Spain, v. 1 (of 2) by Edmondo De Amicis

Author:Edmondo De Amicis [Amicis, Edmondo De]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction & Literature, Historical, Classics
ISBN: 1230001002911
Publisher: @AnnieRoseBooks
Published: 2016-03-22T04:00:00+00:00

[Image not available: The Immaculate Conception, by Murillo]

The Immaculate Conception, by Murillo

and among them is a very large canvas representing the entire family of Charles IV. But the two paintings into which he put his whole soul are the French soldiers shooting the Spaniards on the second of May, and the fight of the people of Madrid with the Mamelukes of Napoleon, in which the figures are life-size. These are paintings which make one shudder. One cannot imagine anything more terrible, nor is it possible to give overbearing power a form more execrable, to desperation a more fearful appearance, or to the fury of a battle an expression of greater ferocity. In the first of these paintings there is a murky sky, the light of a lantern, a pool of blood, a confused mass of corpses, a crowd of men condemned to death, a row of French soldiers in the act of firing: in the other, bleeding horses, cavaliers dragged from their saddles, stabbed, trampled down, and mangled. What faces! what attitudes! One seems to hear the cries and see the blood run; the actual scene could not have been more horrible. Goya must have painted these pictures with flashing eyes and foaming mouth, with all the fury of a demoniac. It is the final point which painting can reach before it is transferred into action; beyond this point the brush is flung aside and the battle begins. Anything more terrible than these paintings must be slaughter; after these colors comes blood.

Of Ribera—whom we know also by the name of Spagnoletto—there are enough paintings to form a museum. They consist in great part of life-size figures of saints; a martyrdom of Saint Bartholomew, full of figures; a colossal Prometheus chained to a rock. Other paintings of his are found in other museums, at the Escurial, and in the churches, for he was very productive and industrious, like almost all the Spanish artists. After seeing a painting of his, one recognizes all the others at a glance, nor is it necessary to look at them with the eye of a critic to do this. There are old emaciated saints with shaved heads and naked, so that one can count their veins; with hollow eyes, fleshless cheeks, furrowed brows, and sunken chests, through which one can see their ribs; arms and hands which are only skin and bones; bodies worn out and exhausted, clothed in rags—yellow with the deathly pallor of corpses, full of sores, and covered with flood; carcases which seem to have been just dragged from the tomb, bearing on their faces the impress of all the spasms of pain, torture, famine, and sleeplessness; figures from the anatomist’s table, from which you might study all the secrets of the human organism. Admirable? Yes, for boldness of design, for strength of color, and for the thousand other merits which won for Ribera the fame of a most powerful painter. But true and great art—ah, it is not that! In those faces

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