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The production of marbles in water-colour has a depth, softness, and stoniness that defies oil-painting, and in some cases will defy detection unless by an expert of marbles.
It was often the occasion of the story being told over again, and used to hang in the patients' reception room, next to an oil-painting of the Punch-Bowl, an admired landscape picture by a local artist, highly-toned and true to every particular of the scene, with the bright yellow road winding uphill, and the banks of brilliant purple heath, and a white thorn in bloom quite beautiful, and the green fir trees, and the big Bowl black as a cauldron, indeed a perfect feast of harmonious contrasts in colours.
There were pictures on the walls, and among them an oil-painting of a beefsteak, with such an admirable show of juicy tenderness, that the beholder sighed to think it merely visionary, and incapable of ever being put upon a gridiron.
Here, on a raised platform, stands a grand piano of great price, which tonight has the additional virtue of not being played upon. Here, hanging on the wall, is an oil-painting of a handsome man in full dress, rigid, erect, straight as the tasseled cane he holds in his stiff, ring-covered fingers the whole seeming to say, "Ahem! See how well dressed and how dignified I am!"
This is quite true; and if you enter the picture-gallery of the palace, you will there behold the deed more explicitly represented, in a large oil-painting hung conspicuously in the centre of the wall. The scene of this painting is a forest of old trees, whose grey, gnarled trunks stand thickly over the ground.
Whether the "Entombment," also unfinished, and also in the National Gallery, belongs to this time, and whether it be Michael Angelo's at all, is a matter for the experts to decide. To my perception, it is quite unworthy of the painter of the Doni "Holy family;" nor can I think that his want of practice in oil-painting will explain its want of charm and vigour.
Thus, even as late as 1809, when a portrait of King Ferdinand arrived at Coquimbo, the oil-painting was received with the honours accorded to a symbol of Deity. A special road was made for it from Coquimbo to La Serena, the capital of the province. This task occupied many days.
The magnificent series of pictures give character and dignity to the room. Occupying almost two-thirds of the north end is an oil-painting of King Charles I. and his family, by Vandyck, in 1632. There is a mournful expression on all the faces, even those of the two small children in the front.
According to Vasari, oil-painting reached Venice through Antonello da Messina, who had learned the art in the Netherlands. But that cannot be true. It came to Venice from Verona or Padua long after Florence could boast many fine masters, the delay being due to the circumstance that the Venetians thought more of architecture than the sister art.
The one ornament of the walls which attracted him was a large and splendidly-framed oil-painting of a ruined castle, in the midst of a sombre forest, through which cows were strolling. In the tower of the castle was a clock, and this clock was a realistic timepiece, whose fingers moved and told the hour.
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