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+Project Gutenberg's Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3, by John Addington Symonds
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3
+       The Fine Arts
+
+Author: John Addington Symonds
+
+Release Date: March 13, 2004 [EBook #11559]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RENAISSANCE IN ITALY VOL. 3 ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Ted Garvin and PG Distributed Proofreaders
+
+
+
+
+
+
+RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
+
+THE FINE ARTS
+
+BY
+
+JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS
+
+AUTHOR OF
+
+"AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF DANTE", "STUDIES OF THE GREEK POETS"
+
+AND "SKETCHES IN ITALY AND GREECE"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    Dii Romae indigetes, Trojae tuque auctor, Apollo,
+    Unde genus nostrum coeli se tollit ad astra,
+    Hanc saltem auferri laudem prohibete Latinis:
+    Artibus emineat semper, studiisque Minervae,
+    Italia, et gentes doceat pulcherrima Roma;
+    Quandoquidem armorum penitus fortuna recessit,
+    Tanta Italos inter crevit discordia reges;
+    Ipsi nos inter saevos distringimus enses,
+    Nec patriam pudet externis aperire tyrannis
+
+    VIDA, _Poetica_, lib. ii.
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LONDON
+
+SMITH, ELDER & CO
+
+1899
+
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE[1]
+
+
+This third volume of my book on the "Renaissance in Italy" does not
+pretend to retrace the history of the Italian arts, but rather to define
+their relation to the main movement of Renaissance culture. Keeping this,
+the chief object of my whole work, steadily in view, I have tried to
+explain the dependence of the arts on mediaeval Christianity at their
+commencement, their gradual emancipation from ecclesiastical control, and
+their final attainment of freedom at the moment when the classical revival
+culminated.
+
+Not to notice the mediaeval period in this evolution would be impossible;
+since the revival of Sculpture and Painting at the end of the thirteenth
+century was among the earliest signs of that new intellectual birth to
+which we give the title of Renaissance. I have, therefore, had to deal at
+some length with stages in the development of Architecture, Sculpture,
+and Painting, which form a prelude to the proper age of my own history.
+
+In studying the architectural branch of the subject, I have had recourse
+to Fergusson's "Illustrated Handbook of Architecture," to Burckhardt's
+"Cicerone," to Grüner's "Terra-Cotta Buildings of North Italy," to
+Milizia's "Memorie degli Architetti," and to many illustrated works on
+single buildings in Rome, Tuscany, Lombardy, and Venice. For the history
+of Sculpture I have used Burckhardt's "Cicerone," and the two important
+works of Charles C. Perkins, entitled "Tuscan Sculptors," and "Italian
+Sculptors." Such books as "Le Tre Porte del Battistero di Firenze,"
+Grüner's "Cathedral of Orvieto," and Lasinio's "Tabernacolo della Madonna
+d'Orsammichele" have been helpful by their illustrations. For the history
+of Painting I have made use principally of Vasari's "Vite de' più
+eccellenti Pittori," &c., in Le Monnier's edition of Crowe and
+Cavalcaselle's "History of Painting," of Burckhardt's "Cicerone," of
+Rosini's illustrated "Storia della Pittura Italiana," of Rio's "L'Art
+Chrétien," and of Henri Beyle's "Histoire de la Peinture en Italie." I
+should, however, far exceed the limits of a preface were I to make a list
+of all the books I have consulted with profit on the history of the arts
+in Italy.
+
+In this part of my work I feel that I owe less to reading than to
+observation. I am not aware of having mentioned any important building,
+statue, or picture which I have not had the opportunity of studying. What
+I have written in this volume about the monuments of Italian art has
+always been first noted face to face with the originals, and afterwards
+corrected, modified, or confirmed in the course of subsequent journeys to
+Italy. I know that this method of composition, if it has the merit of
+freshness, entails some inequality of style and disproportion in the
+distribution of materials. In the final preparation of my work for press I
+have therefore endeavoured, as far as possible, to compensate this
+disadvantage by adhering to the main motive of my subject--the
+illustration of the Renaissance spirit as this was manifested in the Arts.
+
+I must add, in conclusion, that Chapters VII. and IX. and Appendix II. are
+in part reprinted from the "Westminster," the "Cornhill," and the
+"Contemporary."
