A merchant of Genoa commissioned Donatello to carve for him a colossal head. When the model was finished the Genoa merchant objected to the price, saying that he had been engaged only a month on it, and the sum asked was equal to half a Florin a day. Donatello, turning round, exclaimed that it was possible in a moment to destroy the work of a year, and with a sudden push he threw the head to the ground, where it broke into a hundred pieces. It was clear, he said, that the purchaser ought to confine himself to vegetables and leave art alone.
Xxx
SHEDDING TEARS
The works of Millais, the painter, had been
collected in a gallery in London, and a friend, Lady Constance Leslie, went
early in the day to the exhibition. Going up the stairs, she encountered the
painter going out with head bowed down. As she greeted him and he looked up she
saw tears in his eyes .
“Ah, dear Lady Constance”, he said “you see me
unmannered.
Well I am not ashamed of averring that in
looking at my earliest pictures I have been overcome with chagrin that I so far
failed in my maturity to fulfil the full forecast of my youth”.
Xxx
When Sir Humphrey Davy returned from a visit to
Paris he was asked how the picture galleries had impressed him. “The finest
collection of frames that I ever saw”, he said.
Xxx
‘I DON’T MIND’ – MARK TWAIN
Mark Twain once visited the artist Whistler in
his studio and was looking over his pictures. He started to touch one canvas,
“Oh, cried Whistler, don’t touch that”.
“Don’t you see, it is not dry yet?”
“I don’t mind, said Mark Twain , I have gloves
on”.
Xxx
O Keefe
The fine American painter Georgia O Keeffe, was
slow in appreciating the monetary value of her work, and has never ceased to be
somewhat indifferent to it. Characteristic of her reactions was the day when
the first sale one of her pictures occurred. The canvas brought 400 dollars.
Miss O Keeffe who was standing nearby while the transaction was completed,
became pale; not because of the sum of money but at the thought that she would
never see her painting again.
Xxx
Upside Down!
Whistler once undertook to get a fellow painter’s work into the autumn salon. He succeeded and the picture was hung. But the painter, going to see his master piece with Whistler on varnishing day, uttered a terrible oath when he beheld it! “Good gracious,” he groaned. “You are exhibiting my picture upside down”. “Hush, said Whistler, the committee refused it the other way”.
Xxx
POVERTY KILLED A FAMOUS PAINTER
Correggio was yet in the prime of life when he
completed his great work,
‘The Assumption of the Virgin’, which he painted
on the ceiling of the dome of the cathedral at Parma. So ignorantly
unappreciated was his masterly performance by the canons, his employers , that
they not only refused the unfortunate artist the price they had agreed upon,
but paid 500 crowns , which was all that they would allow, in copper.
Correggio was carrying home this money to his family who were living in great poverty in a neighbouring village, when overcome by the heat of the weather and the weight of his coppers , he was tempted to slake his thirst at a spring by the wayside , and the consequence was an inflammatory attack, which soon proved fatal.
Tamil and Vedas 