SHAKES PEARE

TON

To be a great artist

is one of the

grandest things in the world. Some pictures bring tears to our eyes by their sadness. Others seem to tell us a fine story, or show us a scene in which everything seems to be alive. Another will show us a portrait of a man who looks so real that we think he is going to speak to us.

And so to-day we can look upon pictures of the world that has been, painted by the men who lived in it, as if the artist were still alive, lending us his eyes, through which we might see the things he saw.

Leonardo da Vinci was wiser than most men of his time. As a painter he had a wonderful sense of beauty. He thought out most beautiful things and painted them in a life-like way. He did not only draw lines; he painted his pictures so that we feel much more than we see when we look at them.

Many great men have tried to teach the world how pictures ought to be painted, but everything that they are able to say was said by Leonardo da Vinci. What he wrote about art is the foundation of the artist's learning. He was one of the most wonderful men who ever lived. He did not only paint pictures and write about them. He was a great engineer and inventor. He travelled

JULIUS CASAR

all the way from Florence to Egypt to be an engineer there. He invented many wonderful things. All the beautiful Carrara marble from which statues are made to-day is cut with a machine that he invented. He had enough brains for twenty men; but he thought out so much that he could not get nearly all of his great works done. Some of the pictures which he painted are among the greatest in the world, and all the great painters of Italy who came after him made their fame by copying his example.

Who was the greatest painter who ever lived in the world? Some people say Raphael. Others say Titian. At any rate, Titian was one of the greatest. He was the greatest painter in colour that ever lived; and whatever he painted he did splendidly and well, whether it was a portrait, a picture of his fancy, a religious painting, or a thought that he tried to put into colour. His colours are full of meaning.

By the time he was twenty-four his pictures had made him known, not only in Venice, near where he was born in 1477, but all over Europe, and kings paid him great sums of money to visit great cities and paint for them. Although it is so long since his pictures were made, the

HERBERT SPENCER

colours are as fresh and rich and lovely now as they were then.

So much was he admired that at the Court of Spain, where he lived for many years, the noblemen were jealous of him. "Ah," said the king, "I have many nobles, but only one Titian!" One day the artist, when talking to the king, dropped his pencil, and the king, who was one of the proudest men in Europe, stooped and picked it up, saying that it was an honour to serve so great an artist.

TITIAN'S PICTURE, THE GREATEST

TREASURE AT THE COURT OF SPAIN

A terrible fire broke out in the king's palace while Titian was there, and when the king was told of it he asked if they had saved Titian's great picture of Venus, which had been hanging in the palace. They answered that they had saved it. Then I can bear all my other losses," the king said.

The only man whose fame is as great as Titian's is Raphael, who was born in Italy in 1483, and was alive at the same time as Titian. As a boy Raphael studied under a great painter, but he was soon able to paint so much like his master that now, when we see pictures done by both of them, it is hard to say which is Raphael's and which is by Raphael's master.

The boy was really a greater painter than the man who taught him. Raphael studied all the great painters who had lived before him and copied all their best ideas. He put al these ideas into his own work, and, though he did not think out new subjects for pictures, he painted pictures that seem almost perfect.

The great and beautiful home of the Pope in Rome is called the Vatican, and Raphael did nearly all the wonderful paintings there. He was an architect, too, and drew the plans from which St. Peter's at Rome, the grandest church in the world, was begun.

England bought the cartoons. So fine did people think them that they actually built a factory and sent for many clever workmen to come and make the tapestries which Raphael had drawn. Then came another king who did not know how precious they were, and as nobody understood them they were treated as rubbish and lost. One dav a clever man found them, and saw what they were, and they were then thought so much of that £500 was spent in making the frames to put them in. Money could not buy these drawings now, but you may see them at the South Kensington Museum.

