Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847

Whilst the groundwork of the Basilikon remained unchanged, Christian art added steeples and cupolas to increase the solemnity of the impression. The most perfect building of the kind is, without doubt, the church of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome. For chastity and purity of style, it can never be surpassed. The numerous churches erected by ostentation and devotion in basilikon form are all inferior to that incomparable temple. Many, it is true, have been disfigured, robbed, and half-burned; but their faults are not accidental. The greater number were built at a time when Pagan art, their prototype, had sunk very low indeed. Moreover, since the days of Constantine, Pagan temples had fallen into disuse. They stood deserted, and were suffered to crumble away beneath the influences of neglect and time. Christian builders took all they wanted from the ruins; a fragment from this temple, a block from that. Ionian and Corinthian columns were placed in the same line. If a pillar was too long for its companion, it was shortened without reference to its diameters or form. Columns of different stones were jumbled together in a row. Thus, amongst a number of columns of purple granite in the church of Ara Celi at Rome we discover two Ionian columns of white marble. In Saint Peter's, granite and Parian and African marbles are grouped together without the smallest attempt at harmony or adaptation. San Giovanni in Porta Laterana boasts ten columns of five different kinds of stone.

A more interesting employment cannot be found than that of watching the slow and cautious progress of ancient painting and sculpture in connexion with Christianity. The slowness is indeed remarkable, when we reflect upon the high perfection which these arts had generally attained even during the reigns of the first emperors. Christianity dealt far differently with painting and sculpture, than with architecture. In the latter, the Pagan form was adopted and improved; but with respect to the former, she made a tabula rasa, and descended to the rudest efforts of daubing and carving. The shapes, both of men and animals, were awkward, cumbrous, and unnatural; every part was out of proportion, and the most solemn scenes acquired a ludicrous grotesqueness. But the strangest phenomenon is, that Pagan art itself, of its own accord, descended to as low a level. The productions of Paganism in the time of Constantine were altogether as barbarous as the clumsy attempts of the untutored hands of Christianity. The new religion had created a new world. The forms of the old might indeed survive for a time, but its spirit was gone. Paganism was a corpse. Altars might be crowned with garlands, sacrifice might be offered to the gods: but all in vain. A voice came forth from an island in the Ægean Sea; a voice of sorrow and complaint, but of truth also. It wailed the death of the great Pan. The mighty were indeed fallen, and so vast was the gulf between Paganism in the days of Titus, and Paganism in those of Constantine, that the creations of the former period could be no lesson to the idolaters of the latter. These clung to the worship of a departed age, but in spite of themselves. The new and mighty river of thought swept them onward, and carried them on to the very same parting point from which Christian art was struggling for perfection.

Christian art started with one grand error. It was warring for ever against itself. In portraying the world, it hated it. Of all its creations, there is not one which can be said to be really beautiful; the effusions of symbolical enthusiasm are without all plastic truth. Ideas were incorporated, but they did not prove men with flesh and blood. The paintings and carvings were hieroglyphics. The same figure expressed the same idea, and the idea once expressed, there was no desire to extend the circle of figures or to alter their wretched appearance. The same uncouth forms return with a killing monotony. Centuries do not change them. The uniformity of monastic life by no means tended to relax the inflexibility of invention. Religion, not art, was the sculptor's or the painter's object; his production was a creation of faith, not of beauty. Such is the character of almost all the carvings in wood and stone which have been found in the catacombs of Rome and Naples.

Christianity has the great merit of having discovered the poesy of the grave. From the outset it abhorred the Pagan custom of burning the dead, and faithful to its Jewish origin, and mindful perhaps of Christ's burial, it renewed the old Roman custom of interring the departed. This was the origin of the catacombs. The early Christians loved to be deposited with, or near the Martyrs, and grounds for burial capable of receiving a large number of the dead were wholly wanting. The population of Rome, Naples, Alexandria, and Syracuse was so great, that there was scarcely room enough for the living. To find new receptacles for the dead became an urgent necessity. It is true, that digging into the bowels of the earth for the purpose of entombing the bodies of the dead was no new operation. Egypt and Etruria had in their time set the example. The one idea of immortality, led to similar results in different creeds. The early Christians found their cities of the dead already prepared for them. Paris, in our own time, stands upon a soil which is hollowed throughout. The limestone upon which Paris stands was taken from beneath to supply the wants of the builders. Rome, in like manner, has a second and subterraneous town of vast extent, with its streets and squares in endless number. Nor is it without its inhabitants. In this town did Christians seek refuge from Pagan persecution, and here did they likewise inter their dead. The caves and passages were not dug by Christian hands, but were discovered already made. They date from the last century of the republic, when the clay upon which Rome stands, was required by the mania then raging for extensive and magnificent structures. The Christians took possession of the hollows and enlarged them; the work was by no means difficult, for the clay was soft and plastic.

