the metropolitan is practically the same as the archbishop (q.v.); in the Eastern church he ranks above the archbishop, but below the patriarch (q.v.). Metropolitans first appear in the East in the 4th century as presiding over a province (provincia or ἐπαρχία), and their see is fixed in the principal town (μητροπόλις) of the province, which remains the normal custom both in East and West. In Africa, however, the metropolitan jurisdiction was exercised by the senior bishop (primas, primae sedis episcopus, senex) for the time being, a custom which prevailed for a time also in Spain. Thus, too, in the Scottish Episcopal Church and the Protestant Episcopal Church of America there are no metropolitans, the primas being the senior bishop.
METSU, GABRIEL (1630–1667), Dutch painter, was the son
of Jacob Metsu, who lived most of his days at Leiden, where he
was three times married. The last of these marriages was celebrated
in 1625, and Jacomma Garnijers, herself the widow of a
painter, gave birth to Gabriel in 1630. According to Houbraken
Metsu was taught by Gerard Dow, though his early works do not
lend colour to this assertion. It is certain, however, that he was
influenced in turn by Jan Steen, Rembrandt, and Hals. Metsu
was registered among the first members of the painters’ corporation
at Leiden; and the books of the gild also tell us that he
remained a member in 1649. In 1650 he ceased to subscribe, and
works bearing his name and the date of 1653 give countenance
to the belief that he had then settled at Amsterdam, where he
probably continued his studies under Rembrandt. One of his
earliest pictures is the “Lazarus” at the Strassburg Museum,
painted under the influence of Jan Steen. Under the influence
of Rembrandt he produced the “Woman taken in Adultery,” a
large picture with the date of 1653 in the Louvre. To the same
period belong the “Departure of Hagar,” formerly in the Thore
collection, and the “Widow’s Mite” at the Schwerin Gallery.
But he probably observed that sacred art was ill suited to his
temper, or he found the field too strongly occupied, and turned to
other subjects for which he was better fitted. That at one time
he was deeply impressed by the vivacity and bold technique of
Frans Hals can be gathered from Lord Lonsdale’s picture of
“Women at a Fishmonger’s Shop.” What Metsu undertook
and carried out from the first with surprising success was the low
life of the market and tavern, contrasted, with wonderful
versatility, by incidents of high life and the drawing-room. In
no single instance do the artistic lessons of Rembrandt appear
to have been lost upon him. The same principles of light and
shade which had marked his schoolwork in the “Woman taken
in Adultery” were applied to subjects of quite a different kind.
A group in a drawing-room, a series of groups in the marketplace,
or a single figure in the gloom of a tavern or parlour,
was treated with the utmost felicity by fit concentration and
gradation of light, a warm flush of tone pervading every part,
and, with that, the study of texture in stuffs was carried as far
as it had been by Ter Borch or Dow, if not with the finish or
the brio of De Hooch.
Metsu went to Amsterdam before 1655, married in 1658, and became a citizen of that city in 1659. One of the best pictures of Metsu’s manhood is the “Market-place of Amsterdam,” at the Louvre, respecting which it is difficult to distribute praise in fair proportions, so excellent are the various parts, the characteristic movement and action of the dramatis personae, the selection of faces, the expression and the gesture, and the texture of the things depicted. Equally fine, though earlier, are the “Sportsman” (dated 1661) and the “Tavern” (also 1661) at the Hague and Dresden Museums, and the “Game-Dealer’s Shop,” also at Dresden, with the painter’s signature and 1662. Among the five examples of the painter at the Wallace Collection, including “The Tabby Cat,” “The Sleeping Sportsman,” which cost Lord Hertford £3000, is an admirable example technically considered. Among his finest representations of home life are the “Repast” at the Hermitage in St Petersburg; the “Mother nursing her Sick Child” of the Steengracht Gallery at the Hague; the “Amateur Musicians” at the Hague Gallery; the “Duet” and the “Music Lesson” at the National Gallery, and many more examples at nearly all the leading European galleries.
METTERNICH-WINNEBURG, CLEMENS WENZEL LOTHAR,
Prince (1773–1859), Austrian statesman and diplomatist, was born at Coblenz on the 15th of May 1773. His father, Count Franz Georg Karl von Metternich-Winneburg zu Beilstein[1]
(d. 1818), was a diplomatist who had passed from the service of the archbishop-elector of Trier to that of the court of Vienna; his mother was Countess Maria Beatrix Aloisia von Kagenegg. At the time of Clemens Metternich’s birth, and for some time subsequently, his father was Austrian ambassador to the courts of the three Rhenish electors, and the boy was thus from the first brought up under the influence of the tone and ideas which flourished in the small German courts that lay within the sphere of influence of the France of the ancien régime. In 1788 he went to the university of Strassburg, where he studied German constitutional law; but the outbreak of the French Revolution caused him to leave after two years. Metternich was a witness of the excesses of the mob in Strassburg, and he ascribed his life-long hatred of political innovation to these early experiences of the victory of liberal ideas. In 1790, by way of striking contrast, he was deputed by the Catholic bench of the Westphalian college of counts to act as their master of the ceremonies at the coronation of the Emperor Leopold II. at Frankfort, a function which he again performed at the coronation of Francis II. in 1792. The intervening time he spent at Mainz, attending the university and frequenting the court of the archbishop-elector, where his impressions of the Revolution were strengthened by his intercourse with the French émigrés who had made it their centre. The outbreak of the revolutionary war drove him from Mainz, and he went to Brussels, where he found employment in the chancery of his father, at that time Austrian minister to the government of the Netherlands. Here, in August 1794, he issued his first publication, a pamphlet in which he denounced the “shallow pates” of the old diplomacy and argued that the only way to combat the French revolutionary armies was by a levée en masse of the populations on the frontier of France—singular views for the statesman who was destined to be the last great representative of the old diplomacy and the greater part of whose life was to be spent in combating the national enthusiasms by which the revolutionary power of France was ultimately overthrown.
After a long stay in England, where he made the acquaintance of the prince of Wales (afterwards George IV.), Metternich went to Vienna; and on the 27th of September 1795 he married at Austerlitz the Countess Eleonore von Kaunitz, a grand-daughter of that Austrian chancellor who in many respects was his prototype. This alliance not only brought him great estates in Austria, but introduced him into the most exalted circles of Viennese society. Here he was well qualified to hold his own by reason of his handsome presence, the exquisite courtesy of his address and a certain reputation for gallantry. He was far, however, from being a mere carpet diplomatist. His interests were many and varied, and he found time for the serious study of natural science and medicine. In December 1797 he was chosen by the Westphalian counts as their representative at the congress of Rastadt, where he remained till 1799. This was his first experience of the great world of practical politics and especially of those rough diplomatists of the Revolution of whom in his letters he has left so vivid a description. In January 1801 he was appointed Austrian envoy to the elector of Saxony. His two years’ stay at the court of Dresden was mainly useful to him by bringing him into touch with the many Russian and Polish families of importance; his serious diplomatic career did not begin till his appointment, in November 1803, as ambassador at Berlin. His instructions at the outset were to
- ↑ The family of Metternich, originally established in the county of Jülich, can trace its descent to the middle of the 14th century. In 1637 they received from the archbishop of Trier the countships of Winneburg and Beilstein. These were confiscated in 1803, and the lands of the suppressed abbey of Ochsenhausen, with the title of prince of the Empire, were granted by the edict as compensation. The new principality was “mediatized” in 1806 in favour of Württemberg; but in virtue of their short tenure of it the descendants of Prince Metternich enjoy the privileges of mediatized princes.
