1709-1742.]

STATE OF THE FINE ARTS.

447

this country had hitherto seen; and, though the evil times on which he had fallen prevented him from carrying his purpose into execution, we know that he sought to unite in one splendid metropolitan palace the utmost attainable magnificence of the combined arts of the architect and the painter. His example found eager imitators among his courtiers. Nobles and wealthy commoners were no longer content as of old, with portraits of themselves, their wives, and their elder sons, but began to compare the merits of Titian and Velasquez, of Raffaelle and Honthorst, of Rubens and Snyders and Vandyck; and to seek for a work by some cunning hand of Italy, Spain, or the Netherlands to decorate their town house or country mansion. The duke of Buckingham and the earl of Arundel were at the head of the courtly connoisseurs. They despatched agents to Italy and the East to seek for works of merit; and urged on by the rival ministers, our envoys at Madrid, Venice, Constantinople, and the Hague were almost as much occupied in negotiating for pictures and statues, as in affairs of state.

The passion for Art penetrated probably but little downwards. Among the higher classes it was a mere fashion. By the Puritans the taste of the king for religious paintings was regarded as idolatrous: his classic pictures offended their notions of propriety. The Civil War broke up the royal and many private collections. Cromwell indeed saved the royal pictures from being utterly dispersed, and the stately galleries of several of the older nobility yet contain many works purchased for them in the reign of Charles. But the influence was not abiding. Cromwell had little leisure, probably little inclination, to attend to pictures and statues. The period of the Commonwealth was not one in which private individuals would venture to indulge the taste if they possessed it, still less to simulate a taste they did not feel. With the Restoration came a season of lax morals and thoughtless selfindulgent habits, inimical to everything pure and elevated in art, but favourable to the voluptuous and meretricious artist. Verrio and Laguerre grew rich, as their sensual deities and profane virtues sprawled over the ceilings and staircases of the palaces of the king and the nobility; and Lely found ample employment for his pencil in depicting the sleepy-eyed "Beauties" of the royal court and harem.

Painting and sculpture were at a low ebb when William and Mary ascended the throne of England. Kneller had succeeded to Lely as the fashionable portrait painter, and he reigned without a rival. Cibber and Gibbons practised as sculptors; but their chisels were almost confined to carving in wood the internal, in stone the external, decorations of buildings. Walpole says of William: "This prince like most of those in our annals contributed nothing to the advancement of the Arts." And he adds that "Mary seems to have had little more propensity to the Arts than the king." William was not a man to waste time on what he would consider trifling pursuits, when serious affairs both at home and abroad called for the utmost exercise of his time, thought, and energy. But if he cared little for the other arts he did not neglect architecture; and so long as William lived Wren had not to complain of ingratitude or neglect. William and Mary did, however, in a certain careless way patronize painters. They gave employment, as their

"Anecdotes of Painting," vol. ii. p. 585, Wornum's ed.