+
+CLIFTON: _March_ 1877.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE PROBLEM FOR THE FINE ARTS
+
+Art in Italy and Greece--The Leading Phase of Culture--Æsthetic Type of
+Literature--Painting the Supreme Italian Art--Its Task in the
+Renaissance--Christian and Classical Traditions--Sculpture for the
+Ancients--Painting for the Romance Nations--Mediaeval Faith and
+Superstition--The Promise of Painting--How far can the Figurative Arts
+express Christian Ideas?--Greek and Christian Religion--Plastic Art
+incapable of solving the Problem--A more Emotional Art needed--Place of
+Sculpture in the Renaissance--Painting and Christian Story--Humanization
+of Ecclesiastical Ideas by Art--Hostility of the Spirit of True Piety to
+Art--Compromises effected by the Church--Fra Bartolommeo's S.
+Sebastian--Irreconcilability of Art and Theology, Art and
+Philosophy--Recapitulation--Art in the end Paganises--Music--The Future of
+Painting after the Renaissance.
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+ARCHITECTURE
+
+Architecture of Mediaeval Italy--Milan, Genoa, Venice--The Despots as
+Builders--Diversity of Styles--Local Influences--Lombard, Tuscan,
+Romanesque, Gothic--Italian want of feeling for Gothic--Cathedrals of
+Siena and Orvieto--Secular Buildings of the Middle Ages--Florence and
+Venice--Private Palaces--Public Halls--Palazzo della Signoria at
+Florence--Arnolfo di Cambio--S. Maria del Fiore--Brunelleschi's
+Dome--Classical Revival in Architecture--Roman Ruins--Three Periods in
+Renaissance Architecture--Their Characteristics--Brunelleschi
+--Alberti--Palace-building--Michellozzo--Decorative Work of the
+Revival--Bramante--Vitoni's Church of the Umiltà at Pistoja--Palazzo del
+Te--Villa Farnesina--Sansovino at Venice--Michael Angelo--The Building of
+S. Peter's--Palladio--The Palazzo della Ragione at Vicenza--Lombard
+Architects--Theorists and Students of Vitruvius--Vignola and
+Scamozzi--European Influence of the Palladian Style--Comparison of
+Scholars and Architects in relation to the Revival of Learning.
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+SCULPTURE
+
+Niccola Pisano--Obscurity of the Sources for a History of Early Italian
+Sculpture--Vasari's Legend of Pisano--Deposition from the Cross at
+Lucca--Study of Nature and the Antique--Sarcophagus at Pisa--Pisan
+Pulpit--Niccola's School--Giovanni Pisano--Pulpit in S. Andrea at
+Pistoja--Fragments of his work at Pisa--Tomb of Benedict XI. at
+Perugia--Bas-reliefs at Orvieto--Andrea Pisano--Relation of Sculpture to
+Painting--Giotto--Subordination of Sculpture to Architecture in
+Italy--Pisano's Influence in Venice--Balduccio of Pisa--Orcagna--The
+Tabernacle of Orsammichele--The Gates of the Florentine Baptistery
+--Competition of Ghiberti, Brunelleschi, and Della Quercia--Comparison
+of Ghiberti's and Brunelleschi's Trial-pieces--Comparison of Ghiberti
+and Della Quercia--The Bas-reliefs of S. Petronio--Ghiberti's
+Education--His Pictorial Style in Bas-relief--His Feeling for the
+Antique--Donatello--Early Visit to Rome--Christian Subjects--Realistic
+Treatment--S. George and David--Judith--Equestrian Statue of
+Gattamelata--Influence of Donatello's Naturalism--Andrea Verocchio--His
+David--Statue of Colleoni--Alessandro Leopardi--Lionardo's Statue of
+Francesco Sforza--The Pollajuoli--Tombs of Sixtus IV. and Innocent
+VIII.--Luca della Robbia--His Treatment of Glazed Earthenware--Agostino
+di Duccio--The Oratory of S. Bernardino at Perugia--Antonio
+Rossellino--Matteo Civitali--Mino da Fiesole--Benedetto da
+Majano--Characteristics and Masterpieces of this Group--Sepulchral
+Monuments--Andrea Contucci's Tombs in S. Maria del Popolo--Desiderio da
+Settignano--Sculpture in S. Francesco at Rimini--Venetian
+Sculpture--Verona--Guido Mazzoni of Modena--Certosa of Pavia--Colleoni
+Chapel at Bergamo--Sansovino at Venice--Pagan Sculpture--Michael Angelo's
+Scholars--Baccio Bandinelli--Bartolommeo Ammanati--Cellini--Gian
+Bologna--Survey of the History of Renaissance Sculpture.