It was after the time of Constantine that the catacombs came into more general use. Martyrs were more revered subsequently to the reign of this Emperor than before it, for martyrdom became less easy of achievement. The chief martyrs had found a resting-place in the catacombs. Churches rose above their remains, from which secret and sacred doors led into the City of the Dead, the cemetery of the saints. It was at the period to which we refer that the regularly formed spacious catacombs were first fashioned—a fact established by the date of the coffins, all of which belong to a time later than that of the Emperor Constantine. The wealthier members of the community constructed small chapels in the catacombs for the reception of the bodies of their relations and friends. These chapels are for the most part situated at the crossing of passages or at the end of them, in which latter case the chapel forms the termination of one particular passage. They are most important as indices to the development of art. Besides the curious character and beauty of the architecture, they afford specimens of the most ancient grave paintings that we know of. Their walls and ceilings are covered with a thin crust of gypsum, upon which the colours were laid. Not unfrequently we find ornaments of stucco and marble. Altars and stone seats, too, are found in these chapels. An astonishing number of skeletons have been discovered in the passages by which the chapels are connected: it was not the custom, as now, to bury the dead beneath the floor and to cover the grave with a stone slab. The bodies were placed in niches of from three to six feet in length. Sometimes four and six together, one above the other. The corpse of a departed brother was thrust into one of these niches; a lamp and some tool, explanatory of the trade he had followed in life, were placed beside him, and then the aperture was walled up, and lastly covered with a thin marble slab, bearing an inscription and the particulars of the life and death of the departed.

Church service was frequently performed in the catacombs, yet not in the days of persecution. It was after Constantine that these tombs were used for such a purpose. On Sabbath days they were open to the public and were much visited. Devotion, love for departed relatives, and mere curiosity, carried vast numbers to these silent halls. Saint Jerome, tells us of his having often explored them with his comrades whilst he was still a student in Rome; and he lived some three hundred and fifty years after the death of Christ. The catacombs were but badly lighted at first, light being admitted by a few apertures only in the roofs of the chapels. At a later period, great care was taken to prevent visitors losing their way amidst the labyrinth of passages. The guardianship of the catacombs was confided to a certain body of the clergy, who went under the name of fossores, or grave-diggers. It was their office to inspect the chapels and passages, to point out the places where new passages might be formed, and to portion out and sell the spots in which burials might take place. The water in the wells of the catacombs was subsequently found to possess the virtue of healing to a marvellous degree. Nay, even the use of the drinking-cups found in the catacombs was sufficient to cure several diseases.

In later days, many of the catacombs were opened, and a vast number of curious and interesting objects brought to light. Not the least valuable amongst these objects were the paintings and carvings to which we have above adverted, and which throw some light upon the history of the portraiture of the great Founder of our religion. Still in the great bulk of the subjects represented the symbolical prevails; and since the earliest masters were for a long time forbidden, by a pious awe, from producing the figure of Christ, we find in the more ancient carvings a decided preference given to the Old Testament over the New. Noah's ark, Abraham sacrificing his son, Moses taking off his shoes upon receiving the tablets of the law, the destruction of Pharaoh, and the miracle of the water starting from the rock—in short, all the subjects of our modern illustrated Bibles are of frequent occurrence in these ancient houses of the dead, and one and all are intended to represent the mission and person of Christ. The suffering of Christ, in the delineation of which the masters of later times have so much delighted, formed no subject for the artist in the earliest selections from the history of the New Testament. The controversy in the temple, the entry into Jerusalem, and the most celebrated of the miracles, were subjects that better suited the ancient master's pencil. The infancy of Christ was an inexhaustible subject to a later age. The Nestorian controversy brought the religious pretensions of the Holy Virgin to an issue; and after the church in the fifth century had bestowed upon Mary the title of Mother of God, artists took pleasure in representing her either as lying-in, or as holding the babe in her arms. The Eastern Kings are not unfrequently found in the Virgin's company. M. Kinkel presumes that the number of these wise men was first determined by the early masters, who in all probability conferred the royal dignity upon them. Holy Writ does not inform us that these personages were kings, and in the more ancient carvings, they wear ordinary Phrygian caps. At a later period, and no doubt inadvertently, these caps were changed into crowns. The four evangelists are constantly represented either as four rolls of papyrus, or as four fountains issuing from a hill beneath the feet of Christ. When seen in the guise of the four apocalyptical animals, they belong to a later period. The apostles also are found on ancient coffins, surrounding Christ, at whose left side Peter is placed, whilst Paul stands on his right. They all wear sandals tied with ribbon to their feet. Some paintings represent scenes of early Christian life, the sacred rites of the Church, and the love-feasts of the first Christians.