Many painters have come to be known by the name of the town in which they were born, or the place where they did their best work. This was so with the famous artist Correggio. His real name was Antonio Allegri, but he is known by the name of the town where he was born. Some of the best pictures in the world were done by him. One he did for the home of the monks at Correggio. CORREGGIO, WITH THE SECRET OF LIGHT,

RUBENS, WITH THE BIG BRUSH

Artists were not very well paid in those days, and Correggio was paid less than fifty pounds for a picture over the altar of the convent. One dark night thieves broke in and took the picture away. picture away. The people of the town were very sad when they heard of the loss, and two hundred people, rich men and poor men, went to the governor of the town and asked that the picture should be found and given back to them. But the governor could not get it back; so the people sent to the Pope and to everybody likely to help them. Still nothing could be done, and the picture, carried perhaps into some wicked rich man's palace, was never heard of any more.

Correggio learned the great secret of how to show in a picture the effects of light. Rembrandt's pictures show this too, but Correggio's light is much softer. and gentler than Rembrandt's.

Another great artist was Peter Paul Rubens, a Dutchman. He was a poor boy. His father died in prison, but his mother had him educated by clever men. When he grew up he was so fine a gentleman that he could have made his fortune as an ambassador, had he not loved painting. His services as

Anthony Van Dyke was born in the same town as Rubens and studied art under him. But he had much more feeling than his master. His colours are soft and "cool," and not glaring like those of Rubens, and they blend together in beautiful harmony, as notes in music do.

The English lovers of art thought a great deal of his work. Charles I. made him Court painter, and Van Dyke painted portraits of the Royal Family and of most of the great people in England. He did not live in England always, but used to go to the Continent for long holidays. No doubt he was glad to do some painting abroad, because he could not always get paid for the work which he did for the Royal Family in England. This was a great shame, for he did a picture that is famous all over the world. It is the portrait of Charles I. on horseback, and is in the National Gallery. Van Dyke died a poor man, but he was buried in St. Paul's Cathedral, before it was burnt down in the Great Fire of London.

VELASQUEZ, WHOSE SPLENDID PICTURES

HUNG ON GLOOMY PALACE WALLS

Velasquez was the greatest artist ever produced by Spain. He painted pictures exactly as he saw them and painted them rapidly, without thinking

them out as Leonardo da Vinci did. Yet, though they came to him so quickly, he had a wonderful way of making us see the important things in his picture, and he never put in anything which could be left out.

Velasquez had to teach himself. All painters in Spain at that time painted in one style, and that was a bad style. Velasquez went to a master who was painting in a different and better way.

But this master was very cruel, and beat him, so he soon left and set to work to learn for himself the way to paint.

Over and over again he tried, until at last he was able to make a lovely picture called the " Water-Seller." This was shown to the King of Spain and at once made Velasquez famous. His splendid works were hung upon the gloomy walls of the Royal palaces in Madrid, and the world did not know until more than two hundred years later what a great artist he had been.

Then the French Army captured Spain, and the soldiers found the pictures in the palaces. When the Spaniards drove the French out again, King Jerome Bonaparte, a brother of Napoleon, carried off the "WaterSeller Seller" in his carriage. But he was caught, and the picture was taken from him on a battlefield. The King of Spain gave the "Water-Seller" to the Duke of Wellington for driving his enemies away, and the picture was brought to England and hung in the duke's house near Hyde Park. REMBRANDT, THE MILLER'S SON

WHO

PLAYED PRANKS & PAINTED PICTURES

Another great Dutch artist was Rembrandt, the son of a miller.. His work is very grand and famous, but in his lifetime people did not think as much of him as they do now. He was quite poor.

He was a man of great pranks and frolics. Once he was painting the portraits of a rich family. While he was doing so, someone opened the door of his room and brought in the dead body of a monkey. The creature looked so funny that Rembrandt felt he must paint a picture of it. The only thing on which he could make the drawing was the canvas on which he was painting the portraits of the rich people who were waiting. Although they were angry, he painted the monkey in among their portraits.

Rembrandt painted portraits as they had never been painted before. There are two ways of painting a man. He

may be painted so that we see he is a man by his shape and form, or so that we feel he is a man because he is natural and seems to be a part of everything around him. Rembrandt painted in this way, and his portraits look almost alive.