While the national sobriety and self-respect made them revolt from coarse revelries in the style of Teniers, the want of middling easy classes prevented any demand for the genteel comedy of Terburgs or domesticity of Gerard Dows. Where a people live out-of-doors, and furniture is a nuisance, to adorn their house is not a necessity and a delight, as in less favoured climates. Again, Spanish painters themselves, habituated to link art with high associations, looked down upon these performances as trivial and earthy. The exquisite finish and elaborate detail was also too much and too business-like for a semi-Oriental people, who will not be fashed,' and who have never reached mediocrity where nicety of handcraft is required. These causes, if they have limited Spanish art, at least have maintained its peculiar features; and thus, if condemned to dwell in decencies for ever, her great schools preserved a decorous, chaste, and natural character, free alike from the paganism of voluptuous Italy, the fantasies and devil-homage of freethinking Germany, the tinsel and lubricity of artificial France, and the coarse extravagancies of Dutch dissent and democracy.

Not a score of years ago, Wilkie, writing to his brotheracademician Philipps, described the Peninsula as an unexplored territory-the very Timbuctoo of art, insomuch that every work he saw had the merit of a new discovery.' 'Madrid,' said he, in a letter to Sir Robert Peel, 'is quite a mine of old pictures, of which in England we have known nothing:' nor, it would seem, have his discoveries,' and he was anything but the Mungo Park which he imagined himself, reduced this ignorance to the past

tense :

6

I will close this preface,' says Sir Edmund Head, with the following story, as illustrating the knowledge of Spanish pictures, and the taste for Velazquez prevailing in England at the present day. When General Meade's pictures were exhibited at Christie's this year, there was among them a large three-quarter length portrait of the Infanta Margarita Mariana of Austria [second wife to Philip IV.]. Before the sale, when the public were admitted to view the pictures, this one was hung so high as to make it utterly impossible to be certain what it was. The dress, too,

is grotesque and unprepossessing. She is attired in court mourning-a large hooped petticoat, and a sort of jacket of black, the latter of which is richly laced with white gimp, and has cut sleeves, so as to show the white satin dress underneath it. Her hair, or wig, is frizzed in the extraordinary style of the day, in regular rows of flaxen curls standing straight out on each side of her face, and at the top of her head a feather lies flat. She has no jewels but pearls, and one or two diamonds. I was not at the sale; but I presume the picture was taken down before it was actually brought to the hammer. Be this as it may, some time after the sale a

letter

The

letter was received by a gentleman in this country from the best judge of Spanish pictures in Spain, in which the latter says that he knows the picture well; that it was one of those given by the late King Ferdinand VII. to the Canon Cepero of Seville, in exchange for the two large Zurbarans that now hang in the gallery at Madrid. When Cepero was in difficulties from his political opinions, it passed into the hands of Señor Rodenas, and was sold some years later by his widow to General Meade. writer of this letter adds, "It gives me but a very poor idea of the state of knowledge of the arts in England when I see that a fine Velazquez has been sold for less money than many miserable daubs in the same collection have fetched." But the reader will be desirous of knowing for what it really did sell. This Velazquez in the year 1847, in the height of the season, at Christie's, with all the dealers of London in the room, fetched thirteen guineas! I have since seen the picture close, and I have no doubt whatever of its genuineness. It is slightly painted, without glazing or much finish; but it is brilliant in touch, and thoroughly characteristic of the master.'-Head, p. ix.

