Read Ebook: A Popular Handbook to the National Gallery Volume I Foreign Schools Including by Special Permission Notes Collected from the Works of John Ruskin by Cook Edward Tyas Sir Compiler National Gallery Great Britain Contributor Ruskin John Contributor

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PAGE

PREFACE BY JOHN RUSKIN vii

GENERAL INTRODUCTION, WITH SOME ACCOUNT OF THE NATIONAL GALLERY x

GUIDE TO THE GALLERY AND PLAN OF THE ROOMS xxv

INTRODUCTIONS TO THE SCHOOLS OF PAINTING:

THE EARLY FLORENTINE SCHOOL 1

THE FLORENTINE SCHOOL 8

THE SIENESE SCHOOL 14

THE LOMBARD SCHOOL 16

THE FERRARESE SCHOOL 19

THE UMBRIAN SCHOOL 22

THE VENETIAN SCHOOL 25

THE PADUAN SCHOOL 32

THE LATER ITALIAN SCHOOLS 34

THE EARLY FLEMISH AND THE GERMAN SCHOOLS 38

THE DUTCH SCHOOL 43

THE LATER FLEMISH SCHOOL 47

THE SPANISH SCHOOL 48

THE FRENCH SCHOOL 51

NUMERICAL CATALOGUE, WITH BIOGRAPHICAL AND DESCRIPTIVE NOTES 55

PICTURES ON LOAN 749

COPIES FROM OLD MASTERS 752

THE ARUNDEL SOCIETY'S COLLECTION 757

SCULPTURES AND MARBLES 770

PREFACE BY JOHN RUSKIN

We have indeed--be it to our humiliation remembered--small reason to congratulate ourselves on the enlargement of the collection now belonging to the public, by the sale of the former possessions of our nobles. But since the parks and castles which were once the pride, beauty, and political strength of England are doomed by the progress of democracy to be cut up into lots on building leases, and have their libraries and pictures sold at Sotheby's and Christie's, we may at least be thankful that the funds placed by the Government at the disposal of the Trustees for the National Gallery have permitted them to save so much from the wreck of English mansions and Italian monasteries, and enrich the recreations of our metropolis with graceful interludes by Perugino and Raphael.

It will be at once felt by the readers of the following catalogue that it tells them, about every picture and its painter, just the things they wished to know. They may rest satisfied also that it tells them these things on the best historical authorities, and that they have in its concise pages an account of the rise and decline of the arts of the Old Masters, and record of their personal characters and worldly state and fortunes, leaving nothing of authentic tradition, and essential interest, untold.

As a collection of critical remarks by esteemed judges, and of clearly formed opinions by earnest lovers of art, the little book possesses a metaphysical interest quite as great as its historical one. Of course the first persons to be consulted on the merit of a picture are those for whom the artist painted it: with those in after generations who have sympathy with them; one does not ask a Roundhead or a Republican his opinion of the Vandyke at Wilton, nor a Presbyterian minister his impressions of the Sistine Chapel:--but from any one honestly taking pleasure in any sort of painting, it is always worth while to hear the grounds of his admiration, if he can himself analyse them. For those who take no pleasure in painting, or who are offended by its inevitable faults, any form of criticism is insolent. Opinion is only valuable when it

gilds with various rays These painted clouds that beautify our days.

When I last lingered in the Gallery before my old favourites, I thought them more wonderful than ever before; but as I draw towards the close of life, I feel that the real world is more wonderful yet: that Painting has not yet fulfilled half her mission,--she has told us only of the heroism of men and the happiness of angels: she may perhaps record in future the beauty of a world whose mortal inhabitants are happy, and which angels may be glad to visit.

J. RUSKIN.

GENERAL INTRODUCTION

WITH SOME

ACCOUNT OF THE NATIONAL GALLERY

Such were the principal changes made in the ascriptions of the pictures during Sir Edward Poynter's directorate. His successor, Sir Charles Holroyd, has recently made many others, as shown in the following list:

I can only hope that the later editions have been made--largely owing to the suggestions of critics and private correspondents--a little more deserving of the kind reception which, now for a period of nearly twenty-five years, has been given by the public to my Handbook.

E. T. C.

FOOTNOTES:

The Tate Gallery is ten minutes' drive or twenty minutes' walk from Trafalgar Square. It is reached in a straight line by Whitehall, Parliament Street, past the Houses of Parliament, Millbank Street, and Grosvenor Road.

Mr. Ruskin himself was converted by the acquisition of the great Perugino . In congratulating the Trustees on their acquisition of this "noble picture," he wrote: "It at once, to my mind, raises our National Gallery from a second-rate to a first-rate collection. I have always loved the master, and given much time to the study of his works; but this is the best I have ever seen" .

See, for instance, Nos. 10, 61, 193, 195, 479 and 498, 757, 790, 896, 1131, and 1171.

The exterior of the building is not generally considered an architectural success, and the ugliness of the dome is almost proverbial. But it should be remembered that the original design included the erection of suitable pieces of sculpture--such as may be seen in old engravings of the Gallery, made from the architect's drawings--on the still vacant pedestals.

The several extensions of the Gallery are shown in the plan on a later page.

The total number should thus be 28; but in the reconstruction four smaller rooms were thrown into two larger ones. The plan thus shows 25 numbered rooms and one called the "Dome."

This sum only includes amounts paid out of Parliamentary grants or other National Gallery funds or special contributions.

In 1894, however, an alteration was made in the Minute, and the responsibility for purchases was vested in the Director and the Trustees jointly.

Of the 1170 pieces thus unaccounted for the greater number are at Millbank. Others are on loan to provincial institutions .

With this object in view, several of them have been published with descriptive letterpress by Mr. Sydney Vacher.

GUIDE TO THE GALLERY

AND

INTRODUCTIONS TO THE SCHOOLS OF PAINTING

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