The Best Portraits in Engraving | Page 6

inflexible to the dishonest and wicked, with a sweetness noble and beneficent for all; dwelling also on his countenance, which had not that severe and sour austerity that renders justice to the good only with regret, and to the guilty only with anger; then on his pleasant and gracious address, his intellectual and charming conversation, his ready and judicious replies, his agreeable and intelligent silence, his refusals, which were well received and obliging; while, amidst all the pomp and splendor accompanying him, there shone in his eyes a certain air of humanity and majesty, which secured for him, and for justice itself, love as well as respect. His benefactions were constant. Not content with giving only his own, he gave with a beautiful manner still more rare. He could not abide beauty of intelligence without goodness of soul, and he preferred always the poor, having for them not only compassion but a sort of reverence. He knew that the way to take the poison from riches was to make them tasted by those who had them not. The sentiment of Christian charity for the poor, who were to him in the place of children, was his last thought, as witness especially the General Hospital endowed by him, and presented by the preacher as the greatest and most illustrious work ever undertaken by charity the most heroic.
Thus lived and died the splendid Pompone de Bellièvre, with no other children than his works. Celebrated at the time by a Funeral Panegyric now forgotten, and placed among the Illustrious Men of France in a work remembered only for its engraved portraits, his famous life shrinks, in the voluminous Biographie Universelle of Michaud, to the seventh part of a single page, and in the later Biographie Généralle of Didot disappears entirely. History forgets to mention him. But the lofty magistrate, ambassador, and benefactor, founder of a great hospital, cannot be entirely lost from sight so long as his portrait by Nanteuil holds a place in art.
[Sidenote: Edelinck.]
Younger than Nanteuil by ten years, Gérard Edelinck excelled him in genuine mastery. Born at Antwerp, he became French by adoption, occupying apartments in the Gobelins, and enjoying a pension from Louis XIV. Longhi says that he is the engraver whose works, not only according to his own judgment, but that of the most intelligent, deserve the first place among exemplars, and he attributes to him all perfections in highest degree, design, chiaro-oscuro, ?rial perspective, local tints, softness, lightness, variety, in short everything which can enter into the most exact representation of the true and beautiful without the aid of color. Others may have surpassed him in particular things, but, according to the Italian teacher, he remains by common consent "the prince of engraving." Another critic calls him "king."
It requires no remarkable knowledge to recognize his great merits. Evidently he is a master, exercising sway with absolute art, and without attempts to bribe the eye by special effects of light, as on metal or satin. Among his conspicuous productions is the TENT OF DARIUS, a large engraving on two sheets, after Le Brun, where the family of the Persian monarch prostrate themselves before Alexander, who approaches with Heph?stion. There is also a HOLY FAMILY, after Raffaelle, and the BATTLE OF THE STANDARD, after Leonardo da Vinci; but these are less interesting than his numerous portraits, among which that of PHILIPPE DE CHAMPAIGNE is the chief masterpiece; but there are others of signal merit, including especially that of MADAME HELIOT, or La Belle Religieuse, a beautiful French coquette praying before a crucifix; MARTIN VAN DER BOGAERT, a sculptor; FREDERIC LéONARD, printer to the king; MOUTON, the Lute-player; MARTINUS DILGERUS, with a venerable beard white with age; JULES HARDOUIN MANSART, the architect; also a portrait of POMPONE DE BELLIèVRE which will be found among the prints of Perrault's Illustrious Men.
The PHILIPPE DE CHAMPAIGNE is the head of that eminent French artist after a painting by himself, and it contests the palm with the Pompone. Mr. Marsh, who is an authority, prefers it. Dr. Thies, who places the latter first in beauty, is constrained to allow that the other is "superior as a work of the graver," being executed with all the resources of the art in its chastest form. The enthusiasm of Longhi finds expression in unusual praise:
"The work which goes the most to my blood, and with regard to which Edelinck, with good reason, congratulated himself, is the portrait of Champaigne. I shall die before I cease to contemplate it with wonder always new. Here is seen how he was equally great as designer and engraver."[6]
[Illustration: MARTIN VAN DER BOGAERT.
(Painted by Hyacinthe Rigaud, and Engraved by Gérard Edelinck.)]
And he then dwells on various details; the skin, the flesh, the eyes living and seeing, the moistened lips, the chin covered