n
the street." He is described as resembling in figure "the spindling
columns of the church naves of the fifteenth century. . . . The azure of
the frescoes of Fiesole had furnished the blue of his eyes; his hairs, of
the blond of an aureole, seemed painted one by one, with the gold of the
illuminators of the Middle Ages. . . . One would have said, that from
the height of his Gothic pinnacle Celestin Nanteuil overlooked the actual
town, hovering above the sea of roofs, regarding the eddying blue smoke,
perceiving the city squares like a checkerboard, the streets like the
notches of a saw in a stone bench, the passers-by like mice; but all that
confusedly athwart the haze, while from his airy observatory he saw,
close at hand and in all their detail, the rose windows, the bell towers
bristling with crosses, the kings, patriarchs, prophets, saints, angels
of all the orders, the whole monstrous army of demons or chimeras,
nailed, scaled, tushed, hideously winged; _guivres_, taresques,
gargoyles, asses' heads, apes' muzzles, all the strange bestiary of the
Middle Age." Nanteuil furnished illustrations for the books of the
French romanticists. "Hugo's' Notre-Dame de Paris' was the object of his
most fervent admiration, and he drew from it subjects for a large number
of designs and aquarelles." Gautier mentions, as among his rarest
vignettes, the frontispiece of "Albertus," recalling Rembrandt's manner;
and his view of the Palazzo of San Marc in Royer's "Venezia la bella."
Gautier says that one might apply to Nanteuil's aquarelles what Joseph
Delorme[39] said of Hugo's ballads, that they were Gothic window
paintings. "The essential thing in these short fantasies is the
carriage, the shape, the clerical, monastic, royal, seignorial
_awkwardness_ of the figures and their high colouring. . . . Celestin
had made his own the angular anatomy of coats-of-arms, the extravagant
contours of the mantles, the chimerical or monstrous figures of heraldry,
the branchings of the emblazoned skirts, the lofty attitude of the feudal
baron, the modest air of the chatelaine, the sanctimonious physiognomy of
the big Carthusian Carmelite, the furtive mien of the young page with
parti-coloured pantaloons. . . . He excelled also in setting the persons
of poem, drama, or romance in ornamented frames like the Gothic shrines
with triple colonettes, arches, canopied and bracketed niches, with
statuettes, figurines, emblematic animals, male and fema