The Mentor: The Metropolitan Museum of Art 1

The Mentor: The Metropolitan Museum of Art 1

The Mentor: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Vol. 6, Num. 9, Serial No. 157, June 15, 1918

 

Author: Sydney P. Noe

 

 

DOES ART PAY?

 

 

“Art is a vain pursuit,” says the shop-keeper. In that conviction many

an immortal painter, like Corot, has, in his youth, been packed off

from home by a shop-keeping parent, and made to shift for himself. “The

stomach must be filled,” exclaims the shop-keeper, “let Art wait on

that.” To which the young painter answers, “Art must find __EXPRESSION__

first. Let the stomach wait.” And so the shop-keeper and painter pursue

their separate ways, and it often happens, in the course of time,

that they come together again. The painter gains recognition, and his

pictures make him famous. The shop-keeper rises to be a millionaire

merchant--and becomes a patron of Art.

 

[Illustration]

 

It is all very well to talk, as some cultured people do, about Art as a

kind of goddess that calls into existence paintings, statues, temples,

and museums, but, as William C. Prime observed some years ago, “Art is,

after all, a practical work. Her noblest products and her homeliest

always did and do cost money. That was a wise thought, in the earliest

days of Art, of the monarch who recorded on the Great Pyramid the

quantity of onions, and radishes, and garlic consumed by its builders.”

 

[Illustration]

 

There are still left some who ask, ‘What is the use of beauty? What

is the practical good of increasing art production? How does it pay?’

The life blood of modern commerce and industry is the love of beauty.

A great city, its wealth and power, rest on this foundation--trade in

beauty, buying and selling beauty. Is there any exaggeration in this?

Begin with the lowest possible illustration and ask the questioner,

‘Why are your boots polished? Why did you pay ten cents for a shine?

How many thousand times ten cents are paid every day in a city for

beauty of boots?’

 

[Illustration]

 

Take from the people their love of color, their various tastes in

cotton prints, and one factory would supply all the wants supplied by

fifty. Consider for one instant what is the trade that supports your

long avenues of stores crowded with purchasers, not only in holiday

times, but all the year around. Enumerate carpets, upholstery, wall

papers, furniture, handsome houses, the innumerable beauties of life

that employ millions of people in their production, and you will

realize that, but for the commercial and industrial love of beauty, a

city would be a wilderness, steamers and railways would vanish, wealth

would be poverty, population would starve. Yes, there is money in

teaching people to love beautiful things.

 

 

 

 

[Illustration: IN THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART, NEW YORK

 

PORTRAIT OF FEDERIGO GONZAGA, BY FRANCIA]

 

 

 

 

_THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART_

 

_Francia_

 

ONE

 

 

Though Francia can hardly be ranked with the giants of Italian art, he

has given us a number of placid altarpieces and a few exceptionally

attractive portraits. The portrait of Federigo Gonzaga is one of the

best from his brush. Francia, a shortening of Francesco, was born in

Bologna, Italy, in the year 1450 or thereabout. He took the family

name of the goldsmith, Raibolini, to whom he was apprenticed at the

beginning of his artistic career. As a worker in metal he did some

die-cutting for medals, and designed some highly decorative pieces of

jewelry. We have an indication of his interest in this phase of art in

the necklace worn by Federigo Gonzaga. When Lorenzo Costa, later known

as the head of the Bolognese School of painters, settled in Bologna,

Francia became his intimate friend, and from that time on seems to

have devoted his attention to painting. As regards the graceful pose

and __EXPRESSION__ of his figures, he belonged among the followers of

Perugino, a painter who had a strong influence upon the work of his

most illustrious pupil, Raphael. Francia’s earliest dated altarpiece

was completed when he was about forty-five, but he had probably been

working in conjunction with Costa for a number of years before that

time. Professor John C. Van Dyke, in his “History of Painting,” tells

us that Francia’s “color was usually cold, his drawing a little sharp

at first, as showing the goldsmith’s hand, the surfaces smooth, the

detail elaborate.” Francia died in the year 1517.

 

The tale of the way in which the commission was received to paint the

portrait shown in this gravure is interesting. Federigo was the son of

Francesco Gonzaga, Marquis of Mantua, and Isabella d’Este, the famous

art patron. While fighting in the company of the Milanese against

the Venetians at Legnago, the Marquis was captured, but through the

intervention of the pope was liberated. However, the pope demanded as a

hostage Francesco’s son, Federigo, then ten years of age, stipulating

that he be sent to the papal court at Rome. The boy’s mother, on being

parted from him, insisted that she have a portrait of him, and on the

journey to Rome, in July, 1510, he halted at Bologna, where his father

was, and visited the studio of Francia. In ten days the artist had

completed the portrait with the exception of the background, which was

finished later. The noble mother was much pleased with the result, and

in expressing her gratification to the painter sent him thirty ducats

of gold. We have in her own words the statement that “it is impossible

to see a better portrait or a closer resemblance.”

