DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.62822#0259
CLAUDE LORRAINE.
187
having purchased them as his productions. The
enemies of his fame and prosperity, being thus checked,
and their designs frustrated, spread a report that he
now rarely wrought with his own hands, but employed
a clever youth of the name of Giovanni Domenico, a
cripple, whom he had compassionately taken into his
service to grind his colours, and attend upon him while
painting. His enemies, at length, carried their malice
so far as to suborn this servant, who, instead os
requiting a kind master with gratitude, lent himself to
their machinations, assumed an air of importance, and
demanded payment of a suitable salary for the thirty
years he had been with him, not as a servant, but in
the capacity of an assistant.
Claude, who had throughout a long life scrupulously
avoided every kind of litigation, and patiently sub-
mitted to many provocations, determined, in the
present instance, in order to avoid the trouble and
vexation of a process at law, to comply with the
unjust claim of the ungrateful domestic, and he there-
fore paid him his demand. This event, together with
others of a trivial nature, tended greatly to disturb the
calm and peaceful disposition of the artist, and
embittered many hours of his latter days: the gout
also, which had been an occasional visitor for nearly
forty years, now increased in virulence, and, although,
at intervals, he continued to paint, even to a very
late period of his life*, he, at length, sunk under a
* The dates on pictures show that, notwithstanding his infirmity,
he painted a great number between the years 1670 and 1680.
187
having purchased them as his productions. The
enemies of his fame and prosperity, being thus checked,
and their designs frustrated, spread a report that he
now rarely wrought with his own hands, but employed
a clever youth of the name of Giovanni Domenico, a
cripple, whom he had compassionately taken into his
service to grind his colours, and attend upon him while
painting. His enemies, at length, carried their malice
so far as to suborn this servant, who, instead os
requiting a kind master with gratitude, lent himself to
their machinations, assumed an air of importance, and
demanded payment of a suitable salary for the thirty
years he had been with him, not as a servant, but in
the capacity of an assistant.
Claude, who had throughout a long life scrupulously
avoided every kind of litigation, and patiently sub-
mitted to many provocations, determined, in the
present instance, in order to avoid the trouble and
vexation of a process at law, to comply with the
unjust claim of the ungrateful domestic, and he there-
fore paid him his demand. This event, together with
others of a trivial nature, tended greatly to disturb the
calm and peaceful disposition of the artist, and
embittered many hours of his latter days: the gout
also, which had been an occasional visitor for nearly
forty years, now increased in virulence, and, although,
at intervals, he continued to paint, even to a very
late period of his life*, he, at length, sunk under a
* The dates on pictures show that, notwithstanding his infirmity,
he painted a great number between the years 1670 and 1680.