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+PAINTING
+
+Distribution of Artistic Gifts in Italy--Florence and Venice
+--Classification by Schools--Stages in the Evolution of Painting--Cimabue
+--The Rucellai Madonna--Giotto--His widespread Activity--The Scope of his
+Art--Vitality--Composition--Colour--Naturalism--Healthiness--Frescoes at
+Assisi and Padua--Legend of S. Francis--The Giotteschi--Pictures of the
+Last Judgment--Orcagna in the Strozzi Chapel--Ambrogio Lorenzetti at
+Pisa--Dogmatic Theology--Cappella degli Spagnuoli--Traini's "Triumph,
+of S. Thomas Aquinas"--Political Doctrine expressed in Fresco--Sala della
+Pace at Siena--Religious Art in Siena and Perugia--The Relation of the
+Giottesque Painters to the Renaissance.
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+PAINTING
+
+Mediaeval Motives exhausted--New Impulse toward Technical
+Perfection--Naturalists in Painting--Intermediate Achievement needed
+for the Great Age of Art--Positive Spirit of the Fifteenth
+Century--Masaccio--The Modern Manner--Paolo Uccello--Perspective--Realistic
+Painters--The Model--Piero della Francesca--His Study of Form--Resurrection
+at Borgo San Sepolcro--Melozzo da Forli--Squarcione at Padua--Gentile da
+Fabriano--Fra Angelico--Benozzo Gozzoli--His Decorative Style--Lippo
+Lippi--Frescoes at Prato and Spoleto--Filippino Lippi--Sandro
+Botticelli--His Value for the Student of Renaissance Fancy--His Feeling
+for Mythology--Piero di Cosimo--Domenico Ghirlandajo--In what sense he
+sums up the Age--Prosaic Spirit--Florence hitherto supreme in
+Painting--Extension of Art Activity throughout Italy--Medicean Patronage.
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+PAINTING
+
+Two Periods in the True Renaissance--Andrea Mantegna--His Statuesque
+Design--His Naturalism--Roman Inspiration--Triumph of Julius
+Caesar--Bas-reliefs--Luca Signorelli--The Precursor of Michael
+Angelo--Anatomical Studies--Sense of Beauty--The Chapel of S. Brizio at
+Orvieto--Its Arabesques and Medallions--Degrees in his Ideal--Enthusiasm
+for Organic Life--Mode of treating Classical Subjects--Perugino--His
+Pietistic Style--His Formalism--The Psychological Problem of his
+Life--Perugino's Pupils--Pinturicchio--At Spello and Siena--Francia--Fra
+Bartolommeo--Transition to the Golden Age--Lionardo da Vinci--The Magician
+of the Renaissance--Raphael--The Melodist--Correggio--The Faun--Michael
+Angelo--The Prophet.
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+VENETIAN PAINTING
+
+Painting bloomed late in Venice--Conditions offered by Venice to
+Art--Shelley and Pietro Aretino--Political Circumstances of
+Venice--Comparison with Florence--The Ducal Palace--Art regarded as an
+adjunct to State Pageantry--Myth of Venezia--Heroic Deeds of
+Venice--Tintoretto's Paradise and Guardi's Picture of a Ball--Early
+Venetian Masters of Murano--Gian Bellini--Carpaccio's Little Angels--The
+Madonna of S. Zaccaria--Giorgione--Allegory, Idyll, Expression of
+Emotion--The Monk at the Clavichord--Titian, Tintoret, and
+Veronese--Tintoretto's Attempt to dramatise Venetian Art--Veronese's
+Mundane Splendour--Titian's Sophoclean Harmony--Their Schools--Further
+Characteristics of Veronese--of Tintoretto--His Imaginative
+Energy--Predominant Poetry--Titian's Perfection of Balance--Assumption of
+Madonna--Spirit common to the great Venetians.
