Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) by S. Spooner (pdf to ebook reader .TXT) 📕

nature more attentively, he

bought a yacht, embarked his family, and spent his whole time on the

river. After several years he sailed for Holland in his frail craft but

was wrecked in the Texel, where, after eight days of suffering, he and

his family barely escaped with their lives, having lost all his

paintings, and the fruits of his industry. This mishap cured him of his

passion for the sea.

 

 

 

 

ANECDOTE OF JOHN DE MABUSE.

 

 

An amusing anecdote is related of this eminent painter. He was

inordinately given to dissipation, and spent all his money, as fast as

he earned it, in carousing with his boon companions. He was for a long

time in the service of the Marquess de Veren, for whom he executed some

of his most capital works. It happened on one occasion that the Emperor

Charles V. made a visit to the Marquess, who made magnificent

preparations for his reception, and among other things ordered all his

household to be dressed in white damask. When the tailor came to measure

Mabuse, he desired to have the damask, under the pretence of inventing a

singular habit. He sold it immediately, spent the money, and then

painted a paper suit, so like damask that it was not distinguished as he

walked in procession between a philosopher and a poet, other pensioners

of the Marquess; but the joke was too good to be kept, so his friends

betrayed him to the Marquess, who, instead of being displeased was

highly diverted, and asked the Emperor which of the three suits he liked

best. The Emperor pointed to that of Mabuse, as excelling in whiteness

and beauty of the flowers; and when he was told of the painter's

stratagem, he would not believe it, till he had examined it with his own

hands.

 

 

 

 

CAPUGNANO AND LIONELLO SPADA.

 

 

Lanzi relates the following amusing anecdote of Giovanni da Capugnano,

an artist of little merit, but whose assurance enabled him to attract

considerable attention in his day. "Misled by a pleasing self-delusion,

he believed himself born to become a painter; like that ancient

personage, mentioned by Horace, who imagined himself the owner of all

the vessels that arrived in the Athenian port. His chief talent lay in

making crucifixes, to fill up the angles, and in giving a varnish to the

balustrades. Next, he attempted landscape in water-colors, in which were

exhibited the most strange proportions; of houses less than the men;

these last smaller than his sheep; and the sheep again than his birds.

Extolled, however, in his own district, he determined to leave his

native mountains, and figure on a wider theatre at Bologna; there he

opened his house, and requested the Caracci, the only artists he

believed to be more learned than himself, to furnish him with a pupil,

whom he intended to polish in his studio. Lionello Spada, an admirable

wit, accepted this invitation; he went and copied designs, affecting the

utmost obsequiousness towards his master. At length, conceiving it time

to put an end to the jest, he left behind him a most exquisite painting

of Lucretia, and over the entrance of the chamber some fine satirical

octaves, in apparent praise, but real ridicule of Capugnano. His worthy

master only accused Lionello of ingratitude, for having acquired from

him in so short a space the art of painting so beautifully from his

designs; but the Caracci at last acquainted him with the joke, which

acted as a complete antidote to his folly."

 

 

 

 

MICHAEL ANGELO DA CARAVAGGIO--HIS QUARRELSOME DISPOSITION.

 

 

Caravaggio possessed a very irascible and roving disposition. At the

height of his popularity at Rome, he got into a quarrel with one of his

own young friends, in a tennis-court, and struck him dead with a racket,

having been severely wounded himself in the affray. He fled to Naples,

where he executed some of his finest pictures, but he soon got weary of

his residence there, and went to Malta. Here his superb picture of the

Grand Master obtained for him the Cross of Malta, a rich gold chain,

placed on his neck by the Grand Master's own hands, and two slaves to

attend him. All these honors did not prevent the new knight from falling

back into old habits. "_Il suo torbido ingegno_," says Bellori, plunged

him into new difficulties; he fought and wounded a noble cavalier, was

thrown into prison, from which he escaped almost by a miracle, and fled

to Syracuse, where he obtained the favor of the Syracusans by painting a

splendid picture of the Santa Morte, for the church of S. Lucia. In

apprehension of being taken by the Knights of Malta, he soon fled to

Messina, thence to Palermo, and returned to Naples, where hopes were

held out to him of the Pope's pardon. Here he got into a quarrel with

some military men in a public house, was wounded, and took refuge on

board a felucca, about to sail for Rome. Stopping at a small port on the

way, he was arrested by a Spanish guard, by mistake, for another person;

when released, he found the felucca gone, and in it all his property.

Traversing the burning shore, under an almost vertical sun, he was

seized with a brain fever, and continued to wander through the Pontine

Marshes till he arrived at Porto Ercoli, when he expired, aged forty

years.

 

 

 

 

JACOPO AMICONI.

 

 

Giacomo Amiconi, a Venetian painter, went to England, in 1729, where he

was first employed by Lord Tankerville to paint the staircase of his

palace in St. James' Square. He there represented the stories of

Achilles, Telemachus and Tiresias, which gained him great applause. When

he was to be paid, he produced his bills of the workmen for scaffolding,

materials, &c., amounting to £90, and asked no more, saying that he was

content with the opportunity of showing what he could do. The peer,

however, gave him £200 more. This brought him into notice, and he was

much employed by the nobility to decorate their houses.

 

 

 

 

PAINTING THE DEAD.

 

 

Giovanni Baptista Gaulli, called Baciccio, one of the most eminent

Genoese painters, was no less celebrated for portraits than for history.

Pascoli says he painted no less than seven different Pontiffs, besides

many illustrious personages. Possessing great colloquial powers, he

engaged his sitters in the most animated conversation, and thus

transferred their features to his canvas, so full of life and

expression, that they looked as though they were about to speak to the

beholder. He also had a remarkable talent of painting the dead, so as to

obtain an exact resemblance of deceased persons whom he had never seen.

