Pictures Every Child Should Know Part 3

ALESSANDRO BOTTICELLI

(p.r.o.nounced Ah-lays-sahn'dro Bo't-te-chel'lee) _Florentine School,_ 1447-1510 (Vasari's dates) _Pupil of Filippo Lippi and Verrocchio_

Botticelli took his name from his first master, as was the fashion in those days. The relation of master and apprentice was very close, not at all like the relation of pupil and teacher to-day.

Botticelli's father was a Florentine citizen, Mariano Filipepi, and he wished his son to become a goldsmith; hence the lad was soon apprenticed to Botticelli, the goldsmith. As a scholar, the little goldsmith had not distinguished himself. Indeed it is said that as a boy he would not "take to any sort of schooling in reading, writing, or arithmetic." It cannot be said that this failure distinguished him as a genius, or the world would be full of genius-boys; but the result was that he early began to learn his trade.

Fortunately for him and us, Botticelli, the smith, was a man of some wisdom and when he saw that the lad originated beautiful designs and had creative genius he did not treat the matter with scorn, as the master of Andrea del Sarto had done, but sent him instead to Fra Filippo (Lippo Lippi) to be taught the art of painting. So kind a deed might well establish a feeling of devotion on little Alessandro's part and make him wish to take his master's name.

Fra Filippo was a Carmelite monk, merry and kindly; simple, good, and gifted, but his temperament did not seem to influence his young pupil. Of all unhappy, morbid men, Botticelli seems to have been the most so, unless we are to except Michael Angelo.

After studying with the monk, Botticelli was summoned by Pope Sixtus IV. to Rome to decorate a new chapel in the Vatican. Before that time his whole life had been greatly influenced by the teachings of Savonarola who had preached both pa.s.sionately and learnedly in Florence, advocating liberty. From the time he fell under Savonarola's wonderful power, the artist grew more and more mystic and morbid. In Rome it was the custom to have the portraits of conspirators, or persons of high degree who were revolutionary or otherwise objectionable to the state, hung outside the Public Palace, and in Botticelli's time there was a famous disturbance among the aristocrats of the state. In 1478 the powerful Pazzi family conspired against the Medici family, which then actually had control. It was Botticelli who was engaged to paint the portraits of the Pazzi family, which to their shame and humiliation were to be displayed upon the palace walls.

One peculiarity of this artist's pictures was that he used actual goldleaf to make the high lights upon hair, leaves, and draperies. The effect of the use of this gold was very beautiful, if unusual, and it may have been that his apprenticeship as a goldsmith suggested to him such a device.

Also it was he who created certain characteristics of painting that have since been thought original with Burne-Jones. This was the use of long stiff lily-stalks or other upright details in his compositions.

Examples of this idea, which produced so weird an effect, will be found in his allegory of "Spring," where stiff tree-trunks form a part of the background. In the "Madonna of the Palms" upright lily-stalks are held in pale and trembling hands. Like Michael Angelo, who came years afterward, Botticelli was a guest of the great Lorenzo the "Magnificent," in Florence. It was by Botticelli's hand that the greater painter sent a letter to Lorenzo from a d.u.c.h.ess friend who was also his patron. This was in Angelo's youth; in Botticelli's old age.

All his life was a drama of morbid seeking after the unattainable, and finally he became so poor and helpless that in his old age he would have starved had Lorenzo de' Medici not taken care of him. Lorenzo and other friends who in spite of his gloominess admired his real piety, gathered about him and kept him from starvation.

On his "Nativity," Botticelli wrote: "This picture I, Alessandro, painted at the end of the year 1500 in the troubles of Italy, in the halftime after the time, during the fulfilment of the eleventh of John, in the second woe of the Apocalypse, in the loosing the devil for three and a half years. Afterward he shall be chained according to the twelfth of John, and see him trodden down as in this picture." All of this is interesting because Botticelli himself wrote it, but it is not very easily understood by any child, nor by many grown people.

Botticelli did some very extraordinary things, but whether they are beautiful or not one must decide for himself. They are paintings so characteristic that one must think them very beautiful or else not at all so.

PLATE--LA PRIMAVERA _(Spring)_

In this picture we have the forerunner of a modern painter, because we see in it certain, qualities that we find in B?cklin. Look at the effect of vertical lines; the tree trunks, and the poses of the slender women. Over all hovers a cupid who is sending love-shafts into the hearts of all in springtime.

Notice the lacy effect of the flowers that bestar the wind-blown gown of "La Primavera," the fern-like leaves that fleck the background; the draperies that do not conceal the forms of the nymphs of the lovely springtime.

The very spirit of spring is seen in all the half-floating, half-dancing, gliding, diaphanous figures of the forest. The flowers of "La Primavera's" crown are blue and white cornflowers and primroses. She scatters over the earth tulips, anemones, and narcissus. The painting is allegorical and unique. Never were such fluttering odds and ends of draperies painted before, nor such fascinating effects had from canvas, paint, or brush. The picture hangs in Florence in the Uffizi Gallery. A German critic tells us that the "Realm of Venus," is a better t.i.tle for this picture, and that it was painted after a poem of that name.

Other pictures by this artist are: "The Birth of Venus," "Pallas,"

"Judith," "Holofernes," "St. Augustine," "Adoration of the Magi," and "St. Sebastian."

