Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art Part 16

More was employed by most of the princes of Europe, who liberally rewarded him, and at every court his paintings were beheld with admiration and applause, but at none more than at those of Spain and England. He acquired an ample fortune. When he was in Portugal, the n.o.bility of that country, in token of their esteem, presented him, in the name of their order, a gold chain valued at a thousand ducats. He closely imitated nature. He designed and painted in a bold, masculine style, with a rich tone of coloring; he showed a good knowledge of the chiaro-scuro, and he finished his pictures with neatness and care; his style is said to resemble that of Hans Holbein, though not possessing his delicacy and clearness; and there is something dry and hard in his manner. His talents were not confined to portraits; he painted several historical subjects in Spain for the Royal Collection, which were highly applauded, but which were unfortunately destroyed in the conflagration of the palace of the Prado. While he resided in Spain, he copied some portraits of ill.u.s.trious women, in a style said to approach t.i.tian. His own portrait, painted by himself, charmingly colored, and full of life and nature, is in the Florentine Gallery. His best work was a picture of the Circ.u.mcision, intended for the Cathedral at Antwerp, but he did not live to finish it, and died there in 1575.

PERILOUS ADVENTURE OF A PAINTER.

John Griffier, a Dutch painter of celebrity, went to London in 1667, where he met with great encouragement. While there he painted many views on the Thames, and in order to observe nature more attentively, he bought a yacht, embarked his family, and spent his whole time on the river. After several years he sailed for Holland in his frail craft but was wrecked in the Texel, where, after eight days of suffering, he and his family barely escaped with their lives, having lost all his paintings, and the fruits of his industry. This mishap cured him of his pa.s.sion for the sea.

ANECDOTE OF JOHN DE MABUSE.

An amusing anecdote is related of this eminent painter. He was inordinately given to dissipation, and spent all his money, as fast as he earned it, in carousing with his boon companions. He was for a long time in the service of the Marquess de Veren, for whom he executed some of his most capital works. It happened on one occasion that the Emperor Charles V. made a visit to the Marquess, who made magnificent preparations for his reception, and among other things ordered all his household to be dressed in white damask. When the tailor came to measure Mabuse, he desired to have the damask, under the pretence of inventing a singular habit. He sold it immediately, spent the money, and then painted a paper suit, so like damask that it was not distinguished as he walked in procession between a philosopher and a poet, other pensioners of the Marquess; but the joke was too good to be kept, so his friends betrayed him to the Marquess, who, instead of being displeased was highly diverted, and asked the Emperor which of the three suits he liked best. The Emperor pointed to that of Mabuse, as excelling in whiteness and beauty of the flowers; and when he was told of the painter's stratagem, he would not believe it, till he had examined it with his own hands.

CAPUGNANO AND LIONELLO SPADA.

Lanzi relates the following amusing anecdote of Giovanni da Capugnano, an artist of little merit, but whose a.s.surance enabled him to attract considerable attention in his day. "Misled by a pleasing self-delusion, he believed himself born to become a painter; like that ancient personage, mentioned by Horace, who imagined himself the owner of all the vessels that arrived in the Athenian port. His chief talent lay in making crucifixes, to fill up the angles, and in giving a varnish to the bal.u.s.trades. Next, he attempted landscape in water-colors, in which were exhibited the most strange proportions; of houses less than the men; these last smaller than his sheep; and the sheep again than his birds.

Extolled, however, in his own district, he determined to leave his native mountains, and figure on a wider theatre at Bologna; there he opened his house, and requested the Caracci, the only artists he believed to be more learned than himself, to furnish him with a pupil, whom he intended to polish in his studio. Lionello Spada, an admirable wit, accepted this invitation; he went and copied designs, affecting the utmost obsequiousness towards his master. At length, conceiving it time to put an end to the jest, he left behind him a most exquisite painting of Lucretia, and over the entrance of the chamber some fine satirical octaves, in apparent praise, but real ridicule of Capugnano. His worthy master only accused Lionello of ingrat.i.tude, for having acquired from him in so short a s.p.a.ce the art of painting so beautifully from his designs; but the Caracci at last acquainted him with the joke, which acted as a complete antidote to his folly."

