The second period alluded to in the history of Europe, arrived a hundred years after; it extends over about fifty years of the seventeenth century, comprising the ministries of Cardinal Richelieu and his successor Mazarin in France, corresponding in England with the reign of Charles I., the Rebellion, and the restoration of the Stuarts to power. It is especially to painters that we are indebted for our knowledge of the cardinal ministers of both France and Spain, of their sovereigns, their friends, their enemies, and the courts that they so despotically governed. had borne, but of whom the old Lion never of Europe than with any other period in would acknowledge the legitimacy. Shere history. We allude, first, to that of the Singh was a man of considerable energy of Reformation, the reign of Henry VIII., character, and proceeded at once from his and Cardinal Wolsey, in England, with its retirement near Umretzur to assume the corresponding period in Italy and Germany, reins of government; but the widow of the reign of the Emperor Charles V., exKurruck Singh opposed him, giving out tending to Spain, to that of his successor that her daughter-in-law, the relic of Noo and son, Philip II., the husband of our Nehal, was enceinte, and that it was her Queen Mary. duty to act as regent till the child should be born. At first the tale was credited, so both Shere Singh and Dhejan Singh withdrew again from the capital; but the falsehood came to light as soon as men recalled to their remembrance that the interesting lady numbered no more than eight years of age. Accordingly, Shere Singh took the field again and prevailed. But these claims and counter-claims, as they could not be maintained without constant appeals to the troops, so they soon converted the Sikh army into a body as disorganized and mercenary as were the Prætorian bands of Rome. Rivals bid for their services, and The state of the fine arts in Europe at were served and betrayed alternately. Thus both these periods (the Reformation and Shere Singh having gained his end by the Rebellion) was glorious. At the time largesses, kept his place only till he forgot of the Reformation, Holbein resided in to be profuse among his troops, and was England; Albert Durer flourished in Germurdered at a review, the very minister many; Titian, Tintoret, Georgione, and who raised him to the throne being a party Paul Veronese were protected by the Emto the deed. Other assassinations and peror Charles V.; Raphael, Leonardo da military riots followed, till, in the end, all government, or semblance of a government, ceased, and the army, after existing by plunder as long as it could be had on the Sikh side of the Sutlej, advanced towards the river and threatened the protected principalities. Here, then, we stop for the present. Before we meet our readers again, the results of the operations which have been carried on in the neighborhood of Loodiana will have transpired; and as soon as we feel ourselves in a position to deal fairly by so important a subject, we will not fail to give a sketch both of them and of the circumstances which shall appear to have led to them and arisen out of them. From Frazer's Magazine. Vinci, Janet, and Prismaticcio, by Francis I.; Michael Angelo was rather persecuted than protected by the different successive popes; and Pierin del Vago, along with several other artists, worked at Genoa for the great and generous Andrea Doria. Richelieu and Mazarin were equally in their day surrounded by a halo of glory in painting, owing to their enormous wealth; commissions were sent to Italy on a large scale, which laid the foundation of all the collections of France; and, notwithstanding the poverty and the bad fortune of the sovereigns of England and Spain, they protected, as well as their ministers, the fine arts, and both loved and understood painting. Accordingly, Rubens, Vandyke, Velasquez, and Murillo, along with the famous miniature painters, Oliver, Petitot, and Cooper, having transmitted to posterity the likenesses of all those by whom they were surrounded, we know the air and counte MURILLO, OR THE PAINTER WITHOUT nance, the figure and costume of the most AMBITION. Ir is through the assistance of the fine arts that we are better acquainted with two of the most striking epochs in the history celebrated persons of Europe; and thus are we become intimately acquainted with the beauties and wits, and the military and political leaders of the day. We know the peculiar expression of the unfortunate Charles; the grace of Henrietta | up in the repertory of the Hospital de los Maria; the portly grandeur of her mother, Venerables at Seville. It represents the Mary of Medecis; the sternness of Wall- superior, Don Justino Francisco