For this purpose, he drew a face at random, afterwards altering it in

every feature, by the advice and under the inspection of those who had

known the original, till he had improved it to a striking likeness.

 

 

 

 

TADDEO ZUCCARO.

 

 

This eminent painter was born at San Angiolo, in the Duchy of Urbino, in

At a very early age he evinced a passion for art and a precocious

genius. After having received instruction from his father, a painter of

little note, his extraordinary enthusiasm induced him, at fourteen years

of age, to go to Rome, without a penny in his pocket, where he passed

the day in designing, from the works of Raffaelle. Such was his poverty,

that he was compelled to sleep under the loggie of the Chigi palace; he

contrived to get money enough barely to supply the wants of nature, by

grinding colors for the shops. Undaunted by difficulties that would have

driven a less devoted lover of the art from the field, he pursued his

studies with undiminished ardor, till his talents and industry attracted

the notice of Daniello da Por, an artist then in repute, who generously

relieved his wants and gave him instruction. From that time he made

rapid progress, and soon acquired a distinguished reputation, but he

died at Rome in 1566, in the prime of life.

 

 

 

 

ZUCCARO'S RESENTMENT.

 

 

Federigo Zuccaro, the brother of Taddeo, was employed by Pope Gregory

XIII. in the Pauline chapel. While proceeding with his work, however, he

fell out with some of the Pope's officers; and conceiving himself

treated with indignity, he painted an allegorical picture of Calumny,

introducing the portraits of all those individuals who had offended him,

decorated with asses' ears. This he caused to be exhibited publicly over

the gate of St. Luke's church, on the festival day of that Saint. His

enemies, upon this, made such complaints that he was forced to fly from

Rome, and passing into France, he visited Flanders and England. As soon

as the pontiff was appeased, he returned to Rome, and completed his work

in the Pauline chapel, fortunate in not losing his head as the price of

such a daring exploit.

 

 

 

 

ROYAL CRITICISM.

 

 

Federigo Zuccaro was invited to Madrid by Philip II. to execute some

frescos in the lower cloister of the Escurial, which, failing to give

satisfaction to his royal patron, were subsequently effaced, and their

place supplied by Pellegrino Tibaldi; the king nevertheless munificently

rewarded him. One day, as he was displaying a picture of the Nativity,

which he had painted for the great altar of the Escurial, for the

inspection of the monarch, he said, "Sire, you now behold all that art

can execute; beyond this which I have done, the powers of painting

cannot go." The king was silent for some time; his countenance betrayed

neither approbation nor contempt; at last, preserving the same

indifference, he quietly asked the painter what _those things_ were in

the basket of one of the shepherds in the act of running? He replied

they were eggs. "It is well then, that he did not break them," said the

king, as he turned on his way--a just rebuke for such fulsome

self-adulation.

 

 

 

 

PIETRO DA CORTONA.

 

 

The name of this illustrious painter and architect was Berrettini, and

he was born at Cortona, near Florence, in 1596. At the age of fourteen

he went to Rome, where he studied the works of Raffaelle and Caravaggio

with the greatest assiduity. It is said that at first he betrayed but

little talent for painting, but his genius burst forth suddenly, to the

astonishment of those companions who had laughed at his incapacity; this

doubtless was owing to his previous thorough course of study. While yet

young, he painted two pictures for the Cardinal Sacchetti, representing

the Rape of the Sabines, and a Battle of Alexander, which gained him so

much celebrity that Pope Urban VIII. commissioned him to paint a chapel

in the church of S. Bibiena, where Ciampelli was employed. The latter at

first regarded with contempt the audacity of so young a man's daring to

attempt so important a public work, but Cortona had no sooner commenced

than Ciampelli's disgust changed to admiration of his abilities. His

success in this performance gained him the celebrated work of the

ceiling of the grand saloon in the Barberini palace, which is considered

one of the greatest productions of the kind ever executed. Cortona was

invited to Florence by the Grand Duke Ferdinand II., to paint the saloon

and four apartments in the Pitti palace, where he represented the

Clemency of Alexander to the family of Darius, the Firmness of Porsena,

the Continence of Cyrus, the History of Massanissa, and other subjects.

While thus employed, the Duke, one day, having expressed his admiration

of a weeping child which he had just painted, Cortona with a single

stroke of his pencil made it appear laughing, and with another restored

it to its former state; "Prince," said he, "you see how easily children

laugh and cry." Disgusted with the intrigues of some artists jealous of

his reputation, he left Florence abruptly, without completing his works,

and the Grand Duke could never persuade him to return. On his return to

Rome, he abounded with commissions, and Pope Alexander VII. honored him

with the order of the Golden Spur. Cortona was also distinguished as an

architect. He made a design for the Palace of the Louvre, which was so

highly approved by Louis XIV. that he sent him his picture richly set in

jewels. Cortona was a laborious artist, and though tormented with the

gout, and in affluent circumstances, he continued to paint till his

death, in 1699.

 

 

 

 

"KNOW THYSELF."

 

 

Mario Ballassi, a Florentine painter born in 1604, studied successively

under Ligozzi, Roselli, and Passignano; he assisted the latter in the

works he executed at Rome for Pope Urban XIII. His chief talent lay in

copying the works of the great masters, which he did to admiration. Don

Taddeo Barberini employed him to copy the Transfiguration of Raffaelle,

for the Church of the Conception, in which he imitated the touch and

expression of the original in so excellent a manner as to excite the

surprise of the best judges at Rome. At the recommendation of the

Cardinal Piccolomini, he was introduced to the Emperor Ferdinand III.,

who received him in an honorable manner. Elated with his success, he

vainly imagined that if he could imitate the old masters, he could also

equal them