NOTES ON THE LOUVRE 471

found a problem about Vandyck,¹ so I have to consider to-day how strange it is that Rubens could paint a picture like that of his mother, in our Gallery,² and such a thing as this. For there is no joy of colour, no fine form, no drollery; it is unmitigated brutality: if meant as a satire on drunkenness, well; but I cannot conceive a good man enduring to paint it, bearing the sight of his own imaginations. A pig puts its snout out of a stye in the corner; and two ducks, carefully painted, occupy the nearest gutter. I did not enough note the landscape background.

§ 47. The most impressive picture of the Sphinx and Pyramids³ I have ever seen-modern French in Standish Gallery-deep blue sky, ground nearly white, pyramids, light side, nearly white and ghostly like Turner, dark side just dark on sky and no more. Very sweeping, far away, and fine-and real withal!

§ 48. Grass-painting.-Giorgione’s picture⁴ I had not time to examine-it is in bad light. Pure blue distance and golden sky, then brown cottages against it, full green in foreground, changing Titian’s last two steps. The grass on which figures sit has puzzled him-it is exquisitely touched, but not like grass, covered with slender curved lines, like hay left after carrying; Paul Potter’s, in large cow piece [No. 2527], execrable, all like this ... [reference to sketch] touched on in light.

3. NOTES OF 1854⁵

§ 49. No. 1187 [Paolo Veronese: “Lot leaving Sodom”]. I have before noted this picture. The action of one of the daughters pulling her sandal up at the heel to be compared with Turner’s old woman at Turin.⁶

Titian, “Supper at Emmaus” [No. 1581]. The table-cloth covered with the blue flower I found at Sion with the conical centre as opposite [reference to a drawing], mixed with heart’s-ease.]

Domenichino, 1614 [“Hercules and Achelous”]. A hero stopping bull in full career, which he does standing on tip-toe, on one leg, the bull utterly out of proportion, utterly meagre, base, and like the worst toy in a child’s Noah’s Ark, with its leg forward under it, as at [reference to a sketch]; could a bull possibly fall in such a position? Two kings standing by shrug their shoulders and lift up their hands, as people are represented at a show of a dwarf or giantess, on the canvass outside.⁷

¹ [See above, § 41, p. 468.]

² [i.e., in this case, the Dulwich Gallery; the reference being to the “Portrait of an Old Lady” (now No. 29), formerly entitled “The Mother of Rubens,” now ascribed to his school.]

³ [Here, again, the picture cannot now be identified, as there is none in the Louvre corresponding to the description.]

⁴ [The “Concert Champêtre,” No. 1136 (now well hung): see above, p. 454.]

⁵ [This visit to the Louvre was made on Ruskin’s return from his summer tour in 1854: see above, Introduction, p. xxxvii.]

⁶ [The figure in the corner of Turner’s drawing of “Turin from the Superga”: see Ruskin’s Notes on his Drawings by Turner, No. 17.]

⁷ [Ruskin next notices Francesco di Bianchi’s “Madonna and Child” (No. 1167) and Lorenzo di Costa (No. 1261 or 1262); but the page in the diary is greatly torn, and the extracts cannot be given.]

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