by Grant Allen
The next room, in the Pavillon Denon, a connecting passage, contains Portraits of Painters, chiefly by themselves, a few of which are worthy of attention. Among them is the famous and touching * *portrait by Mme. Lebrun of herself and her daughter, which, in spite of some theatrical sentiment here and there obtruded, is a charming realisation of maternal feeling amply reciprocated.
Beyond it we come to the French Gallery of the 18th century, reflecting for the most part the spirit of the Regency and the Louis XV period. Much of it is meretricious; much of it breathes the atmosphere of the boudoir. The flavour of Du Barry pervades it almost all. It scents of musk and powder. The reader will pick out for himself such works as he admires in this curious yet not wholly unpleasing mass of affectation and mediocrity. Indeed, as opposed to the purely official work in the preceding French room, the growth of the rococo spirit, to be traced in this gallery, is by no means without interest. The one set of works sets forth the ideal of monarchy as a formal institution; the other displays its actual outcome in royal mistresses and frivolous amusements. Here too the ornate French taste — the Dresden china and Sèvres taste — finds its first faint embodiment. Greuze’s famous *Cruche Cassée (263), is the chief favourite with visitors to this room. It has about it a certain false simplicity, a pretended virginal innocence, which is perhaps the highest point of art this school could attain. Drouais’s child portraits (187), are more entirely characteristic, in their red-and-white chubbiness, of the ideas of the epoch. The pastoral scenes by Watteau and Vanloo, represent nature and country life, as they envisaged themselves to the painted and powdered great ladies of the Trianon. Coypel’s Esther before Ahasuerus is a not unfavourable specimen of the inflated quasi-sacred style of the period. Some good portraits redeem the general high level of mediocrity in this room, but do not equal those of the daintily aristocratic English School of the end of the 18th century. Two Greuzes (267 and, still more, 266), reveal the essentially artificial methods of this superficially taking painter. Most observers begin by admiring him and end by disliking his ceaseless posing. Boucher’s artificial pink-and-white nudities (as in 24 and 26), have the air of a man who painted, as he did, in a room hung round with rose-coloured satin. He is perhaps the most typical of these rococo artists: he imitates on canvas the coquettish ideals of the contemporary china-painters. Fragonard, again, throws into this school the love of display and bravado of a southern temperament. At the far end of the room we find in Greuze’s later moralising pictures faint indications of the altered and somewhat more earnest feeling which produced the revolutionary epoch, still closely mixed up with the ineradicable affectation and unreality of the painter and his period. Two little stories of a Prodigal Son and his too late return, on either side of the doorway, with their violent theatrical passion and their excessive expression of impossible emotion, illustrate well this nascent tendency. They are attempts to feel where feeling was not really present. David’s Paris and Helen introduces us, on the other hand, to the beginnings of the cold classicism which prevailed under the Empire.
In order to continue the chronological examination of the French School the visitor must now return to the Salon Carré and traverse the vulgarly ornate Galerie d’Apollon by its side (which contains objects of more or less artistic interest in the precious metals and precious stones, many of which, especially those in the two last cases, deserve careful inspection. A morning should, if possible, be devoted later to this collection).
