showing that he had their trick of colour, but exaggerating the attitude and gestures of the figures painted by Van der Weyden. A striking altar-piece in the Belvedere Museum, at Vienna, must be mentioned amongst the few works of Van der Weyden, although it is classified under the name of Martin Schön. The picture clearly exhibits the practised hand of an anatomist, and is remarkable for the affected air of the heads. The same wan forms-the same thinly-coloured landscapes, pale in light, and transparent brown in shadow-the same foregrounds intersected by crevices, and covered with vegetation on the surface—the same large eyes, with their thin eyelids, which characterise the pictures at Berlin-may be noticed here. The centre of this picture represents the Saviour on the Cross, the Virgin at its foot, supported by St. John. The donors, a man and a woman, kneel on each side. On the wings are St. Veronica and the Magdalen.' The pictures which may be assigned with certainty to Van der Weyden are thus not numerous. Those which are falsely attributed to him are more so. "The Seven Sacraments," at Antwerp, does not exhibit, in its feebly marshalled groups, the talent of Roger for composition; the Magdalen at the Cross reminds us of the master, but nothing more. There is no reason for attributing to this painter two panels which bear his name in the Belvedere Collection. 1 No. 81, room 1, Belv. Cat. Wood, centre, 3′ 2′′ by 2′ 2′′; the wings severally 1' 1" broad, Austrian measure. 2 No. 23, Ant. Cat. Wood, 2 m. high by 0.97 m. broad, French measure. Painted for a dignitary of the chapter of Tournai, of the family of Boonem. Of these the first represents the Virgin and Child, St. Anne kneeling, two little dogs in the foreground, and a hedge of roses, behind which is a landscape and a city. The Eternal soars above in the clouds.' This picture is an imitation of the master, and a feeble one. The second panel represents the Adoration of the Magi, and is a poor production of a later date. The strongest sign of want of knowledge as to the master's style and manner was betrayed, however, by those who attributed to him the picture of Berlin, signed "Sumus Rugerii manus."3 The story of the picture is this: Zanetti, in his book "Pittura Veneziana," describes it as suspended, at the time he wrote (1771), in a passage leading from San Gregorio, at Venice, to a neighbouring convent. He thought, at first, that it must be a work by that "noted pupil of John Van Eyck, Ruggieri ;” but doubts arose upon this point when he found that the panel was Venetian fir, and not the oak in use amongst the Flemings. At a later period Lanzi saw this picture in the Nani Palace at Venice, and repeated Zanetti's statement.5 Some persons are inclined to put but little stress on this objection, saying, that probably the pupil of Van Eyck visited Venice when he came to Italy, and naturally painted with the materials afforded by the country; and those who held such an opinion thought it 1 No. 21, room 2, Belv. Cat. 2 No. 38, room 2, Belv. Cat. Wood, 1' by 81", Aust. measure. 3 No. 1163, Berlin Cat. Centre, 4 f. 84 z. high by 1f. 54z. broad, wood; wings, each 4f. 84z. high by 1f. 41 z. broad. ↑ Zanetti, Pittura Veneziana, 1771, lib. i. p. 31. 5 Lanzi, vol. iii. Scuola Venez., Epoca prima, p. 37. more entitled to belief, because the Anonimo di Morelli describes a portrait of Van der Weyden in the house of Marco Zuanne Ram at Venice, in 1531, painted in oils by Roger himself, and dated 1462. This would not prove that Roger was in Venice.1 The Anonimo did not say, as Mr. Michiels pretends, that the portrait was signed in Italian fashion, "Rugerio da Bruxelles," but distinctly that it was "from the hand of Rugerio da Burselles ;"2 and we know that the family of Ram was one of wealthy traders established at Venice for purposes of trade,3 and likely to have had this portrait brought from Flanders. But all such speculations, were they even founded, as we believe them not to be, must fall before the simple view of the style and manner of the picture. The subject is San Girolamo on a throne; to the right Mary Magdalen, and to the left St. Catherine; the style, Italian of the sixteenth