Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art Part 13

Palomino was one day in company with Carreno at the house of Don Pedro de Arce, when a discussion arose about the merits of a certain copy of t.i.tian's St. Margaret, which hung in the room After all present had voted it execrable, Carreno quietly remarked, "It at least has the merit of showing that no man need despair of improving in art, for I painted it myself when I was a beginner."

CARRENO'S ABSTRACTION OF MIND.

Being at his easel one morning with two friends, one of them, for a jest, drank the cup of chocolate which stood untasted by his side. The maid-servant removing the cup, Carreno remonstrated, saying that he had not breakfasted, and on being shown that the contents were gone, appealed to the visitors. Being gravely a.s.sured by them that he had actually emptied the cup with his own lips, he replied, like Newton, "Well really, I was so busy that I had entirely forgotten it."

ANECDOTE OF CESPEDES' LAST SUPPER.

The Cathedral of Cordova still possesses his famous Supper, but in so faded and ruinous a condition that it is impossible to judge fairly of its merits. Palomino extols the dignity and beauty of the Saviour's head, and the masterly discrimination of character displayed in those of the apostles. Of the jars and vases standing in the foreground, it is related that while the picture was on the easel, these accessories attracted, by their exquisite finish, the attention of some visitors, to the exclusion of the higher parts of the composition, to the great disgust of the artist. "Andres!" cried he, somewhat testily, to his servant, "rub out these things, since after all my care and study, and amongst so many heads, figures, hands, and expressions, people choose to see nothing but these impertinences;" and much persuasion and entreaty were needed to save the devoted pipkins from destruction.

ZUCCARO'S COMPLIMENT TO CESPEDES.

The reputation which the Spanish painter Cespedes enjoyed among his cotemporaries, is proved by an anecdote of Federigo Zuccaro. On being requested to paint a picture of St. Margaret for the Cathedral of Cordova, he for some time refused to comply, asking, "Where is Cespedes, that you send to Italy for pictures?"

DONA BARBARA MARIA DE HUEVA.

Dona Barbara Maria de Hueva was born at Madrid in 1733. Before she had reached her twentieth year, according to Bermudez, she had acquired so much skill in painting, that at the first meeting of the Academy of St.

Ferdinand in 1752, on the exhibition of some of her sketches, she was immediately elected an honorary academician, and received the first diploma issued under the royal charter. "This proud distinction," said the president, "is conferred in the hope that the fair artist may be encouraged to rival the fame of those ladies already ill.u.s.trious in art." How far this hope was realized, Bermudez has omitted to inform us.

THE MIRACULOUS PICTURE OF THE VIRGIN.

The eminent American sculptor Greenough, who has recently (1853) departed this life, wrote several years ago a very interesting account of a wonderful picture at Florence, from which the following is extracted:

"When you enter the church of Santissima Annunziata, at Florence, your attention is drawn at once to a sort of miniature temple on the left hand. It is of white marble; but the glare and flash of crimson hangings and silver lamps scarcely allow your eye the quiet necessary to appreciate either form or material. A picture hangs there. It is the _Miraculous Annunciation_. The artist who was employed to paint it, had finished all except the head of the Virgin Mary, and fell asleep before the easel while the work was in that condition. On awakening, he beheld the picture finished; and the short time which had elapsed, and his own position relative to the canvas, made it clear (so says the tradition) that a divine hand had completed a task which, to say the least, a mortal could only attempt with despair.

"Less than this has made many pictures in Italy the objects of attentions which our Puritan fathers condemned as idolatrous. The miraculous 'Annunziata' became, accordingly, the divinity of a splendid shrine. The fame of her interposition spread far and wide, and her tabernacle was filled with the costly offerings of the devout, the showy tributes of the zealous. The prince gave of his abundance, nor was the widow's mite refused; and to this day the reputation of this shrine stands untouched among all papal devotees.

