spirit finds full expression. As no other city was so steeped
in intense appreciation of beauty and in undisguised
licentiousness, so in no other painter is there such a complete
union of ravishing loveliness and frankest sensuousness as in
Titian, who painted his mistresses for Madonnas. It is, of
course, in colouring that he is pre-eminent. His forms
are perfect, but he is not interested in them. Colour fasci-
nates him. We shall have to speak of the brilliance of eaf ly
Flemish colouring, but the colouring of Titian, and in a less
degree of the whole Venetian school, surpasses that of all
others, no matter how bright and vivid and rich it may
be. The diflerence is more easily seen than defined ; but
it lies principally in the luminous quality of Venetian
work, appearing alike in the most delicate pearly tints,
and in those that are deepest and richest. * The Venetian
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SPANISH PAINTING 239
painters/ says Mr. Pater/ * seem to work with gold dust
or gold thread, spinning its fine filaments through the
solemn human flesh away into the white plastered walls
of the thatched huts/
Section II. — In Spain
It was the grand manner of Titian, so stately and yet
so warm, which most strongly influenced the development
Influenced ^^ painting in Spain. We can well understand
by Titian tj^ai; the glow and passion of Venice were more
in harmony with the temper of the Spaniards than was the
colder, more practical intelligence of Florence. Painting in
Spain was not fully developed until the Renaissance was
at its full height. For a short time it flourished with a
luxuriant brilliant growth, while the nation that produced
it was already falling into decay. There is very little
Spanish painting that is earlier than the close of the
fifteenth century. In the distracted times that preceded
the conquest of Granada in 1492 there was not the leisure
nor the refined atmosphere necessary for the development
of fine art. True, early in the fifteenth century Stamino
and Dello had come firom Florence and had painted for the
King ; the great Jan van Eyck had travelled in Portugal,
leaving pupils there to spread the new method through the
Peninsula ; while our old friend the Marquis of Santillana
had caused portraits of himself and his wife to be painted
by some wandering English artist. But it was not until
the time of Ferdinand and Isabella, and the establishment
of a central Court, that a really national school began to be
* History of the Benmsscmoe, p. 169.
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240 THE RENAISSANCE
formed. From the time of Rincon, Court painter to tliis
King and Queen, art advanced with rapid strides, much
Eincon influenced by new ideas and methods brought
c. 1446-1500 froni the studios of the Italian masters by travel-
ling students, until it culminated, in the seventeenth
century, in Velasquez and Murillo.
Art in Spain, like literature, had to reckon with the
Catholic reaction. Never, in the time of its greatest splen-
Reiigious ^^^^ and vigour, was it able to free itself from
of Spardsh ^^^ service of the Church ; never able, like art in
art other lands, to wander at will over the broad
fields of classic story and every-day life. The office of
Inspector of Sacred Pictures for the Inquisition was no
sinecure. Its rules were strict and minute ; the painter
who transgressed them, putting four nails where there
should have been three, or exhibiting more of the nude figure
than was absolutely necessary, might look for the painting
out of the ofiending portion as his smallest punishment.
Gloomy, Spanish art could not fail to be under such cir-
cumstances ; but the repression gives it a depth and inten-
sity, a restrained glow, which now and then breaks out into
almost lurid splendour. We must remember, in estimating
the benumbing influence of the Inquisition, that while it
created an atmosphere in which Michael Angelo could not
have breathed, it was not foreign to the intensely religious
spirit of the Spaniards themselves; that they admired
and supported it while they shuddered at it ; and that they
were able to advance as far as they pleased, within the
limitations they had voluntarily imposed upon themselves.
The painting produced under these conditions is
marked, then, first by a passion of religious fervour, best
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SPANISH PAINtING 241
illustrated perhaps in the pictures of Morales, called M
Divino by his countrymen. This painter, like Fra
Morales, Angelico, remained untouched by all the world-
1509-1600 liness of the Renaissance, and, maintaining the
mediaeval consciousness of the unseen and its mystic piety,
painted reverently, often on his knees and after devout
reception of the Blessed Sacrament, pictures which have a
gleam of the Divine essence, which his more brilliant
brothers missed. But while the monk of Fiesole loved to
paint joyous angels radiant in the light of God's presence,
it was divine sorrow that appealed to Morales, the haunting
silent agony of the bereaved Mother, the noble pathos of
the Son of Man, done to death, but still God.
