Page:EB1911 - Volume 20.djvu/523

Rh The origin of Animal Painting is to be sought partly in figure-pieces, where, as in Egypt and Assyria, animals play a part in scenes of human life, and partly in landscapes, in which cattle, &c., are introduced to enliven the foreground. The Hunting Picture, combining a treatment of figures and animals in action with landscape of a picturesque character, gives an artist like Rubens a welcome opportunity, and the picture of Dead Game may be regarded as its offshoot. This brings us to the important class of Still-Life Painting, the relation of which to the figure-piece can be traced through the genre picture and the portrait. As a natural scene in the background, so on the nearer planes, a judiciously chosen group of accessory objects adds life and interest to the representation of a personage or scene from human life. Later on these objects, when regarded with the eyes of an artist fully opened to the beauty of the world, become in themselves fit for artistic, aye, even ideal, treatment; and a Vollon will by the magic of his art make the interior of a huge and polished copper caldron look as grand as if it were the very vault of heaven itself.

§ 23. Portraiture. — Attention has already been called in § 7 to the skill of the Egyptian artist in marking differences of species and race in animals and men. In the case of personages of special distinction, notably kings, individual lineaments were portrayed with the same freshness, the same accent of truth. There is less of this power among the artists of Assyria. The naturalism of Cretan and Mycenaean art is so striking that we should expect to find portraiture represented among its remains, and this term may be fairly applied to the gold masks that covered the faces of bodies in the tombs opened by Dr Schliemann. In early (historical) Greek art some archaic vases show representations of named personages of the day, such as King Arkesilas of Cyrene, that may fall under the same heading, and portraiture was no doubt attempted in the early painted tombstones. The ideal character of Greek art however kept portraiture in the background tiU the later period after Alexander the Great, whose effigy limned by Apelles was one of the most famous pictures in antiquity. Our collections of works of classical art have been recently enriched by a series of actual painted portraits of men and women of the late classical period, executed on mummy cases in Egypt, and discovered in Graeco-Egyptian cemeteries. An attempt has been made by comparison with coins to identify some of the personages represented with members of the Ptolemaic house, including the famous Cleopatra, but it is safer to regard them, with Flinders Petrie, as portraits of ordinary men and vvomen of the earhest centuries a.d. Technically they are of the highest interest, as will be noticed in § 42. From the artistic point of view one notes their variety, their lifelike character, and the pleasing impression of the human personality which some of them afford. There are specimens in the London National Gallery and British Museum.

During the early Christian and early m.edieval periods portraits always existed. The effigies of rulers appeared, for example, on their coins, and there are some creditable attempts at portraiture on Anglo-Saxon pieces of money. In painting we find the most continuous series in the illuminated MSS. where they occur in the so-called dedicatory pictures, in MSS. intended for royal or distinguished persons, where the patron is shown seated in state and perhaps receiving the volume. The object here, as Woltmann says, " always appears to be to give a true portrait of the exalted personage himself " {Hist, of Paintiiig, Eng. trans., i. 212). Julia Anicia, granddaughter of Valentinus III., in the 6th century; the Carolingian emperor, Lothair, in the 9th; the Byzantine emperors, Basil II. in the 10th, and Nikephoros Botaniates in the nth, &c., appear in this fashion. Some famous mosaic pictures in S. Vitale, Ravenna, contain effigies of Justinian, Theodora, and the Ravennese bishop, Maximian. In very many medieval works of art a small portrait of the donor or the artist makes its appearance as an accessory.

With the rise of schools of painting in the 14th and isth centuries, especially in the north, the portrait begins to assume greater prominence. The living personage of the day not only

figures as donor, but takes his place in the picture itself as one of the actors in the sacred or historical scene which is portrayed. A good deal of misplaced ingenuity has been expended in older and more modern days in identifying by guess-work historical figures in old pictures, but there is no doubt that such were often introduced. Dante and some of his famous contemporaries make their appearance in a fresco ascribed to Giotto in the chapel of the Bargello at Florence. One is wilUng to see the face and form of the great Masaccio in the St Thomas with the red cloak, on the right of the group, in the fresco of the Tribute Monty (see § 15). Dürer certainly paints himself as one of the Magi in his picture in the Uffizi. In Italy Ghirlandajo (see § 15) carried to an extreme this fashion, and thereby unduly secularized his bibhcal representations. The portrait proper, as an independent artistic creation, comes into vogue in the course of the 15th century both north and south of the Alps, and Jan van Eyck, !Iemlinc, and Dürer are in this department in advance of the Florentines, for whereas the latter almost confine themselves to flat profiles. Van Eyck introduces the three-quarter face view, which represents an improvement in the rendering of form. Mantegna and Antonello da Messina portray with great firmness, and to Uccello is ascribed an interesting series of heads of his contemporaries. It is Gentile and Giovanni Bellini however who may be regarded as the fathers of modern portrait painting. Venetian art was always more secular in spirit than that of the rest of Italy, and Venetian portraits were abundant. Those by Gentile Bellini of the Sultan Mahomet II., and by Giovanni of the Doge Loredano are specially famous. Vasari in his notice of the Bellini says that the Venetian palaces were full of family portraits going back sometimes to the fourth generation. Some of the finest portraits in the world are the work of the great Venetians of the i6th century, for they combine pictorial quality with an air of easy greatness which later painters find it hard to impart to their creations. Though greatly damaged, Titian's equestrian portrait of Charles V. at Madrid (fig. 26, Plate VIII.) is one of the very finest of existing works of the kind. It is somewhat remarkable that of the other Italian painters who executed portraits the most successful was the idealist Raphael, whose papal portraits of Julius II. and Leo X. are masterpieces of firm and accurate delineation. Leonardo's " Monna Lisa " is a study rather than a portrait proper.

The realistic vein, which, as we have seen, runs through northern painting, explains to some extent the extraordinary merit in portraiture of Holbein, who represents the culmination of the efforts in this direction of masters Like Jan van Eyck and Durer. Holbein is one of the greatest delineators that ever lived, and in many of his portraits he not only presents his sitter in life-like fashion, but he surrounds him with accessory objects, painted in an analytical spirit, but with a truthfulness that has seldom been equalled. The portrait of Georg Gysis at Berlin represents this s'de of Holbein's art at its best (fig. 27, Plate VIII.). Some fine portraits by Italianizing Flemings such as Antonio Moro (see Table I.) bring us to the notable masters in portraiture of the 17th century. All the schools of the period were great in this phase of the art, but it flourished more especially in Holland, where political events had developed in the people self-reliance and a strong sense of individuality. As a consequence the Dutch men and women of the period from about 1575 to 1675 were incessantly having their portraits painted, either singly or in groups. The so-called " corporation picture " was a feature of the times. This had for its subject some group of individuals associated as members of a company or board or military mess. Such works are almost incredibly numerous in Holland, and their artistic evolution is interesting to trace. The earlier ones of the i6th century are merely collections of single portraits each treated for itself, the link of connexion between the various members of the group being quite arbitrary. Later on efforts, that were ultimately successful, were made to group the portraits into a single composition so that the picture became an artistic whole. Frans Hals of Haarlem, one of the most brilliant painters of the impressionist school that he did much to found, achieved remarkable success in the artistic