"The Santissima Annunziata is always veiled, unless her interposition is urgently demanded by the apprehension of famine, plague, cholera, or some other public calamity. During my own residence at Florence, I have never known the miraculous picture to be uncovered during a drought, without the desired result immediately following. In cases of long continued rains, its intervention has been equally happy. I have heard several persons, rather inclined to skepticism as to the miraculous qualities of the picture, hint that the _barometer_ was consulted on these occasions; else, say they, why was not the picture uncovered before the mischief had gone so far? What an idea is suggested by the bare hint!

"I stood on the pavement of the church, with an old man who had himself been educated as a priest. He had a talent for drawing, and became a painter. As a practical painter, he was mediocre; but he was learned in everything relating to art. He gradually sank from history to portrait, from portrait to miniature, from miniature to restoration; and had the grim satisfaction, in his old age, of mending what in his best days he never could make--good pictures. When I knew him, he was one of the conservators of the Royal Gallery. He led me before the shrine, and whispered, with much veneration, the story I have related of its origin.

When I had gazed long at the picture, I turned to speak to him, but he had left the church. As I walked through the vestibule, however, I saw him standing near one of the pillars that adorn the facade. He was evidently waiting for me. Me-thinks I see him now, with his face of seventy and his dress of twenty-five, his bright black wig, his velvet waistcoat, and glittering gold chain--his snuff-box in his hand, and a latent twinkle in his black eyes. 'What is really remarkable in that miraculous picture,' said he, taking me by the b.u.t.ton, and forcing me to bend till his mouth and my ear were exactly on a line--'What is really remarkable about it is, that the angel who painted that Virgin, so completely adopted the style of that epoch! Same angular, incorrect outline! Same opaque shadows! eh? eh?' He took a pinch, and wis.h.i.+ng me a good appet.i.te, turned up the Via S. Sebastiano."

THE CHAIR OF ST. PETER.

"La Festra di Cattreda, or commemoration of the placing of the chair of St. Peter, on the 18th of January, is one of the most striking ceremonies, at Rome, which follow Christmas and precede the holy week.

At the extremity of the great nave of St. Peter's, behind the high altar, and mounted upon a tribune designed or ornamented by Michael Angelo, stands a sort of throne, composed of precious materials, and supported by four gigantic figures. A glory of seraphim, with groups of angels, shed a brilliant light upon its splendors. This throne enshrines the real, plain, worm-eaten wooden chair, on which St. Peter, the prince of the apostles, is said to have pontificated; more precious than all the bronze, gold, and gems with which it is hidden, not only from impious, but holy eyes, and which once only, in the flight of ages, was profaned by mortal inspection.

"The sacrilegious curiosity of the French, however, broke through all obstacles to their seeing the chair of St. Peter. They actually removed its superb casket, and discovered the relic. Upon its mouldering and dusty surface were traced carvings, which bore the appearance of letters. The chair was quickly brought into a better light, the dust and cobwebs removed, and the inscription (for an inscription it was), faithfully copied. The writing is in Arabic characters, and is the well known confession of Mahometan faith--'There is but one G.o.d, and Mahomet is his prophet.' It is supposed that this chair had been, among the spoils of the Crusaders, offered to the church at a time when a taste for antiquarian lore, and the deciphering of inscriptions, were not yet in fas.h.i.+on. The story has been since hushed up, the chair replaced, and none but the unhallowed remember the fact, and none but the audacious repeat it. Yet such there are, even at Rome!"--_Ireland's Anecdotes of Napoleon._

THE SAGRO CATINO, OR EMERALD DISH.

"The church of St. Lorenzo, at Genoa, is celebrated for containing a most sacred relic, the 'Sagro Catino,' a dish of one entire and perfect _emerald_, said to be that on which our Saviour ate his last supper.

Such a dish in the house of a Jewish publican was a miracle in itself.