The inability of our collective connoisseurs to recognise a Spanish picture when indubitably true, is compensated by the individual acumen with which the trade' fix parentage and perfection on paintings that are decidedly false. Sir Edmund seeing for sale a Virgin in an embroidered petticoat, with Zuccaro on the frame, and expressing some surprise to the dealer, 'Yes, Sir,' said he, Zuccaro or Velazquez.' The alternative appearing strange, he ventured to observe that there was a difference between the two masters: Why, yes,'-answered the vendor, the fact is the picture came from Spain, and Zuccaro is not a Spanish master,— that is the only reason for calling it Velazquez' (p. 181); nor is this audacious nomenclature confined to the murky receivingshops of Wardour Street. Witness the vile daubs which throughout Europe are passed off in public and private galleries as undoubted originals; nor even in Spain itself is the proverbial prodigality of fine names and undeserved honours, which cost nothing, withheld from pictures of the most impostor quality. And yet in that land of anomalies, where no se sabe is the stereotyped answer to questioners, there exists a sure guide and instructor in Cean Bermudez, of whom we have spoken in a previous number (cliv. 398): in his artistical dictionary, a labour of twenty years' love, the pith and marrow of the subject is condensed. To this Lanzi of Spain the invading hordes of France owed everything -he pointed out the exact localities where the best pictures were to be found. Alas! that the very torch destined to shed lustre on art, should have guided the spoiler to his prey. Cean, however, by thus facilitating the operations of Corsican brass and French iron, contributed indirectly, for out of evil comes some

good,

good, to set free the imprisoned genius of the Peninsula, and introduce many a hitherto great unknown to the glorious company of European artists.

Since the Peace of 1815 various Essays on Spanish art have been published out of Spain; but we cannot say that the Germans have contributed their usual accurate and critical industry to this subject. We could not have expected much from the Frenchand they have done little :-it would be waste of time to dwell on the intuitive art revelations' of the superficial sciolist Viardot, and the paltry plagiarisms of the blunderers Huard and Quilliet, who caper on the banks of the Seine in utter unconsciousness of the indecent nakedness of their ignorance.* We had already been more fortunate here; but still a wide extent of darkness remained to be cleared up-and it is indeed a cosa de España that our long standing gloom should at last be doubly dispelled by twinborn productions, whose parents only heard of each other's prolific purposes when in the last throes of parturition, and barely in time for each to preface lamentations that the honourable pangs had not been left to the rival. In their graceful regrets we do not participate, nor deem either a work of supererogation; difference of impressions produced on individual and competent minds is both interesting and instructive. A fuller understanding of the subject is thus attained, just as the form and presence of Charles V. are more distinctly stamped on us from the opportunity of inspecting side by side the portraits of him by Albert Durer

and Titian.

Sir Edmund Head was already favourably known by his translation and annotation of Kugler's History of the German, Flemish, and Dutch Schools. In the course of that task he could not but feel painfully how little justice his author had done to Spain, in which country the industrious German had never been. The translator was thus induced to venture on an original work, which, as one good turn deserves another, we recommend Dr. Kugler to overset into German for the benefit of his countrymen in general, and himself in particular. Sir E. Head modestly apologises for stating his opinion on the originality and merit of individual pictures-he feels, he says, 'that, being the opinion of a mere amateur, it is necessarily worth but little.' But the judgments of persons qualified like him are, to our minds, often superior to those of professionals. Few amateurs really encounter a subject which requires the rare advantages of leisure, study, travel, and

*Dictionnaire des Peintres Espagnols, par F. Quilliet, 1816; Etudes sur les Beaux Arts de l'Espagne, &c., par L. Viardot, 1815; Les Musées de l'Espagne et de l'Angleterre, par L. Viardot, 1843.

critical

critical comparison, without having the spirit, the love for the pursuit urging impatiently within. Painters, on the other hand, who figure as authors, rarely rank high in their own calling-on what pretext should they claim peculiar attention, unless perhaps as to mere technicalities? Art,' said Buonarotti, 'is a jealous mistress; she is won with difficulty-exacts the whole man;' she grudges time and thought transferred to the pen, as if robbed from the pencil. An Eastlake is a very uncommon phenomenon.

