CHAPTER IX
The old, dilapidated palazzo into which they moved supplied Vronsky with the agreeable illusion that he was not so much a Russian proprietor, a shtalmeïster in retirement, as he was an enlightened amateur and protector of art, in his own modest way an artist, who had sacrificed society, his ties, his ambition, for a woman's love. This ancient palace, with its lofty stuccoed ceilings, its frescoed walls, its mosaic floors, its yellow tapestries, its thick, yellow curtains at the high windows, its vases on mantelpiece and consoles, its carved doors, and its melancholy halls hung with paintings, lent itself readily to his illusion.
This new rôle which Vronsky had chosen, together with their removal to the palazzo and acquaintance with several interesting persons, which came about through Golenishchef, made the first part of this period very enjoyable. Under the instruction of an Italian professor of painting, he made some studies from nature, and he took up the study of Italian life during the Middle Ages. Medieval Italian life became so fascinating to him that he began to wear his hat and throw his plaid over his shoulders in the medieval style, which was very becoming to him.
"Here we are alive, and yet we know nothing," said Vronsky one morning to Golenishchef, who came in to see him. "Have you seen Mikhaïlof's[1] painting?" he asked, and at the same time handed him a Russian paper just received, and indicated an article on this artist, who was living in that very city, and had just completed a picture about which many reports had long been in circulation, and which had been sold on the easel. The article severely criticized the government and the academy that an artist of such genius was left without any encouragement and aid.
"I have seen it," replied Golenishchef. "Of course he is not without talent, but his tendencies are absolutely false. He always shows the Ivanof-Strauss-Renan conception of Christ and religious art."
"What is the subject of his painting?" asked Anna.
"'Christ before Pilate.' The Christ is a Jew with all the realism of the new school."
And as this subject was a favorite one with him, he began to develop his ideas.
"I cannot understand how they can fall into such a gross mistake. The type of the Christ in art was clearly represented by the old masters. Accordingly, if they want to paint, not God, but a sage or a revolutionist, let them take Franklin or Socrates, or Charlotte Corday,—but not Christ. They take the very person whom art should not attempt to portray, and then ...."
"Is it true that this Mikhaïlof is in such poverty?" asked Vronsky, who felt that in his quality of Russian Mæcenas he ought to find some way of aiding the artist, whether his painting was good or not.
"It is doubtful. He is a famous portrait painter. Have you not seen his portrait of Madame Vasilchikof? But it seems he does n't care to paint portraits any longer, and perhaps that is the reason he is in need. I say that...."
"Could n't we ask him to paint Anna Arkadyevna's portrait?"
"Why mine?" she demanded. "After your portrait of me, I want no other. It would be better to let him paint Ani [so she called her daughter], or her," she added, looking out of the window at the pretty Italian nurse, who was just taking the baby into the garden. And at the same time she gave Vronsky a furtive glance. This pretty Italian woman, whose face Vronsky had taken as a model for a picture, was the only secret woe in Anna's life. Vronsky painted her picture, admired her beauty and her medieval quaintness, and Anna did not dare to confess to herself that she feared she was going to be jealous, and was accordingly all the more kind to her and her little boy.
Vronsky also looked out of the window, and at Anna's eyes, and, instantly turning to Golenishchef, said:—
"And so you know this Mikhailof?"
"I have met him. But he is an original—a chudak—without any education, you know, one of these new-fashioned savages such as you meet with nowadays—you know them—these free-thinkers, who rush headlong into atheism, materialism, universal negation. Once," Golenishchef went on to say, either not noticing or not wishing to notice that both Vronsky and Anna were ready to speak, "once the free-thinker was a man educated in the conceptions of religion, law, and morality, who did not ignore the laws by which society is regulated, and who reached freedom of thought only after long struggles. But now we have a new type of them,—free-thinkers who grow up without even knowing that there are such things as laws in morality and religion, who will not admit that sure authorities exist, and who possess only the sentiment of negation; in a word, savages. Mikhaïlof is one of these. He is the son of a majordomo, or ober-lakeï, at Moscow, and never had any education. When he entered the academy, and had made a reputation, he was willing to be taught, for he is not a fool; and, with this end in view, he turned to that source of all learning,—the magazines and reviews. Now you know in the good old times, if a man—let us say a Frenchman—wanted to get an education, he would study the classics,—the preachers, the tragic poets, the historians, the philosophers; and you can see all the intellectual labor that involved. But nowadays he turns to negative literature, and succeeds very speedily in getting a smattering of such a science. And, again, twenty years ago, he would have found in this same literature traces of the struggle against the authorities and secular traditions of the past; he would have understood from this dispute that there was some thing else. But now he turns directly to a literature where the old traditions are of no avail at all, but men say up and down there is nothing—natural selection, évolution, struggle for existence, negation, and all. In my article...."
"Do you know," said Anna, after exchanging several glances with Vronsky, and noticing that he was not interested in the artist's education, but was occupied only with the thought of helping him and getting him to paint the portrait. "What do you say?" said she, resolutely cutting short Golenishchef's verbiage, "let us go and see him."
Golenishchef , after deliberating, readily consented; and, as the artist lived in a remote quarter, they had a carriage called. An hour later, Anna, occupying the same seat in the calash with Golenishchef and Vronsky, drove up to an ugly new house in a distant part of the city. When they learned from the concierge's wife, who came to receive them, that Mikhaïlof permitted visitors to his studio, but that he was now at his lodgings a few steps distant, they sent her to him with their cards, and begged to be admitted to see his paintings.
- ↑ Count Tolstoï may possibly refer to the great artist Gay, one of whose pictures was exhibited in this country a number of years ago.—Ed.