ment, and the still clinging stiffness of traditional restraints, to the freedom and coldness of his later works, painted under the influence of success at a dissolute court, of flattery, of jealousy, and of indifference to the motives of religion.
The Venetian masters of the sixteenth century fill a large portion of the sides of one of the great saloons of this aisle, covering it with a glow of deepest color. The opposite side is hung with many pictures by Rubens; and the contrast between the works of the mighty colorists of Venice and the famous colorist of Antwerp is not without curious interest and instruction. The Venice wall has the color of Venetian sunsets, the gold and crimson of its clouds, the solemn blue of the Cadore hills, the deep green of the lagoons, the brown and purple of the seaweeds, and the shadows of the city of decaying palaces. Here are such harmonies as Nature strikes in her great symphony of color. But on the other wall are the colors of the courts in which Rubens passed so many of his days,—the dyes of tapestry, the sheen of jewels and velvet, the glaring crimson and yellow of royal displays; while the harmonies that he strikes out with his rapid and powerful hand are like those of the music of some great military band.
There are noble pictures here by Giorgione, and Titian, and Tintoret, and Paul Veronese, and Bonifazio. Look at this Musical Party by Giorgione, this landscape by Titian, this portrait of the vile Duke of Alva by the same great master, the greatest master of all in portraiture. It is the Duke himself, not merely in his outward presence, but such as the insight of one as profoundly versed in human as in external nature beheld him. The portrait is a biography of the man, and one may read in the narrow, hard, and wily face the history of his cruel life. The same qualities of inward vision are displayed by Tintoret in his more hasty portraits, and one learns as much of Venetian men and of their lives from the pencil of Titian and of Tintoret as from the pens of contemporary chroniclers. The picture by Bonifazio of a Virgin and Child surrounded by saints is a splendid example of this almost unsurpassed colorist; while several of the pictures by Paul Veronese are among the most precious things in all the Exhibition, as clear and uninjured specimens of admirable Venetian work.
The Bolognese school is represented at Manchester out of all proportion to its worth, in comparison with the earlier and greater schools of Italy. It is essentially the school of decline, and, after the time of Francia, very few pictures proceeded from it dignified by noble thought, or exhibiting either purity or power of imagination. Its very method condemned it to inferiority. But debased as it is, it has been during the last two centuries the object of perhaps more real and affected admiration than any other of the schools of Italian art. Fortunately, we have entered upon a better period of criticism, and a change is fast coming over the public taste. But it is a curious fact, that the most popular picture in the whole gallery of ancient masters, the picture before which larger crowds assemble and linger than before any other, is one from this school,—the three Maries weeping over the body of the Saviour, by Annibale Caracci. A portion of the interest which it excites undoubtedly arises from the report that Louis Napoleon has offered the sum of £20,000 for it to its possessor, the Earl of Carlisle; but its intrinsic qualities are such as to explain much of its attraction for uneducated eyes. The attitudes of the figures are violent and theatrical, the colors are strong, the surface is smooth, the subject is easily recognized and of general interest. But whatever value be set upon these points, it is an example of many of the worst defects of the school. The expressions of the figures are exaggerated and unnatural, the color, though strong, is cold and inharmonious, the drawing feeble and incorrect, the sentiment inconceivably material. It is a true exponent of the low ebb of artistic power and of religious feeling at the period at which it was painted.
