Part 23

It is related, says Vasari, of this master, that being commissioned to paint a picture of St. Thomas seeking the wound in the side of Christ, above the door of the church dedicated to that saint, in the Mercato Vecchio, he declared that he would make known in that work, the extent of what he had acquired and was capable of producing. He accordingly bestowed upon it the utmost care and consideration, and erected an enclosure around the place that he might not be disturbed until it should be completed. One day, his friend Donatello met him, and asked him, "What kind of work is this of thine, that thou art shutting up so closely?" Paolo replied, "Thou shalt see it some day; let that suffice thee." Donatello would not press him, thinking that when the time came, he should, as usual, behold a miracle of art. It happened one morning, as he was in the Mercato Vecchio, buying fruit, he saw Paolo uncovering his picture, and saluting him courteously, the latter anxiously demanded what he thought of his work. Donatello having examined the painting very closely, turned to the painter with a disappointed look, and said, "Why, Paolo, thou art uncovering thy picture at the very moment when thou shouldst be shutting it up from the sight of all!" These words so grievously afflicted the painter, who at once perceived that he would be more likely to incur derision from his boasted master-piece, than the honor he had hoped for, that he hastened home and shut himself up, devoting himself to the study of perspective, which, says Vasari, kept him in poverty and depression till the day of his death. If this story be true, Uccello must have painted the picture referred to in his old age.

THE ITALIAN SCHOOLS OF PAINTING.

The fame and success of Cimabue and Giotto, brought forth painters in abundance, and created schools all over Italy. The church increasing in power and riches, called on the arts of painting and sculpture, to add to the beauty and magnificence of her sanctuaries; riches and honors were showered on men whose genius added a new ray of grace to the Madonna, or conferred a diviner air on St. Peter or St. Paul; and as much of the wealth of Christendom found its way to Rome, the successors of the apostles were enabled to distribute their patronage over all the schools of Italy. Lanzi reckons fourteen schools of painting in Italy, each of which is distinguished by some peculiar characteristics, as follows: 1, the Florentine school; 2, the Sienese school; 3, the Roman school; 4, the Neapolitan school; 5, the Venetian school; 6, the Mantuan school; 7, the Modenese school; 8, the school of Parma; 9, the school of Cremona; 10, the school of Milan; 11, the school of Bologna; 12, the school of Ferrara; 13, the school of Genoa; 14, the school of Piedmont. Of these, the Florentine, the Roman, and the Bolognese are celebrated for their epic grandeur of composition; that of Siena for its poetic taste; that of Naples for its fire; and that of Venice for the splendor of its coloring.

Other writers make different divisions, according to style or country; thus, Correggio, being by birth a Lombard, and the originator of a new style, the name of the Lombard school has been conferred by many upon the followers of his maxims, the characteristics of which are contours drawn round and full, the countenances warm and smiling, the union of the colors clear and strong, and the foreshortenings frequent, with a particular attention to the chiaro-scuro. Others again, rank the artists of Milan, Mantua Parma, Modena, and Cremona, under the one head of the Lombard school; but Lanzi justly makes the distinctions before mentioned, because their manners are very different. Writers of other nations rank all these subdivisions under one head--the Italian school. Lanzi again divides these schools into epochs, as they rose from their infancy, to their greatest perfection, and again declined into mannerism, or servile imitation, or as eminent artists rose who formed an era in art. Thus writers speak of the schools of Lionardo da Vinci, of Michael Angelo, of Raffaelle, of Correggio, of Titian, of the Caracci, and of every artist who acquired a distinguished reputation, and had many followers. Several great artists formed such a marked era in their schools, that their names and those of their schools are often used synonymously by many writers; thus, when they speak of the Roman school, they mean that of Raffaelle; of the Florentine, that of Michael Angelo; of Parma or Lombardy, that of Correggio; of Bologna, that of the Caracci; but not so of the Venetian and Neapolitan schools, because the Venetian school produced several splendid colorists, and that of Naples as many, distinguished by other peculiarities. These distinctions should be borne in mind in order rightly to understand writers, especially foreigners, on Italian art.

