Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art Part 10

Homer represents the Harpies as the rapacious G.o.ddesses of the storms, residing near the Erinnyes, or the Ocean, before the jaws of h.e.l.l. If any person was so long absent from home that it was not known what had become of him, and he was supposed to be dead, it was commonly said, "The Harpies have carried him off." Hesiod represents them as young virgins of great beauty. The later poets and artists vied with each other in depicting them under the most hideous forms; they commonly represented them as winged monsters, having the face of a woman and the body of a vulture, with their feet and fingers armed with sharp claws.

Spanheim, in his work, gives three representations of the harpies, taken from ancient coins and works of art; they have female heads, with the bodies and claws of birds of prey; the first has a coa.r.s.e female face, the second a beautiful feminine head, and two b.r.e.a.s.t.s, and the third a visage ornamented with wreaths and a head-dress. There are various other representations of them, one of the most remarkable of which is a monster with a human head and the body of a vampire bat.

ADRIAN BROWER.

This extraordinary painter was born at Haerlem, in 1608. His parents were extremely poor, and his mother sold to the peasants bonnets and handkerchiefs, which the young Adrian painted with flowers and birds.

These attempts were noticed by Francis Hals, a distinguished painter of Haerlem, who offered to take the young artist into his school--which proposal was gladly accepted. Hals, on discovering his superior genius, separated him from all his companions, and locked him up in a garret, that he might profit by his talents. The pictures of Brower sold readily at high prices, but the avaricious Hals treated him with increased severity, lest he should become acquainted with the value of his talents, and leave him. This cruelty excited the pity of Adrian van Ostade, then a pupil of Hals; and he found an opportunity of advising Brower to make his escape, which the latter effected, and fled to Amsterdam. Soon after arriving in that city, he painted a picture of Boors Fighting, which he gave to the landlord of the inn where he lodged, and requested him to sell it. The host soon returned with one hundred ducats, which he had received for the work. The artist was amazed at such a result of his labors, but instead of exerting his wonderful talents, he plunged into a course of dissipation. This natural propensity to alternate work and indulgence marked his whole life, and involved him in many extraordinary adventures.

BROWER, THE DUKE D'AREMBERG, AND RUBENS.

When the States-General were at war with Spain, Brower started on a visit to Antwerp, whither his reputation had already proceeded him.

Omitting to provide himself with a pa.s.sport, he was arrested as a spy, and confined in the citadel, where the Duke d'Aremberg was imprisoned.

That n.o.bleman lived in friends.h.i.+p with Rubens, who often visited him in his confinement; and the Duke, having observed the genius of Brower, desired Rubens to bring a palette and pencils, which he gave to Brower, and the latter soon produced a representation of Soldiers playing at Cards, which he designed from a group he had seen from his prison window. The Duke showed the picture to Rubens, who immediately exclaimed that it was by the celebrated Brower, whose pictures he often admired; and he offered the Duke six hundred guilders for the work, but the latter refused to part with it, and presented the artist with a much larger sum. Rubens lost no time in procuring his liberty, which he did by becoming his surety, took him into his own house, and treated him with the greatest kindness.

DEATH OF BROWER.

Brower did not continue long in the hospitable mansion of Rubens, whose refined and elegant manners, love of literature, and domestic happiness were less congenial to this erratic genius than the revels of his pot-companions. Brower soon became weary of his situation, and returned to his vicious habits, to which he soon fell a victim in 1640, at the early age of 32 years. He died in the public hospital at Antwerp, and was buried in an obscure manner; but when Rubens knew it, he had the body reinterred, with funeral pomp, in the church of the Carmelites; and he intended also to have erected a superb monument to his memory, had he lived to see it executed; though Sandrart says there was a magnificent one over his tomb, with an epitaph to perpetuate his honor.

BROWER'S WORKS.

The subjects of Brower were of the lowest order, representing the frolics of his pot companions; but his expression is so lively and characteristic, his coloring so transparent and brilliant, and the pa.s.sions and movements of his figures are so admirably expressed, that his works have justly elicited the applause of the world. They are highly valued, and in consequence of his irregular life, are exceedingly scarce. Brower also etched a few plates in a very spirited style.

ROSA DA TIVOLI.

The name of this artist was Philip Roos, and he was born at Frankfort in 1655. He early showed a pa.s.sion for painting, and exhibited such extraordinary talents that the Landgrave of Hesse took him under his protection, and sent him to Italy with a pension sufficient for his support. To facilitate his studies, he established himself at Tivoli (whence his name), where he kept a kind of menagerie, and on account of the number and variety of the animals, his house was called _Noah's Ark_.

ROSA DA TIVOLI'S WORKS.

