Gustav Kobbé

“ THE WIFE IN ART
Rossetti and Elizabeth Siddal SIX
One day when Rossetti was painting in his studio, Deverell, a fellow artist, rushed in and exclaimed that he had found the ideal woman. She was working in a milliner’s shop, he said; but she was a wonderful girl of stately dignity, with blue-green eyes and coppery tinted hair. This girl was Elizabeth Siddal, and from that time on she was the model for Rossetti’s mystical dreams in color. She later became his wife.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti was born in England in 1828, the son of an Italian refugee. ”

“ If she, in character the worst kind of wife a man can have, so inspired her husband, how rare and exquisite must have been the influence of Lucrezia Buti (boo ́tee) over Fra Filippo Lippi (lip ́pee) , of Helena Fourment (hel-en-ah fur ́-ment) over Rubens (roo-benz) , of Maria Ruthven over Van Dyck, of Saskia over Rembrandt, of Elizabeth Siddal over Rossetti! For these women were devoted to their artist-husbands, and were in turn adored by them. Doubtful, indeed, if any of these men would have subscribed to the doctrine that he rides fastest who rides alone. ”

“ Fra Lippo Lippi and Lucrezia Buti TWO
The painter of divine beauties, Filippo Lippi, or as he is often called, Fra Lippo Lippi, was not himself a handsome man. He had rather a full face, large features, and thick lips. Laziness and love were always interfering with his work. As a result of extravagance he was usually in debt, and not always careful to get out honestly. Yet the people of his time were kind-hearted enough to overlook boyish faults in an artist who brought so much renown to their country. ”

“ He attracted to his society the greatest of English nobility. Gossip had him in love with so many of the court ladies that the king, fearing his portrait painter would get into serious difficulties, determined once for all to save him by a marriage with a Scottish beauty in the queen’s retinue.
Van Dyck offered no objection. The lady, Maria Ruthven, was young and very beautiful. Although she brought no dowry except that given by royal generosity, she was considered a very good match for the artist, who came of burgher stock. ”

“ But Lucrezia persuaded him to return to Italy. He was granted a month in which to return and bring his wife to France. Francis also intrusted him with money to buy Italian works of art for the royal palace.
A month passed. Andrea did not return; but purchased a plot of ground in Florence with the king’s money, and on it built a house for Lucrezia. King Francis never received his paintings, and the “faultless painter” had thrown away a chance of achieving supreme greatness.
In 1531 Andrea del Sarto died of the plague. As he lay on his deathbed Lucrezia fled from the house for fear of infection. ”

“ His father, a well-to-do merchant in Antwerp, where Van Dyck was born in 1599, gave Anthony every opportunity to follow up the art of painting. The boy was for several years a pupil of Rubens, whom he made a little jealous by his success in portrait painting. Some of his pictures were better than Rubens’. A few years in Italy gave Van Dyck a still higher position among artists. Some said he was the best portrait painter in Europe. ”

“ Their union was blessed with five handsome children; so that his declining years found him surrounded by youth and beauty, and with a splendid young wife as comrade.
HELENA FOURMENT, BY RUBENS
A portrait of the artist’s second wife and two of their children, hanging in the Louvre, Paris.
During the eighteen years of his first marriage Isabella appeared in nearly all his large pictures. She was of a more refined type than Helena; so that, with his second marriage, when he began to introduce his second wife into his pictures, his style becomes broader and more vigorous. ”

“ RUBENS
SASKIA VAN ULENBURG—
REMBRANDT
MARIA RUTHVEN—
VAN DYCK
ELIZABETH SIDDAL—
ROSSETTI
By GUSTAV KOBBÉ
It may be that he who rides alone rides fastest; and that the man encumbered with wife and family feels his pace slacken and the goal as far away as ever. Andrea (ahn ́-dree-ah) del Sarto, in the closing lines of Browning’s poem, utters the same thought. He is addressing his wife, Lucrezia Fedi, whose extravagant and wayward tastes, many think, ruined his career and prevented his ranking with Leonardo (lay-o-nar ́-do) , Raphael (rah ́-fay-ell) , and Angelo (ahn ́-jel-o) ”

“ Notwithstanding his conduct, so out of keeping with his cloth, he was appointed chaplain to the nuns of the convent of Santa Margherita (mahr ́-gare-ee-tah) in Prato (prah ́-to) and commissioned by the abbess to paint a picture of the Madonna for the altar of the convent church. ”