OCR Text |
Show LOVE MAKES A PAINTER -- Quinten Matsys, the celebrated painter, was in his youth a blacksmith at Antwerp, but dared to love a beautiful daughter of a painter. The damsel returned his passion. The father was inexorable. "Wert thou a painter," said he, "she should be thine, but a blacksmith -never!" The young man mused and mused; the hammer dropped from his hand; the god stirred within him, a thousand glorious conceptions passed like shadows across his brain. "I will be a painter," said he, but again his soul was cast down as he reflected on his ignorance of the mechanical part of the art, and genius trembled at his own ???. His first efforts reassured him. He drew; and the lines that came were the features of that one loved and lovely face engraved on his heart. "I will paint her portrait!" cried he. "Love will inspire me!" and he made the attempt. He gazed upon her till his soul became drunken with beauty, and in the wild inspiration of such moments his colors flashed fast and thick upon the canvas, till they formed what one might have imagined to be the reflection of his mistress. "There!" said he, showing the work to the astonished father --"There! I claim the prize, for I am a painter!" He exchanged his portrait for the original; continued to love and paint; became eminent among the sons of art in his day and generation; and, dying, was buried in the cathedral of his native city. |