CLAUDE JOSEPH VERNET.

Claude Joseph Vernet, the father of Carl Vernet, and the grandfather of Horace, was born at Avignon in 1714. He was the son of Antoine Vernet, an obscure painter, who foretold that he would one day render his family illustrious in art, and gave him every advantage that his limited means would permit. Such were the extraordinary talents he exhibited almost in his infancy, that his father regarded him as a prodigy, and dreaming of nothing but seeing him become the greatest historical painter of the age, he resolved to send him to Rome; and having, by great economy, saved a few louis d'or, he put them into Joseph's pocket, when he was about eighteen years of age, and sent him off with a wagoner, who undertook to conduct him to Marseilles.

VERNET'S PRECOCITY.

The wonderful stories told about the early exhibitions of genius in many celebrated painters are really true with respect to Joseph Vernet. In his infancy, he exhibited the most extraordinary passion for painting. He himself has related, that on his return from Italy, his mother gave him some drawings which he had executed at the age of five years, when he was rewarded by being allowed to use the pencils he had tried to purloin. Before he was fifteen, he painted frieze-panels, fire-screens, coach-panels, sedan chair-panels, and the like, whenever he could get a commission; he also gave proof of that facility of conceiving and executing, which was one of the characteristics of his genius.

VERNET'S ENTHUSIASM.

It has been before stated that Vernet's father intended him for an historical painter, but nature formed his genius to imitate her sweetest, as well as most terrible aspect. When he was on his way to Marseilles, he met with so many charming prospects, that he induced his companion to halt so often while he sketched them, that it took them a much longer time to reach that port than it would otherwise have done.

When he first saw the sea from the high hill, called La Viste, near Marseilles, he stood wrapt in admiration. Before him stretched the blue waters of the Mediterranean as far as the eye could reach, while three islands, a few leagues from the shore, seemed to have been placed there on purpose to break the uniformity of the immense expanse of waters, and to gratify the eye; on his right rose a sloping town of country houses, intersected with trees, rising above one another on successive terraces; on his left was the little harbor of Mastigues; in front, innumerable vessels rocked to and fro in the harbor of Marseilles, while the horizon was terminated by the picturesque tower of Bouc, nearly lost, however, in the distance. This scene made a lasting impression on Vernet. Nature seemed not only to invite, but to woo him to paint marine subjects, and from that moment his vocation was decided on. Thus nature frequently instructs men of genius, and leads them on in the true path to excellence and renown. Like the AEolian harp, which waits for a breath of air to produce a sound, so they frequently wait or strive in vain, till nature strikes a sympathetic chord, that vibrates to the soul. Thus Joseph Vernet never thought of his forte till he first stood on La Viste; and after that, he was nothing but a painter of ships and harbors, and tranquil seas, till the day when lashed to the mast, he first beheld the wild sea in such rude commotion, as threatened to engulf the noble ship and all on board at every moment. Then his mind was elevated to the grandeur of the scene; and he recollected forever the minutest incident of the occasion.

