In all directions Goya renewed and innovated. Whether he worked for the churches or painted patriotic pictures he always did something unexpected. His cartoons for tapestries show that he had studied Boucher and Fragonard. But there was nothing conventional about him. In scenes of gallantry or merriment, some even dramatic, all, costumes, types, attitudes, has the ac cent of popular truth. His inexhaustible verve and the profoundly original turn of his sensibility found an even more favourable field in his little genre pictures. But how insufficient is the term "genre pictures" for these little masterpieces of invention, obser vation, emotion and irony. There are carnival scenes like El entierro de la Sardina, street processions like the Flagellants, in teriors of prisons and madhouses, fête days in the country; like the celebrated Pradera de San Isidro, and many other strange subjects, melodramatic, romantic, anecdotal and satiric, which every time are a surprise and revelation to us, for inevitably we think what such subjects would have become in the hands of another painter, and appreciate the more fully what marvels of poetic fantasy and mysterious, almost enigmatic, emotion the magician Goya made of them.
This extraordinarily versatile man is the author of the finest nude in Spanish painting (the Maja Desnuda). To complete the universality of his genius, this roué and libertine had his hours of Christian inspiration. The Last Communion of St. Joseph Calasanz is perhaps the finest i8th century religious painting known. It palpitates secretly with an emotion which recalls Rembrandt. The mystery does not come, however, as in Rem brandt, from a source of light springing from shadow, but from the infinite gradations of a twilight grey. In San Antonio de la, Florida Goya painted his other religious masterpiece and his mas terpiece of decoration. Never have we seen anything to equal those greys and blacks which play the part of a sotto voce bass in light and aerial harmonies.
Goya is the father of 19th century art and of all modern art. In his own country he left only one expert and too servile imi tator, who had however animation, Eugenio Lucas (1824-1870). His best and truest heirs are to be found in France. In the course of the 19th century however, outside the brilliant but harsh and petty art of Fortuny, we feel that Spain still keeps her possibili ties and will be capable, some day, of favouring the development of a great painter.
The first half of the 17th century is, in France as in almost all the countries where art has flourished, a period of rich develop ment which saw the birth of geniuses of the most diverse types and the most marked originality.
Simon Vouet (159o-1649) was exceedingly precocious. At
14 he already enjoyed such a reputation as a portrait painter that he was invited to pay a visit to England in order to paint the portrait of a lady of quality. He was successful also at Con stantinople, whither he followed the French embassy; at Venice; then at Florence where he received the title of prince of the Academie de St. Luc, and finally at Genoa where he decorated the Doria Palace. Recalled to Paris by Louis XIII. in 1628, he was loaded with honours and for 20 years held sovereign sway over the arts. It is obvious that he was too much car ried away by this facility but his clear colour and sense of decoration have played a part in the evolution of French painting. He had more influence than Poussin himself on Le Sueur, Le Brun and Mignard and through them on the great work of Louis XIV.'s reign, the decoration of Versailles. From him derives Boucher, and hence a substantial part of i8th century art.