ST. BARBARA
Jacopo Palma Il Vecchio (1480? -1528)
St. Barbara, born a. d. 303, was a very beautiful girl. Her father, an eastern nobleman, loved her so much and was so afraid something might happen to her that he built a very wonderful tower for her home and shut her up in it. And in that tower she studied the stars. Night after night she looked at the heavenly bodies until she knew more about the sun and the moon and the stars than any of the learned men. But as she studied the shining bodies she decided that worshiping idols, made of wood and stone, as her father did, was wrong. Finally she learned about the Savior, and to show her faith in Christianity she had some workmen who were making repairs on her tower put in three windows. When her father came as usual to visit her, he asked in surprise what the three windows were for. She replied:
"Know, my father, that through three windows doth the soul receive light, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost: and the three are one."
Her father was very angry when he found she had learned about the Savior and had become a Christian. He condemned her to death and at last took her out on a hill and killed her, but he, too, was struck dead. St. Barbara is always represented with a tower that has three windows in it.
Palma Vecchio painted this picture for some Venetian soldiers nearly four hundred years ago. When the Germans bombarded Venice (1918) the Venetians took the picture from the church to a place of safety. Scarcely a week had passed before a bomb broke through the roof of the church tearing everything before it at the exact spot where the picture had hung. But "St. Barbara," one of the great pictures of the world, was safe.
CHARLES I AND HIS HORSE
Sir Anthony Van Dyck (1599-1641)
The horse in this picture of Charles I is probably the one Rubens gave to Van Dyck. It is said that Rubens gave it as a present after Van Dyck had painted a portrait of Helena Fourment, the master's second wife, and presented it to him. Van Dyck was twenty-two years younger than Rubens. You will remember that he was the master painter's favorite pupil. Having Rubens as a teacher did not make the pupil a great painter. Van Dyck was never more than a prince; just an heir to the throne. Rubens was a king and sat on the throne.
The story is told that once Rubens was away from his private studio when the students bribed the servant to open the door for them. They stole into the master's studio to see "The Descent from the Cross," which he was then painting. By some mishap the culprits rubbed against the wet paint and spoiled that part of the picture. Of course they were terrified at the damage done. They finally decided that Van Dyck was the one to repair the spot. The work was so well done that they hoped Rubens would not see the repairs. But the first thing that caught the eye of the master was that particular spot. He at once sent for the students and asked who had worked on his picture. Van Dyck stepped out from the others and frankly confessed that he was the culprit. Rubens was so pleased with his frankness and also at the skill of the work that he forgave them all.
King Charles I invited Van Dyck to come to England, and then he knighted him and gave him a pension for life. The hundreds of pictures of the royal family and court people of England left by Van Dyck show us how rapidly he could paint, for the artist died when he was only forty-two years old.
THE GALE
Winslow Homer (1836-1910)
Winslow Homer lived in Maine, where he heard the roar of mighty waters beating the rocks all day and all night. Some days the ocean grew so angry because the winds whirled its waters about in such a cruel manner that it would fling itself upon the sands and rocks as though to tear everything to pieces. The waves would raise up like furious horses champing their bits and foaming at the mouth. Somehow these angry waves could never go beyond a certain point, and the mother carrying her baby along the coast knows just the point at which the waves must stop. Let us clap our hands and shout with joy that old ocean cannot hurt that mother and her baby. Fill your lungs full of that glorious breeze whipping their hair and clothes. Open your eyes wide like the baby and let the salt air polish them until they sparkle like diamonds as the baby's do.
Winslow Homer loved old ocean, and so do we! Let us love his pictures of old ocean for he has taught us that that mighty power is under a greater Power.
MADONNA DEL GRAN' DUCA
Raphael Sanzio (1483-1520)
Iwant you to learn everything you can about Raphael. He was so kind and gentle and beautiful that everybody loved him. People said that when he walked on the streets of Rome scores of young men went with him until one would think him a prince. The pope gave him a large order to decorate the Vatican, the pope's home. Every artist was willing to help him because he was always ready to do anything he could to help his brother artists.