Rosa da Tivoli's pictures usually represent pastoral subjects, with herdsmen and cattle, or shepherds with sheep and goats, which he frequently painted as large as life. He designed everything from nature, not only his animals, but the sites of his landscapes, ruins, buildings, rocks, precipices, rivers, etc. His groups are composed with great judgment and taste, and his landscapes, backgrounds, skies, and distances are treated in a masterly style. His cattle and animals, in particular, are designed with wonderful truth and spirit; his coloring is full of force, his lights and shadows are distributed with judgment and his touch is remarkably firm and spirited.

ROSA DA TIVOLI'S FACILITY OF EXECUTION.

Rosa da Tivoli acquired a wonderful facility in design and execution, for which reason he was named _Mercurius_ by the Bentvogel Society. A remarkable instance of his powers is recorded by C. le Blond, then a student at Rome. "It happened one day," says he, "that several young artists and myself were occupied in designing from the ba.s.si-relievi of the Arch of t.i.tus, when Roos pa.s.sing by, was particularly struck with some picturesque object which caught his attention, and he requested one of the students to accommodate him with a crayon and paper. What was our surprise, when in half an hour he produced an admirable drawing, finished with accuracy and spirit."

It is also related that the Imperial Amba.s.sador, Count Martinez, laid a wager with a Swedish general that Roos would paint a picture of three-quarters' size, while they were playing a game at cards; and in less than half an hour the picture was well finished, though it consisted of a landscape, a shepherd, and several sheep and goats.

ROSA DA TIVOLI'S HABITS.

Rosa da Tivoli unfortunately fell into extravagant and dissipated habits, which frequently caused him great inconvenience. From his facility, he multiplied his pictures to such an extent as greatly to depreciate their value. It is related that he would sit down, when pressed for money, dispatch a large picture in a few hours, and send it directly to be sold at any price. His servant, possessing more discretion than his master, usually paid him the highest price offered by the dealers, and kept the pictures himself, till he could dispose of them to more advantage.

LUCA CAMBIASO'S FACILITY IN PAINTING.

The most remarkable quality of this distinguished Genoese painter was his rapidity of operation. He began to paint when ten years old, under the eye of his father, Giovanni Cambiaso, who evinced good taste in setting him to copy some works by the correct and n.o.ble Mantegna. His progress was so rapid that at the age of seventeen he was entrusted to decorate some facades and chambers of the Doria palace at Genoa, where he displayed his rash facility of hand by painting the story of Niobe on a s.p.a.ce of wall fifty palms long and of proportionate height, without cartoons or any drawing larger than his first hasty sketch on a single sheet of paper! While he was engaged on this work, there came one morning some Florentine artists to look at it. Seeing a lad enter soon after, and commence painting with prodigious fury, they called out to him to desist; but his mode of handling the brushes and colors, which they had imagined it was his business merely to clean or pound, soon convinced them that this daring youngster was no other than Luca himself; whereupon they crossed themselves, and declared he would one day eclipse Michael Angelo.

CAMBIASO'S WORKS IN SPAIN.

After attaining a high reputation in Italy, Cambiaso was invited to Madrid by Philip II. of Spain. He executed there a great number of works, among which the most important was the vault of the choir of the Escurial church, where he painted in fresco the "Glory of the Blessed in Heaven." Instead of allowing the artist to paint from his own conceptions, the king listened to the counsels of the monks, who "recommended that the heavenly host should be drawn up in due theological order." A design "more pious than picturesque" being at last agreed upon, the painter fell to work with his wonted fury, and so speedily covered vast s.p.a.ces with a mult.i.tude of figures, that the king, according to the expressive Italian phrase, "remained stupid," not being able to believe that the master, with only one a.s.sistant, could have accomplished so much. Philip often visited Cambiaso while at work, and one day remarking that the head of St. Anne among the blessed was too youthful, the painter replied by seizing his pencil, and with four strokes so seamed the face with wrinkles, and so entirely altered its air, that the royal critic once more "remained stupid," hardly knowing whether he had judged amiss, or the change had been effected by magic.

By means of thus painting at full speed, frequently without sketches, and sometimes with both hands at once, Cambiaso clothed the vault with its immense fresco in about fifteen months. The coloring is still fresh, and many of the forms are fine and the figures n.o.ble; but the composition cannot be called pleasing. The failure must be mainly attributed to the unlucky meddling of the friars, who have marshalled

"The helmed Cherubim, And sworded Seraphim,"

with exact military precision, ranged the celestial choir in rows like the fiddlers of a sublunary orchestra, and accommodated the congregation of the righteous with long benches, like those of a Methodist meeting-house! However, the king was so well pleased with the work, that he rewarded Cambiaso with 12,000 ducats.

CAMBIASO'S ARTISTIC MERITS.