"It was on going from Marseilles to Rome," says one of his biographers, M. Pitra, "that Joseph Vernet, on seeing a tempest gathering, when they were off the Island of Sardinia, was seized, not with terror, but with admiration; in the midst of the general alarm, the painter seemed really to relish the peril; his only desire was to face the tempest, and to be, so to say, mixed up with it, in order that, some day or other, he might astonish and frighten others by the terrible effects he would learn to produce; his only fear was that he might lose the sight of a spectacle so new to him. He had himself lashed to the main mast, and while he was tossed about in every direction, saturated with seawater, and excited by this hand-to-hand struggle with his model, he painted the tempest, not on his canvass, but in his memory, which never forgot anything. He saw and remembered all--clouds, waves, and rock, hues and colors, with the motion of the boats and the rocking of the ship, and the accidental light which intersected a slate-colored sky that served as a ground to the whiteness of the sea-foam." But, according to D'Argenville and others, this event occurred in 1752, when he was on his way to Paris, at the invitation of Louis XV. Embarking at Leghorn in a small felucca, he sailed to Marseilles. A violent storm happened on the voyage, which greatly terrified some of the passengers, but Vernet, undaunted, and struck with the grandeur of the scene, requested the sailors to lash him to the mast head, and there he remained, absorbed in admiration, and endeavoring to transfer to his sketch-book, a correct picture of the sublime scene with which he was surrounded. His grandson, Horace Vernet, painted an excellent picture of this scene, which was exhibited in the Louvre in 1816, and attracted a great deal of attention.

VERNET AT ROME.

Vernet arrived at Rome in 1732, and became the scholar of Bernardino Fergioni, then a celebrated marine painter, but Lanzi says, "he was soon eclipsed by Joseph Vernet, who had taken up his abode at Rome." Entirely unknown in that metropolis of art, always swarming with artists, Vernet lived for several years in the greatest poverty, subsisting by the occasional sale of a drawing or picture at any price he could get. He even painted panels for coach builders, which were subsequently sawed out and sold as works of great value. Fiorillo relates that he painted a superb marine for a suit of coarse clothes, which brought 5000 francs at the sale of M. de Julienne. Finding large pictures less saleable, he painted small ones, which he sold for two sequins a-piece, till a Cardinal, one day gave him four louis d'or for a marine. Yet his ardor and enthusiasm were unabated; on the contrary, he studied with the greatest assiduity, striving to perfect himself in his art, and feeling confident that his talents would ultimately command a just reward.

VERNET'S "ALPHABET OF TONES."

It was the custom of Vernet to rise with the lark, and he often walked forth before dawn and spent the whole day in wandering about the surrounding country, to study the ever changing face of nature. He watched the various hues presented by the horizon at different hours of the day. He soon found that with all his powers of observation and pencil, great and impassioned as they were, he could not keep pace with the rapidly changing and evanescent hues of the morning and evening sky. He began to despair of ever being able to represent on canvass the moving harmony of those pictures which nature required so little time to execute in such perfection, and which so quickly passed away. At length, after long contemplating how he could best succeed in catching and transferring these furtive tints to his canvass, bethought himself of a contrivance which he called his Alphabet of tones, and which is described by Renou in his "Art de Peindre."

The various characters of this alphabet are joined together, and correspond to an equal number of different tints; if Vernet saw the sun rise silvery and fresh, or set in the colors of crimson; or if he saw a storm approaching or disappearing, he opened his table and set down the gradations of the tones he admired, as quickly as he could write ten or twelve letters on a piece of paper. After having thus noted down in short hand, the beauties of the sky and the accidental effects of nature, he returned to his studio, and endeavored to make stationary on canvass the moving picture he had just been contemplating. Effects which had long disappeared were thus recomposed in all their charming harmony to delight the eye of every lover of painting.

VERNET AND THE CONNOISSEUR.

Vernet relates, that he was once employed to paint a landscape, with a cave, and St. Jerome in it; he accordingly painted the landscape, with St. Jerome at the entrance of the cave. When he delivered the picture, the purchaser, who understood nothing of perspective, said, "the landscape and the cave are well made, but St. Jerome is not in the cave." "I understand you, Sir," replied Vernet, "I will alter it." He therefore took the painting, and made the shade darker, so that the saint seemed to sit farther in. The gentleman took the painting; but it again appeared to him that the saint was not in the cave. Vernet then wiped out the figure, and gave it to the gentleman, who seemed perfectly satisfied. Whenever he saw strangers to whom he shewed the picture, he said, "Here you see a picture by Vernet, with St. Jerome in the cave." "But we cannot see the saint," replied the visitors. "Excuse me, gentlemen," answered the possessor, "he is there; for I have seen him standing at the entrance, and afterwards farther back; and am therefore quite sure that he is in it."