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+LIFE OF MICHAEL ANGELO
+
+Contrast of Michael Angelo and Cellini--Parentage and Boyhood of Michael
+Angelo--Work with Ghirlandajo--Gardens of S. Marco--The Medicean
+Circle--Early Essays in Sculpture--Visit to Bologna--First Visit to
+Rome--The Pietà of S. Peter's--Michael Angelo as a Patriot and a friend of
+the Medici--Cartoon for the Battle of Pisa--Michael Angelo and Julius
+II.--The Tragedy of the Tomb--Design for the Pope's Mausoleum--Visit to
+Carrara--Flight from Rome--Michael Angelo at Bologna--Bronze Statue of
+Julius--Return to Rome--Ceiling of the Sistine Chapel--Greek and Modern
+Art--Raphael--Michael Angelo and Leo X.--S. Lorenzo--The new
+Sacristy--Circumstances under which it was designed and partly
+finished--Meaning of the Allegories--Incomplete state of Michael Angelo's
+Marbles--Paul III.--The "Last Judgment"--Critiques of Contemporaries--The
+Dome of S. Peter's--Vittoria Colonna--Tommaso Cavalieri--Personal Habits
+of Michael Angelo--His Emotional Nature--Last Illness.
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+LIFE OF BENVENUTO CELLINI
+
+His Fame--His Autobiography--Its Value for the Student of History,
+Manners, and Character in the Renaissance--Birth, Parentage, and
+Boyhood--Flute-playing--Apprenticeship to Marcone--Wanderjahr--The
+Goldsmith's Trade at Florence--Torrigiani and England--Cellini leaves
+Florence for Rome--Quarrel with the Guasconti--Homicidal Fury--Cellini a
+Law to Himself--Three Periods in his Manhood--Life in Rome--Diego at the
+Banquet--Renaissance Feeling for Physical Beauty--Sack of Rome--Miracles
+in Cellini's Life--His Affections--Murder of his Brother's
+Assassin--Sanctuary--Pardon and Absolution--Incantation in the
+Colosseum--First Visit to France--Adventures on the Way--Accused of
+stealing Crown Jewels in Rome--Imprisonment in the Castle of S.
+Angelo--The Governor--Cellini's Escape--His Visions--The Nature of his
+Religion--Second Visit to France--The Wandering Court--Le Petit
+Nesle--Cellini in the French Law Courts--Scene at Fontainebleau--Return to
+Florence--Cosimo de' Medici as a Patron--Intrigues of a Petty
+Court--Bandinelli--The Duchess--Statue of Perseus--End of Cellini's
+Life--Cellini and Machiavelli.
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE EPIGONI
+
+Full Development and Decline of Painting--Exhaustion of the old
+Motives--Relation of Lionardo to his Pupils--His Legacy to the
+Lombard School--Bernardino Luini--Gaudenzio Ferrari--The Devotion
+of the Sacri Monti--The School of Raphael--Nothing left but
+Imitation--Unwholesome Influences of Rome--Giulio Romano--Michael
+Angelesque Mannerists--Misconception of Michael Angelo--Correggio founds
+no School--Parmigianino--Macchinisti--The Bolognese--After-growth of Art in
+Florence--Andrea del Sarto--His Followers--Pontormo--Bronzino--Revival of
+Painting in Siena--Sodoma--His Influence on Pacchia, Beccafumi,
+Peruzzi--Garofalo and Dosso Dossi at Ferrari--The Campi at
+Cremona--Brescia and Bergamo--The Decadence in the second half of the
+Sixteenth Century--The Counter-Reformation--Extinction of the Renaissance
+Impulse.
+
+
+APPENDICES
+
+I.--The Pulpits of Pisa and Ravello
+
+II.--Michael Angelo's Sonnets
+
+III.--Chronological Tables
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] To the original edition of this volume.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE PROBLEM FOR THE FINE ARTS
+
+Art in Italy and Greece--The Leading Phase of Culture--Æsthetic Type of
+Literature--Painting the Supreme Italian Art--Its Task in the
+Renaissance--Christian and Classical Traditions--Sculpture for the
+Ancients--Painting for the Romance Nations--Mediaeval Faith and
+Superstition--The Promise of Painting--How far can the Figurative Arts
+express Christian Ideas?--Greek and Christian Religion--Plastic Art
+incapable of solving the Problem--A more Emotional Art needed--Place of
+Sculpture in the Renaissance--Painting and Christian Story--Humanization
+of Ecclesiastical Ideas by Art--Hostility of the Spirit of True Piety to
+Art--Compromises effected by the Church--Fra Bartolommeo's S.