Meanwhile that susceptibility to the beauty of the
external world, which the Spaniards fully shared with the
other nations at this time, was driven to find its expression
Zurbaran ^^ colour. Zurbaran, who would, one thinks, have
1598-1662 \)QQjx at home depicting the gleaming limbs and
flying draperies of the goddesses of Hellas, contents himself
with the white robes of Carthusian monks ; but in his
masterpiece, the Triumph of St, Thomas Aquinas, is fully
shown his love of more rich and sumptuous colouring.
Zurbaran delighted in those sharp contrasts of light and
shade which the Spaniards had learned from Oaravaggio.
This was a Neapolitan painter who, in the decadence of
Italian art, startled the world by a new style — a style
marked by bold powerful modelling, by strong lights and
heavy shadows, and by an imitation of Nature
Naturaiis- that is brutal in its realism. With all its faults,
ic c oo j^^ ^^yj^ became immensely popular, and exer-
cised no good influence upon Spanish and French painting,
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242 THE RENAISSANCE
producing everywhere schools of Naturalisti. A man of
much the same type as Caravaggio was Bibera, called Lo
Ribera, SpognolettOf one of those restless, lawless spirits
168^-1666 in whom, as in Cellini, the very spirit of revolt
seems incarnate. The fatal narrowness of Spanish painting
is shown in the work of this artist, who could find no better
scope for his great knowledge of anatomy and his keen
observation than in depicting the agonies of martyrs in
the most repulsive form. At the same time his Deposition
Jrom the Cross shows of what sublimity he was capable
had his choice of subject been freer.
Another characteristic of the Spanish School is its
predilection for portrait painting — perhaps because it was
Portrait *^® ^^^^ foTm of secular painting that was safe
painting from ecclesiastical censure. It was in this
direction that Velasquez became pre-eminent, for even he,
Velasquez, ^^^ ^^^ artist of Spain who had the courage to
1599-1660 l^reak away from ecclesiastical tradition and to
paint boldly whatsoever he would, was not drawn into the
seductive paths of Paganism, but contented himself with
portraiture. This no doubt was partly due to the fact
that studying from the nude was unheard of in Spain, a
fact which also accounts for the absence of delicacy and
tenderness in the work of Velasquez. He was a painter of
men rather than of women. On his canvases, sombre and
yet rich, like all that is truly Spanish, they live and breathe
in the vigour of their glowing Southern beauty, or, if
Nature has been less kind than Fortune, in the splendour of
magnificent robes, of gold and jewels. All his subjects,
from the King to the water-carrier in the street, are treated
in the same easy^ spirited, unconventional manner. He
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SPANISH PAINTING 248
felt, too, and waa ailmost the first Spanish painter to depict,
the charm of the sunset sky and of bosky foliage. Bat in
the main it was humanity that attracted him ; humanity as
it is, unidealised, but seen in a kindly tolerant spirit.
This was the golden age of Spanish culture. While
his kingdom was fast crumbling to pieces for want of a
strongcontrolling hand the young King, Philip IV., devoted
all the energy he possessed to the encouragement of art
and literature. He loved magnificence and pageantry,
and Lope de Vega found in him an ever-appreciative
patron. Poets and other literary men were ever welcome
at his Court. Not only had he a real appreciation of
excellence in art, but he himself dabbled in painting. He
heaped honours upon Velasquez, who did much to foster
painting among his countrymen, stretching out a helping
hand to brother-artists less fortunate than himself, and
assisting his royal master in the collection of treasures
of art fi'om Italy to serve as models and incentives to
native painting. When he travelled to Rome on this
mission he was received everywhere with the honour due
to a great master. In Italy he studied the works of
Raphael and Michael Angelo, and would spend hours
before the great Venetian masters : yet he never relinquished
his own strong Spanish individuality.
