PAINTING 



697 



After the invention of oil-painting the incon- 

 veniences of fresco were more strongly felt, and 

 many artists turned away from it to the new 

 process. True fresco cannot be retouched ; it has 

 to he painted darker than the artist's intention, as 

 it lightens in drying, and it must he painted from 

 sketches or cartoons. On the other hand, it is 

 luminous and has no gloss, and so is suitable for 

 mural decoration. Raphael seems to have liked 

 fresco and oil equally well. Michelangelo greatly 

 preferred fresco, as letter suited to his powers. 

 Leonardo da Vinci painted his great mural work, 

 ' The Last Supper,' in oil, though fresco must have 

 naturally suggested itself. 



Many modern attempts to revive fresco have 

 been made in Europe. They have" rarely been 

 successful, and have especially failed in the Houses 

 of Parliament, where many works have decayed 

 prematurely. Modern failures have led to the 

 adoption of a process on dry plaster, fixed after- 

 wards with water-glass in spray, as in Maclise's 

 large works in the Royal Gallery : but this is not 

 absolutely durable. The best substitute for true 

 lp'-r<> appears to be Mr Gambler Parry's 'spirit 

 fresco,' employed by Sir Frederick Leighton for his 

 large compositions at South Kensington. These 

 are painted with a spirit medium on dry mortar. 

 In France a substitute for fresco has been found in 

 iiainting on canvas with a dead surface, the canvas 

 being afterwards fastened to the wall with white 

 lead. True fresco may now be considered almost a 

 deail art. 



The next step of importance in the history of art 

 is the discovery, or earliest known practice, of what 

 we call 'oil-painting,' which includes the use of 

 varnishes during the progress of the work. This 

 has been generally a>^i^ned to John Van Eyck, 

 who was born al>out 13'JO; but it is now believed 

 that his elder brother Hubert may have an equal if 

 not a better claim. Both certainly worked in 

 the new method, and John continued it after his 

 brother's death. Since then the practice of oil- 

 painting and of varnish-painting has been carried 

 without interruption down to our own time, and, 

 though it has undergone much technical develop- 

 ment, it remains essentially distinguished from 

 tempera by the mixture of oil or varnish with the 

 colours themselves and by the consequences in 

 execution to which this mixture has led. The 

 brothers Van Eyck themselves were far from 

 anticipating the future freedom and power of oil- 

 painting. Their work was lieautifully executed 

 in a smooth and simple way, and, with the excep- 

 tion of small cracks, it has lasted wonderfully ; 

 but their careful rendering of detail belongs to the 

 infancy of art. An Italian student of painting, 

 Antonello da Messina, stayed in Flanders for some 

 time and worked under John Van Eyck. He after- 

 wards returned to Italv by way of Venice, and from 

 him the knowledge of the new method spread to 

 Florence, and thence to the other cities of Italy. 

 The date of Antonello's death, which occurred in 

 Venice, is not precisely known, but appeal's to have 

 been in the last years of the loth century. 



It may be convenient to remember that the year 

 1500 saw the practice of oil-painting firmly estab- 

 lished in the north and south of Europe. It did 

 not immediately win the absolute pre-eminence 

 that it has subsequently attained. Michelangelo 

 expressed a contempt for it which was probably 

 due to the fact that its full powers were not yet 

 developed by his neighbours. The fame of Raphael 

 aa an mti-i is due to other qualities than the 

 technical merit of his oil-painting, which remained 

 comparatively primitive. The earliest practice of 

 oil-painting was dependent upon the luminous 

 quality of the ground showing through the colours ; 

 and, although the early oil-painters manifested a 



workman-like skill in dealing with their materials, 

 they displayed no power of handling. The manual 

 precision of Albert Diirer has never been surpassed, 

 yet his work as a painter is primitive. Roman 

 painters of the time of Michelangelo might use oil 

 as a convenience, but they could have expressed 

 themselves as completely in fresco or tempera. 

 When we come to the Venetian school the case is 

 very different. There was a harmony between the 

 technical methods of oil and the genius of the 

 Venetians which led to the highest technical 

 excellence. Van Eyck and his followers, both in 

 Flanders and Italy, painted upon a transparent 

 monochrome. Titian used a substantial dead- 

 colouring in which he could make whatever altera- 

 tions he chose, and afterwards worked upon that 

 by successive glazings till he obtained the utmost 

 richness of quality. The notion that Titian had 

 some secret that died with him may be dismissed 

 as purely fanciful. His method of painting is well 

 known, and his superiority to his imitators may be 

 accounted for by his natural genius and by favour- 

 able circumstances. His master, Bellini, drew 

 carefully and coloured well, but his work is still 

 primitive, because it is still coloured drawing. In 

 Titian's painting the different kinds of technical 

 knowledge are so completely fused together that 

 he is not the draughtsman who colours, but the 

 painter. The same is true of Giorgione, almost 

 equally gifted, but less favoured than Titian in 

 the circumstances of his life. 



Ruliens was a great master of the technique of 

 painting in another way. He painted much in 

 transparent or semi-transparent colours over a first 

 painting in transparent brown monochrome ; but, 

 instead of leaving the lights thin that the white 

 ground might show through as in the practice of 

 the early Flemish painters, Rubens loaded his 

 lights with thick opaque colour. His way of 

 painting was technically very systematic, which 

 permitted an extreme rapidity. There is evidence 

 that he followed the early practice of mixing 

 varnish with his colours, at least when transparent 

 and for linear sketching with the brush. The 

 technical execution of Velasquez is a model of 

 excellence in the use of both transparent and 

 opaque colours and in variety of handling. It is 

 not so methodical as that of Rubens, being always 

 suliordinated to the artistic intention of the 

 painter. 



The most perfect works on a small scale have 

 hitherto been those of the Dutch painters, Teniers, 

 Terburg, Metsu (orMatsys), Maas, Peter de Hooch, 

 and many others of the same school. Their method 

 of painting was almost universally to begin with 

 a transparent brown monochrome on which they 

 painted the shadows thinly, giving more substance 

 and opacity to the lights. Being limited in their 

 aims, and painting chiefly what they could see 

 around them and study at their own convenience, 

 they attained a high degree of technical excellence. 

 Their drawing is almost invariably careful and 

 true, and their colouring harmonious, whilst the 

 quality of their textures is often inimitable. 



The practice of modern artists is always founded 

 upon that of one or other of the masters we have men- 

 tioned. There are not very many ways of painting, 

 or if they seem to be many they are reducible to a 

 few very simple principles. The early method of 

 giving luminous quality to the lights by letting 

 the white ground show through them is seldom 

 follo>yed in these days, but it lias been resorted to 

 occasionally. The practice of Rubens, by which 

 the shadows are painted thinly and the lights more 

 thickly, is much commoner in the modern schools. 

 Reynolds, who painted first a strong dead-colour 

 with few colours and glazed upon it afterwards, 

 worked on the principle of Tiiian. Landseer'a 