VERNET'S WORKS.

Far from confining himself within the narrow limits of one branch of his profession, Vernet determined to take as wide a range as possible. At Rome, he made the acquaintance of Lucatelli, Pannini, and Solimene. Like them, he studied the splendid ruins of the architecture of ancient Rome, and the noble landscapes of its environs, together with every interesting scene and object, especially the celebrated cascades of Tivoli. He paid particular attention to the proportions and attitudes of his figures, which were mostly those of fishermen and lazzaroni, as well as to the picturesque appearance of their costume. Such love of nature and of art, such assiduous study of nature at different hours of the day, of the phenomena of light, and such profound study of the numerous accessories essential to beauty and effect, made an excellent landscape painter of Vernet, though his fame rests chiefly on the unrivalled excellence of his marine subjects. Diderot remarks, that "though he was undoubtedly inferior to Claude Lorraine in producing bold and luminous effects, he was quite equal to that great painter in rendering the effects of vapor, and superior to him in the invention of scenes, in designing figures, and in the variety of his incidents."

At a later period, Diderot compared his favorite painter to the Jupiter of Lucian, who, tired of listening to the lamentable cries of mankind, rose from table and exclaimed: 'Let it hail in Thrace!' and the trees were immediately stripped of their leaves, the heaviest cut to pieces, and the thatch of the houses scattered before the wind: then he said, "Let the plague fall on Asia!" and the doors of the houses were immediately closed, the streets were deserted, and men shunned one another; and again he exclaimed: 'Let a volcano appear here!' and the earth immediately shook, the buildings were thrown down, the animals were terrified, and the inhabitants fled into the surrounding country; and on his crying out: 'Let this place be visited with a death!' the old husbandman died of want at his door. Jupiter calls that governing the world, but he was wrong. Vernet calls it painting pictures, and he is right.

It was with reference to the twenty-five paintings exhibited by Vernet, in 1765, that Diderot penned the foregoing lines, which formed the peroration to an eloquent and lengthy eulogium, such as it rarely falls to a painter to be the subject of. Among other things, the great critic there says: "There is hardly a single one of his compositions which any painter would have taken not less than two years to execute, however well he might have employed his time. What incredible effects of light do we not behold in them! What magnificent skies! what water! what ordonnance! what prodigious variety in the scenes! Here, we see a child borne off on the shoulders of his father, after having been saved from a watery grave; while there, lies a woman dead upon the beach, with her forlorn and widowed husband weeping at her side. The sea roars, the wind bowls, the thunder fills the air with its peals, and the pale and sombre glimmers of the lightning that shoots incessantly through the sky, illuminate and hide the scene in turn. It appears as if you heard the sides of the ship crack, so natural does it look with its broken masts and lacerated sails; the persons on deck are stretching their hands toward heaven, while others have thrown themselves into the sea. The latter are swept by the waves against the neighboring rocks, where their blood mingles with the white foam of the raging billows. Some, too, are floating on the surface of the sea, some are about to sink, and some are endeavoring to reach the shore, against which they will be inevitably dashed to pieces. The same variety of character, action, and expression is observable among the spectators, some of whom are turning aside with a shudder, some are doing their utmost to assist the drowning persons, while others remain motionless and are merely looking on. A few persons have made a fire beneath a rock, and are endeavoring to revive a woman, who is apparently expiring. But now turn your eyes, reader, towards another picture, and you will there see a calm, with all its charms. The waters, which are tranquil, smooth, and cheerful-looking, insensibly lose their transparency as they extend further from the sight, while their surface gradually assumes a lighter tint, as they roll from the shore to the horizon. The ships are motionless, and the sailors and passengers are whiling away the time in various amusements. If it is morning, what light vapors are seen rising all around! and how they have refreshed and vivified every object they have fallen on! If it is evening, what a golden tint do the tops of the mountains assume! How various, too, are the hues of the sky! And how gently do the clouds move along, as they cast the reflection of their different colors into the sea! Go, reader, into the country, lift your eyes up towards the azure vault of heaven, observe well the phenomena you then see there, and you will think that a large piece of the canvass lighted by the sun himself has been cut out and placed upon the easel of the artist: or form your hand into a tube, so that, by looking through it, you will only be able to see a limited space of the canvass painted by nature, and you will at once fancy that you are gazing on one of Vernet's pictures which has been taken from off his easel and placed in the sky. His nights, too, are as touching as his days are fine; while his ports are as fine as his imaginative pieces are piquant. He is equally wonderful, whether he employs his pencil to depict a subject of everyday life, or he abandons himself completely to his imagination; and he is equally incomprehensible, whether he employs the orb of day or the orb of night, natural or artificial lights, to light his pictures with: he is always bold, harmonious, and staid, like those great poets whose judgment balances all things so well, that they are never either exaggerated or cold. His fabrics, edifices, costumes, actions, men and animals are all true. When near, he astonishes you, and, at a distance, he astonishes you still more."

