DA UDINE, PARMEGIANO, DAVID SCOTT. 21

exercise of his pencil at once beguiled the tedium of his confinement, and indicated the character of his mind. GIOVANNI NANNI, better known as GIOVANNI DA UDINE (like many other Italian artists from the appellation of his birth-place) discovered an early disposition for the art, by designing the animals and birds pursued by his father in the chase.

PARMEGIANO distinguished himself at the age of fourteen by painting the Baptism of Christ in the church of the Annunciation at Parma. LANFRANCO, when but a year older than the last-named artist, painted a picture of the Virgin and several saints, which was thought worthy of being placed in the church of St. Agostino at Piacenza.

The anecdotes which have been preserved of the childish days of DAVID SCOTT foreshadow the future character of the artist; and the story of his making his way up to a young lady in a room full of company, laying his hands upon her knees, and exclaiming, "You are very beautiful;" of his fondness for ghost stories leading him to manufacture a goblin out of a bolster, a sheet, and a mask, and then of his screaming with terror at the object of his own fashioning; of his fitting up a recess in the bed-room as a picture-gallery, enclosing it by a curtain, and admitting the other children of the house to it on payment of a penny; and of the rude designs he made to illustrate the

supernatural portions of "Paradise Lost," "Macbeth," and other books which came within his reach, are not without their import and significance, when viewed in connection with the artist's subsequent

career.

GASPAR POUSSIN's future celebrity in art was predicted at a very early age; and similarly prophetic indications were given by COLONNA who produced at the age of sixteen a Marriage of the Virgin, so full of merit that his reputation was assured. It was at a still earlier age-for he was only ten-that GUERCINO painted a Virgin on the façade of his father's house.

MARTIN HEEMSKERCK's invincible propensity to art was shown after a somewhat amusing fashion. His father was a farmer in the village of the same name, and, discerning the bias of his son's mind, placed him with a painter who had the skill to discern, and the good sense to encourage, Master Martin's artistic leanings. Unfortunately, however, the boy's services were needed at home upon the farm, and so he was withdrawn from the studio of his instructor, and employed in labours for which he had little ability, and still less inclination. One day while returning from milking, with a bowl of milk upon his head, "his eyes were with his heart, and that was far away," and either by accident or design, the bowl came into contact with the branch of a tree, which shattered the vessel and dissipated

its contents. The disaster was witnessed by the boy's father, whose wrath it excited, and who would have inflicted condign punishment upon the offender had he not fled from the presence of the angry old gentleman. Young scapegrace conceived that the occurrence furnished him with a suitable pretext for running away from home. His mother covertly furnished him with a little money and a few other necessaries, and turning his back upon the paternal farm, he repaired the same evening to Delft, and shortly afterwards placed himself under the tutelage of Jean Lucas at Leyden, where he resumed the vocation for which nature had designed him.

The holiday hours of JEAN ANTOINE VAN DER LÉEPE were spent in watching the nimble fingers of a Beguine at Brussels, embroidering the delicate. point lace for which that city is so famous. The patterns which she executed with her needle, he delineated with his pencil, and the sports and comrades of his childhood were abandoned for this new source of amusement and delight. Such engravings as fell in his way were eagerly copied, and he displayed so much aptitude in the use of his pencil, that his instructors permitted him, by way of reward for his general attention to his ordinary studies, to indulge himself with the use of canvas and colours. natural taste, and a close application to this fascinating pursuit, caused him to make rapid progress; and when he returned to his father's home at Bruges,

His

he announced his unalterable determination of

becoming a painter.

It was at school, also, that JEAN VAN CLEEF displayed the faculties he possessed for design; neither menaces nor chastisements could deter him from covering his school-books with the scrawls which his fancy dictated; and the rector of the college, finding it hopeless to prolong the contest between the natural bent of the young student's mind and its aversion to the ordinary routine of learning, judiciously recommended the boy's father to withdraw him from school, and give free course to the fixed inclinations of his mind, which the father did.

CARLO MARATTA was a painter from his cradle. With the first gleam of intelligence, while yet a mere bambino in the arms of his nurse, his childish eyes were riveted on the pictures which adorned the churches, and he would disturb the devotions of those about him by pointing to the figures which thus absorbed his attention. As soon as he was a little older, he covered the walls of his father's house with sketches of the Virgin; and in default of colours, he had recourse, like Titian, to the juices of herbs and flowers. He copied every print of which he could obtain possession, and neglected his lessons at school in order that he might design the figures and incidents suggested by his vagrant fancy. Chance threw in his way a book full of elementary sketches,

GOLTZIUS, FLINCK.

25

which his half-brother, Barnabas (also a painter), had left in his mother's house. These the young Carlo copied from beginning to end, and sent them to his brother who was at Rome.

HENRY GOLTZIUS owed his rudimentary instruc tions to his father, who possessed some skill as a painter upon glass. When not more than seven or eight years old, the youthful artist was accustomed, we are told, to trace all sorts of figures on the walls of his father's house; and these juvenile designs are said to have displayed a surprising degree of ability.

GOVAERT FLINCK, the son of the treasurer of Cleves, was dedicated by his father to the pursuits of commerce, and was placed with a silk-mercer for the purpose of receiving the requisite training in that branch of trade; but nature had quite other ends in view when she sent young Flinck into the breathing world, and instead of mercantile entries, he filled his master's day-books and ledgers with sketches of men and animals. In the worthy mercer's eyes, this mischievous defacement of books sacred to the records of commerce, was little better than profanity; and he remonstrated with the elder Flinck, assuring him that his son was in a fair way of becoming a dauber instead of a merchant. The treasurer of Cleves was grievously afflicted by the news, for he appears to have regarded painter and vagabond as synonymous terms. Govaert received a severe lecture, and promised amendment. He was then confided

C