MICHAEL ANGELO DA CARAVAGGIO--HIS QUARRELSOME DISPOSITION.

Caravaggio possessed a very irascible and roving disposition. At the height of his popularity at Rome, he got into a quarrel with one of his own young friends, in a tennis-court, and struck him dead with a racket, having been severely wounded himself in the affray. He fled to Naples, where he executed some of his finest pictures, but he soon got weary of his residence there, and went to Malta. Here his superb picture of the Grand Master obtained for him the Cross of Malta, a rich gold chain, placed on his neck by the Grand Master's own hands, and two slaves to attend him. All these honors did not prevent the new knight from falling back into old habits. "_Il suo torbido ingegno_," says Bellori, plunged him into new difficulties; he fought and wounded a n.o.ble cavalier, was thrown into prison, from which he escaped almost by a miracle, and fled to Syracuse, where he obtained the favor of the Syracusans by painting a splendid picture of the Santa Morte, for the church of S. Lucia. In apprehension of being taken by the Knights of Malta, he soon fled to Messina, thence to Palermo, and returned to Naples, where hopes were held out to him of the Pope's pardon. Here he got into a quarrel with some military men in a public house, was wounded, and took refuge on board a felucca, about to sail for Rome. Stopping at a small port on the way, he was arrested by a Spanish guard, by mistake, for another person; when released, he found the felucca gone, and in it all his property.

Traversing the burning sh.o.r.e, under an almost vertical sun, he was seized with a brain fever, and continued to wander through the Pontine Marshes till he arrived at Porto Ercoli, when he expired, aged forty years.

JACOPO AMICONI.

Giacomo Amiconi, a Venetian painter, went to England, in 1729, where he was first employed by Lord Tankerville to paint the staircase of his palace in St. James' Square. He there represented the stories of Achilles, Telemachus and Tiresias, which gained him great applause. When he was to be paid, he produced his bills of the workmen for scaffolding, materials, &c., amounting to 90, and asked no more, saying that he was content with the opportunity of showing what he could do. The peer, however, gave him 200 more. This brought him into notice, and he was much employed by the n.o.bility to decorate their houses.

PAINTING THE DEAD.

Giovanni Baptista Gaulli, called Baciccio, one of the most eminent Genoese painters, was no less celebrated for portraits than for history.

Pascoli says he painted no less than seven different Pontiffs, besides many ill.u.s.trious personages. Possessing great colloquial powers, he engaged his sitters in the most animated conversation, and thus transferred their features to his canvas, so full of life and expression, that they looked as though they were about to speak to the beholder. He also had a remarkable talent of painting the dead, so as to obtain an exact resemblance of deceased persons whom he had never seen.

For this purpose, he drew a face at random, afterwards altering it in every feature, by the advice and under the inspection of those who had known the original, till he had improved it to a striking likeness.

TADDEO ZUCCARO.

This eminent painter was born at San Angiolo, in the Duchy of Urbino, in 1529. At a very early age he evinced a pa.s.sion for art and a precocious genius. After having received instruction from his father, a painter of little note, his extraordinary enthusiasm induced him, at fourteen years of age, to go to Rome, without a penny in his pocket, where he pa.s.sed the day in designing, from the works of Raffaelle. Such was his poverty, that he was compelled to sleep under the loggie of the Chigi palace; he contrived to get money enough barely to supply the wants of nature, by grinding colors for the shops. Undaunted by difficulties that would have driven a less devoted lover of the art from the field, he pursued his studies with undiminished ardor, till his talents and industry attracted the notice of Daniello da Por, an artist then in repute, who generously relieved his wants and gave him instruction. From that time he made rapid progress, and soon acquired a distinguished reputation, but he died at Rome in 1566, in the prime of life.

ZUCCARO'S RESENTMENT.

Federigo Zuccaro, the brother of Taddeo, was employed by Pope Gregory XIII. in the Pauline chapel. While proceeding with his work, however, he fell out with some of the Pope's officers; and conceiving himself treated with indignity, he painted an allegorical picture of Calumny, introducing the portraits of all those individuals who had offended him, decorated with a.s.ses' ears. This he caused to be exhibited publicly over the gate of St. Luke's church, on the festival day of that Saint. His enemies, upon this, made such complaints that he was forced to fly from Rome, and pa.s.sing into France, he visited Flanders and England. As soon as the pontiff was appeased, he returned to Rome, and completed his work in the Pauline chapel, fortunate in not losing his head as the price of such a daring exploit.

