Part 4

THE WOOD GATHERERS

JEAN BAPTISTE CAMILLE COROT (1796-1875)

The picture of "The Wood Gatherers" is very precious to us. It is the last picture Corot signed after he was confined to the bed, a few days before he died.

A curious story is told of Corot's painting this picture. He had an old study of another artist's of a landscape with St. Jerome at prayer: you remember I told you the story of St. Jerome and his lion. Corot took the study and made a number of sketches of it. Somehow his landscape would not fit St. Jerome, so he painted a man on horseback and a dog going off into the woods. Then in the place of St. Jerome praying he put a woman gathering bits of wood and another woman with a bundle of fagots under her arm. Now the picture must have another name and he called it "The Wood Gatherers." When you go to Washington, you must not fail to see this picture in the Corcoran Art Gallery.

AURORA

GUIDO RENI (1575-1642)

Hyperion had three wonderful children, Apollo, the god of the sun, Selene, the goddess of the moon, and Aurora, the goddess of the dawn. When Aurora appears her sister, Selene (the moon), fades and night rolls back like a curtain. Now let us look at this masterpiece by Guido Reni carefully that we may know how wonderful is the coming of day.

Aurora, in a filmy white robe, is dropping flowers in the path of Apollo (the sun) as he drives his dun-colored horses above the sleeping Earth. The Horæ (the hours), a gliding, dancing group of lovely beings, accompany the brilliant god. Each hour is clothed in garments of a special tint of the great light of day, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, and violet. The golden-hued Apollo sits supreme in his chariot of the sun.

The fresco--fresco means painted on fresh plaster--is on the ceiling of the Rospigliosi Palace, Rome. The painting is as brilliant in color to-day as it was when painted three hundred and fifty years ago.

Aurora, like most of the gods and goddesses, fell in love with a mortal. She asked Zeus to make her husband immortal but she forgot to ask that he should never grow old. And, fickle woman that she was! when he became gray and infirm, she deserted him and, to put a stop to his groans, she turned him into a grasshopper.

Her son, Memnon, was made king of the Ethiopians, and in the war of Troy he was overcome by Achilles. When Aurora, who was watching him from the sky, saw him fall she sent his brothers, the Winds, to take his body to the banks of a river in Asia Minor. In the evening the mother and the Hours and the Pleiades came to weep over her dead son. Poor Aurora! even to-day her tears are seen in the dewdrops on the grass at early dawn.

FIG. 5. THE AURORA. GUIDO RENI. ROSPIGLIOSI PALACE, ROME]

THE SINGING BOYS

FRANS HALS (1584?-1666)

These jolly singers are Dutch boys. They are singing on the street or in some back yard just as singers do to-day, though they lived nearly three hundred years ago.

Hals was such a rapid painter that he could make a picture while you wait. The story is told that one time young Van Dyck, the Flemish painter who painted "Baby Stuart," went to see Hals in Amsterdam when Hals was an old man. Van Dyck did not tell the old artist that he was Van Dyck but simply asked him to paint his portrait, knowing what a rapid painter Hals was. In an hour the picture was done. Van Dyck remarked, as he looked at the portrait:

"That seems easy; I believe I could do it."

Hals thought he would have some fun, so he told the young stranger that he would sit for him just one hour.

Van Dyck set his easel where Hals could not see him work and began to paint. At the end of an hour he said:

"Your picture is finished, sir."

Hals, ready to laugh at the daub, looked at the portrait and the laugh went out of his face. He then looked at Van Dyck, and cried out:

"You must be either Van Dyck or a wizard!"

You see, Hals had heard of Van Dyck and his rapid work, and knew that only a master painter could make the splendid portrait in an hour.

FIG. 6. SINGING BOYS. FRANS HALS. CASSEL GALLERY, GERMANY]

ST. BARBARA

JACOPO PALMA IL VECCHIO (1480?-1528)

St. Barbara, born A. D. 303, was a very beautiful girl. Her father, an eastern nobleman, loved her so much and was so afraid something might happen to her that he built a very wonderful tower for her home and shut her up in it. And in that tower she studied the stars. Night after night she looked at the heavenly bodies until she knew more about the sun and the moon and the stars than any of the learned men. But as she studied the shining bodies she decided that worshiping idols, made of wood and stone, as her father did, was wrong. Finally she learned about the Savior, and to show her faith in Christianity she had some workmen who were making repairs on her tower put in three windows. When her father came as usual to visit her, he asked in surprise what the three windows were for. She replied:

"Know, my father, that through three windows doth the soul receive light, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost: and the three are one."