Page:Bryan's dictionary of painters and engravers, volume 1.djvu/509

 Brunswick. Dresden. Hague. Stockholm. Vienna.

gether with portraits and flower-pieces. They are distinguished especially by careful drawings from the nude, and accurate foreshortening of the figures. One of his paintings, ' The Rest upon the Flight into Egypt,' he afterwards engraved ; and Kilian, Goltzius, Jan Miiller, and others, have reproduced many of his works. Cornells Bega was his grand- son. The following paintings by him are in public galleries :

Amsterdam. Museum. Massacre of the lunocents. 1690. Berlin. Gallery. Bathsheba. 1617. ,, ,, An Entertainment. 1618. Gallery. The Deluge. 1592. „ The Golden Age. (His chef- d^txuvre.) 1615. Gallery. Venus, Apollo, and Ceres. „ An Old Man showing a full Purse to a Girl. Museum. Massacre of the Innocents. 1591. „ The Marriage of Peleus and Thetis. Petersburg. Hermitage. Baptism of Christ. „ „ Cimon and Iphigenia. Gallery. The Judgment of Paris. Gallery. The Dragon devouring the Men of Cadmus.

CORNELISZ, (or Cobnelissen,) Jacob, who was born at Oost-Zaan in North Holland about 1475- 1480, was living at Amsterdam in the first quarter of the 16th century, and distinguished himself as a painter and a designer on wood. He was still painting in 1553, and died in Amsterdam at an advanced age. He was one of the masters of Jan Schoorl. Though he is sometimes defective in the nude, his compositions are spirited, his heads ex- pressive, and there is a great variety in his figures. The greater part of his numerous pictures for the churches of Holland perished during the Reforma- tion. Of his paintings there are preserved :

Portrait of a Man with a long white beard. The Triumph of Religion. 1523. (Falsely ascribed to Jan De Mahuse.) Herodias with the Head of St. John the Baptist. 1524. Portraits of a Dutch Lady and Gentleman. A Crucifixion.

To this artist belong the wood-cuts which were during the last century ascribed to a certain Jan Werner, or Jan Walther van Assen, but which are assigned to Jacob Cornelisz in an edition of the ' Historia Christi patientiset morientis,' dated 1651. His wood-cuts, which were as much admired as the copper-plates of his contemporary, Lucas van Leyden, are, however, so numerous as to preclude the idea that he could have done more than make the designs. Among the best are :

12 plates of the Passion. 1517. 6 „ of the Life of Christ. 10 „ of Counts and Countesses of Holland on Horseback. Jesus disputing with the Doctors. St. Hubert. His son, Dirk Jacobsz, was a good portrait painter, who died in 1567.

CORNELISZ, (or Cobnelissen,) Ldcas, called Koch (' the Cook '), was a Dutch painter, born at Leyden in 1493. He was the son of Comelis Engel- brechtsen, and was instructed by his father. The little encouragement the art experienced at that time in his native country, obliged him, for the sup- port of a numerous family, to exercise the occupa-

Berlin. Gallery. Cassel. Gallery. Hague. Museum. London. Nat. Gal Munich. Gallery.

tion of a cook, and eventually induced him to visit England in the reign of Henry VIII., by whom he was employed, and was made painter to the king. Van Mander mentions some of the works of this master at Leyden, among others, the ' Adulteress before Christ.' Of his works in England, the six- teen portraits of the Constables of Queenborough Castle, at Penshurst, are the most considerable ; and though few of them can be original paintings, they possess great merit. At Hampton Court there are four small female portraits, probably copies, attributed to him. He died in England in 1552.

CORNELIUS, Peter von. This famous German painter was born on the 23rd of September, 1783, at Diisseldorf, where his father was Inspector of the Gallery, an appointment by no means lucrative, and scarcely sufficient for the support of his numerous family. The disposition of Cornelius for the profession of art wag evinced at a very early age by his drawings in outline of single figures, groups, battles, and hunting parties, which were pronounced by those who had opportunities of seeing his untutored essays to be by no means devoid of an intuitive skill in their execution and arrangement. Yet the character of his talent was questioned, and it was against the advice of friends that he was allowed to proceed in his studies at the Academy, where he continued drawing industri- ously after the antique. Whilst yet a boy he lost liis father, an event which immediately incited his naturally energetic temperament to extraordinary exertion, commensurate with the bereavement and its threatened consequences. In a letter to Count Raczjmski, he states: —

" I was in my sixteenth year when I lost my father, and it fell to the lot of an elder brother and myself to watch over the interest of a numerous family. It was at this time that it was attempted to persuade my mother that it would be better for me to devote myself to the trade of a goldsmith than continue to pursue painting — in tlie first place, in consequence of the time necessary to qualify me for the art ; and in the next, because there were already so many painters. My dear mother, how- ever, rejected all this advice, and I felt myself impelled onward by an uncommon enthusiasm, to which the confidence of ray mother gave new strength, which was supported by the continual fear that I should be removed from the study of the art I loved so much."

In the works of this distinguished artist it is observed that the study of nature and the technique of his art occupy him less than the care of expressing his thoughts in a powerful and characteristic manner; and it would often seem that those of his figures which are most forcible and elevated in style are deficient of vitality, insomuch that we might almost say that their life-blood had been arrested in its circulation. Force and grandeur are abundant elements in the character of his works, but we do not, perhaps, perceive in an equal degree truth and refined taste. In explanation of this it should be observed that a new era had about this time commenced in German literature. The principles of Winckelmann, which presented as the solitary rule the study of the antique, were no longer admitted as those alone which could develop skilful artists. It was perceived that an overweening love of the antique had in a great measure contributed to the unintelligible affectations of the French school ; yet certain schools, and especially that of Diisseldorf, pursued the ancient method ; and Cor-