A short connecting room beyond (with gold Etruscan jewelery) gives access next to the Salle des Sept Cheminées, which contains many stiff but excellent works of the period of the Empire. The most noticeable of these are by David, whose formal classicism (a result of the revolutionary revolt from Christianity, with its reliance upon Greek, and still more Roman, morality and history) is excellently exemplified in his large picture of the *Sabine Women Intervening between their Husbands and their Fathers. This is considered his masterpiece. Its frigid style, not very distantly resembling that of a bas-relief, and its declamatory feeling do not blind us to the excellence of its general technique and its real advance on the art of the 18th century. David imitated the antique, but was always sculpturesque rather than pictorial in treatment. Among other fine examples of this classic period — the transitional stage between the 18th century and the distinctively modern spirit — attention may be called to Gérard’s Cupid and Psyché, and to his fine portrait of the Marquis Visconti. *Mme. Lebrun’s charmingly animated portrait of Mme. Molé-Raymond, the comedian, is full of real vigour. Two good portraits by David, of himself and Pius VII, deserve close inspection. Gros’s Bonaparte at Arcola, is also interesting. Mme. Lebrun’s earlier portrait of herself and her daughter is less beautiful than the one we have already examined. Several military portraits, such as Gros’s Fournier-Sarlovèze, reflect the predominant militarism of the epoch. David’s huge canvas of the Coronation of Napoleon I in Notre-Dame is typical of another side of the great artist’s development. Gradually, the frigidity of the early revolutionary period gave way to the growing romanticism of 1830. Géricault’s Raft of the Medusa (sighting a sail after twelve days out), strikes the first keynote of the modern romantic movement. It created a great sensation in its own day, and gave rise to endless discussion and animadversion. It marks the advent of the emotional in modern art. Gros’s Bonaparte Visiting the Plague-stricken at Jaffa, also indicates in another way a marked modernising tendency. The school of blood and wounds, of the morbid and the ghastly, has here its forerunner. All the works in this room (which modernity forbids me to treat at adequate length) should be carefully studied in detail and comparison by those who wish to understand the various steps which led to the evolution of modern French painting. Guérin’s Return of Marcus Sextus, and Girodet’s Burial of Atala, in particular, mark special phases of transition from the coldly classical to the romantic tendency. This room, in one word, begins with the severe; it ends with the melodramatic.
The room beyond, known as the Salle Henri II, is so nearly modern in tone that the reader may be safely trusted to inspect it on his own knowledge. Giraud’s Slave-dealer and Chassériau’s Tepidarium are its most popular pictures. It lies outside the scope of the present handbook.
The Salle La Caze, however, still beyond, contains a collection kept separately apart by the express desire of the donor, and includes many works both of earlier schools and of the French 17th and 18th century, worthy of the greatest attention. It is especially rich in works of the rococo painters, better exemplified here than in the main collection. Beginning on the L, I will merely enumerate a few of the most important works. An excellent Hondekoeter, skied. A noble portrait by Tintoretto of a Venetian magnate. A most characteristic Fragonard, full of the morganatic sentiment of the 18th century. Portraits by Nattier, affording more pleasing examples of the early 18th century style than those we have hitherto examined. Above it, a mediocre Tintoretto of Susanna at the Bath, not good in colour. Centre of the hall, *Watteau’s Gilles, an excellent embodiment of the innocent fool of traditional French comedy. *Frans Hals’s sly figure of a Gipsy Woman is a fine piece of vulgar character-painting. A good Greuze, etc. Examine more particularly the works by Watteau, Fragonard, and other boudoir painters, whose pictures on this wall give a more pleasing and fuller idea of the temperament of their school than that which we obtained in other parts of the collection. R wall returning — several good Watteaus, Bouchers, Greuzes, etc. Excellent small Dutch pictures. Fine portrait by Rembrandt. Rembrandt’s Woman at the Bath is a characteristic example of his strikingly original conception of the nude. Ribera’s Club-footed Boy is a Spanish pendant to Frans Hals’s Gipsy. This room, containing as it does very mixed examples of all the schools, should only be visited after the spectator has obtained some idea of each in other parts of the collection. Its Dutch works, in particular, are admirable. I do not enumerate them, as enumeration is useless, but leave it to the reader to pick out for himself several fine examples.
