A Popular Handbook to the National Gallery, Volume I, Foreign Schools: Including by Special Permission Notes Collected from the Works of John Ruskin
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A Popular Handbook to the National Gallery, Volume I, Foreign Schools: Including by Special Permission Notes Collected from the Works of John Ruskin
National Gallery (Great Britain); Painting -- England -- London -- Catalogs
hounds, thronging round the fine boar-hound, who has been ripped up by
the quarry. Notice, too, the isolated group of cavaliers in grey and
scarlet cloaks, with the clergyman, perhaps the "chaplain to the hunt."
They stand apart from the scene, having more weighty matters on hand."
"The figures do not seem very numerous, as they are scattered about
without a trace of conventional grouping. Yet, even without the heads
that are merely suggested, there are over a hundred figures, some sixty
outside and fifty inside the central enclosure. Sir Edwin Landseer
declared that he had never seen so much large art on so small a scale"
(Justi's _Velazquez and his Times_, pp. 212-14). Notice especially the
two splendid dogs near the left-hand corner. Velazquez is very great in
painting dogs; he "has made some of them nearly as grand as his surly
kings" (_Modern Painters_, vol. v. pt. ix. ch. vi. § 13).
With regard to the execution of the picture (which was bought in 1846
and was alleged to have been damaged in cleaning), Ruskin wrote:
"I have seldom met with an example of the master which gave me
more delight, or which I believed to be in more genuine or perfect
condition.... (The critic's) complaint of loss of substance in the
figures of the foreground is, I have no doubt, altogether groundless.
He has seen little southern scenery if he supposes that the brilliancy
and apparent nearness of the silver clouds is in the slightest degree
overcharged; and shows little appreciation of Velazquez in supposing
him to have sacrificed the solemnity and might of such a distance
to the inferior interest of the figures in the foreground.... The
position of the horizon suggests, and the _lateral_ extent of the
foreground _proves_, such a distance between the spectator and even
its nearest figures as may well justify the slightness of their
execution. Even granting that some of the upper glazings of the figures
had been removed, the tone of the whole picture is so light, grey,
and glittering, and the dependence on the power of its whites so
absolute, that I think the process hardly to be regretted which has
left these in lustre so precious, and restored to a brilliancy which a
comparison with any modern work of similar aim would render apparently
supernatural, the sparkling motion of its figures and the serene snow
of its sky"[111] (_Arrows of the Chace_, i. 58-60).
198. THE TEMPTATION OF ST. ANTHONY.
_Annibale Carracci_ (Eclectic-Bologna: 1560-1609). _See 9._
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