Saint Mary's beacon. [volume] (Leonard Town, Md.) 1867-1983, 1909-02-25
PAINTERS BLUNOERS
fMPossIBlurlEs IN NATURE.

a Rainbow Depicted Wrsas side Out
and Meens In Pesltlens and Ferms
That cssid MAI Occur Amusing
Anaehrenisms by Old Time Artists.
That art1ux, hks authors. should
commit many erross Of fact n hardly
o cause for wonhss. RathsR. it N as-
spuishing that they are NOT found Of
sanAx &C fmu1k An v1ew &C The great
variety of knowiedge required In their
work. .Dsspats this. however. there IN
no manner Of excuse fcr certain ab-
surditiss.
For exampls. there n the case Of an
English painter who depicted an elab-
crate rainbow. Unfcrtunately he
painted Il wrong side out. But we
forget amaxsment &C such stupidity In
admfraf1on for the artists magnificent
audacity when We learn that he
charged f20 additional for rspainting
the rainbow colored In accordance
with naturws arrangement.
Painters are very prone % distress
the astrunomsfs by their reckless
pranks with the heavenly bodies. par
ticulaxiy with tho moon. One artise
presented O scene IN which was O
crescent moon low IN the eastern sky
directly opposite q setting sun. More
over. this genius disdained the criti-
cisms Of the learned. He insisted that
this arrangement was necessary for
the composition, inasmuch as the rest
OF the picture would be destroyed by
q full mooD-the only one possible In
such q situation.
Other artists have trifed with the
moon by turning its convexity away
from the sun, which In, Of course, im-
possible In nature. In one picture the
moon was placed near the constella-
tion OF the Great Bear, though as q
matter Of fact the satellite never ven-
lures into this part Of the heavens.
There are. too, Oft recurring errors
made In the bulk OF the orb. An
American astronomer amused himself
by measuring the moons In a number
or paintings. He established the fact
that by reckoning from the satellites
size the average height OF the hills In
these landscapes was forty-three
miles. One OF the mountains, indeed,
had the stupendous altitude Of q hun
dred m1iea.
Artists Of old tsms were often out
rageousiy wrong. sometimes nscessari-
~ by reason Of ths limitations imposed
BY the ignorance Of the period A
Dutch artist painted the garden Of
Eden with well clipped borders and
yew trees trimmed into fantastic
shapes. He wrought In all innocence.
for Of such sort were the only gardens
OF his experience. But the excuse
does not apply TO q Dutch painting OF
17o4. This showed Abraham about to
slaughter Isaac by means Of a blunder-
buss-the product Of an age 5000
years after the time Of the patriarchsl
Yet this mistake occurs again and
again. There have been elaborate
paintings Of the children Of Israel
crossing the Red sea with muskets on
their shoulders. A beautiful ivory
tankard. an Augsburg carving Of the
early seventeenth century, was sold
Tor high price In London not long
ago. The design, which is exquisite
In workmanship. shows the good Sa-
maritan, with his attendants, In the
Jericho road. One Of the servants
carries a gunI
Many a child az well as some older
persons has puzzled over that beam"
I'm the eye Of which the New Testa-
ment speaks. 1t In not always under
stood that this means q beam Of iisht.
But Ii was left to Solomon Bernard,
In his wOOdcuts illustrating the Bible,
published at Lyons In 1853, to picture
this beam as one Of wood, rectangular
In section and several feet in lengthl
The matter Of costumes offers vast
opportunity for flaws. which the paint
era have not failed to seize. In the
national gallery at Edinburgh Pha-
raoh's daughter and her accompanying
women are exhibited CARRIED In the
long wasted bodices and hooped
skirts Of Europe In the sixteenth CEN
tury. The national collection in Lon
don has q picture Of Joseph and his
kindred in Egypt, where the buildings
shown are not ut all Egyptian in their
style OF architecture. but distinctly
Italian. In the same gallery Paolo
Veronese's THE Family Of Darius at
the Feet Of Alexander After the Battle
Of Issus" displays the women of the
group In the pointed waists and indat-
cd skirts that made the familiar dress
OF Venetian women In the painters
time.
Errors that have 10 do with armor
may be more readily pardoned, though
the artists fail lamentably In knowl-
edge as Co the earlier forms Of metal
protection Thus In some paintings
showing the time Of Christ the war
rtors are seen clad In beautifully da-
mascened mail, yet this form Of armor
did not come into actual use until half
q thousand years later.
Similarly, In other pictures Of Christ's
time. monks are portrayed in their
robes, with tonsures. In fact, how.
ever. they did not exist In the church
prior 20 the fourth century A. d.
A curious Illustration Of the limita-
lions net on genius by circumstance II
exhibited In one Of the worlds most
famous paintings, The Last Supper"
Leonardo da vinci simply dtd not
know that the table, the cloth, tho
plates, the knives and forks and salt
cellars ws.s imposzthilities In the
scene he designed 20 portray. The
eastern people Of that age who were
his subjects used no table. no chairS
no forks, but squatted about O common