Wherever our Saviour is found he is represented by two types. In the earliest paintings of the catacombs he appears as a beardless youth: this type of the Saviour was produced under the influence of antique art. The second and later type bears those oriental features which have been transmitted by sacred painting even to our own time. The features of the second face so closely resemble those of the first that the early theologians do not hesitate to proclaim them exact copies of the original. "Christ was well proportioned," says John of Damascus in the eighth century; "his fingers were slender, his nose mighty, and the eyebrows joined above the same; his hair was very curly, his beard black, and the colour of his face like his mother's,—viz. yellowish, like unto wheat." Later western writers change the colour of the beard and hair from black to blond. Both hair and beard are parted in the middle. There are two pictures of Christ thus represented, one in the cemetery of S. Calintus, and another in that of S. Ponziano. The former is partly, the latter wholly dressed. In both, the features are strongly marked, and the eyes are very large; the right hand is placed on the breast, whilst the left holds a book.

Apocryphal pictures ascribed to Saint Luke have asserted a considerable influence upon the traditions concerning the portrait of Christ. The same has happened in the instance of the Virgin Mary, although her type is far from attaining the degree of stability which we find in the representations of her divine son. The fathers, however, are unanimous in their opinion that the face of Mary bore a strong resemblance to that of our Saviour. She is seldom found in the Catacombs, but frequently in the Mosaic work of churches dedicated to her worship, and on Byzantine coins from the tenth century forwards. The face is oval, similar to that of a youthful matron of ancient Rome, and carrying always the expression of a calm benignity. The head is covered with a veil and surrounded by a nimbus. Next to Mary and her Son, Peter and Paul, the chief apostles of the Pagan and Judaic world, are most frequently represented. They were both objects of devotion, even to those who still lingered without the pale of Christianity. The Mosaics display them more frequently than the Catacombs. Their type is not fixed; although Peter may at times be known by his curly hair and beard, whilst the bald forehead and the pointed fashion of the beard render Paul at once recognisable. The other apostles, as well as the personages of the Old Testament, have not grown into individuality, and lack the distinguishing features by which sacred and historical characters of antiquity become objects of real life, and are rendered familiar to the most distant ages.

The most ancient Mosaic works of the Christian era are to be found in the mausoleum of Constantine. The subject is strictly symbolic. It is the vine, with birds perched on the branches and angels collecting the grapes. One of the tendrils encompasses the head of Constantine. The forms of the angels show a near affinity to Pagan art. Another great Mosaic work, more ecclesiastical in thought and execution, was promoted by Pope Sixtus III. in 443. It consists of historical representations from the Old and New Testaments, and ornaments the space below the windows of the Maria Maggiore. The costumes, the helmets, and cuirasses resemble those of ancient Rome; but where priests and Levites appear, the oriental character is followed. The composition is poor, and the human figures are rude and awkward. That little regard is paid to perspective is not a matter of surprise. Antique art is guilty of the fault. It would be difficult for any Mosaic work to overcome the difficulties which present themselves in the active scenes of real life and history. The Mosaics in the triumphal arch of the Church of St Paul create a favourable impression, simply because they confine themselves to that narrow and more suitable sphere, in which alone the Mosaic art can look to be successful.