The Escurial, the triumph of Renaissance architecture
in Spain, was becoming, under the fostering care of art-
loving monarchs, an unrivalled school for the artist. It
contained — besides many pictures by the early Spanish
masters of the pietistic type which was preferred by the
monkish King, Philip 11. — the splendid series of paintings
sent by Titian at the invitation of Charles V., which
b2
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244 THE RENAISSANCE
formed the style of generations of Spanish artists ; a few
works of Rubens, and much of the best work of Velasquez,
besides the Italian pictures and statues which he had
helped to choose. Thus, when in 1642 the young student
MurUio Murillo, too poor to go to Italy, came to Madrid
1618-1682 j-Q g^gjj advice from the kindly Court painter, he
found that there was no need to travel further than the
Escurial in search of great examples. Murillo became
one of the most popular of religious painters, a position
for which he had every qualification. Far less unconven-
tional than Velasquez, he does not by any originality of
motive or treatment in his pictures soar above the com-
prehension of the average observer. At the same time they
are inspired by genuine religious sentiment, are true to
Nature, rich in colouring, which grew mellower and softer
as the painter advanced in years, and faultless in execution.
He became known as the * painter of the Conception,'
so often did he represent the Virgin * in glory,' feeling,
like his great example Titian, the peculiar capability
of the subject for dramatic and majestic representation.
In his secular pictures, principally studies of beggars
and children, he is attracted by the shady side of life, and
does not shrink from being unnecessarily repulsive. He
was an enthusiast for his art, and to encourage it he
established a public academy. But after his death, in 1682,
Spanish painting shared in the general decay into which
the whole nation was sinking.
In Portugal, during its brief period of glory, before it
fell into the grasp of Spain, there had been a short but
very brilliant era of painting. Lisbon, like Antwerp and
like Venice, was a rich prosperous port, full of wealthy
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FRENCH PAINTING 246
citizens and visitors from all parts of the world. As the
leader in the van of discovery, Portugal reaped the benefit
of all that medley of strange new ideas which
inPortu- poured in from the New World to stir and
inflame men's imaginations. And during the
first years of the fifteenth century all this rich confusion
was reflected in a vigorous and fervent outburst of painting,
followed, alas ! by centuries of decline.
Section III. — In France.
The difference in the style of architecture north of the
Alps was naturally accompanied by a difference in the
style of its handmaid, painting. In sunny Italy window-
openings are small, and there are large intervening wall-
spaces to be decorated with fresco paintings; in the
darker North larger windows are necessary, and the wall-
spaces become comparatively insignificant. And so it
was in glass painting that the art of mediaeval France
found its highest development. In the rich windows of
Chartres or La Sainte Chapelle we may see how well these
old painters understood colour, both how to obtain the
deepest, purest tints, and how to combine them in a scheme
of jewelled brilliance ; we may see, too, how they were
feeling their way to a freer and bolder style of drawing.
But in the fifteenth century glass painting had begun to
decline, and for the first signs of modem art we must
TheiUu- ^^^^ ^0°^ ^^ ^ *^® ^"^ of illumination. The
minators iUuminators of Paris were famous in Dante's
time, and they were closely rivalled by those of Touraine.
While Paris art owed much to Flemish influence,
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246 THE RENAISSANCE
adopting the brilliant colouring of the Flemish illuminators
without their hardness, the artists of Tours were brought
into contact with the Italians, from whom they leamt a
scientific and refined style while retaining their own
lightness of touch and their realistic treatment.
In the illuminations of Jean Fouquet, painter to the
King when the Court was yet at Tours, we find all the
Fouquet, characteristics of an adult style : a knowledge of
1415-1486 perspective, of the laws of composition, skilful
delineation of the human form, and an original and beauti-
ful scheme of colouring, remarkable for its soft and silvery
yet vivid radiance. Among the works ascribed to Fouquet
are the miniatures illustrating two translations of Livy^
one of Josephus, an original Livyy a Virgil^ and a
Boccaccio, in all of which the painter, who had travelled
in Italy, shows a true appreciation of the classic spirit, if
his knowledge of antique Roman detail was but slight. It
may have been fi'om Flemish painters he leamt his skill
in the rendering of textures. It was of course from them
that he learned the new art of painting in oils, if, indeed,
he was the author of the oil paintings that are attributed
to him : the Virgin and Child, and a portrait of Etienne
Chevalier, But, whatever he knew of Flemish or Italian
art, Fouquet remains as truly French in spirit as are the
landscapes that form his backgrounds, and it was a truly
national tradition that he handed on to his successors.
