his prints are accurately designed. He frequently made several drawings for the same plate before he was satisfied. Watelet says that he saw four different drawings by him for the celebrated Temptation of St. Anthony. His drawings are also greatly admired and highly prized.

CALLOT'S PATRIOTISM.

When Cardinal Richelieu desired Callot to design and engrave a set of plates descriptive of the siege and fall of his native town, he promptly refused; and when the Cardinal peremptorily insisted that he should do it, he replied, "My Lord, if you continue to urge me, I will cut off the thumb of my right hand before your face, for I never will consent to perpetuate the calamity and disgrace of my sovereign and protector."

INGENUITY OF ARTISTS.

Pliny a.s.serts that an ingenious artist wrote the whole of the Iliad on so small a piece of parchment that it might be enclosed within the compa.s.s of a nut-sh.e.l.l. Cicero also records the same thing. This doubtless might be done on a strip of thin parchment, and rolling it compactly.

Heylin, in his life of Charles I., says that in Queen Elizabeth's time, a person wrote the Ten Commandments, the Creed, the Pater Noster, the Queen's name, and the date, within the compa.s.s of a penny, which he presented to her Majesty, together with a pair of spectacles of such an artificial make, that by their help she plainly discerned every letter.

One Francis Almonus wrote the Creed, and the first fourteen verses of the Gospel of St. John, on a piece of parchment no larger than a penny.

In the library of St. John's College, Oxford, is a picture of Charles I.

done with a pen, the lines of which contain all the psalms, written in a legible hand.

"At Halston, in Shropshire, the seat of the Myttons, is preserved a carving much resembling that mentioned by Walpole in his Anecdotes of Painting, vol. ii., p. 42. It is the portrait of Charles I., full-faced, cut on a peach-stone; above, is a crown; his face, and clothes which are of a Vandyck dress are painted; on the reverse is an eagle transfixed with an arrow, and round it is this motto: _I feathered this arrow._ The whole is most admirably executed, and is set in gold, with a crystal on each side. It probably was the work of Nicholas Bryot, a great graver of the mint in the time of Charles I."--_Pennant's Wales._

In the Royal Museum at Copenhagen is a common cherry-stone, on the surface of which are cut two hundred and twenty heads!

A HINT TO JEWELERS.

"When the haughty and able Pope Innocent III. caused Cardinal Langton to be elected Archbishop of Canterbury in despite of King John, and compelled him to submit, to appease the latter and to admonish him, his Holiness presented him with four golden rings, set with precious stones, at the same time taking care to inform him of the many mysteries implied in them. His Holiness begged of him (King John)," says Hume, "to consider seriously the _form_ of the rings, their _number_, their _matter_, and their _color_. Their _form_, he said, shadowed out eternity, which had neither beginning nor end; and he ought thence to learn his duty of aspiring from earthly objects to heavenly, from things temporal to things eternal. The _number_, from being a square, denoted steadiness of mind, not to be subverted either by adversity or prosperity, fixed forever on the firm base of the four cardinal virtues. _Gold_, which is the matter, being the most precious of the metals, signified wisdom, which is the most precious of all the accomplishments, and justly preferred by Solomon to riches, power, and all exterior attainments. The _blue color_ of the sapphire represented Faith; the _verdure_ of the emerald, Hope; the _redness_ of the ruby, Charity; and the _splendor_ of the topaz, good works." Jewelers, who usually deal so little in sentiment in their works, may learn from this ingenious allegory the advantage of calling up the wonder-working aid of fancy, in forming their combinations of precious things.

CURIOUS PAINTINGS.

In the Cathedral at Worms, over the altar, is a very old painting, in which the Virgin is represented throwing the infant Jesus into the hopper of a mill; while from the other side he issues, changed into wafers or little morsels of bread, which the priests are administering to the people.

Mathison, in his letters, thus describes a picture in a church at Constance, called the Conception of the Holy Virgin. "An old man lies on a cloud, whence he darts a vast beam, which pa.s.ses through a dove hovering just below; at the end of the beam appears a large transparent egg, in which egg is seen a child in swaddling clothes, with a glory round it; Mary sits leaning in an arm-chair and opens her mouth to receive the egg!" Which are the most profane--these pictures, or the Venus Anadyomene of Apelles, the Venus of t.i.tian, and the Leda of Correggio?

THE OLDEST OIL PAINTING EXTANT.

"The oldest oil painting now in existence, is believed to be one of the Madonna and infant Jesus in her arms, with an Eastern style of countenance. It is marked DCCCLx.x.xVI. (886). This singular and valuable painting formed part of the treasures of art in the old palace of the Florentine Republic, and was purchased by the Director Bencivenni from a broker in the street, for a few livres."

The above is found quoted in many books, in proof that oil painting was known long before the time of the Van Eycks; but all these old _supposed_ oil paintings have been proved by chemical a.n.a.lysis to have been painted in distemper. See vol. ii., p. 141, of this work.

CURIOUS REPRESENTATIONS OF THE HARPIES.