The study of the period of Christian art, treated of and exemplified in Professor Kinkel's book, though apparently unprofitable to the artist, is full of interest to the curious observer, and to one who has pleasure in beholding the development of the human mind under the most varied circumstances. We have read the volume of the learned and accomplished professor with infinite satisfaction, and we can safely recommend it to the perusal of the student and the man of letters. The history of art, in the early stages of Christianity, is the history of intellectual cultivation in the most extraordinary period of the world's history. The state of the world during the first centuries after the departure of Christ, was essentially exceptional. It had never been; it never will be again. Art and civilisation were weighed and were found wanting—a new idea visited the earth and conquered it—old arts drooped and died: civilisation degenerated at once into barbarism; whilst a new art and a new civilisation, with the light of Heaven upon them, were already preparing to claim the dominion over future centuries.

THE PORTRAIT

A TALE: ABRIDGED FROM THE RUSSIAN OF GÓGOL. BY THOMAS B. SHAW

CHAPTER I

By none of the numerous objects of interest in the busy city of St Petersburg are the steps of the sauntering pedestrian more frequently arrested than by the picture-shop in the Stchúkin Dvor.²⁴ True it is that the specimens of art there displayed are distinguished rather by eccentricity of design, and rudeness of execution, than by striking evidences of genius. The paintings are for the most part in oil, coated with green varnish, and fitted into frames of dark yellow tinsel. A winter-piece with white trees, a ferociously red sunset, like the glow of a conflagration, a Flemish boor with a pipe and dislocated-looking arm—resembling a turkey-cock in ruffles, rather than a human being,—such are the ordinary subjects. Beside them hang a few engravings: portraits of Khosrev-Mirza in his sheepskin bonnet, and of truculent generals with cocked hats and crooked noses. Bundles of coarse prints, on large paper broadsides, are suspended on either side the door. Here we have the Princess Miliktris Kirbitierna;²⁵ yonder the city of Jerusalem, its houses and churches smeared with vermilion, which gaudy colour has also invaded a part of the ground and a brace of Russian pilgrims in huge fur gloves. If these works of art find few purchasers, they at least attract a throng of starers; drunken ragamuffin lacqueys on their way from the cook's shop, bearing piles of plates with their masters' dinners, which grow cold whilst they gape at the pictures; great-coated Russian soldiers with penknives for sale; Okhta pedlar-women with boxes of shoes. Each spectator expresses his admiration in his own peculiar way: peasants point with their fingers; soldiers gaze with stolid gravity; dirty foot-boys and blackguard apprentices laugh and apply the caricatures to each other; old serving men in frieze cloaks stand listless and agape, indulging their propensity to utter idleness.

A number of persons answering to the above description were assembled before the picture-shop, when they were joined by a young man in a threadbare cloak and shabby garments. He was a painter, named Tchartkóff, as enthusiastic in his art as he was needy in his circumstances and careless of his dress. Pausing before the booth, he smiled as he glanced at the wretched pictures there displayed. The next moment the expression of mirthful contempt faded from his thin, ardent features, and he fell a-thinking. The question had occurred to him, amongst what class of people could those tawdry, worthless productions find purchasers? That Russian mujíks should gaze delightedly upon the Yeruslán Lazarévitches, on pictures of Phomá and Yerema, of the heroes of their tales and legends, was quite natural; the objects represented were adapted to popular taste and comprehension; but who would buy those tawdry oil-paintings, those Flemish boors, those crimson and azure landscapes, which, whilst pretending to a higher grade of art, served but to prove its deep degradation? Not one redeeming touch could be traced in the senseless caricatures, to whose authors' clumsy hands the mason's trowel would assuredly have been better adapted than the painter's pencil. It was the very dotage of incapacity. The colouring, the treatment, the coarse obtrusive mechanical touch, seemed those of a clumsily constructed automaton, rather than of a human painter. Thus musing, our artist stood for some time before the vile daubs that excited his disgust, gazing at them long after the train of his reflections had led him far from them; whilst the master of the shop, a little, gray, ill-shaven fellow in a frieze cloak, chattered and chaffered and bargained as indefatigably as if the young man had announced himself a purchaser.

"Well now," said he, "for these mujíks and the landscape, I'll take a white note.²⁶ There's painting! It hurts your eye, it's so bright; just received from the Exchange; varnish hardly dry. Take the winter-piece. Fifteen rubles! Frame worth the money. There's a winter, there's snow for you!"

Here the eager trader gave a slight fillip to the canvass, as if he expected the snow to fall off.