+Sebastian--Irreconcilability of Art and Theology, Art and
+Philosophy--Recapitulation--Art in the end Paganises--Music--The Future of
+Painting after the Renaissance.
+
+
+It has been granted only to two nations, the Greeks and the Italians, and
+to the latter only at the time of the Renaissance, to invest every phase
+and variety of intellectual energy with the form of art. Nothing notable
+was produced in Italy between the thirteenth and the seventeenth centuries
+that did not bear the stamp and character of fine art. If the methods of
+science may be truly said to regulate our modes of thinking at the present
+time, it is no less true that, during the Renaissance, art exercised a
+like controlling influence. Not only was each department of the fine arts
+practised with singular success; not only was the national genius to a
+very large extent absorbed in painting, sculpture, and architecture; but
+the aesthetic impulse was more subtly and widely diffused than this alone
+would imply. It possessed the Italians in the very centre of their
+intellectual vitality, imposing its conditions on all the manifestations
+of their thought and feeling, so that even their shortcomings may be
+ascribed in a great measure to their inability to quit the aesthetic point
+of view.
+
+We see this in their literature. It is probable that none but artistic
+natures will ever render full justice to the poetry of the Renaissance.
+Critics endowed with a less lively sensibility to beauty of outline and to
+harmony of form than the Italians, complain that their poetry lacks
+substantial qualities; nor is it except by long familiarity with the
+plastic arts of their contemporaries that we come to understand the ground
+assumed by Ariosto and Poliziano. We then perceive that these poets were
+not so much unable as instinctively unwilling to go beyond a certain
+circle of effects. They subordinated their work to the ideal of their age,
+and that ideal was one to which a painter rather than a poet might
+successfully aspire. A succession of pictures, harmoniously composed and
+delicately toned to please the mental eye, satisfied the taste of the
+Italians. But, however exquisite in design, rich in colour, and complete
+in execution this literary work may be, it strikes a Northern student as
+wanting in the highest elements of genius--sublimity of imagination,
+dramatic passion, energy and earnestness of purpose. In like manner, he
+finds it hard to appreciate those didactic compositions on trifling or
+prosaic themes, which delighted the Italians for the very reason that
+their workmanship surpassed their matter. These defects, as we judge them,
+are still more apparent in the graver branches of literature. In an essay
+or a treatise we do not so much care for well-balanced disposition of
+parts or beautifully rounded periods, though elegance may be thought
+essential to classic masterpieces, as for weighty matter and trenchant
+observations. Having the latter, we can dispense at need with the former.
+The Italians of the Renaissance, under the sway of the fine arts, sought
+after form, and satisfied themselves with rhetoric. Therefore we condemn
+their moral disquisitions and their criticisms as the flimsy playthings of
+intellectual voluptuaries. Yet the right way of doing justice to these
+stylistic trifles is to regard them as products of an all-embracing genius
+for art, in a people whose most serious enthusiasms were aesthetic.
+
+The speech of the Italians at that epoch, their social habits, their ideal
+of manners, their standard of morality, the estimate they formed of men,
+were alike conditioned and qualified by art. It was an age of splendid
+ceremonies and magnificent parade, when the furniture of houses, the
+armour of soldiers, the dress of citizens, the pomp of war, and the
+pageantry of festival were invariably and inevitably beautiful. On the
+meanest articles of domestic utility, cups and platters, door-panels and
+chimney-pieces, coverlets for beds and lids of linen-chests, a wealth of
+artistic invention was lavished by innumerable craftsmen, no less skilled
+in technical details than distinguished by rare taste. From the Pope upon
+S. Peter's chair to the clerks in a Florentine counting-house, every
+Italian was a judge of art. Art supplied the spiritual oxygen, without
+which the life of the Renaissance must have been atrophied. During that
+period of prodigious activity the entire nation seemed to be endowed with
+an instinct for the beautiful, and with the capacity for producing it in
+every conceivable form. As we travel through Italy at the present day,
+when "time, war, pillage, and purchase" have done their worst to denude
+the country of its treasures, we still marvel at the incomparable and
+countless beauties stored in every burgh and hamlet. Pacing the picture
+galleries of Northern Europe, the country seats of English nobles, and the
+palaces of Spain, the same reflection is still forced upon us: how could
+Italy have done what she achieved within so short a space of time? What
+must the houses and the churches once have been, from which these spoils
+were taken, but which still remain so rich in masterpieces?