The development of the miniature from a mere decoration
into a realistic representation of life was carried on by
Jean Perr6al, 'painter and varlet' to Charles
, ®" VIII. and Louis XII. Perr^al well illustrates
the ambiguous position still held by a painter at this
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FRENCH PAINTING 247
period, for it was the business of the artist, whose only
extant oil painting represents the espousals of Charles
and his bride Anne of Brittany, to superintend the
trousseau of the King's second wife, Mary Tudor, and a
few months later the faneral of Charles, as well as all the
more imposing Court functions and pageants. Perr6al
felt the influence of the impulse to art which was the
result of Charles VIII/s Italian expedition, when the
French soldiers came back ' with the wonders of the South
on their lips and her treasures in their hands. They
brought with them books and paintings, they brought
with them armour inlaid with gold and silver, tapestries
enriched with precious metals, embroidered clothing and
even household furniture. Distributed by many hands in
many different places, each precious thing became a separate
centre of initiative power.' ^
From this time French art fell more and more under
Italian influence. Francis, who in his enthusiasm would
Influence ^^y& liked to make his country more Italian than
of Italy Italy herself, delighted to welcome the great
masters of the South to his Court. Among those so honoured
were Lionardo da Vinci, Andrea del Sarto, and Cellini,
with the architects Rosso and Primaticcio. Under their
influence Fontainebleau, where they painted and collected
pictures, became a centre whence the seductive power of
the Italian Naturalistic school exercised a powerful sway
over French students. The French painting of the
Renaissance has the same ' preciousness,' the same fine
foreign flavour, that we have noticed in the sculpture and
^ Mrs. Mark Pattison, Berudeaance of Art m Fra/nce, vol. i.
p. 8.
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248 THE RENAISSANCE
in the poetry of the time. It is not meant to appeal to
the people, but to be the treasure of the refined and cultured ;
of those who can feel the charm of style, and are flattered
by a classical allusion. It is difficult to estimate the
extent to which the young French art retained its indi-
viduality, owing to the fact that the ravages of time and
the more cruel storms of revolution have spared to us
very little French painting of the sixteenth century.
Changes of taste and fashion, too, in a land where those
arbitrary powers rule supreme, have sent many a canvas to
rot in a damp cellar, and caused many a fading fresco to be
painted out. Of the pictures that remain, the great
majority are portraits. This is perhaps partly due to
family pride and a reverence for ancestral dignity ; but it
is also due to the fact that, in the French as in the
Spanish Renaissance, the collection of portraits became an
absorbing fashion. It was in these portraits that the
traditions of French art were kept safe amid the rush of
Italian influence. They are scattered among the palaces
of France, Chenonceau and Azay le Rideau possessing
many specimens. Most of them are attributed to the
The Clouet School. There were three painters of the
ciouets Clouet family : Jean, who was in the service of
the Duke of Burgundy; his son, sometimes called Jean
Jean Glouet IL ; and his grandson Francois, who was
Clouet n., often called by the familiar name of JaneL
1485-1646 ^ ^ . . , . ,
There are no extant pamtmgs which can with
certainty be attributed to the first Jean, while those of the
second are hardly to be distinguished from many others of
the ilcole des Ciouets, But the pictures of Franpois rank
in the first order of portraiture. The chief characteristics
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FRENCH PAINTING 249
of the Hcole des Glouets are naiveUj the precision with
which detail is rendered, and the French purity and
delicacy of the colouring, the heads standing out against
a clear blue-green background. The way in which the
flesh tints are modelled shows that these painters had but
an imperfect mastery of the new medium. The colour
has been first laid on in one flat hard sheet, and on this,
when it was quite dry, the lights and shadows were
hatched with a full brush of diluted colour — a system
which has proved disastrous in its results, as the process
of restoration has in many cases entirely removed the
upper film, leaving only the cold hard under-tint.
