Little Travels and Roadside Sketches [5]
on her chair, enveloped in her full majestic black drapery, that is not a fine study for a painter. These large black mantles of heavy silk brought over the heads of the women, and covering their persons, fall into such fine folds of drapery, that they cannot help being picturesque and noble. See, kneeling by the side of two of those fine devout-looking figures, is a lady in a little twiddling Parisian hat and feather, in a little lace mantelet, in a tight gown and a bustle. She is almost as monstrous as yonder figure of the Virgin, in a hoop, and with a huge crown and a ball and a sceptre; and a bambino dressed in a little hoop, and in a little crown, round which are clustered flowers and pots of orange-trees, and before which many of the faithful are at prayer. Gentle clouds of incense come wafting through the vast edifice; and in the lulls of the music you hear the faint chant of the priest, and the silver tinkle of the bell.
Six Englishmen, with the commissionaires, and the "Murray's Guide- books" in their hands, are looking at the "Descent from the Cross." Of this picture the "Guide-book" gives you orders how to judge. If it is the end of religious painting to express the religious sentiment, a hundred of inferior pictures must rank before Rubens. Who was ever piously affected by any picture of the master? He can depict a livid thief writhing upon the cross, sometimes a blond Magdalen weeping below it; but it is a Magdalen a very short time indeed after her repentance: her yellow brocades and flaring satins are still those which she wore when she was of the world; her body has not yet lost the marks of the feasting and voluptuousness in which she used to indulge, according to the legend. Not one of the Rubens's pictures among all the scores that decorate chapels and churches here, has the least tendency to purify, to touch the affections, or to awaken the feelings of religious respect and wonder. The "Descent from the Cross" is vast, gloomy, and awful; but the awe inspired by it is, as I take it, altogether material. He might have painted a picture of any criminal broken on the wheel, and the sensation inspired by it would have been precisely similar. Nor in a religious picture do you want the savoir-faire of the master to be always protruding itself; it detracts from the feeling of reverence, just as the thumping of cushion and the spouting of tawdry oratory does from a sermon: meek religion disappears, shouldered out of the desk by the pompous, stalwart, big-chested, fresh-colored, bushy-whiskered pulpiteer. Rubens's piety has always struck us as of this sort. If he takes a pious subject, it is to show you in what a fine way he, Peter Paul Rubens, can treat it. He never seems to doubt but that he is doing it a great honor. His "Descent from the Cross," and its accompanying wings and cover, are a set of puns upon the word Christopher, of which the taste is more odious than that of the hooped-petticoated Virgin yonder, with her artificial flowers, and her rings and brooches. The people who made an offering of that hooped petticoat did their best, at any rate; they knew no better. There is humility in that simple, quaint present; trustfulness and kind intention. Looking about at other altars, you see (much to the horror of pious Protestants) all sorts of queer little emblems hanging up under little pyramids of penny candles that are sputtering and flaring there. Here you have a silver arm, or a little gold toe, or a wax leg, or a gilt eye, signifying and commemorating cures that have been performed by the supposed intercession of the saint over whose chapel they hang. Well, although they are abominable superstitions, yet these queer little offerings seem to me to be a great deal more pious than Rubens's big pictures; just as is the widow with her poor little mite compared to the swelling Pharisee who flings his purse of gold into the plate.
A couple of days of Rubens and his church pictures makes one thoroughly and entirely sick of him. His very genius and splendor pails upon one, even taking the
Six Englishmen, with the commissionaires, and the "Murray's Guide- books" in their hands, are looking at the "Descent from the Cross." Of this picture the "Guide-book" gives you orders how to judge. If it is the end of religious painting to express the religious sentiment, a hundred of inferior pictures must rank before Rubens. Who was ever piously affected by any picture of the master? He can depict a livid thief writhing upon the cross, sometimes a blond Magdalen weeping below it; but it is a Magdalen a very short time indeed after her repentance: her yellow brocades and flaring satins are still those which she wore when she was of the world; her body has not yet lost the marks of the feasting and voluptuousness in which she used to indulge, according to the legend. Not one of the Rubens's pictures among all the scores that decorate chapels and churches here, has the least tendency to purify, to touch the affections, or to awaken the feelings of religious respect and wonder. The "Descent from the Cross" is vast, gloomy, and awful; but the awe inspired by it is, as I take it, altogether material. He might have painted a picture of any criminal broken on the wheel, and the sensation inspired by it would have been precisely similar. Nor in a religious picture do you want the savoir-faire of the master to be always protruding itself; it detracts from the feeling of reverence, just as the thumping of cushion and the spouting of tawdry oratory does from a sermon: meek religion disappears, shouldered out of the desk by the pompous, stalwart, big-chested, fresh-colored, bushy-whiskered pulpiteer. Rubens's piety has always struck us as of this sort. If he takes a pious subject, it is to show you in what a fine way he, Peter Paul Rubens, can treat it. He never seems to doubt but that he is doing it a great honor. His "Descent from the Cross," and its accompanying wings and cover, are a set of puns upon the word Christopher, of which the taste is more odious than that of the hooped-petticoated Virgin yonder, with her artificial flowers, and her rings and brooches. The people who made an offering of that hooped petticoat did their best, at any rate; they knew no better. There is humility in that simple, quaint present; trustfulness and kind intention. Looking about at other altars, you see (much to the horror of pious Protestants) all sorts of queer little emblems hanging up under little pyramids of penny candles that are sputtering and flaring there. Here you have a silver arm, or a little gold toe, or a wax leg, or a gilt eye, signifying and commemorating cures that have been performed by the supposed intercession of the saint over whose chapel they hang. Well, although they are abominable superstitions, yet these queer little offerings seem to me to be a great deal more pious than Rubens's big pictures; just as is the widow with her poor little mite compared to the swelling Pharisee who flings his purse of gold into the plate.
A couple of days of Rubens and his church pictures makes one thoroughly and entirely sick of him. His very genius and splendor pails upon one, even taking the