Neve, the stein, according so exactly with Schiller dear friend and patron of Murillo, in whose and Coleridge's description of that extraor- arms he died. It is a whole length of an dinary man; the warrior looks of the great ecclesiastic, sitting in his arm-chair, and commander, Spinola; the fatuity of Buck- very perfect as portraiture. There is also ingham, so exactly in accordance with his in the Louvre the portrait of Don Andreas character and conduct; and the vulgarity de Antrade, with his dog, a whole-length. of feature of the minister of Spain, Oli- Of this picture there are several repetitions vares, joined to his expression of stern good in England. One of these repetitions belongs to the queen; another is at Longford Castle in Wiltshire. However, Murillo's portraits are rare. He painted many abbots, bishops, monks, and generals of monastic orders in Spain, for whose convents and chapter-houses he had commissions for large works of a religious nature. Of these persons, few are known out of Spain, and even in Spain their very names and histories are unknown or forgotten. sense. It is to be regretted that the last great painter of Europe, Murillo, left but few portraits behind him of persons known to posterity. Murillo appears to have been as great in portrait-painting as he was in ideal or religious art. The portraits he has left are perfect in point of truth and nature, but Murillo was an unambitious man. He neither sought the society, the approbation, nor the patronage of kings or ministers. In his character of a mild and gentle nature, there was a sighing and struggling for independence of mind as well as habits, that was the marked characteristic of his life. His representations of himself more portray this spirit of independence than his contemplative and poetical nature, and there is more energy, vivacity, and animal life expressed, than would be expected in the gentleness and love of quiet and retirement that belonged to Murillo's character. There are two portraits of Murillo at Paris; one is reckoned the chef d'œuvre of the Spanish gallery in the Louvre, the other belongs to Louis Philippe. Both have been engraved, and are well known in England through the engravings. The one belonging to the king represents him older and more grave in character than the former. The former would suit the character of Columbus; it represents boldness, acuteness, and sagacity. The latter is more religious in feeling and intent on his art. Another portrait, by and of Murillo, is said to belong to Don Berardo de Friate in Spain, was engraved there, and the engravings sold in London; and a fourth portrait is known in Holland and Belgium, and has been engraved in those countries. Murillo's reputation as a painter rests on the ideal in which he soared-on the earthly nature of the Spaniard raised by his imagination and traced to a heavenly natureon a poetical feeling which came not forth in words, but that went direct from the mind to the hand; at the same time his art was so entirely national, that the most ignorant can immediately distinguish his pictures from those of any of the Italian school. The religious feeling of his faith and creed is expressed in every performance. We read in his divine pictures the history of Spain and of the Spaniards; the strong and fiery passions of the South, held down by the Inquisition; and the gloom and superstition of its kings and nobles. In Murillo's compositions may be read many a well-known story in Spanish life, and of the greatest individuals of the nation; the wisdom of Ferdinand and Isabella, the gloom and intellect of the Emperor Charles V., the crime and superstition of Philip II., the sagacity and wisdom of Ximenes and Olivares, and even the weakness of the imbecile Charles II., that monarch who so much appreciated Murillo's paintings, that he passed a law prohibiting their exportation out of Spain, thus showing sense and feeling enough to estimate their merit. There are also portraits in the Louvre of Alongside of the national characteristics Murillo's mother and of his servant; but of the Spaniards expressed in Murillo's the most celebrated portrait by the hand of composition, is a coloring that tells of the Murillo is now in England, and belongs to brilliancy of a fine climate; it is the beauLord Lansdowne, who bought it from Mr. tiful on earth, in air and vegetation, allied Watson Taylor. It was brought to Eng-to faith in God and in the saints; all these land by a Frenchman, but was seen, in deeply imbued with the ferocity of the early 1806, in its original place, that is, hanging religious wars, which made and created those same saints and martyrs. The moral gloom with which Murillo was surrounded only cleared off now and