Fran ois ^ftii9ois lived in the full light of the French
ciouet, Renaissance. He was the friend of Bonsard,
who addressed more than one poem to him as
Janet He loved to paint the sumptuous dress of the
day, the shimmering silks, the puffed and slashed sleeves,
the gold embroideries and jewels ; but his portraits have a
higher charm than mere magnificence. The angularity
of his predecessors has disappeared, and we find the skill
of a master who knows as well how to interpret the
fearless spirit of childhood as the weariness of a monarch
for whom sovereignty has no longer any illusions. The
steady advance made by the successive generations of the
Glouets is well illustrated by the fact that more pictures
than one which certainly belong to the school of Jean
Ciouet II., if they are not from his own hand, have been
attributed to Holbein, while an undoubted painting of
Franfois was long credited with being the work of Lio-
nardo da Vinci. Fran9ois was, however, no slavish imitator
of Italian art. He only yielded to its seductions long
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260 THE RENAISSANCE
enough to gain greater refinement, strength, and insight,
before he developed his own genuinely national and
individual manner.
Another painter who upheld the traditions of the
art of his own country was Jean Cousin, a versatile genius
Cousin, ^ho, besides being the last of the great generation
1601-1689 Qf glass painters, practised oil painting and
sculpture. In all his work is shown the excellent taste
which distinguishes the best French school. He was able
to share in the bright fanciful grace of the French Renais-
sance, without being led into any of its extravagances.
The sixteenth century closed for France amid scenes
of civil war and religious strife. The atmosphere was no
longer favourable to art. The students went away to
Italy, and the young native school — which, under the
painters we have mentioned, aided by the sculptors Columbe
and Goujon, had made a fair beginning — ^languished
and almost disappeared. When French painting revived
again with Vouet and Valentin, it had become thoroughly
Italianate and ' Naturalistic; ' and Italian it remained until,
in the reign of Louis XIV., it culminated in the grand
classic style of France's greatest painter, Poussin.
Section IV. — In Flandebs
It would have been well for French painting if, instead
of yielding so easily to the seductions of Italy, it had
admitted more freely the sturdy Flemish independence
which showed itself in the Clouets. Painting in Flanders
was of ancient fame, and doubtless owed something to
the long political connection between that country and
Byzantium, the cradle of mediasval art. The early
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FLEMISH PAINTING 261
Flemish illuminators were widely known for their skill
and the brilliance of their colouring ; they, like the French,
were feeling their way to a more lifelike representation of
Nature. The Renaissance in the fifteenth century was a
National purely spontaneous movement, due to national
of FLenSsh vigour unaided by Italian influence. In the days
painting q£ ^Jj^ Hauseatic League the Flemish towns of
Ghent and Bruges were second to none in Europe. It
was at Bruges that the powerful Dukes of Burgundy
held their Court ; and the rich Flemish merchants were not
behind the Florentine citizens in their willingness to pour
out their wealth in civic shows and pageants and all the
pomp of mediaeval life, as well as in the encouragement of
every art. They were a refined and cultured people in their
way ; their government was stable and enlightened ; their
artizans were an intellectual, well-trained class of men ;
their immense commercial activity kept them in touch
with all the centres of culture in Italy, France, and Spain,
as well as with the imagination-kindling riches of Asia
and Africa. In fact, all the conditions necessary to art
were to be found here, no less than at Venice, and it was
from these prosperous citizens, by no aid from prince or
Church, that the young, strong art sprang into existence.
As we advance northward from Italy we find, with less
ideal beauty, a greater practical command of the materials
and methods of painting. The painter whose lot is cast
in a cold foggy climate cannot dash out his conceptions
upon the wet fresco, which, more than any other material,
encourages breadth and freedom of touch and freshness of
inspiration. He knows that in a few years such pictures
would be mildewed and blistered, and he is obliged to
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263 THE RENAISSANCE
seek for media that will enable his work to stand the test
of time and damp, even though he has to sacrifice much of
the spontaneity of fresco. The difficulty he meets with
rouses all his energies, and he becomes a chemist,
thoroughly acquainted with the properties of oils and
the composition of pigments ; he spends hours among his
crucibles, boiling, grinding, preparing, before he begins to
paint. It was to this practical knowledge, and to the
extreme carefulness of their work, that the painters of
Flanders owed their mastery over colour. But they
^. learnt more than that. They learnt the secret of
Discovery ^ •'^
of an oil the proccss which revolutionised art, and made
medium , tt i /• i i i • •
it possible for the people to have pictures in
their homes as well as on the walls of their churches.
Painting in oils was not unknown before the days of
the Van Eycks. From the earliest times siccative (or