+Psychologically to explain this universal capacity for the fine arts in
+the nation at this epoch, is perhaps impossible. Yet the fact remains,
+that he who would comprehend the Italians of the Renaissance must study
+their art, and cling fast to that Ariadne-thread throughout the
+labyrinthine windings of national character. He must learn to recognise
+that herein lay the sources of their intellectual strength as well as the
+secret of their intellectual weakness.
+
+It lies beyond the scope of this work to embrace in one inquiry the
+different forms of art in Italy, or to analyse the connection of the
+aesthetic instinct with the manifold manifestations of the Renaissance.
+Even the narrower task to which I must confine myself, is too vast for the
+limits I am forced to impose upon its treatment. I intend to deal with
+Italian painting as the one complete product which remains from the
+achievements of this period, touching upon sculpture and architecture more
+superficially. Not only is painting the art in which the Italians among
+all the nations of the modern world stand unapproachably alone, but it is
+also the one that best enables us to gauge their genius at the time when
+they impressed their culture on the rest of Europe. In the history of the
+Italian intellect painting takes the same rank as that of sculpture in the
+Greek. Before beginning, however, to trace the course of Italian art, it
+will be necessary to discuss some preliminary questions, important for a
+right understanding of the relations assumed by painting to the thoughts
+of the Renaissance, and for explaining its superiority over the sister art
+of sculpture in that age. This I feel the more bound to do because it is
+my object in this volume to treat of art with special reference to the
+general culture of the nation.
+
+What, let us ask in the first place, was the task appointed for the fine
+arts on the threshold of the modern world? They had, before all things, to
+give form to the ideas evolved by Christianity, and to embody a class of
+emotions unknown to the ancients.[2] The inheritance of the Middle Ages
+had to be appropriated and expressed. In the course of performing this
+work, the painters helped to humanise religion, and revealed the dignity
+and beauty of the body of man. Next, in the fifteenth century, the riches
+of classic culture were discovered, and art was called upon to aid in the
+interpretation of the ancient to the modern mind. The problem was no
+longer simple. Christian and pagan traditions came into close contact, and
+contended for the empire of the newly liberated intellect. During this
+struggle the arts, true to their own principles, eliminated from both
+traditions the more strictly human elements, and expressed them in
+beautiful form to the imagination and the senses. The brush of the same
+painter depicted Bacchus wedding Ariadne and Mary fainting on the hill of
+Calvary. Careless of any peril to dogmatic orthodoxy, and undeterred by
+the dread of encouraging pagan sensuality, the artists wrought out their
+modern ideal of beauty in the double field of Christian and Hellenic
+legend. Before the force of painting was exhausted, it had thus traversed
+the whole cycle of thoughts and feelings that form the content of the
+modern mind. Throughout this performance, art proved itself a powerful
+co-agent in the emancipation of the intellect; the impartiality wherewith
+its methods were applied to subjects sacred and profane, the emphasis laid
+upon physical strength and beauty as good things and desirable, the
+subordination of classical and mediaeval myths to one aesthetic law of
+loveliness, all tended to withdraw attention from the differences between
+paganism and Christianity, and to fix it on the goodliness of that
+humanity wherein both find their harmony.
+
+This being in general the task assigned to art in the Renaissance, we may
+next inquire what constituted the specific quality of modern as
+distinguished from antique feeling, and why painting could not fail to
+take the first place among modern arts. In other words, how was it that,
+while sculpture was the characteristic fine art of antiquity, painting
+became the distinguishing fine art of the modern era? No true form of
+figurative art intervened between Greek sculpture and Italian painting.
+The latter took up the work of investing thought with sensible shape from
+the dead hands of the former. Nor had the tradition that connected art
+with religion been interrupted, although a new cycle of religious ideas
+had been substituted for the old ones. The late Roman and Byzantine
+manners, through which the vital energies of the Athenian genius dwindled
+into barren formalism, still lingered, giving crude and lifeless form to
+Christian conceptions. But the thinking and feeling subject, meanwhile,
+had undergone a change so all-important that it now imperatively required
+fresh channels for its self-expression. It was destined to find these, not
+as of old in sculpture, but in painting.