"Take the three. I'll send them home at once. Where does your honour live? Boy, a cord!"

"Not so fast, my friend," cried the artist, startled from his reverie, and perceiving the brisk dealer about to tie up the three daubs. His first impulse was to walk away, but he felt ashamed to purchase nothing after standing so long before the shop, and causing the hungry-looking old salesman so large an expenditure of breath. "Wait a little," he said. "I will see if you have any thing to suit me." And, stooping down, he turned over a number of battered dusty old pictures heaped like lumber upon the ground. They were chiefly old-fashioned family portraits, likenesses of unknown and insignificant faces, with torn canvass, and frames that had lost their gilding. Nevertheless Tchartkóff carefully examined them, thinking it possible he might pick up something good. He had more than once heard stories of pictures of the great masters being met with amongst the dust and trash of such shops as this. The dealer, perceiving he had probably nailed a customer, ceased his bustling importunity, resumed his station at the door, and recommenced his appeals to the passengers. He shouted, chattered, and pointed to his wares, but without success; then he had a long chat with an old-clothesman, whose establishment was on the opposite side of the alley; and at last, recollecting that, all this time there was a customer in his shop, he turned his back upon the public and walked in.

"Have you chosen anything, sir?"

The artist stood immoveable before a large portrait, whose frame had once been richly gilt, although it now scarcely retained a few tarnished vestiges of its former splendour. The subject was an old man, his face swarthy and bronzed, with furrowed brow and hollow temples, and sharp high cheekbones; a physiognomy on which the ravages of time, and climate, and suffering were plainly legible. The figure was draped in a flowing Asiatic costume. Defaced and injured and grimed with dirt though the portrait was, yet, when Tchartkóff had wiped the dust from the countenance, he perceived evident traces of the touch of a great artist. The picture seemed to have been scarcely finished, but the force of treatment was immense. Its most extraordinary part was the eyes; in them the artist had concentrated all the power of his pencil. There was vitality in those dark and lustrous orbs, they looked out of the portrait, and in some measure destroyed its harmony by their strange and life-like expression. When Tchartkóff took the picture to the door, he fancied the pupils dilated. The peculiarity of the painting at once attracted the attention of the idlers without. Some uttered exclamations of surprise, others fell back a pace as if in terror. A pale, sickly-looking woman of the lower classes, who suddenly found herself face to face with this singular portrait, screamed with alarm. "It's looking at me!" she cried, and hurried away, casting nervous glances over her shoulder. Tchartkóff himself experienced—he could not tell why—a sort of disagreeable sensation, and he put the portrait on the ground.

"D'ye buy?" said the picture-dealer.

"How much?" replied the artist.

"At a word—three tchetvertáks."²⁷

Tchartkóff shook his head. "Too much. I will give you a dougrívennoi," he added, moving towards the door.

"A dougrívennoi for that picture! You are pleased to joke, sir. The frame is worth twice the money. Bid me something more, if it be only another grivennik. Come back, sir," he shouted, running after the painter, and detaining him by his cloak-skirt; "come back, sir. You are my first customer to-day, and I will take your offer, for luck's sake. But the picture is given away."

On finding his offer thus unexpectedly accepted, Tchartkóff heartily repented his temerity in making it. The dougrívennoi he paid the dealer was his last in the world, and he was encumbered with a lumbering old portrait for which he had no earthly use. Cursing his own imprudence, he took up his purchase, and trudged away with it. Its weight and size caused it to slip perpetually from under his arm, and rendered it a most troublesome burthen. At last, tired to death and bathed in perspiration, he reached the house, in the fifteenth line of the Vasílievskü Ostrow, in which he occupied a modest lodging, ascended the uncleanly staircase, and knocked impatiently at the door of his apartment. It was opened by a slatternly lad in a blue shirt—his cook, model, colour-grinder and floor-sweeper, who had to thank his godfathers for the harmonious name of Nikíta, and who united in his person the dirt incidental to three out of his four occupations. Tchartkóff entered his ante-room, which felt very chilly, as artists' ante-rooms usually are, and, without taking off his cloak, walked on into his studio a square apartment, tolerably spacious, but low in the ceiling, and with windows dimmed by the frost. This room was littered with all kinds of artistical rubbish: fragments of plaster of Paris, casts of hands, frames, stretched canvasses, sketches begun and thrown aside, and drapery cast carelessly over the chairs. Completely knocked up, Tchartkóff let his cloak fall, placed his new purchase against the wall, and threw himself on a narrow meagre little sofa, whose leathern cover, torn upon one side from the row of brass nails that had formerly confined it, afforded Nikíta a convenient receptacle for dish-cloths, old clothes, dirty linen, and any other miscellaneous matters he thought fit to cram under. The sun had set, and the night grew each moment darker. Our artist ordered Nikíta to bring a candle.