 

The panel, a singularly perfect example of Francia’s careful manner

of painting, passed from Isabella d’Este to a gentleman who had done

her a service, and thereafter remained in obscurity until, over three

centuries later, it appeared in a London auction room in the collection

of Prince Jerome Bonaparte. Later it came into the possession of Mr.

Altman, who bequeathed it to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

 

PREPARED BY THE EDITORIAL STAFF OF THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION

ILLUSTRATION FOR THE MENTOR, VOL. 6, No. 9. SERIAL No. 157

COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION, INC.

 

 

 

 

[Illustration: IN THE ALTMAN COLLECTION, METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART,

NEW YORK

 

OLD WOMAN CUTTING HER NAILS, BY REMBRANDT]

 

 

 

 

_THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART_

 

_Rembrandt van Rijn_

 

TWO

 

 

The keeping of a few dates in mind greatly aids in understanding

Rembrandt’s pictures. His birth date has been variously given as

1605, 1606, and 1607. Rembrandt’s story has been told at length in

previous numbers of The Mentor. It is said that “whatever he turned to

was treated with that breadth of view that overlooked the little and

grasped the great.” His earliest work dates from 1627. In 1632 came

his first great success, the famous “Lesson in Anatomy.” He was at

that time living in Amsterdam, having moved there from his birth city,

Leyden, Holland. Pupils and patrons flocked to his studios, and the

world was very bright. He became the best-known portrait painter of the

richest art and commercial center of Holland. In 1634 he married Saskia

van Uylenborch, daughter of an aristocratic family and a young girl of

attractive qualities, who brought him many friends and bore him four

children. Rembrandt loved his wife devotedly. He made many portraits

of her, including one of her with himself that hangs in the Royal

Gallery at Dresden. In 1641, the fourth child was born, a son, whom

they named Titus. A portrait of this “Golden Lad,” as his father liked

to call him, hangs in the Metropolitan Museum. It was painted when he

was fourteen: “The wide-set eyes and full upper lids mark his artistic

inheritance, but the far-away haunting __EXPRESSION__ seems a premonition

of his death in early manhood.” Saskia’s death came in 1642, when Titus

was less than a year old.

 

Broken by the loss of his wife, Rembrandt continued to paint under

increasingly bitter circumstances, but his work showed no diminution in

merit, only a deeper feeling. When he was about thirty-five he received

an order to paint Captain Banning Cock’s company of Dutch musketeers.

His manner of handling the lights and shadows of this renowned

masterpiece was misunderstood by French writers of a later period, who

called it “The Night Patrol,” and Sir Joshua Reynolds, falling into the

same error, named it “The Night Watch,” instead of “The Day Watch.”

Great dissatisfaction followed the original exhibition of this sortie

of the civic guards through the jealousy of those that thought they had

been slighted in the composition of the grouping. This dissatisfaction

cost Rembrandt much subsequent patronage, and thereafter he was no

longer the darling of Amsterdam, but a man saddened by personal griefs

and overwhelmed by adversity.

 

“The Mill,” now in the Widener Collection in Philadelphia, was executed

during this dark period of Rembrandt’s life. Under the same influences

he painted “The Old Woman Cutting Her Nails,” judged one of the rarest

gems of all the Rembrandt pictures owned in this country. It portrays

the sympathetic feeling of the artist for old age, and is “typical of

the careworn, sorrow-wrecked woman of all time.” Says a critic, “This

picture is simply of a poor old woman intent on cutting her nails, with

a pair of sheep-shears it seems, yet we are overcome with the power of

it--no details, dull in color, homely in subject, but bathed with a

light that never was on land or sea. Rembrandt’s light! What cared he

for poverty or neglect with such a comforter at hand?” The “Portrait of

Rembrandt” in the Museum was painted by himself when he was fifty-four,

and is one of about sixty self-portraits. In 1668, he painted the “Man

with a Magnifying Glass.” This, too, hangs in the Museum, and also the

grim “Pilate Washing His Hands.” The last picture purchased by Mr.

Altman, whose entire collection was obtained in the space of a few

years, was “The Toilet of Bathsheba,” thought by many judges to be the

loveliest of Rembrandt’s pictures that tell a story. It was painted in 1643.