PREFACE THIS book is compiled for the use of the artloving tourist who wishes to see the most important pictures in the great galleries of Europe. The tourist is always in a hurry: he wants to reap the greatest possible pleasure and profit with the least expenditure of time. Generally speaking, he allows two days on the average for seeing a city; and of this time he cannot spend much in the Art Museums. Baedeker, for instance, allots less than one morning each to the famous galleries of Antwerp, Brussels, The Hague and Amsterdam. Therefore, in rushing through a collection of from six hundred to two thousand works of the Old Masters, the tourist wants to devote his attention to the most famous only. He knows that every great collection contains a number of mediocre works that are interesting only to students and historians of art, and that many pictures are falsely attributed to and are not worthy of the great masters whose names they bear. The visitor, therefore, wants to see, first of all, the recognised gems of the gallery, the masterpieces whose fame has reached him, and the great pictures with which he has become familiar through photographic and other reproductions. To get the best and most lasting impressions from a brief visit to a great gallery, the traveller should be in a measure prepared for what he is going to see. He cannot stand the shock of surprises. It is bewildering enough to see so many great and famous works one after another without a pause. The effect that absorbing such a feast of paintings has upon a cultivated and intellectual mind is graphically expressed by Hawthorne after a visit to the Uffizi. He says: "We looked pretty thoroughly through the gallery, and I saw many pictures that impressed me; but among such a multitude, with only one poor mind to take note of them, the stamp of each new impression helps to obliterate a former one." In going through a gallery, it is well to enjoy the little as well as the great, not only for the sake of contrast and rest to the eye and the mind, but because the art itself is often of the first order. On this same visit to the Uffizi, Hawthorne also says: "Until we learn to appreciate the cherubs and angels that Raphael scatters through the blessed air, it is not amiss to look at a Dutch fly settling on a peach, or a humblebee burying himself in a flower." If the tourist knows beforehand what are the gems of the gallery he can go directly to those he specially wants to see, without losing any of the precious moments that, like the Sibylline Books, became more precious as they lessened in number. In the following pages I have endeavoured to enable the tourist to satisfy these wants with the least trouble to himself. Out of the great mass of works I have selected what are recognised by all critics as the gems; and from the works of art-historians and critics of authority I have selected passages descriptive of the pictures or that give an insight into the special points, features or meaning of the works. The visitor is often curious to know what it is that makes one picture more famous than others that his own taste approves, and is glad in consequence to have a critic point out the special qualities of tone, line, expression, or composition that render it preeminent. It is interesting to know who the saints are that are represented in a "Holy Conversation" and why certain saints accompany the donors of a work. Such works as Botticelli's Spring, Cranach's Fountain of Youth, and Raphael's Virgin of the Fish become more attractive when their subjects are elucidated, and such masters as Crivelli, Carpaccio, Bellini, Vivarini, etc., are better appreciated when their qualities are emphasised by appreciative critics. Some portraits owe their chief interest to the celebrity of the individual represented; some to the beauty of the artist's work; and some to the mystery that surrounds the "unknown" subject. Other pictures have romantic histories, or have been special favourites with rulers and princes; and still others have obscure subjects that need explanation by the informed. Believing that the average tourist is desirous to know the opinion of the most authoritative experts and those discriminating judges who have studied the works and expounded their history, meaning and beauties, I have drawn freely. upon the English, French and German art-critics. and hope that with their aid this little handbook will be a practical guide to the traveller |