Mr. Eustace says, he looked for this dish, but found that the French, 'whose delight is brutal violence, as it is that of the lion or the tiger,' had carried it away. And so indeed they did. But that was nothing. The carrying off relics--the robbing of Peter to pay Paul, and spoliating one church to enrich another--was an old trick of legitimate conquerors in all ages; for this very '_dish_' had been carried away by the royal crusaders, when they took _Cesarea_ in Palestine, under _Guillaume Embriaco_, in the twelfth century. In the division of spoils, this emerald fell to the share of the _Genoese Crusaders_, into whose holy vocation some of their old trading propensities evidently entered; and they deemed the vulgar value, the profane price, of this treasure, so high, that on an emergency, they pledged it for nine thousand five hundred livres. Redeemed and replaced, it was guarded by the _knights of honor_ called _Clavigeri_; and only escaped once a year! Millions knelt before it, and the penalty on the bold but zealous hand that touched it with a diamond, was a thousand golden ducats."

The French seized this relic, as the crusaders had done in the twelfth century; but instead of conveying it from the church of San Lorenzo to the abbey of St. Denis (_selon les regles_), they most sacrilegiously sent it to a _laboratory_. Instead of submitting it, with a traditional story, to a _council of Trent_, they handed it over to the _inst.i.tute of Paris_; and chemists, geologists, and philosophers, were called on to decide the fate of that relic which bishops, priests and deacons had p.r.o.nounced to be too sacred for human investigation, or even for human touch. _The result of the scientific investigation was, that the emerald dish was a piece of green gla.s.s!_

When England made the King of Sardinia a present of the dukedom of one of the oldest republics in Europe, and rest.i.tutions were making "_de part et d'autre_;" _Victor Emmanuel_ insisted upon having his emerald dish; not for the purpose of putting it in a cabinet of curiosities, as they had done at Paris, to serve as a curious monument of the remote epoch in which the art of making colored gla.s.s was known--(of its great antiquity there is no doubt)--but of restoring it to its shrine at San Lorenzo--to its guard of knights servitors--to the homage, offerings, and bigotry of the people! with a republished a.s.surance that this is the invaluable _emerald dish_, the '_Sagro Catino_,' which _Queen Sheba_ offered, with other gems, to King Solomon (who deposited it, where all gems should be, in his church), and which afterwards was reserved for a higher destiny than even that a.s.signed to it in the gorgeous temple of Jerusalem. The story of the a.n.a.lysis by the inst.i.tute of Paris is hushed up, and those who would revive it would be branded with the odium of blasphemy and sedition; none now remember such things, but those who are the determined enemies of social order, or as the Genoese Royal Journal would call them, '_the radicals of the age_.'--_Italy, by Lady Morning_.

"THE PAINTER OF FLORENCE."

There is an old painting in the church of the Holy Virgin at Florence, representing the Virgin with the infant Jesus in her arms, trampling the dragon under her feet, about which is the following curious legend, thus humorously described by Southey, in the Annals of the Fine Arts:

There once was a Painter in Catholic days, Like Job who eschewed all evil, Still on his Madonnas the curious may gaze With applause and amazement; but chiefly his praise And delight was in painting the devil.

They were angels compared to the devils he drew, Who besieged poor St. Anthony's cell, Such burning hot eyes, such a _d----mnable_ hue, You could even smell brimstone, their breath was so blue He painted his devils so well.

And now had the artist a picture begun, 'Twas over the Virgin's church door; She stood on the dragon embracing her son, Many devils already the artist had done, But this must outdo all before.

The old dragon's imps as they fled through the air, At seeing it paused on the wing, For he had a likeness so just to a hair, That they came as Apollyon himself had been there, To pay their respects to their king.

Every child on beholding it, s.h.i.+vered with dread, And screamed, as he turned away quick; Not an old woman saw it, but raising her head, Dropp'd a bead, made a cross on her wrinkles, and said, "G.o.d help me from ugly old Nick!"

What the Painter so earnestly thought on by day, He sometimes would dream of by night; But once he was started as sleeping he lay, 'Twas no fancy, no dream--he could plainly survey That the devil himself was in sight.

"You rascally dauber," old Beelzebub cries, "Take heed how you wrong me, again!