Now trave
rse the Galerie d’Apollon, Salon Carré, and Long Gallery till you arrive at the
Hall of Painters of the 19th Century,
(Room VIII in Baedeker’s plan). This hall contains for the most part the works of artists of the period of Louis Philippe and the early Second Empire — almost our own contemporaries. I will therefore only briefly call attention here to the pictures of the romantic historical school, then so prevalent in France, of which Delaroche’s Death of Queen Elizabeth and Princes in the Tower and Delacroix’s Capture of Constantinople by the Crusaders are conspicuous examples. Devéria’s popular Birth of Henri IV belongs to the same category. These “picturesque” treatments of history answer in painting to the malign influence of Walter Scott and Victor Hugo in literature. Contrasted with them are such semi-classical works of the school of David, softened and modernised, as Ingres’s Apotheosis of Homer — the great poet crowned by Fame, with the Iliad and Odyssey at the base of his pedestal, and surrounded by a concourse of ancient and modern singers. It is cold but dignified. Lethière’s Death of Virginia, and Couture’s Romans of the Decadence, represent to a certain extent a blending of these two main influences. I will not, however, particularise, as almost every picture in this room deserves some study from the point of view of the evolution of contemporary art. I will merely ask the reader not to overlook Flandrin’s famous nude figure, the typical landscapes by Rousseau and Millet, and David’s exquisite portrait of Mme. Récamier — sufficient in itself to immortalise both artist and sitter. The electric influence of a beautiful and pure-souled woman has here galvanised David for once into full perception and reproduction of truth and nature. Even the severe Empire furniture and background exactly accord with the character of the picture. Ary Scheffer’s religious works, in his peculiar twilight style, on a solid blue background, will strike every observer. Millet’s Gleaners and Troyon’s group of oxen strike each a new note in art at the period when they were painted. As a whole this Gallery represents all the various strands of feeling which have gone to the production of modern painting. It attains to the threshold of cosmopolitanism in its Arabs, its negroes, and its Algerian women: it is bloodthirsty and sensuous; it is calm and meditative; it dashes with Courbet; it refines with Millet; it oscillates between the world, the flesh, and the devil; it is pious and meretricious; it sums up in itself the endless contradictory and interlacing tendencies of the Nineteenth Century. As regards chronological sequence, one may say pretty fairly that it begins with classicism, passes through romanticism, and ends for the moment in religious reaction.
Come back often to the pictures in the Louvre, especially the Salle des Primitifs, the Salon Carré, and the first two bays of the Long Gallery.
Further Hints on the Paintings in the Louvre.
The reader must not suppose that these brief notes give anything like an adequate idea of the way in which pictures in such a gallery as the Louvre ought to be studied. My object in these Guides being mainly to open a door, that the tourist himself may enter and look about him carefully, I have given first this connected account of all the rooms in chronological order, for the use of those whose time is very limited, and who desire to go through the collection seriatim. But for the benefit of others who can afford to pay many successive visits, I will now take one or two particular pictures in detail, suggesting what seem to me the best and most fruitful ways in which to study them. Try for yourself afterwards to fill in a similar scheme, as far as you can, for most of the finest works in this Gallery.
I will begin with No. 251, in the Salle des Primitifs — Mantegna’s beautiful and glowing Madonna della Vittoria. And I take Mantegna first, because (among other reasons) he is a painter who can be fairly well studied by means of the pictures in this Gallery alone, without any large reference to his remaining works in Italy or elsewhere.
Now, first, who and what was Mantegna, and what place does he fill in the history of art in Italy? Well, he was a Paduan painter, born in 1431, died in 1506 — about the time when Raphael was painting the Belle Jardinière, in this collection. He was a contemporary and brother-in-law of Giovanni and Gentile Bellini: and if you compare his work with that of the two Bellinis, even as very inadequately represented here, you will see that their art has much in common — that they stood at about the same level of historical evolution, and painted in the same careful, precise, and accurate manner of the second half of the fifteenth century. Contrast them, on the one hand, with their immediate predecessors, such as Filippo Lippi and Benozzo Gozzoli (juniors by roughly about 20 years), in order to mark the advance they made on the art of those who went just before them; and compare them, on the other hand, with their immediate successors, such as Raphael, and even their more advanced contemporaries, like Leonardo, in order to see what place they fill in the development of painting.