The two gentlemen now before us were both well prepared for writing on the art of Spain-both accomplished in scholarship, and both intimate with all the great collections of Europe, the Peninsula especially. Of knowledge and taste they have much in common; but yet their modes of viewing and treating their favourite subject are, fortunately for them and for us, quite different. Sir Edmund, logical and analytic, lucid in style, calm in temper, rejects all German transcendentalisms, and picks with practical English sense the kernel from the husk, ever sacrificing the second-class and trivial for the first-rate and emphatic. He passes as rapidly over the biographies of mediocrities, as a spectator does by their works in a gallery. To many, indeed, his notices will often seem too succinct; full himself, he gives others credit for not needing to be crammed. But his careful and balanced judgments are always valuable and luckily the details which he denies are amply, accurately, and amusingly supplied by Mr. Stirling-the quality of whose mind is synthetic, accumulative, and delighting to heap up facts. Discursive and ornate, he enriches his pages with curiosities of literature bearing upon the manners and spirit of different epochs, larding the dry details of inferior artists now with grave history, anon with court gossip and anecdote; thus an olla podrida is set before us, stuffed with savories, the national garlic not omitted, but so judiciously proportioned, that our fairest reader may welcome this candidate for favour into her innermost boudoir.* both these meritorious publications excellent tables of contents and indexes give an additional and most real value, for to many even a bad book with a good index is more serviceable than a better book without one; life is too short to adventure on voyages of discovery through even a paradise of pages, where there are neither finger-posts nor decent accommodations for matter-of-fact travellers. Again, both writers are scrupulously exact in their copious references to Cean, Ford, and other authorities; but,

To

Mr. Stirling has prepared some large paper copies for private circulation, which are illustrated with rare prints and typographical ornaments, actually reproduced by Mr. Henneman of Regent Street, after the process of Mr. Talbot, whose 'Sun Pictures' are no less bright and true than his Etymologies are obscure and false.

while Sir Edmund gives these middle-men the credit of clearing the way, and quotes their ipsissima verba, Mr. Stirling diligently examines the sources which they pointed out to him, and reextracts for himself, dovetailing in his own original researches, and thus greatly adding to our limited knowledge of Spanish literature. Finally, our authors differ in liberty of speech. Sir Edmund speaks of the collection of the Duke of Dalmatia as reverently as if the blue blood of the Montmorencys flowed in his veins, and his acquisitions' had been made in adherence to rules laid down in Sugden's Purchasers,' rather than according to Mr. Pistol's principles of conveyancing-‘Steal, foh! a fico for the phrase; convey the wise it call.' Such euphemism, decorous in a governor of New Brunswick, is repudiated by the young Laird of Keir, who everywhere rates with unadorned eloquence these dogs of war, these disgraces of revolutionary invasion, from 'plunder-master-general Soult' downwards.

The fine arts, offsprings of a national yearning for the beautiful, are not indigenous in Spain, where man is harsh as his hard land: Oh! dura tellus Iberia. It was in the day-spring East that their star rose to gild and guide the darkling West; but Spain's Phonician and earliest civilization was effaced by the Romans, whose march levelled nationalities previously to providing substitutes of their own and art was too delicate for a soldier people, whose utilitarian roads, aqueducts, coliseums, and other works, great indeed in their kind, stand no less contradistinguished from the temples and academies of speculative Greece, than does the practical code of Justinian from the metaphysical abstractions of Plato. The fine arts passed through a bad conductor, and came to Spain a Roman and inferior copy; equally worthless as scanty are the relics which have escaped the image-destroying Christians and Moors. As any revival from such models could only raise up the corrupt, Spain turned again to the East, to Byzantium, which, previously to the religious schism, and while dogmas and symbolisms were identical, was the art emporium of Chistendom. Osius, Bishop of Cordova, was the tutor of Constantine, in whose capital St. Leander, primate of Seville, became the friend of Gregory the Great-the first who enlisted into Christianity the images of paganism. None can examine at Valencia the crucifix carved by Nicodemus, at Oviedo the cross wrought by angels, the heaven-descended statue of the Virgin at Zaragoza, her portraits and busts by St. Luke at Seville and Monserrat, without pronouncing them all most mediocre as works of art and decidedly of Byzantine or analogous mortal manufacture from the eleventh to the fourteenth centuries. Nor is the Byzantine manner of Orcagni less traceable in the paintings of the age succeeding