Page images
PDF
EPUB

CUEVAS, RENOU, LIPPI, ETC.

51

attained the age of thirty-three, at which period of her life, her sun went down.

EUGENIO DE LAS CUEVAS, the Spanish artist who instructed Philip the Fourth's son, Don Juan of Austria, in drawing, added to his own profession the accomplishments of poet and musician. ANTOINE RENOU, Court painter to Stanislaus, King of Poland, was also a poet and actor. LORENZO LIPPI'S fame rests equally on the productions of his pencil and on his poem of "Il Malmantile racquistato.”

Between Themis, the muses and the arts, FLATMAN must have acknowledged a divided duty, if any importance is to be attached to the epigram which Walpole quotes from Oldys: :

Should Flatman for his client strain the laws,
The painter gives some colour to the cause:
Should critics censure what the poet writ
The pleader quits him at the bar of wit.

ANNE KILLEGREW, who has been styled "a grace for beauty and a muse for wit," is celebrated by Dryden for her "excellence in the two sister arts of poesy and painting" in an excessively panegyrical ode:

Born to the spacious empire of the Nine

One would have thought she should have been content

To manage well that mighty government;

But what can young ambitious souls confine?

To the next realm she stretch'd her sway,

For Painture near adjoining lay,

A plenteous province and alluring prey.

GAINSBOROUGH was fonder of music than of the art

in which he excelled, and a characteristic story is told by Smith in his life of Nollekens, of Gainsborough's passionate attachment to sweet sounds. The biographer referred to, relates that he once found Colonel Hamilton playing so exquisitely to Gainsborough on the violin, that he exclaimed, "Go on, and I will give you the picture of the Boy at the Stile, which you have so often wished to purchase of me." The colonel proceeded, and the painter stood in speechless admiration, with the tears of rapture on his cheek. Hamilton then called a coach, and carried away the picture.

The versatility of THOMAS HEAPHY was such as to hinder him in the attainment of professional reputation. According to Mr. Stanley, he was equally expert at quarrying for stone, building a house, devising an improved axle, or laying down a railway.

ALLAN RAMSAY, the painter, was a good linguist and an accomplished scholar. "You will not find a man," said Dr. Johnson, who knew him well, "in whose conversation there is more instruction, more information, or more elegance, than in Ramsay's." The varied powers of OPIE's mind, may be inferred from the weighty expression made use of by Sir James Mackintosh, "If Mr. Opie had turned his attention to the study of philosophy," said he, "he would have been one of the first philosophers of the age." FUSELI, was a classical scholar and a linguist.

PETHER, GIORGIONE, PRIMATICCIO, ETC.

53

"I can speak Greek, Latin, French, English, German, Danish, Dutch, Icelandic, and Spanish," said he, "and so let my folly or my fury get vent through nine different avenues." ABRAHAM PETHER, of Chichester, was as eminent in music as in painting, and distinguished himself by his philosophical and mathematical researches.

GIORGIONE was an accomplished musician, and became so famous for playing on the lute and singing, that he was invited to all concerts and public music meetings.

The painters of eminence, who have also been respectable authors, are very numerous, while it is somewhat singular, as was recently remarked by Lord John Russell, that no great writer has achieved eminence as a painter.

PRIMATICCIO's pencil found a diversity of employment in supplying designs for the sculptor and the architect, for the furniture of mansions and for arches of triumph, for the jeweller and the balletmaster, for the construction of a fountain and the arrangement of a masked ball. PELEGRINO TIBALDI was a skilled architect and sculptor, and his plaster figures were so true to nature, that they are said to have served as models to Annibale Caracci. FRANCIS SOLIMENE acquired a high reputation among his contemporaries for the sonnets he composed. SEBASTIAN DEL PIOMBO excelled in music, and was master of several instruments. FILIPPO LAURI,

besides being well read in history and mythology, flirted with the Muse, and delighted his companions by the happy sallies of his wit. There was a similar charm in the conversation of FRANK FLORIS, who also "expressed his thoughts in numerous verse," and charmed his sitters by the varied range of his conversation, flowing from a mind stored with philosophy and an extensive knowledge of profane and sacred history.

ALONSO BERRUGUETE, for his genius in the three arts of painting, sculpture, and architecture, writes Mr. Stirling, may be called the Spanish Michael Angelo. LUCAS DI HEERE was a man of versatile genius, and the author of several poetical compositions, one of which-the Lives of the Flemish Painters-written in verse, has failed to reach posterity. FRANCISCO PACHECO, So well known for his Treatise on Painting, "planned, but did not live to finish, an Ecclesiastical History of Seville;" he likewise "composed occasional poems of great elegance, and delivered himself of several polemical tracts." The great RUBENS consecrated his hours of recreation to the belles lettres, and, as M. Descamps expresses it, he awoke and retired to rest with the Muses. It is related of him, that one day while at work upon a composition representing the combat between Turnus and Eneas, surrendering himself with enthusiasm to the genius loci, he recited aloud the passage:

DU FRESNOY.

Ille etiam patriis agmen ciet Ocnus ab oris,
Fatidica Mantus, et Tusci filius amnis,

Qui muros matrisque dedit tibi, Mantua, nomen;
Mantua dives avis; sed non genus omnibus unum ;
Gens illi triplex; populi sub gente quaterni,
Ipsa caput populis; Tusco de sanguine vires.

55

Rubens' recitation of the passage had been overheard by the Duke of Mantua, who entered the room smiling, and thinking to embarrass the painter, whose knowledge of Latin he probably conceived was confined to the recollection of a few passages from the poets, committed to memory at school, addressed him in that language, and was surprised to find the reply couched in terms worthy of the old Mantuan bard himself.

The author of the "Arte Graphica" divided his affections between painting and poetry, and dedicated twenty years to the composition of that elegant production :

How finish'd with illustrious toil appears

This small, well-polish'd gem, the work of years.

DU FRESNOY'S acquaintance with the poets of antiquity was also extensive, and in architecture, geometry, perspective, and anatomy he was likewise thoroughly at home, faithfully practising what he preached :

In geometrali priùs arte parumpèr adulti,

Signa antiqua super Graiorum addiscite formam ;
Nec mora, nec requies, noctuque dieque labori,
Illorum menti atque modo, vos donec agendi
Praxis ab assiduo faciles assueverit usu.

« PreviousContinue »