"There are no candles," was Nikíta's reply.

"How!—no candles?"

"There were none yesterday," said Nikíta.

Tchartkóff remembered that there had been none the night before, and that his credit with the tallow-chandler was not such as to render it probable a supply had been sent in that morning. So he held his tongue, allowed Nikíta to take off his coat, waistcoat, and cravat, and wrapped himself up as warmly as he could in a dressing gown with tattered elbows.

"I forgot to tell you," said Nikíta, "the landlord has been here."

"For money, I suppose," said the artist, shrugging his shoulders.

"He had somebody with him. A Kvartàlnü, I think.²⁸ He said something about the rent not being paid."

"Well, what can they do?"

"Don't know," replied the imperturbable Nikíta. "He said you must leave the lodgings or pay. Will come again to-morrow."

"Let them come," said Tchartkóff gloomily. And he turned himself upon the comfortless sofa with a feeling akin to desperation.

Tchartkóff was a young artist of considerable promise, and whose pencil was at times remarked for its accuracy, and near approach to the truthfulness of nature. But he had faults which procured him frequent admonitions from the professor under whom he studied. "You have talent," he would say to him; "it will be a sin to ruin it by carelessness and by pursuing erroneous ideas and principles. You are too impatient; too apt to be fascinated by novelty, and to neglect rules hallowed by time and experience, laws immutable as those of the Medes. Beware, lest you become a mere fashionable painter. Your colours, I observe, are not unfrequently selected in defiance of good taste; your drawing is often feeble, sometimes positively incorrect; your outlines want clearness. You run after a flashy kind of chiaro-scuro, the lighting up of your picture is meant only to strike the eye at the first glance. And you have a passion for the introduction of finery; a taste for dandified costume. All this is dangerous, and may lead you into the fatal habit of painting mere fashionable pictures, pretty portraits and the like, which yield money, but can never give fame. Do that, and your talent is lost and thrown away. Be patient, wait, reflect, chasten your taste by study, and wean yourself from that hankering after prettiness and dandyism. Leave such tricks to those who care but for gold, and propose yourself a higher aim, the never-dying laurels of a Titian or an Angelo."

The professor meant well, and was right in the main. Tchartkóff was apt to indulge in the flashy and the superficial. But he had sufficient strength of mind to control this dangerous tendency, and a purer taste was gradually but perceptibly developing itself in him. As yet he could not quite appreciate all the depth of Raphael, but he was strongly fascinated by the broad and rapid touch of Guido; he would stand enchanted before Titian's portraits, and had a high appreciation of the Flemish school. Yet the darkened and sober tone characterising old pictures did not quite please or satisfy him; nor did he, in his innermost mind, altogether agree with the professor, when the latter expatiated to him on that mysterious power which places the old masters at such immeasurable distance above the moderns. In some respects he almost fancied them surpassed by the nineteenth century; that the imitation of nature had somehow become, in modern times, more vivid, and lively, and faithful: in a word, his mind was in that fluctuating unsettled state in which the minds of young people are apt to be when they have reached a particular point of proficiency in their art, and feel a proud internal conviction of talent. Often was he filled with rage when he saw some travelling French or German painter, by the mere effect of trick and habit, by readiness of pencil and flashy colouring, catching the multitude, and making a fortune. These impressions made their way into his mind, not in moments when he was buried, body and soul, in his work, and forgot food and drink and all outward things; but when, as was often the case, necessity stared him in the face, and he found himself without the means of buying brushes and colours, or even bread, whilst the greedy and implacable landlord came ten times a-day to dun him for his rent. Then his hunger-sharpened imagination would revert to the different lot of the rich and fashionable painter; then darted through his brain the thought that so often flits through the Russian head, the idea of sending his art and all to the devil, and going to the devil himself.