Page:Biographical catalogue of the principal Italian painters.djvu/12



“ hast bisher die schönen Bilder angestaunt, als wären es wunderwerke, vom himmel auf die erde heruntergefallen. Aber bedenke, dass dies alles werk von Menschenhänden ist—was meynst du nun? Solltest du nicht lust empfinden, von den Männern, welche sich in der Mahlerey hervorgethan haben, etwas mehreres zu erfahren?”

Such were the impressive words of the young enthusiastic Wachenroder sixty years ago, when men really cared little either about painters or their works. This is a matter in which, since then, we have made much progress, and by some the era of the new epoch of art criticism is identified with the appearance of Wachenroder’s Heart Effusions of an Art-loving Monk, which, though now little more than a curiosity, was then a repertory of new and charming reflections. Criticism till then, probably, was almost exclusively material, but we have since run into the other extreme.

In both cases the authors of the works which are the prime cause of the delights and the intellectual exercises so engrossing to some, have been altogether neglected. We have been too habitually content to admire pictures without inquiring into the characters or fortunes of the devoted men who have produced them. While some works are faithful objective pictures of men and manners, others are simply subjective exponents of character; and others, without being exactly either, are often nevertheless good indices to both the moral and intellectual tendencies of an age.

Still it is impossible to feel much about pictures, and even more difficult to comprehend the nature of art epochs, without some personal knowledge of their artists. It is unquestionable that a knowledge of the painter will frequently cause an interest in a work that would be otherwise overlooked or forgotten; and what is true of individual works is true also of collections. Travellers saunter through picture galleries until they are tired of the very name of art, and eventually glory in neither knowing nor caring