Notes and Queries | Page 6

RIMBAULT.
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EXTRACTS FROM OLD RECORDS.
If you think the insertion of scraps from the mutilated Exchequer records useful, I shall be most happy, from time to time, to contribute a few. The following are extracted from fragments of a book of entries, temp. Charles I.: the book appears to have been a large folio, and each leaf torn into at least four pieces. It is much to be regretted that the work of selection and mutilation was not assigned to more competent persons than the ignorant porters who I am told were entrusted with it.
ROBERT COLE.
_Fragment dated 1640._
John de Critz, Serjeant Painter, p't of 2158. 13, for a debt in the great wardrobe 60 0 0 { 200 0 0 S'r James Palmer, Kn't, for the Tapestrie { 362 10 0 makers and painters at Mortlach { 300 0 0 { 262 10 0 { 300 0 0
_Fragment dated 1637._
..........hony Vandike Kn't p't of 1200_li._ for......... 300 0 0
..........le Seur Sculpter p't of 720_li._ .................Statues and Images 300 0 0
_Fragment dated 1640._
..........in satisfaction for his greate Losses by his greate and extraordinary disbursem'ts vpon assignem'ts and other charges 4000 0 0
S'r Job Harby and S'r John Nulles, Kn'ts, for soe much paid to the King of Denmke for redempion of a greate Jewell, and to liquidate the accompts betwixt his Ma'ty and the said King 25000 0 0
Hubrecht le Seur in full of 340_li._ for } 2 statues in brasse, the one of his late } 100 0 0 Ma'ty, and the other of our now } 70 0 3 Souerainge lo: King Charles[3] }
More to him 60_li._, in p't of 120li. for a bust of brasse of his late Ma'ty, and 40_li._ for carrying and erecting 2 figures at Winchester 100 0 0
Richard Delamair for making divers } Mathematicall Instruments, and } 100 0 0 other services } 68 0 0
[Footnote 3: Qy. the statue now at Charing Cross.]
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QUERIES.
QUERIES ON OUTLINE.
The boundary between a surface represented and its background received two different treatments in the hands of artists who have the highest claims on our respect. Some, following the older painters as they were followed by Raphael and Albert Durer, bring the surface of the figure abruptly against its background. Others, like Murillo and Titian, melt the one into the other, so that no pencil could trace the absolute limit of either. Curiously enough, though for very obvious reasons, the Daguerreotype seems to favour one method, the Calotype the other. Yet, two Calotypes, in which the outlines are quite undefined, coalesce in the Stereoscope, giving a sharp outline; and as soon as the mind has been thus taught to expect a relievo, either eye will see it.
But if you look at your face in the glass, you cannot at once (say at three feet distance) see the outlines of the eye and cheek. They disappear every where, except in the focus common to both eyes. Then nothing is seen absolutely at rest. The act of breathing imparts perpetual motion to the artist and the model. The aspen leaf is trembling in the stillest air. Whatever difference of opinion may exist as to Turner's use or abuse of his great faculties, no one will doubt that he has never been excelled in the art of giving space and relative distance to all parts of his canvas. Certainly no one ever carried confusion of outline in every part not supposed to be in the focus of the eye so far.
On the other hand, every portion of a large picture, however severe its execution, acquires this morbid outline wherever the eye quits one detail for another. Is, then, the law governing small and large surface different? Do these instances imply that a definite boundary, a modern German style, is indefensible? or only indefensible in miniature? Or, is such a picture as the Van Eyh in the National Gallery a vindication of the practice in small works?
I can answer that it is not; and this last question I merely ask to avoid all answers on the score of authority. No doubt that strange work is one of the most realising pictures ever painted,--more so than any neighbouring Rembrandt,--whose masses of light and shade were used as a "creative power." I want to know whether there is a right and wrong in the case, apart from every thing men call taste. Whether, whenever a work of art passes from suggestion to imitation, some liberty must not be given at the lines whence the rays are supposed to diverge to the two eyes from two different surfaces. Every advance in art and science removes something from the realms of opinion, and this appears to be a question on which science must some day legislate for art.
J.O.W.H.
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