then under the influence of a bright sun by day, and a clear, starry firmament by night. Like Spagnoletto, Murillo's representations of our Saviour are disagreeable in the extreme. They express human nature, not divine nature; Spaniards in feature, passions, and countenance. Of all the great painters, it is Titian who has best combined the divine and human nature of our Lord, blended and mingled as Scripture has authorized our belief. It must be rather to the pictures of the Virgin Mary and the martyred saints that we must turn to become acquainted with Murillo. See the Madonnas in Marshal Soult's gallery, the way that they float in air on the canvass. They are evidently painted at the hour of setting sun in the south of Europe, and not in the street of a crowded metropolis, under the influence of a chilling easterly wind, or a November fog. The play of coloring in these pictures is so harmonious, that the idler lingers long before them, scarcely able to tear himself away, and yet not able to explain why he is so attracted there. One might suppose that Milton had contemplated the crowd of sunny cherubims in which the figure of the Madonna is encircled, those lovely beings "In the color of the rainbow live, And play in the plighted clouds." It is but Murillo, Correggio, and Guido, that can paint cherubims. But it is difficult to bring the mind to a belief that the same artist who painted these heavenly visions, and thus represented assumptions and martyrdoms, could have excelled in low life in the manner in which Murillo, as a painter, is classed in the gallery at Munich. There he is known but as the painter of real life. The ragged beggar-boys of Seville are there depicted, devouring grapes and melons, and playing at cards as eagerly as if they staked thousands. All objects are represented with a truth that has caused it to be said, with regard to these paintings, "that the indifference to the external and the internal freedom amidst rags and poverty, raises these same paintings of beggar children to all that art can depict or express." Painting began at once in Spain; not like the schools of Italy, gradually and successively, but dividing immediately into the schools of Seville and Madrid. That of Madrid owed its origin to El Mudo (Navarette), having belonging to it the families of Italian origin of Castillo, Carducci, and others, who formed Sanchez Coello (the favorite painter of Philip II.), Pareda, Collautes, and others. The school of Seville owed its origin to Luis de Vargas, and Pietro Campana, both of whom were formed and educated in Italy, and this same school continued with Alonzo Cano, Zurbaran, Velasquez, &c., and ended with Murillo. Murillo, like Velasquez his contemporary and master, was born at Seville; and baptized on the 1st of January, 1618, under the name of Bartolomé Esteban. His parents were of humble origin, his youth was passed in obscurity, without education, without pleasures, without resource; " most melancholy youth," as one of his biographers remarks of him, often leads to greatness. At last Juan de Castillo, a distant relation, took the boy out of compassion and charity to his home, whose reputation, destined to be so celebrated in the history of art, was to carry down the name of the master to posterity. Castillo drew correctly, but could only instruct the youth in the dry and cold coloring of a professor of Seville; and Murillo shortly left him to go to Cadiz, where, as it may be said, he became selftaught. The poor boy, deprived of all instruction, of all study, had to gain his daily. bread by his pencil, of which he scarcely knew the use, and could not make great proficiency in an art which he used but as the means of procuring daily food and clothing. He sold his religious paintings (painted on wood) by the dozen, to persons going to America, and to the newly converted population of Peru and Mexico; but in painting these daubs, he acquired the habit of handling a paint-brush, managing his colors, and nothing more. Murillo had attained the age of twentyfour, when, fortunately for him, an enthusiastic Spanish painter, Pietro de Moya, passed through Seville, to which town Murillo had returned. Moya had been in London, and had been instructed by Vandyke, and brought with him, on his revisiting Spain, the brilliant coloring and the good taste with which Vandyke inspired his admirers. At the sight of Moya's paintings, Murillo fell into an ecstacy of delight; he was touched with the spark which sets the fire of genius into a flame. But what could he Notwithstanding the envy which generally follows success, notwithstanding the rivalry and hatred of Valdez Leal, of Herrera the younger, whom Murillo had dethroned from being at the head of their