became gray and infirm, she deserted him and, to put a stop to his groans, she turned him into a grasshopper.
Her son, Memnon, was made king of the Ethiopians, and in the war of Troy he was overcome by Achilles. When Aurora, who was watching him from the sky, saw him fall she sent his brothers, the Winds, to take his body to the banks of a river in Asia Minor. In the evening the mother and the Hours and the Pleiades came to weep over her dead son. Poor Aurora! even to-day her tears are seen in the dewdrops on the grass at early dawn.
THE SINGING BOYS
Frans Hals (1584? -1666)
These jolly singers are Dutch boys. They are singing on the street or in some back yard just as singers do to-day, though they lived nearly three hundred years ago.
Hals was such a rapid painter that he could make a picture while you wait. The story is told that one time young Van Dyck, the Flemish painter who painted "Baby Stuart," went to see Hals in Amsterdam when Hals was an old man. Van Dyck did not tell the old artist that he was Van Dyck but simply asked him to paint his portrait, knowing what a rapid painter Hals was. In an hour the picture was done. Van Dyck remarked, as he looked at the portrait:
"That seems easy; I believe I could do it."
Hals thought he would have some fun, so he told the young stranger that he would sit for him just one hour.
Van Dyck set his easel where Hals could not see him work and began to paint. At the end of an hour he said:
"Your picture is finished, sir."
Hals, ready to laugh at the daub, looked at the portrait and the laugh went out of his face. He then looked at Van Dyck, and cried out:
"You must be either Van Dyck or a wizard!"
You see, Hals had heard of Van Dyck and his rapid work, and knew that only a master painter could make the splendid portrait in an hour.
ST. BARBARA
Jacopo Palma Il Vecchio (1480? -1528)
St. Barbara, born a. d. 303, was a very beautiful girl. Her father, an eastern nobleman, loved her so much and was so afraid something might happen to her that he built a very wonderful tower for her home and shut her up in it. And in that tower she studied the stars. Night after night she looked at the heavenly bodies until she knew more about the sun and the moon and the stars than any of the learned men. But as she studied the shining bodies she decided that worshiping idols, made of wood and stone, as her father did, was wrong. Finally she learned about the Savior, and to show her faith in Christianity she had some workmen who were making repairs on her tower put in three windows. When her father came as usual to visit her, he asked in surprise what the three windows were for. She replied:
"Know, my father, that through three windows doth the soul receive light, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost: and the three are one."
Her father was very angry when he found she had learned about the Savior and had become a Christian. He condemned her to death and at last took her out on a hill and killed her, but he, too, was struck dead. St. Barbara is always represented with a tower that has three windows in it.
Palma Vecchio painted this picture for some Venetian soldiers nearly four hundred years ago. When the Germans bombarded Venice (1918) the Venetians took the picture from the church to a place of safety. Scarcely a week had passed before a bomb broke through the roof of the church tearing everything before it at the exact spot where the picture had hung. But "St. Barbara," one of the great pictures of the world, was safe.
CHARLES I AND HIS HORSE
Sir Anthony Van Dyck (1599-1641)
The horse in this picture of Charles I is probably the one Rubens gave to Van Dyck. It is said that Rubens gave it as a present after Van Dyck had painted a portrait of Helena Fourment, the master's second wife, and presented it to him. Van Dyck was twenty-two years younger than Rubens. You will remember that he was the master painter's favorite pupil. Having Rubens as a teacher did not make the pupil a great painter. Van Dyck was never more than a prince; just an heir to the throne. Rubens was a king and sat on the throne.
The story is told that once Rubens was away from his private studio when the students bribed the servant to open the door for them. They stole into the master's studio to see "The Descent from the Cross," which he was then painting. By some mishap the culprits rubbed against the wet paint and spoiled that part of the picture. Of course they were terrified at the damage done. They finally decided that Van Dyck was the one to repair the spot. The work was so well done that they hoped Rubens would not see the repairs. But the first thing that caught the eye of the master was that particular spot. He at once sent for the students and asked who had worked on his picture. Van Dyck stepped out from the others and frankly confessed that he was the culprit. Rubens was so pleased with his frankness and also at the skill of the work that he forgave them all.
King Charles I invited Van Dyck to come to England, and then he knighted him and gave him a pension for life. The hundreds of pictures of the royal family and court people of England left by Van Dyck show us how rapidly he could paint, for the artist died when he was only forty-two years old.
THE GALE
Winslow Homer (1836-1910)
Winslow Homer lived in Maine, where he heard the roar of mighty waters beating the rocks all day and all night. Some days the ocean grew so angry because the winds whirled its waters about in such a cruel manner that it would fling itself upon the sands and rocks as though to tear everything to pieces. The waves would raise up like furious horses champing their bits and foaming at the mouth. Somehow these angry waves could never go beyond a certain point, and the mother carrying her baby along the coast knows just the point at which the waves must stop. Let us clap our hands and shout with joy that old ocean cannot hurt that mother and her baby. Fill your lungs full of that glorious breeze whipping their hair and clothes. Open your eyes wide like the baby and let the salt air polish them until they sparkle like diamonds as the baby's do.
Winslow Homer loved old ocean, and so do we! Let us love his pictures of old ocean for he has taught us that that mighty power is under a greater Power.
MADONNA DEL GRAN' DUCA
Raphael Sanzio (1483-1520)
Iwant you to learn everything you can about Raphael. He was so kind and gentle and beautiful that everybody loved him. People said that when he walked on the streets of Rome scores of young men went with him until one would think him a prince. The pope gave him a large order to decorate the Vatican, the pope's home. Every artist was willing to help him because he was always ready to do anything he could to help his brother artists.
Raphael only lived to be thirty-seven. When he died all Italy mourned his death, and his funeral was one of the largest of any artist of his time.
When Raphael was only twenty-one he painted the "Madonna del Gran' Duca." He had gone to Florence for the first time. We do not know where the picture was for a hundred years after it was painted; then the painter Carlo Dolci owned it. Again another hundred years went by, and we find it in possession of a poor widow. She sold it to a picture-dealer for about twenty dollars. It then went into the hands of the grand duke of Tuscany, Ferdinand III, for the big sum of eight hundred dollars. No amount of money could buy the picture to-day.
Ferdinand loved the picture so much that he always took it with him on all his travels and the grand duchess, his wife, felt that her baby boys were purer if she had the picture near her. It got its name "Madonna