VI

WILLIAM ADOLPHE BOUGUEREAU

(p.r.o.nounced W. A'dolf Bou-gair-roh) _French (Genre) School_ 1825-1905 _Pupil of Picot and the Ecole des Beaux-Arts_

Bouguereau's business-like father meant his son also to be business-like, but he made the mistake of permitting him to go to a drawing school in Bordeaux and there, to his father's chagrin, the youngster took the annual prize. After that there seemed nothing for the father to do but grin and bear it, because the son decided to be an artist and had fairly won his right to be one.

Young Bouguereau had no money, and therefore he went to live with an uncle at Saintonge, a priest, who had much sympathy with the boy's wish to paint, and he left him free to do the best he could for himself in art. He got a chance to paint some portraits, and when he and his uncle talked the matter over It was decided that he should take the money got for them, and go to Paris. It was there that he sought Picot, his first truly helpful teacher; and there, for the first time he learned more than he already knew about art.

All Bouguereau's opportunities in life were made by himself, by his own genius. No one gave him anything; he earned all. He longed to go to Italy, and in the Ecole des Beaux-Arts he won the Prix de Rome, which made possible a journey to the land of great artists. The French Government began to buy his work, and he began to receive commissions to decorate walls in great buildings; thus, gradually, he made for himself fame and fortune.

When this artist undertook to paint sacred subjects, of great dignity, he was not at his best; but when he chose children and mothers and everyday folk engaged about their everyday business, he painted beautifully. Americans have bought many of his pictures and he has had more popularity in this country than anywhere outside of France.

Some authorities give the birthplace of Bouguereau as La Roch.e.l.le; at any rate he died there at midnight, on the nineteenth of August, 1905.

PLATE--THE VIRGIN AS CONSOLER

The main distinction about this artist's pictured faces is the peculiarly earnest expression he has given to the eyes. In this picture of the Virgin there is great genius in the pose and death-look of the little child whose mother has flung herself across the lap of Mary, abandoned to her agony. This painting is hung in the Luxembourg. Others by the same master are called "Psyche and Cupid"

"Birth of Venus," "Innocence," and "At the Well."

VII

SIR EDWARD BURNE-JONES

_English (Pre-Raphaelite) School_ 1833-1898 _Pupil of Rossetti_

This artist has been called the most original of all contemporaneous artists. He has also been called the "lyric painter"; meaning that he is to painting what the lyric poet is to literature. His work once known can almost always be recognised wherever seen afterward. He did not slavishly follow the Pre-Raphaelite school, yet he drew most of his ideas from its methods. He was, in the use of stiff lines, a follower of Botticelli, and not original in that detail, as some have seemed to think.

PLATE--CHANT D'AMOUR _(The Love-Song)_

This is a picture in the true Burne-Jones style: a beautiful woman in billowy draperies, playing upon a harp forms the central figure of the group of three--a listener on either side of her. There is the attractiveness of the Burne-Jones method about this picture, but after all there seems to be no very good reason for its having been painted. The subject thus treated has only a negative value, and little suggestion of thought or dramatic idea.

Another picture of this artist, in which his use of stiff draperies is specially shown, is that of the women at the tomb of Christ, when they find the stone rolled away and, looking around, see the Saviour's figure before them. The scene is low and cavern-like, with a brilliant light surrounding the tomb. This artist also painted "The Vestal Virgin," "King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid," "Pan and Psyche," "The Golden Stairs," and "Love Among the Ruins."

VIII

JOHN CONSTABLE

_English School_ 1776-1837 _Pupil of the Royal Academy_

John Constable was the son of a "yeoman farmer" who meant to make him also a yeoman farmer. Mostly we find that the fathers of our artists had no higher expectations for their sons than to have them take up their own business; to begin as they had, and to end as they expected to. But in John Constable's case, as with all the others, the father's methods of living did not at all please the son, and having most of all a liking for picture-making; young John set himself to planning his own affairs.

Nevertheless, the foundation of John's art was laid right there in the Suffolk farmer's home and conditions. He was born in East Bergholt, and the father seems to have believed in windmills, for early in life the signs of wind and weather became a part of the son's education. He learned a deal more of atmospheric conditions there on his father's windmill planted farm than he could possibly have learned shut up in a studio, French fashion. As a little boy he came to know all the signs of the heavens; the clouds gathering for storm or shine; the bending of the trees in the blast; all of these he loved, and later on made the princ.i.p.al subjects of his art. He learned to observe these things as a matter of business and at his father's command; thus we may say that he studied his life-work from his very infancy. All about him were beautiful hedgerows, picturesque cottages with high pitched roofs covered with thatch, and it was these beauties which bred one other great landscape painter besides Constable, of whom we shall presently speak, Gainsborough.

At last, graduating from windmills, John went to London. He had a vacation from the work set him by his father, and for two years he painted "cottages, studied anatomy," and did the drudgery of his art; but there was little money in it for him, and soon he had to go into his father's counting house, for windmills seemed to have paid the elder Constable, considerably better than painting promised to pay young John.

John doubtless liked counting-house work even less than he had done the study of windmills and weather in his father's fields. He was a most persistent fellow, however, and finally he returned to London, to study again the art he loved, this time in the Royal Academy, which meant that he had made some progress.

His father gave him very little aid to do the things he longed to do, but after his father's death he found that a little money was coming to him from the estate--?4,000. He had already triumphed over his difficulties by painting his first fine pictures; he now knew that he was to become a successful artist, and be able to take care of himself and a wife. Though in love, he had hitherto been too poor to marry. His first splendid work was "Dedham Vale."