profession as painters, he soon rose from indigence and obscurity to renown; and, in 1648, he was in a position good enough to obtain in marriage the hand of a rich and noble lady, Doña Beatrix de Cabrera y Sotomajor. do? He had neither money nor patronage; to be superior to all that they had proand soon after Moya's visit to Seville, Van- duced. dyke died, so that it would have been useless to have gone to England; a journey to Italy was too expensive to think of undertaking; and Moya himself, then but a scholar, was going to Granada. In a fit of despair, Murillo took a desperate resolution; he bought a large canvass, cutting it into small pieces, which he covered with little figures of the Madonna, of the Infant Saviour, with cherubims and garlands of flowers; and after disposing of these trifles at the fair at Seville, with a few pence in his pocket, neither asking advice nor taking leave of any one, he set out on foot for Madrid. It was in the year 1643. Arrived at Madrid, he presented himself to Velasquez, then in all the glory of his reputation and his good fortune. The king's favorite painter received the young artist kindly, encouraged him, promised him work, gave him the means of studying the works of the great Italian masters in the palaces and at the Escurial, and in his own studio Velasquez finally instructed and advised him. From the year that Murillo returned to Seville (1645), until his death in 1682, he rarely left his native place, nor indeed scarcely his studio; spending there thirtyseven years in constant and incessant employment, and by that means producing the enormous number of pictures that were the work of his pencil. Given up to his art, he sought neither the patronage of the great nor the applause of the multitude, but made his happiness in placing his talent at the disposal of those persons who pleased himself in indulging his taste for composing his Murillo passed two years in studying the pictures in retirement, and for being comgreat colorists. The masters he preferred pletely independent in his daily habits of were Titian, Rubens, and Vandyke, Spag-life. The chapters, the monasteries, and noletto, and Velasquez. Less anxious for the grandees of Spain sent incessant rerenown than for independence he left Madrid, notwithstanding Velasquez's wish to retain him in that city, and returned to Seville in 1645. It was said that Murillo took a disgust to courts and cities, in consequence of the disgrace of the prime minister Olivares, which happened in 1643. He was a great patron of the arts, and was sent into exile, where he shortly after died. His loss The Convent of Capuchins at Seville at was deeply deplored by Velasquez; and it the beginning of this century, possessed is probable that the pure and simple-minded nineteen first-rate pictures painted by MuMurillo may have taken a disgust to Madrid rillo, and the Hospital de la Claridad had in in consequence of this public event. No its little church eight of his most famous persuasions of Velasquez could get him to compositions. He received from the hosprofit by the king's bounty, or recommenda-pital for the painting of "Moses Striking tions to pursue his studies at Rome. Paint ers are as excitable as patriots or poets. quests and orders to the artist of Seville; and there were few cathedrals, sacristies, or convents, that did not possess some representation of their patron saint by his hand. Most of the illustrious and ancient families of Spain also aspired to the portrait of some ecclesiastic, friend, or relation painted by him. the Rock," 13,300 réaux de vellon; for the "Miracle of the loaves in the Desert," Hardly had Murillo's absence been no- 15,975; and for all the eight pictures toticed in his native town; but the astonish-gether, 82,000 réaux de vellon, a sum ment was great when the following year he amounting to about 8501. of our money-a painted for the Convent of San Francisco large sum for those days, and for Spain. three pictures, one was "The Death of The most laborious and productive time of Saint Claire," a picture that formed the his life was from his fiftieth to his sixtieth principal ornament latterly of the Aguado year; proving in art as in literature, that Gallery at Paris. Every one inquired where the greatest works of a man of genius are Murillo could have learned this noble and towards his decline, when he can unite exattractive style, which partook of the man-perience and habit to invention and imaginer of Spagnoletto, Vandyke, and Velas-nation. Murillo is, of all the Spanish masquez, and that was thought from its variety ters, the one who possessed the most of the Murillo, like many of the great painters, had three successive manners; and these were called in