Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 35, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 September 1892 — Blunders in Art. [ARTICLE]

Blunders in Art.

Some of the early painters committed blunders which were so ludicrous that it is a marvel their work was not condemned. In the picture of the Magi worshiping the infant Savior, a Dutch artist represented one of them booted and spurred in a large white surplice, and bearing in his hand as an offering to the babe a model of a Dutch frigate. In a church at Capua there is a large painting of the annunciation of the "Virgin Mary, in which she is represented in an armchair upholstered with ricli crimson velvet ornamented with gold flowers. Near her are seen a cat and a parrot, and on a table a silver coffee-pot and a cup are displayed A picture representing the four elements was essayed by an Italian artist and he selected fish to indicate the sea, moles the earth, and a salamander, fire. The chameleon was .intended as the allegorical representative of the air, but the painter, having no model of this creature, and knowing nothing about its shape, contented himself by introducing a camel. He probably thought in his ignorance that from a similarity of sounds they were one and the same animal. Another painter, in a picture of the crucifixion, represented a father confessor holding out a crucifix to the repentant thief who was promised a place in paradise by the Savior. The famous Tintoretto, in a painting of the Israelites gathering manna, showed them armed with guns, and a latter-day Neapolitan artist has depicted the Holy Family crossing the Nile, in their flight into Egypt, in a magnificently ornamented barge. These are but a of the laughable errors committed from time to time by the disciples of art. Probably the smallest painting ever made was the work of the wife of a Flemish artist. It depicted a mill with the sails bent, the miller mounting the stairs with a sack of grain on his back. Upon the terrace where the mill stood was a cart and horse, and on the road leading to it several peasants were shown. The picture beautifully finished and every

object was very distinct, yet It was so amazingly small that its surface, so the story goes, could be covered with a grain of corn. In contradistinction to this the largest painting—exclusive of frescoes and panoramas—is Tintoretto’s “Paradise.” It is hung in the grand salon of the doge’s palace at Venice, and is eighty-four feet wide and thirty-four feet high!