LITMIR.BIZ

      "In the distance is something white, which I believe must be intended for a snowy mountain, because I do not see that it can well be intended for anything else. Now no mountain of elevation sufficient to be sheeted with perpetual snow can by any possibility sink so low on the horizon as this something of Claude's, unless it be at a distance of from fifty to seventy miles. At such distances … the mountains rise from the horizon like transparent films, only distinguishable from mist by their excessively keen edges and their brilliant flashes of sudden light; they are as unsubstantial as the air itself, and impress their enormous size by means of this aerial-ness, in a far greater degree at these vast distances, than even when towering above the spectator's head.50 Now, I ask of the candid observer if there be the smallest vestige of an effort to attain, if there be the most miserable, the most contemptible, shadow of attainment of such an effect by Claude? Does that white thing on the horizon look seventy miles off? Is it faint or fading, or to be looked for by the eye before it can be found out? Does it look high? Does it look large? Does it look impressive? You cannot but feel that there is not a vestige of any kind or species of truth in that horizon; and that however artistical it may be, as giving brilliancy to the distance (though as far as I have any feeling in the matter it only gives coldness), it is, in the very branch of art on which Claude's reputation chiefly rests, aerial perspective, hurling defiance to nature in her very teeth. But there are worse failures in this unlucky distance… No mountain was ever raised to the level of perpetual snow without an infinite multiplicity of form. Its foundation is built of a hundred minor mountains, and from these, great buttresses run in converging ridges to the central peak… Consequently, in distant effect, when chains of such peaks are visible at once, the multiplicity of form is absolutely oceanic; and though it is possible in near scenes to find vast and simple masses composed of lines which run unbroken for a thousand feet or more, it is physically impossible when these masses are thrown seventy miles back to have simple outlines, for then these large features become mere jags and hillocks, and are heaped and huddled together in endless confusion… Hence these mountains of Claude having no indication of the steep vertical summits which are characteristic of the central ridges, having soft edges instead of decisive ones, simple forms instead of varied and broken ones, and being painted with a crude raw white, having no transparency, nor filminess, nor air in it, instead of rising in the opalescent mystery which invariably characterises the distant snows, have the forms and the colours of heaps of chalk in a limekiln, not of Alps" (ibid., sec. iv. ch. ii. §§ 8, 9).

      Bartolomé Estéban Murillo, the most widely popular of the Spanish painters, was himself sprung from the "people." He was born of humble parents in Seville, and his earliest attempts at art were pictures for fairs. He is also believed to have supplied some of the Madonnas which were shipped off by loads for the convents in Mexico51 and Peru. A turning-point in his artistic career came, however, when a certain Pedro de Moya came into the studio of Murillo's uncle, Castillo. De Moya had been studying under Van Dyck in London. Van Dyck's style was a revelation to Murillo, who determined forthwith to start off on the grand tour. First, however, he went to Madrid, where Velazquez helped him greatly. His studies there were so successful, and his popularity became so great, that the foreign journey was abandoned. He married a lady of fortune, his house became a centre of taste and fashion, commissions poured in upon him, and in 1660 he formed the Academy of Seville. His life was as pious as it was busy. He was often seen praying for long hours in his parish church, and in his last illness (which was brought on by his falling, in a fit of absence of mind, from a scaffold) he was carried every day to pray before Pedro Campaña's "Descent from the Cross." "I wait here," he said to the sacristan who asked one day if he were ready to go, "till the pious servants of our Lord have taken him down."

      Murillo was thus one of the last sincerely religious painters – a class which, "after a few pale rays of fading sanctity from Guido, and brown gleams of gipsy Madonnahood from Murillo, came utterly to an end" (Modern Painters, vol. v. pt. ix. ch. iv. § 4). But it was "gipsy Madonnahood": there is an entire want of elevation in his religious types, and the peasants whom he painted as beggars or flower-girls he painted also as angels or Virgins. This mingling of the common with the religious alike in subject and treatment was no doubt a principal reason of his great popularity in his own country.52 His vulgarity of treatment in his favourite beggar subjects is best seen in the Dulwich Gallery; of his religious style, the pictures here are characteristic examples. There is a certain "sweetness" and sentimentality about them which often makes them immensely popular. The French in particular are subject to a furore for Murillo, his "Immaculate Conception," now in the Louvre, having been bought in 1852 for £23,440 – the largest sum ever given up to that time for a single picture.53 With children, too, Murillo is nearly always a great favourite. A maturer taste, however, finds the sentiment of Murillo overcharged, and the sweetness of expression an insufficient substitute for elevation of character. "His drawing," says Ruskin, "is free and not ungraceful, but most imperfect and slurred to give a melting quality of colour. That colour is agreeable because it has no force or severity; but it is morbid, sunless, and untrue. His expression is sweet, but shallow; his models amiable, but vulgar and mindless; his chiaroscuro commonplace, opaque, and conventional; and yet all this is so agreeably combined, and animated by a species of wax-work life, that it is sure to catch everybody who has not either very high feeling or strong love of truth, and to keep them from obtaining either" (Letter to Dean Liddell, given in the Memoir by H. L. Thompson, p, 224.)54 "Murillo," says a more appreciative critic, "who assimilated least of foreign elements, had become the most international of all Spanish painters; for he possessed the art of winning the favour of all, the gift of a language intelligible to all times and peoples, to all classes and even to aliens of his faith" (Justi: Velazquez and his Times, p. 236). One charm his pictures have which no criticism is likely to take away: they are all stamped with the artist's individuality; there is never any mistaking a Murillo.