ROYAL CRITICISM.

Federigo Zuccaro was invited to Madrid by Philip II. to execute some frescos in the lower cloister of the Escurial, which, failing to give satisfaction to his royal patron, were subsequently effaced, and their place supplied by Pellegrino Tibaldi; the king nevertheless munificently rewarded him. One day, as he was displaying a picture of the Nativity, which he had painted for the great altar of the Escurial, for the inspection of the monarch, he said, "Sire, you now behold all that art can execute; beyond this which I have done, the powers of painting cannot go." The king was silent for some time; his countenance betrayed neither approbation nor contempt; at last, preserving the same indifference, he quietly asked the painter what _those things_ were in the basket of one of the shepherds in the act of running? He replied they were eggs. "It is well then, that he did not break them," said the king, as he turned on his way--a just rebuke for such fulsome self-adulation.

PIETRO DA CORTONA.

The name of this ill.u.s.trious painter and architect was Berrettini, and he was born at Cortona, near Florence, in 1596. At the age of fourteen he went to Rome, where he studied the works of Raffaelle and Caravaggio with the greatest a.s.siduity. It is said that at first he betrayed but little talent for painting, but his genius burst forth suddenly, to the astonishment of those companions who had laughed at his incapacity; this doubtless was owing to his previous thorough course of study. While yet young, he painted two pictures for the Cardinal Sacchetti, representing the Rape of the Sabines, and a Battle of Alexander, which gained him so much celebrity that Pope Urban VIII. commissioned him to paint a chapel in the church of S. Bibiena, where Ciampelli was employed. The latter at first regarded with contempt the audacity of so young a man's daring to attempt so important a public work, but Cortona had no sooner commenced than Ciampelli's disgust changed to admiration of his abilities. His success in this performance gained him the celebrated work of the ceiling of the grand saloon in the Barberini palace, which is considered one of the greatest productions of the kind ever executed. Cortona was invited to Florence by the Grand Duke Ferdinand II., to paint the saloon and four apartments in the Pitti palace, where he represented the Clemency of Alexander to the family of Darius, the Firmness of Porsena, the Continence of Cyrus, the History of Ma.s.sanissa, and other subjects.

While thus employed, the Duke, one day, having expressed his admiration of a weeping child which he had just painted, Cortona with a single stroke of his pencil made it appear laughing, and with another restored it to its former state; "Prince," said he, "you see how easily children laugh and cry." Disgusted with the intrigues of some artists jealous of his reputation, he left Florence abruptly, without completing his works, and the Grand Duke could never persuade him to return. On his return to Rome, he abounded with commissions, and Pope Alexander VII. honored him with the order of the Golden Spur. Cortona was also distinguished as an architect. He made a design for the Palace of the Louvre, which was so highly approved by Louis XIV. that he sent him his picture richly set in jewels. Cortona was a laborious artist, and though tormented with the gout, and in affluent circ.u.mstances, he continued to paint till his death, in 1699.

"KNOW THYSELF."

Mario Balla.s.si, a Florentine painter born in 1604, studied successively under Ligozzi, Roselli, and Pa.s.signano; he a.s.sisted the latter in the works he executed at Rome for Pope Urban XIII. His chief talent lay in copying the works of the great masters, which he did to admiration. Don Taddeo Barberini employed him to copy the Transfiguration of Raffaelle, for the Church of the Conception, in which he imitated the touch and expression of the original in so excellent a manner as to excite the surprise of the best judges at Rome. At the recommendation of the Cardinal Piccolomini, he was introduced to the Emperor Ferdinand III., who received him in an honorable manner. Elated with his success, he vainly imagined that if he could imitate the old masters, he could also equal them in an original style of his own. He signally failed in the attempt, which brought him into as much contempt as his former works had gained him approbation.

BENVENUTO CELLINI.