He paints, too, the Adoration of the
Magi, because it gives such a good opportunity to deal with camels,
jewels, turbans, and all the trappings of Oriental royalty. The Virgin
and Child are a small part of the affair. I like Paul because he is so
innocently unconscious of any thing _deep_ to be expressed; so
honestly intent on clothes, jewels, and colors. He is a magnificent
master of ceremonies, and ought to have been kept by some king
desirous of going down to posterity, to celebrate his royal praise and
glory.
Another room is devoted to the works of Guido. One or two of the Ecce
Homo are much admired. To me they are, as compared with my conceptions
of Jesus, more than inadequate. It seems to me that, if Jesus Christ
should come again on earth, and walk through a gallery of paintings,
and see the representations of sacred subjects, he would say again, as
he did of old in the temple, "Take these things hence!"
How could men who bowed down before art as an idol, and worshipped it
as an ultimate end, and thus sensualized it, represent these holy
mysteries, into which angels desired to look?
There are many representations of Christ here, set forth in the guide
book as full of grace and majesty, which, any soul who has ever felt
his infinite beauty would reject as a libel. And as to the Virgin
Mother, one's eye becomes wearied in following the countless catalogue
of the effeminate inane representations.
There is more pathos and beauty in those few words of the Scripture,
"Now there stood by the cross of Jesus his mother," than in all these
galleries put together. The soul that has learned to know her from the
Bible, loving without idolizing, hoping for blest communion with her
beyond the veil, seeking to imitate only the devotion which stood by
the cross in the deepest hour of desertion, cannot be satisfied with
these insipidities.
Only once or twice have I seen any thing like an approach towards the
representations of the _scriptural_ idea. One is this painting by
Raphael. Another is by him, and is called Madonna Maison d'Alba: of
this I have seen only a copy; it might have been painted on the words,
"Now Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart." The
figure is that of a young Jewess, between girl and womanhood, in whose
air and eye are expressed at once the princess of the house of David,
the poetess, and the thoughtful sequestered maiden. She is sitting on
the ground, the book of the prophets in one hand, lying listless at
her side; the other hand is placed beneath the chin of her infant son,
who looks inquiringly into her face. She does not see him - her eye has
a sorrowful, far-darting look, as if beyond this flowery childhood she
saw the dim image of a cross and a sepulchre. This was Mary, I have
often thought that, in the reaction from the idolatry of Romanism, we
Protestants were in danger of forgetting the treasures of religious
sweetness, which the Bible has given us in her brief history.
It seems to me the time demands the forming of a new school of art
based upon Protestant principles. For whatever vigor and originality
there might once be in art, based on Romanism, it has certainly been
worn threadbare by repetition.
Apropos to this. During the time I was in Paris, I formed the
acquaintance of Schoeffer, whose _Christus Consolator_ and
Remumrator and other works, have made him known in America. I went
with a lady who has for many years been an intimate friend, and whose
head has been introduced into several of his paintings. On the way she
gave me some interesting particulars of him and his family. His mother
was an artist - a woman of singularly ethereal and religious character.
There are three brothers devoted to art; of these Ary is the one best
known in America, and the most distinguished. For some time, while
they were studying, they were obliged to be separated, and the mother,
to keep up the sympathy between them, used to copy the design of the
one with whom she resided for the other two. A singular strength of
attachment unites the family.
We found Schoeffer in retired lodgings in the outskirts of Paris, and
were presented to his very pretty and agreeable English wife. In his
studio we saw a picture of his mother, a most lovely and delicate
woman, dressed in white, like one of the saints in the Revelation.
Then we saw his celebrated picture, Francisca Rimini, representing a
cloudy, dark, infernal region, in which two hapless lovers are whirled
round and round in mazes of never-ending wrath and anguish. _His_
face is hid from view; his attitude expresses the extreme of despair.
But she clinging to his bosom - what words can tell the depths of love,
of an anguish, and of endurance unconquerable, written in her pale
sweet face! The picture smote to my heart like a dagger thrust; I felt
its mournful, exquisite beauty as a libel on my Father in heaven.
No. It is _not_ God who eternally pursues undying, patient love
with storms of vindictive wrath. Alas! well said Jesus, "O righteous
Father, the world hath not known thee." The day will come when it will
appear that in earth's history the sorrowing, invincible tenderness
has been all on his part and that the strange word, _long-suffering_,
means just what it says.
Nevertheless, the power and pathos of this picture cannot be too much
praised. The coloring is beautiful, and though it pained me so much, I
felt that it was one of the most striking works of art I had seen.
