Chapter Page to Paladore of P by Brewer's Readers Handbook

(4) Carracci: eclectic artists, who picked out and pieced together parts taken from Correggio, Raphael, Titian, and other great artists. If Michael Angelo is the Æschylos of artists, and Raphael the Sophoclês, the Carracci may be called the Euripidês of painters. I know not why in England the name is spelt with only one r.

(5) Correggio (Antonio Allegri): wonderful foreshortenings magnificent light and shade. Pictures are full of motion and stir. He is said to have delighted “in the buoyance of childish glee, the bliss of earthly, the fervour of heavenly love.” Chiaro-scuro so perfect that “you seem to look through Correggio’s shadows, and to see beyond them the genuine texture of the flesh” (Mrs. Jameson). (1494–1534.)

(6) Cuyp (Albert), the Dutch Claude; landscapes which show the painter’s love of nature. Skies with their “clearness and coolness,” and the “expression of yellow sunlight” (1605; date of death uncertain, about 1638).

(7) David: noted for his stiff, dry, pedantic, “highly classic” style, according to the interpretation of the phrase by the French in the first Revolution (1748–1825).

(8) Dolce (Carlo): famous for his Madonnas, which are all finished with most extraordinary delicacy (1616–1686).

(9) Guido (Reni): student in the Carracci school. His characteristic was a refined sense of beauty, which had a tendency to develop into “empty grace” without soul (1575–1642).

(10) Holbein (Hans): characterized by the living truthfulness of his likenesses, and the “inimitable bloom” imparted to his pictures, which he “touched till not a touch became discernible.” He used a peculiar green for the backgrounds of his larger portraits, a blue background for his miniatures (1494 or 1495–1543).

(11) Lorraine (Claude Gelée). He was fond of painting scenes on the Tiber and in the Roman Campagna. His landscapes are suffused with a golden haze, so that the expression “a mellow” or a “sunny Claude” is used in relation to his work (1600–1682).

(12) Murillo (Bartolomé Estévan). A great religious painter, eminently Spanish; his Virgins are dark-eyed and olive-complexioned; the Holy Child is a Spanish babe (1618–1682).

(13) Ommeganck: sheep (1775–1826).

(14) Perugino (Pietro): “At his best he had luminous colour, grace, softness, and enthusiastic earnestness.” “His defects were monotony and formality.” He had some tiresome affectations and mannerisms, which are found in his upturned heads, etc.—Sarah Tytler: The Old Masters, etc. (1446–1524.)

(15) Poussin (Nicholas): famous for his classic style. Reynolds says, “No works of any modern have so much the air of antique painting as those of Poussin” (1593–1665).

(16) Poussin (Gaspar): a landscape painter, the very opposite of Claude Lorraine. He seems to have drawn his inspiration from Hervey’s Meditations among the Tombs, Blair’s Grave, Young’s Night Thoughts, and Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy. (1613–1675.)

(17) Raphael. The Sophoclês of painters. The head of the Roman school. He painted the loveliest Madonnas and Child Christs: his portraits are perfect. Angelo’s figures are all gigantesque and ideal like those of Æschylos; Raphael’s are perfect human beings (1483–1520).

(18) Rembrandt (Van Rhyn): his characteristics are fire-light, camp-light, and torch-light scenes, with the deep black shadows belonging to these artificial lights (1606–1669).

(19) Reynolds: a portrait-painter. He presents his portraits in bal masqué, not always suggestive either of the rank or character of the person represented. There is about the same analogy between Watteau and Reynolds as between Claude Lorraine and Gaspar Poussin (1723–1792). (See Errors, p. 331.)