Spanish, frio, calido, y vaporoso (cold, warm, and vaporous). These three terms sufficiently indicate the manner of each, the children, the beggars, and the scenes of every-day life, in which Murillo excelled, were painted in his first style, as were a few of his monastic scenes. The silvery tone in which his Annunciations are painted, are in the style called vaporous; harmonizing all throughout, and giving to the scene the appearance of the lighted-up clouds, a miraculous but fantastic light, full of the charms of effect and the triumph of coloring, and attempted previously but by Guido and Correggio. ideal and of a poetical grandeur in his combining all the perfection of each of his works. He seldom made use of allegory styles of painting, and of conveying to the in his compositions, but went straight to his eye and mind of the spectator a moral influpoint to represent the scene as he imagined ence. In ancient times the kings of France it, without having recourse to learning, or and England were supposed to cure the evil. to tradition, or to legendary tale, as had the The kings of Hungary had another vocagreat Italian masters. tion, they cleansed and washed the lepers. The palace is converted into an hospital, where reigns a fearful and disgusting misery; the rags, dirt, and vermin, with which the children are covered, is suited but for Murillo's powers to represent. On one side are the ladies of the court, graceful, handsome, and magnificently dressed; on the other side are these wretched children, deformed, full of sores and suffering, amidst paralytic and almost lifeless old age. One profile of an old woman is brought out with great skill from a background, formed by the velvet robe of one of the court ladies. This is the triumph of coloring, as the whole picture is the triumph of contrasts. All that is brilliant in beauty, in health, and in luxury, is placed alongside of all the hideous ills to which human nature is subject. All of disease, all of splendor; but Charity approaches and unites these two extremes; a young and beautiful woman, wearing a royal crown beneath her nun's veil, is in the act of washing the impure head of a leper; her white and delicate hands seem to refuse the disgusting office that Religion calls on her to perform; her eyes are filled with tears; and her distress of mind is shown on her countenance, but Charity overcomes disgust, and Religion carries her through her terrible task. Such is the scene of a picture which causes artists and travellers such an admiration of the vaIn his Assumptions, Murillo takes a loftyried powers of Murillo; each detail is adflight into aërial regions amidst the ecstacies mirable; the least change would destroy the of saints and the visions of the enthusiast. harmony of the whole; and Viardot says, As Velasquez aspired to the illustration of" that this picture places Murillo by the truth and to precision in details, so did his side of Raphael." friend Murillo live above realities. He The lover of painting has but few opporloved poetical life, and addressed himself tunities of studying the Spanish school in to the imagination. England. At Paris and at Munich the Murillo's third manner, the warm tint, was the one that he preferred. Some of his largest compositions, now in the Museum at Madrid, are painted in this manner, and they are all taken from the stories of saints. It is in such-like subjects of divine poetry that the pencil of Murillo, like the wand of the enchanter, can show prodigies; and if in common life he is equal to the greatest of painters, he stands alone like Milton, in scenes of another world; and of the two great Spanish painters (him and his instructor Velasquez), it may be said that Velasquez was the painter of the earth, and Murillo that of the heavens. It was in the warm manner to which Mu-means are more at hand. In England, it is rillo was so partial, that he painted what is principally to the Sutherland Gallery that esteemed his greatest performance, "St. he must have recourse. That gallery posAnthony of Padua," a picture now in the sesses five pictures by Murillo, one of which chapel of the cathedral of Seville; however, is an acknowledged masterpiece of art. many of his admirers prefer the picture of Four pictures by Zurbaran, one by Alonzo "St. Isabella of Hungary," now in the mu- Cauo, one by Spagnoletto, and one by Veseum at Madrid. It represents the pious lasquez. queen gaining a celestial crown, not by At Dulwich are several pictures by the prayer, but by works. The scene takes hand of Murillo; at Grosvenor House is the place in a hall of simple and beautiful archi- celebrated landscape formerly in the palace tecture, where Murillo has succeeded in [of St. Jago, at Madrid; at Lord Ashbur |