FILIPPINO LIPPI

In this altar-piece of the Virgin, Child, and Saints, the expression of religious sentiment in a material age may appear somewhat affected, but it indicates for us the painter's spiritual attitude towards his sacred subject.

This composition is perhaps the most beautiful of its kind in the galleries. The painting is of the primitive order. The white gesso ground, as with the Flemish painters, is a passive agent, kept free for the lights, like white paper in water-colour painting. The darks are applied thickly with much varnish, so that they stand higher up on the surface of the panel than do the lights.

It is drawn with the resolute outline usual with the Gothic painters, and with later decorators, and is then prepared in a brown and black monochrome. The colours are glazed over the lighter passages, and, in the case of the St. Jerome, semi-opaquely modelled.

There are signs in the drapery at the right bottom corner of a change in its arrangement. Here it is of little importance, but it demonstrates the danger of such changes in any prominent part of a work. The oil dries out of the colour in the course of time, and the pigment is thereby so thinned as to become transparent.

FILIPPINO LIPPI

THE VIRGIN AND CHILD. ST. JEROME AND ST. DOMINIC ADORING THE INFANT CHRIST

National Gallery

A beautiful decoration.

XXX.THE VIRGIN AND CHILD, ST. JEROME AND ST. DOMINIC, ADORING THE INFANT CHRIST. BY FILIPPINO LIPPI

GUIDO RENI

ECCE HOMO

National Gallery

An example of thin, rapid painting over a grisaille preparation.

XXXI.ECCE HOMO. BY GUIDO RENIGUIDO RENI

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GUIDO RENI

The " Ecce Homo ! " of Guido is painted over a white and grey ground, very thinly and freshly, with every indication of having been accomplished at one sitting over the dry preparation, judging by the running paint of the shadows washed over the lighter ground, and by the frank little touches beside the tearful eye. A small Gainsborough head of his daughter in the British Section is very like this in execution, and it is interesting to compare them.

There are other works with great names in these first four galleries, which you will no doubt study at your leisure, but I prefer to take you now into the great Italian gallery, which contains mainly Venetian pictures.

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CHAPTER III

THE SCHOOL OF TITIAN

"THE PORTRAIT OF A POET," with a background of laurels, ascribed to Titian, is a most impressive rendering of a sensitive and thoughtful head.

There is no bravura in the handling of it, and except on the white shirt and the glove, no sign of paint. And how it gains by such masterly reticence !

Obtrusively clever brushwork, as with Frans Hals, infuses vitality, and may make of an uninteresting head an interesting picture ; but with so sympathetic a subject as this poet, it would be unwise for the artist to distract from the full enjoyment of its innate delicacy by drawing attention to any obvious skill in its production. The Venetians knew how to import an unequalled gravity and nobility into their portraiture.

Apart from the conclusions to which the skilled Venetian restorers of the early part of the last century have arrived, we have some definite records of Titian's manner of painting.

We shall not necessarily paint Titians because of this knowledge, but in making copies of his works such knowledge, as far as it goes, is indispensable. [141] This applies equally to the copying of works of any master whose method has been handed on to us.

Presumably Titian, who lived nearly ninety years, deviated somewhat from the practice of his master Bellini. His is a more solid style ; but on comparing the two we find that the main principles of their craft are identical, and, with the exception of Paolo Veronese and Tintoretto, constitute the basic conditions of Venetian oil-painting of the period.

TITIAN'S METHOD

It is found that the ground or first covering of the canvas was of gesso, sized, often of the colour of terra-rossa, possibly a pigment resembling our light red, the actual colour painted over being of a slightly reddish white. In a similar colour, very solidly, the flesh in the abozzo (equivalent to the French ébauche, or our "laying in") was done, and the rest of the picture in a faint but firm rendering of the final local colouring.

The abozzo was placed in the dew and sun to dry often for months, until it was sufficiently hard to allow of a rubbing down of the flesh tints with pumice, or of a scraping perfectly even with a knife, for Titian's flesh is smooth. If after this long interval a fresh eye detected faults or the need for change, adequate preparation was made.

[142] The rich glazes and alternate scumblings were then applied with the fingers and thumb, and finally the whole was gilded either with a golden varnish or with asphaltum. In some instances the restorers have found indications of eight or" nine separate applications of pigment more or less solid ; and the toning of the flesh they attribute to the darkening action of the oil in the colours so frequently superposed.

The glowing effects favoured by the Venetians are to be seen any day in Venice, reflected from the marble-fronted buildings on to the people and objects in the houses. Giovanni Bellini's " Peter the Martyr," a fine delicate work by Titian's master, recalls the glowing light of those interiors.

"Bacchus and Ariadne."-Of the composition of this great picture I shall treat later.

The account of Titian's method, as recorded, is consistent with the result. One cannot pretend to do full justice to a painting so rich in achievement and of such unending charms ; let me try, however, to direct your attention to some of its technical excellences.

To begin with, in the figure of Ariadne, note the draughtsmanship and the subtle tone of the profile outlined against the outstretched hand; the texture of the loose hair ; the modelling of the light on the shoulder above the band of red ; ' and the warm greenish-grey tones against its lower edge. Note, again, the gracefully radiating [145] folds of the blue drapery held around the figure by the left hand ; the toning of the flesh and other colours by contrast with the white linen ; and then the harmonising of the blue and red by means of a rich glaze of asphaltum.

Now remark the glitter and sparkle given to the whole scheme by those wonderful flying folds above the arm of the Bacchus, crowning and leading the eye across the whole composition. It is the keystone of the arch. Cover it out with your hand and you will realise the important part it plays here, with its rich glazes of lake on a golden ground against the warm blue of the sky. You will note that, unlike the more modern painters, Titian introduces no shining lights in his flesh, yet it suffers no loss of round-ness or solidity. It is the bigger view.

Observe the joyous handling of the little satyr in the foreground ; the realism of the silver timbrel against the blue and gold harmony ; and, what is perhaps the most notable achievement of all, the underlying grey in the leg of the Bacchante. Such a quality of grey, seen in some form or other in the work of nearly all the great colourists, cannot be realised in direct painting. Only fine tones beneath a warm translucent covering will give it.

Then those majestic clouds tied together with long decorative horizontals, the blue hills and the middle, distance broken with accidental sunlight and shadow in a landscape that has rarely [146] been surpassed, and certainly not equalled by earlier painters.

The loading of pigment is reserved for draperies and accessories. It will be seen in the impastoed white cloth around the bronze vase, which is again warmed with asphaltum.

There are no signs of changes made, such as are evident in the small " Christ and Magdalene " picture by the same master ; and its absolute completeness and maturity more than justify the long and patient processes of its production.

Pilgrimages to this picture cannot be too frequent, for what the French call trouvailles- fresh finds-will reward each succeeding visit to it.