VERNET'S PASSION FOR MUSIC

Vernet, notwithstanding he loved to depict the sea in its most convulsed and terrible aspects, was a perfect gentleman of the French school, whose manners were most amiable and engaging. What he most loved after painting was music. He had formed at Rome, an intimate friendship with Pergolesi, the composer, who afterwards became so celebrated, and they lived almost continually together. Vernet placed a harpsichord in his studio for the express use of his friend, and while the painter, carried away by his imagination, put the waters of the mighty main into commotion, or suspended persons on the towering waves, the grave composer sought, with the tips of his fingers, for the rudiments of his immortal melodies. It was thus that the melancholy stanzas of that chef d'oeuvre of sadness and sorrow, the Stabat-Mater, were composed for a little convent in which one of Pergolesi's sisters resided. It seems to one that while listening to this plaintive music, Vernet must have given a more mellow tint to his painting; and it was, perhaps, while under its influence, that he worked at his calms and moonlights, or, making a truce with the roaring billows of the sea, painted it tranquil and smooth, and represented on the shore nothing but motionless fishermen, sailors seated between the carriages of two cannons, and whiling away the time by relating their travels to one another, or else stretched on the grass in so quiescent a state, that the spectator himself becomes motionless while gazing on them.

Pergolesi died in the arms of Joseph Vernet, who could never after hear the name of his friend pronounced, without being moved to tears. He religiously preserved the scraps of paper, on which he had seen the music of the Stabat-Mater dotted down before his eyes, and brought them with him to France in 1752, at which period he was sent for by the Marquis de Marigny, after an absence of twenty years. Vernet's love for music procured Gretry a hearty welcome, when the young composer came to Paris. Vernet discovered his talent, and predicted his success. Some of Gretry's features, his delicate constitution, and, above all, several of his simple and expressive airs, reminded the painter of the immortal man to whom music owes so large a portion of its present importance; for it was Pergolesi who first introduced in Italy the custom of paying such strict attention to the sense of the words and to the choice of the accompaniments.

VERNET'S OPINION OF HIS OWN MERITS.

Though Vernet rose to great distinction, he was never fully appreciated till long after his decease. At the present day, he is placed in the first rank of marine painters, not only by his own countrymen, but by every other nation. He himself pronounced judgment on his own merits, the justness of which, posterity has sanctioned. The sentence deserves to be preserved, for it is great. Comparing himself to the great painters, his rivals, he says, "If you ask me whether I painted skies better than such and such an artist, I should answer 'no!' or figures better than any one else, I should also say 'no!' or trees and landscapes better than others, still I should answer 'no!' or fogs, water, and vapors better than others, my answer would ever be the same but though inferior to each of them in one branch of the art, I surpass them in all the others."