NOTES ON THE LOUVRE 453

A snail shell is carefully drawn on the ground in “The Entombment.”

§ 13. I found myself finally in the Louvre, fixed opposite this Titian, and turning alternately to it and to the one exactly opposite-John and Gentile Bellini, by John Bellini.¹ I was a long time hesitating between this and Raphael’s dark portrait² but decided for the John Bellini.

§ 14. No. 1417 is Pinturicchio’s exquisite and pure Madonna. I like the execution almost as well as, almost better than, Raphael, especially of the Belle Jardinière [No. 1496], which is to my mind singularly coarse, as compared with the tribune Madonna or with one St. Cecilia.³ The St. John is in this respect most faulty, and his left hand so offensive in its plastery and diseased look, that it made me give up looking at the picture.

§ 15. AMIENS.-I proceed with Louvre notes. 1566 [Perugino: “St. Paul”] is very noble, but hung too high to be judged of. 1319, Benozzo Gozzoli, is a Thomas Aquinas, with Plato on left, Aristotle on right; the heads of all these refined and somewhat majestic, but wanting in intensity. A crowd below, containing many refined and delicate expressions of small heads.

§ 16. MONTREUIL (August 21).-The Standish Gallery in the Louvre contains much which I could not examine-in drawings.⁴

The Spanish pictures on the way to it seem second, or third-rate, except a few Velasquez’s; among which, with a small landscape, in which the trees are completely mixed with the sky by the sweeping lightness of the brush, and yet stand clear enough at a little distance. I like the manner of this landscape better than Salvator’s, but there is not much in it. There is a good head by him, for red reflected lights, and grey full lights-an impressive Murillo, a ghastly coloured monk, sitting writing, white, hearse-like plumes in his cap, solemn and masterly; and a good bit of painting of Christ as a boy, giving bread to a begging friar (the head shaped like present French); also a monk in full canonicals, being crowned by an angel. But I could not look, even for a moment, at pictures of this school after the Italians.⁵

§ 17. Of Nicolas Poussin, 727 [“Mars and Venus”] is a singularly fine example for execution, the canvass being the coarsest I ever saw used for a small picture, the interstices being the tenth or eighth of an inch broad, and the paint is so thin on the features of the Venus that the face can scarcely be seen on looking close-nothing but network; yet on retiring the beauty and refinement of the face is equal to any in his most careful works-

¹ [No. 1156-now called “Portraits of Two Men,” and ascribed to Gentile Bellini; for another notice of the picture see next page.]

² [Perhaps the beautiful and well-known “Portrait of a Young Man,” No. 1644 (in the Salon Carrè), formerly attributed to Raphael, now more commonly to Franciabigio.]

³ [The “Tribune Madonna” is the “Madonna del Cardellino” in the Tribuna at the Uffizi; for Ruskin’s notice of it, see Vol. IV. p. 85. The St. Cecilia is at Bologna: see Vol. II. p. 167, Vol. IV. p. 212. The St. John is in the “Belle Jardinière.”]

⁴ [For the Standish Gallery see below, p. 459 n. A few stray notes on the sculptures here follow in the diary.]

⁵ [The pictures above noticed cannot now be identified, and probably many of them are no longer exhibited at the Louvre; the Standish Gallery, as such, has been dispersed, and the Spanish pictures are differently placed.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]