DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61252#0220
176
THE SUTHERLAND GALLERY.
their holy calling. Ribera’s martyrs and penitents are
“ strong to bear and mighty to suffer.” In the Spanish pic-
tures, the representations of the Saviour are generally of a
painful character—he is crowned with thorns, bleeding on
his cross, dead in the arms of weeping angels, or of his
desolate mother. Morales excelled in the first, Cano in the
second, Ribera in the last-named subject; and it must be
allowed that they have exhausted the resources of art in
depicting horrors. The more harmonious and gentle spirit
of Murillo sought the pathetic, where others gave only the
appalling; as in that wonderful vision, the dying Redeemer
stooping from, the cross to embrace St. Francis.*
It is, as I have already observed, the peculiar stamp
of the national temperament—the fusion of Moorish and
Gothic chivalry with the gloomy yet imaginative super-
stition of the age, which, apart from all connoisseurship,
lend a strong, a vital interest to the productions of the
Spanish painters. We are constantly reminded that the
land of Juanes and Alonzo Cano, of Murillo and Zur-
baran, was the land of St. Dominic, of Loyola, of St.
Francis Xavier, of St. Theresa. Religious art became
poetry among the Italians; among the Spaniards it became
life. Everywhere we see the prevalent religious spirit,
compounded of the mystic and the sensual—of extatic
love-trances, and demon-tempters—of visions of Paradise,
autos-da-fe, and the inquisition;f The Spanish superstition
of the 17th century, takes us back in thought to that of the
Italians in the 14th; miracles were almost as rife, and the
lives of some of their painters read like the legends of their
saints. £
* In the Church of the Capuchins at Seville.
+ One of their great painters was a familiar of the inquisition.
t For instance, it is gravely related in the life of Juanes, that after he had
finished a beautiful picture of the Virgin, he drew back to examine his work at
a proper distance, and in doing so, would have fallen back over the edge of the
scaffold, if the Madonna he had just painted had not stepped out of the canvas
to his rescue. Having performed this miracle, she retired back to her place.
See also the life of Beccerra, in “ Cumberland’s Spanish Painters.”
THE SUTHERLAND GALLERY.
their holy calling. Ribera’s martyrs and penitents are
“ strong to bear and mighty to suffer.” In the Spanish pic-
tures, the representations of the Saviour are generally of a
painful character—he is crowned with thorns, bleeding on
his cross, dead in the arms of weeping angels, or of his
desolate mother. Morales excelled in the first, Cano in the
second, Ribera in the last-named subject; and it must be
allowed that they have exhausted the resources of art in
depicting horrors. The more harmonious and gentle spirit
of Murillo sought the pathetic, where others gave only the
appalling; as in that wonderful vision, the dying Redeemer
stooping from, the cross to embrace St. Francis.*
It is, as I have already observed, the peculiar stamp
of the national temperament—the fusion of Moorish and
Gothic chivalry with the gloomy yet imaginative super-
stition of the age, which, apart from all connoisseurship,
lend a strong, a vital interest to the productions of the
Spanish painters. We are constantly reminded that the
land of Juanes and Alonzo Cano, of Murillo and Zur-
baran, was the land of St. Dominic, of Loyola, of St.
Francis Xavier, of St. Theresa. Religious art became
poetry among the Italians; among the Spaniards it became
life. Everywhere we see the prevalent religious spirit,
compounded of the mystic and the sensual—of extatic
love-trances, and demon-tempters—of visions of Paradise,
autos-da-fe, and the inquisition;f The Spanish superstition
of the 17th century, takes us back in thought to that of the
Italians in the 14th; miracles were almost as rife, and the
lives of some of their painters read like the legends of their
saints. £
* In the Church of the Capuchins at Seville.
+ One of their great painters was a familiar of the inquisition.
t For instance, it is gravely related in the life of Juanes, that after he had
finished a beautiful picture of the Virgin, he drew back to examine his work at
a proper distance, and in doing so, would have fallen back over the edge of the
scaffold, if the Madonna he had just painted had not stepped out of the canvas
to his rescue. Having performed this miracle, she retired back to her place.
See also the life of Beccerra, in “ Cumberland’s Spanish Painters.”