GREAT PICTURES, AS SEEN AND DESCRIBED BY FAMOUS WRITERS***
E-text prepared by Juliet Sutherland, Leonard Johnson, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net/)
Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 17478-h.htm or 17478-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/1/7/4/7/17478/17478-h/17478-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/1/7/4/7/17478/17478-h.zip)
Transcriber's note:
Bracketted lower case letters refer to notes at the end of the text{a}
At the end of this text I have provided some links to Internet sites which have more information about some of the artists, some of which may have color images similar to the ones presented in this book.
GREAT PICTURES
As Seen and Described by Famous Writers
Edited and Translated by
ESTHER SINGLETON
Author of "Turrets, Towers, and Temples" and Translator of "The Music Dramas of Richard Wagner"
With Numerous Illustrations
[Illustration: FISHERMAN PRESENTING THE RING TO THE DOGE GRADENIGO. _Bordone._]
New York Dodd, Mead and Company Copyright, 1899 By Dodd, Mead and Company
Preface
The cordial reception of "Turrets, Towers, and Temples" has encouraged me to hope that a welcome may be given to a book treating the masterpieces of painting in a similar manner.
Great writers and literary tourists have occasionally been inspired to record the impressions of their saunterings among galleries and museums. The most interesting of these, not necessarily professional, I have tried to bring together in the following pages. My object has been not to make a selection of the greatest pictures in the world, although many that have that reputation will be found here, but rather to bring together those that have produced a powerful impression on great minds. Consequently, when the reader is disturbed at the omission of some world-famous painting, I beg him to remember my plan and blame the great writers instead of me for neglecting his favourite.
My task has not been a light one. A few words of rapturous admiration are constantly to be met with in the pages of art-lovers, but a sympathetic study of a single work is rarely found. General comment of a given artist's work is also plentiful, while discriminating praise of individual canvases is scanty. The literary selection has, therefore, involved a great deal of research.
From time to time the relative popularity of painters shifts strangely, but no matter what inconstant fashion may dictate, or what may be the cult of the hour, certain paintings never lose their prestige, but annually attract as many pilgrims as Lourdes or Fusi-San.
Of modern painters I have only included Turner and Rossetti.
It is interesting to compare the example I have chosen from Rossetti with Leonardo's "Monna Lisa." Pater has admirably brought out, without dwelling too much upon it, the charm that is eternal in her face as well as the fantastic imagination of the great artist who created her for all time. He says: "The fancy of a perpetual life, sweeping together ten thousand experiences, is an old one.... Certainly Lady Lisa might stand as the embodiment of the _old_ fancy, the symbol of the _modern_ idea." In a similar sense Lilith the siren, the Lorelei, the eternal enchantress, in her modern robe, is the embodiment of a _new_ fancy, the symbol of the _ancient_ idea; and just here across four centuries the thoughts of two great artists meet.