Raphael only lived to be thirty-seven. When he died all Italy mourned his death, and his funeral was one of the largest of any artist of his time.
When Raphael was only twenty-one he painted the "Madonna del Gran' Duca." He had gone to Florence for the first time. We do not know where the picture was for a hundred years after it was painted; then the painter Carlo Dolci owned it. Again another hundred years went by, and we find it in possession of a poor widow. She sold it to a picture-dealer for about twenty dollars. It then went into the hands of the grand duke of Tuscany, Ferdinand III, for the big sum of eight hundred dollars. No amount of money could buy the picture to-day.
Ferdinand loved the picture so much that he always took it with him on all his travels and the grand duchess, his wife, felt that her baby boys were purer if she had the picture near her. It got its name "Madonna of the Grand Duke" from the title of the family.
JOAN OF ARC
Jules Bastien-Lepage (1848-1884)
No young girl in history has had such a wonderful story as Joan of Arc. She began to hear voices and see visions when she was a little child. She was born in the tiny village of Domremy, France. Just like the other little peasant girls around her she helped her mother about the house and at the spinning. Also she went into the fields with her brothers.
One day when she was in the garden the Archangel St. Michael came to her in a glory of light. He said she was a good little girl and that she must go to church and that some day she was to do a great act; she was to crown the dauphin as king of France at Rheims. Joan was afraid and cried at what the angel told her, but St. Michael said, "God will help you."
These messages kept coming to her until, when she was sixteen, the voices insisted, "You must help the king, and save France."
France was in a terrible state at this time, 1428. The English held most of France. The French king, Charles VI, became insane and died. The son, Dauphin Charles, was weak and lazy and discouraged; he had no money, no army, no energy, and like most cowards, ran from his duty and wasted his time in wickedness.
Joan was still urged by voices to save France. At last a peasant uncle went with her to a man in power to ask for troops. The man was angry, and said sharply:
"The girl is crazy! Box her ears and take her back to her father." But Joan did not give up. She insisted that some one must take her to Dauphin Charles, that God willed it. She said:
"I will go if I have to wear my legs down to my knees." She went, and she saved France by crowning the dauphin as Charles VII at Rheims. But the French and the English people condemned Joan of Arc as a witch and burned her at the stake. Too late they cried:
"We are lost! We have burned a saint!"
THE FATES
Michael Angelo Buonarroti (1474-1564)
When a new baby comes to a home, legend says, three beautiful young girls come to take care of the baby all through its life, but no one ever sees these young girls. Each one has a strange work to do. One, called Clotho, carries a spindle on which is wound flax. The second, named Lachesis, twists a thread from the spindle, called the thread of life. And Atropos, the third, has a pair of shears ready to cut the thread of life.
A funny story is told about Michael Angelo when he designed this picture of "The Fates." An old woman annoyed the artist very much by coming every day to see him. She insisted that he should appoint her son a special place in the fighting line in the seige of Florence (1529). Michael Angelo took revenge on the old woman by using her as a model for all of the women in his "Fates." And that is why Michael Angelo's fates are old women instead of young girls, as legend says they are.
THE MADONNA OF THE CHAIR
Raphael Sanzio (1483-1520)
We like to believe that Raphael, in one of his daily walks in the country, really did see this mother and her two little boys sitting in a doorway. Of course he must paint them, and having no paper with him he rolled up a barrel and made a sketch on the head of it. The story says that this barrel was once a part of a great oak-tree that stood by the hut of an old man, a hermit up in the mountains. And the mother of the two boys, when a little girl, used to go to see the old man. He loved these two – the little girl and the big oak-tree – and called them his daughters.
He used to say that some day they would both be famous. That was more than four hundred years ago, and to-day this picture of "The Madonna of the Chair" is one of the most famous Madonna pictures. It is found in almost every home in America and is a treasure that belongs to all of us though it hangs in a gallery at Florence, Italy.
We know, too, that Raphael did not let any of his helpers work on "The Madonna of the Chair" – in Italian, "Madonna della Sedia." He painted every brush stroke himself, which makes it still more dear to us.