Again, Mantegna was a pupil of Squarcione of Padua, who practically founded the Paduan school. Now Squarcione had travelled in Greece and formed a collection of antiques, from which his pupils made drawings and studies. Also Donatello (the great Florentine sculptor of the early Renaissance, of whose work you can find some beautiful examples in the Renaissance Sculpture rooms of this museum) had executed several bronzes in the church of Sant’ Antonio, the great local saint of Padua; and these likewise Mantegna studied; so that much of his work bears traces of the influence of sculpture and especially of bas-relief. He is particularly fond of introducing reliefs, festoons of fruit or flowers, and classical detail into the accessories of his pictures: and these peculiarities are well marked in the Mars and Venus, the Crucifixion, and the Madonna della Vittoria in this collection. Compare all these closely with one another till you think you have formed a fair idea of Mantegna’s powerful drawing, strong realism, love of the antique, solemnity and dignity, clear-cut style, and perfect mastery of anatomy and technique. Notice his delicate, careful, conscientious workmanship; the precision and perfection of his hands and feet; the joy with which he lingers over classical costume and the painting of armour. Everything is sharp and defined as in the air of Italy, yet never hard, or crude, or angular. Observe, also, the sculpture-like folds of his carefully arranged draperies, and his love for shot colours and melting tints on metal or marble. The St. Michael in this picture, and the Roman soldiers in the Crucifixion, are admirable examples of this tone in his colouring. If you wished to characterise Mantegna in a single phrase, however, you might fairly say he was the most sculpturesque of painters.
As to date, the Crucifixion (in the Salon Carré) which formed one piece only of the predella, or series of small pictures at the base of the great Madonna in the Church of San Zeno at Verona, is the earliest example of Mantegna’s work here. It displays the delicate and exquisite finish of his youthful period: but it is much more mediæval in tone — has far less freedom and conscious artistic power — than the Madonna della Vittoria, which belongs to the latest epoch of the great painter’s development. Observe the early severity of the figures in the Crucifixion, and the firmness of the drawing: each personage stands out with statuesque distinctness. But note, too, that at this early stage, Mantegna’s expression of emotion was still inadequate: in his striving to be powerful, he overdid the passions, sometimes almost to the verge of grotesqueness. On the other hand, do not overlook the dramatic force of the picture, as shewn, for example, in the vivid contrast between the anguish of the Madonna, with her attendant St. John, &c., and the callous carelessness of the soldiers casting lots for the Redeemer’s raiment. The Mars and Venus, once more, of his middle period, represents an intermediate stage between the two styles. What is meant by a predella, again, you can see by looking at Fra Angelico’s Coronation of the Virgin, and other similar pictures in this room — the little figures of St. Dominic and his miracles beneath the main altar-piece being examples of this adjunct. The Crucifixion formed the central picture of three such minor episodes: the Agony in the Garden and the Ascension, to right and left of it, are now in the Museum at Tours. Napoleon I had carried off the entire work
from Verona: at the Restoration, the Madonna was returned to San Zeno, but the three pieces of the predella were retained in France and thus distributed. If you go to Tours or Verona, recollect the connection of the various fragments.
Next, what was the occasion for painting this Madonna della Vittoria? You will remember that in 1494, Charles VIII of France, invited by Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan, invaded North Italy, and conquered a large part of it, including Florence, Pisa, and Rome itself. Marching then on Naples, the boy king achieved a further success, which turned his own head and that of his army. (Read up all this episode in any good French history.) But Venice, trembling for her supremacy, formed a league against him; and soon after, all Italy, alarmed at his success, coalesced to repel the invader. The little Republics united their forces under Giovanni Francesco Gonzaga, Marquis of Mantua, and met Charles, on the 6th of July, 1495, at the pass of Fornova, on the Taro. The French king, it is true, forced his way through the hostile army, and made good his retreat: but the allies, though baffled, claimed the victory, and, as a matter of fact, Charles immediately concluded a treaty of peace and returned to Lyons. In commemoration of this event, the Marquis Gonzaga in gratitude erected a church at Mantua as a votive offering to the Madonna, and dedicated it under the name of Santa Maria della Vittoria.