century, and the wood on which it is executed peculiar to the Venetian painters. From the attitude and motion of the figures, and the character of the heads, which not only differ from Van der Weyden, but all the Flemish school, it must be pretty certain that the picture was executed by a painter of the school of Padua. The figures have the sveltness (to coin a word), and the features the aquiline expression which Flemings never had; and though 1 There is a curious coincidence of date between the portrait mentioned by the Anonimo and that of the late Mr. Rogers's Collection, said to be a portrait of Memling. This portrait was in the Ader's Collection. "In casa de M. Zuanne Ram a S. Stefano (in Venice) 1531. El ritratto de Rugerio da Burselles, pittor antico celebre in un quadretto de tavola a oglio, fin al petto, fù de mano de l' istesso Rugerio, fatto al specchio nel 1462," ut sup., p. 78. 2 Anonimo di Morelli, ut sup., p. 78. 3 Ibid. p. 140. the outline, drapery, and large round form of eye are hard, the whole exhibits considerable research. The colour has the thinness which characterised the school of Mantegna. That painter himself was not exempt from it. When he was a scholar of Squarcione, he, first amongst his fellows, made the Greeks his study, and applied perspective to the human form with such success as to found the science, and reduce it almost to a certainty. This classicism produced in him a want of sentiment, and made him fall into a course of faults peculiar to the school of Padua, and which are quite distinguishable in the picture now before us. Supposing, therefore, even that Van der Weyden came to Venice, and that his coming and departure had remained a secret from historians; supposing that he, and not Antonello, had carried thither the secret of oil-painting; supposing, in fact, a mass of improbable circumstances, it still remains a certainty that this is not a picture produced by him, but the work of some Rugero unknown to fame. Dr. Waagen has, very properly, classed this picture in the Lombard and Venetian school. The Gallery of Munich contains but one picture to which the name of Van der Weyden is attached :1 "Christ crowned with thorns;" but it is not unlike the weak production of a pupil of Quintin Massys. The character of this school is more visible, indeed, in the "Annunciation" of the Antwerp Gallery,2—a diminutive panel, painted with great care and finish, and not 1 No. 65, Pinak. Cat. Cab. IV. Wood, 1′ 9′′ high by 1′ 2′′ 6′′" broad. 2 No. 24, Antw. Gal. Cat. Wood, 0.20 m. high by 0.12 m. broad. dissimilar in execution from one in the Louvre, attributed to Lucas Van Leyden, and of old supposed to be the work of Memling.' It is not quite certain that the portrait said to be that of Philip the Good, in the same collection,' is a likeness of that prince, though we know that Louys engraved it for the Collection of the Dukes and Princes of the House of Burgundy, by Jonas Sinderhof. It was purchased at Besançon, in 1827, and once belonged to Colbert, the minister of Louis the Fourteenth. In style it is hard and dry, in character like a neighbouring picture of a monk, attributed to Memling. In the Academy of Bruges are two pictures, not by the master, though given to him. The first is the Adoration of the Magi,3 the second the Adoration of the Shepherds, a night scene; both of half a century later than Van der Weyden. Mr. Ignace Van Houthem at Bruges is supposed to possess three pictures by Roger, which once adorned the abbey of Flemalle, and represent severally the Trinity, St. Veronica, and the Virgin and Child.5 A Deposition from the Cross, in the Kensington Collection, representing Joseph of Arimathea sustaining the body of Christ, which has just been taken from the Cross, and the Virgin embracing the lifeless form, with deep 1 No. 595, Louvre Cat. Now classed in the school of Memling. 2 No. 25, Antw. Cat. 0.38 m. high, 0.22 m. broad. Wood. 3 No. 4, Bruges Acad. Cat. Wood. 4 No. 5, Bruges Acad. Cat. Wood. 5 Messag. des sc. Hist., 1846, p. 149. catalogued, is in the Francfort Gallery. Van der Weyden, and by a pupil. The same subject, un- 6 No. 56, Wallerstein's Collection. Wood, 2f. 6 in. by 1f. 8in. |
