The art of looking at pictures : an introduction to the old Masters

Front matter

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Foreword

A BEGINNER in the study of art soon discovers a group of defects in the pictures of the Old Masters which seems to make any sincere enjoyment of them impossible. Their attempts to imitate nature seem pathetic failures, their subjects are antiquated and uninteresting, their colours dingy, and their forms and faces often positively ugly. The handbooks to which he goes for aid either ignore these enormities or gloss them over with a word or two, devoting all their attention to certain alleged beauties in these works. His own attempts to perceive these beauties fail, and he ends in ‘bitterness and contempt.

It is for such people that this volume is designed. It is concerned first of all with just these unpleasant aspects of the Old Masters, not with their charms. It does not, of course, make them only the more conspicuous by naming and listing them; but it is always conscious of them, and its chief aim is to lead the beginner, by hook or by crook, past the apparently insurmountable barrier which they present and give him a glimpse of the beauties beyond.

It is necessarily a rudimentary book. It is not for the connoisseur or the initiated, but for the ‘neophyte without the gates. It tells not merely what to look for in the work of a painter, but where to look, and how. It is not meant to be read, but to be applied, sentence by sentence, to pictures or prints. Literary interest, which may be defined as the concealment within each sentence of a subtle temptation to hurry on to the next one, has been sacrificed to utility. It is a reference boak to which

vii vill FOREWORD anyone who dislikes the old masters may apply for help in learning to understand them. Its Directions for Looking are based on the laws of esthetics and psychology, but they are not merely theoretical. They were worked out at first hand in the course of the author’s own search for the beauty in which he sometimes believed but oftener doubted.

Contents

Acknowledgement e e © @ e

Foreword

Introduction :

Index to Quotations

ix

ILLUSTRATIONS

Portrait of the Artist. Rembrandt . Frontispiece

Facing Page Spring (detail). Botticelli . i ata tira a 8 Madonna of the Magnificat. Botticelli . . 16

The Entombment. Caravaggio . elvan ees Cardinal Richelieu. P. de Champaigne Suvaiitir hoe Virgin and Child. Correggio . . Sey eT A) Madonna del Latte. Correggio . . . . . 48 Last Communion of St. Jerome. Domenichino. 56 Thegarists)Pather.’’ Direr ..: '. citer O48 The Resurrection. P. della Francesca arc day thy Portrait of a Man. El Greco . . Ap eM seeped Nurse and Laughing Baby. Frans Hals see ae ee OO Anne. of Cleves. Holbein... Stein IS

The Floating Feather. M. d’ Hondeeoeter Meme ie LOS The Country House. P.de Hooch . . . .. 116 Crrevandier ohn. Jordaens \. 6.9.) > 3 en 126 Madonna of the Rose Hedge. Luini . . . 134 Ame ominnerey Maes | '.:) 6. ime eh ibe er a Lay Madonna and Saints. Mantegna : A aye a Creation of Man (detail). Michelangelo Peetobans 0) Rates pomeonoimero: Bari,: Moretto <2 100 170

Pe eeOP MEE NLOPONE hi) Se 180 The Immaculate Conception. Murillo . . . 188 Raphael and Tobias. Perugino . Oh el ee OS

La Belle Jardiniére. Raphael . . . . .- 206 Madonna della Sedia. Raphael . . . . + 216 Descent from the Cross. Rembrandt . . . 224 neeeraicd. ) Rembrandt io ei se ih 282 Crowning of the Elect (detail). Signorelli . 242 La Bella. . Titian . H(i) WUE DEY ne eae Virgin of a Cherries. Mitian AN a apart s|

Angel Musicians. H. and J. van Eyck oh tein eOG Chart e e . e ° 3 ° e ° e ° End xi