+
+During the interval between the closing of the ancient and the opening of
+the modern age, the faith of Christians had attached itself to symbols and
+material objects little better than fetishes. The host, the relic, the
+wonder-working shrine, things endowed with a mysterious potency, evoked
+the yearning and the awe of medieval multitudes. To such concrete
+actualities the worshippers referred their sense of the invisible
+divinity. The earth of Jerusalem, the Holy Sepulchre, the House of Loreto,
+the Sudarium of Saint Veronica, aroused their deepest sentiments of aweful
+adoration. Like Thomas, they could not be contented with believing; they
+must also touch and handle. At the same time, in apparent
+contradistinction to this demand for things of sense as signs of
+super-sensual power, the claims of dogma on the intellect grew more
+imperious, and mysticism opened for the dreaming soul a realm of spiritual
+rapture. For the figurative arts there was no true place in either of
+these regions. Painting and sculpture were alike alien to the grosser
+superstitions, the scholastic subtleties, and the ecstatic trances of the
+Middle Ages; nor had they anything in common with the logic of theology.
+Votaries who kissed a fragment of the cross with passion, could have found
+but little to satisfy their ardour in pictures painted by a man of genius.
+A formless wooden idol, endowed with the virtue of curing disease, charmed
+the pilgrim more than a statue noticeable only for its beauty or its truth
+to life. We all know that _wunderthätige Bilder sind meist nur schlechte
+Gemälde_. In architecture alone, the mysticism of the Middle Ages, their
+vague but potent feelings of infinity, their yearning towards a deity
+invisible, but localised in holy things and places, found artistic
+outlet. Therefore architecture was essentially a medieval art. The rise of
+sculpture and painting indicated the quickening to life of new faculties,
+fresh intellectual interests, and a novel way of apprehending the old
+substance of religious feeling; for comprehension of these arts implies
+delight in things of beauty for their own sake, a sympathetic attitude
+towards the world of sense, a new freedom of the mind produced by the
+regeneration of society through love.
+
+The mediaeval faiths were still vivid when the first Italian painters began
+their work, and the sincere endeavour of these men was to set forth in
+beautiful and worthy form the truths of Christianity. The eyes of the
+worshipper should no longer have a mere stock or stone to contemplate: his
+imagination should be helped by the dramatic presentation of the scenes of
+sacred history, and his devotion be quickened by lively images of the
+passion of our Lord. Spirit should converse with spirit, through no veil
+of symbol, but through the transparent medium of art, itself instinct with
+inbreathed life and radiant with ideal beauty. The body and the soul,
+moreover, should be reconciled; and God's likeness should be once more
+acknowledged in the features and the limbs of man. Such was the promise of
+art; and this promise was in a great measure fulfilled by the painting of
+the fourteenth century. Men ceased to worship their God in the holiness of
+ugliness; and a great city called its street Glad on the birthday-festival
+of the first picture investing religious emotion with aesthetic charm. But
+in making good the promise they had given, it was needful for the arts on
+the one hand to enter a region not wholly their own--the region of
+abstractions and of mystical conceptions; and on the other to create a
+world of sensuous delightfulness, wherein the spiritual element was
+materialised to the injury of its own essential quality. Spirit, indeed,
+spake to spirit, so far as the religious content was concerned; but flesh
+spake also to flesh in the aesthetic form. The incarnation promised by the
+arts involved a corresponding sensuousness. Heaven was brought down to
+earth, but at the cost of making men believe that earth itself was
+heavenly.
+
+At this point the subject of our inquiry naturally divides into two main
+questions. The first concerns the form of figurative art specially adapted
+to the requirements of religious thought in the fourteenth century. The
+second treats of the effect resulting both to art and religion from the
+expression of mystical and theological conceptions in plastic form.
+
+When we consider the nature of the ideas assimilated in the Middle Ages by
+the human mind, it is clear that art, in order to set them forth, demanded
+a language the Greeks had never greatly needed, and had therefore never
+fully learned. To over-estimate the difference from an aesthetic point of
+view between the religious notions of the Greeks and those which
+Christianity had made essential, would be difficult. Faith, hope, and
+charity; humility, endurance, suffering; the Resurrection and the
+Judgment; the Pall and the Redemption; Heaven and Hell; the height and
+depth of man's mixed nature; the drama of human destiny before the throne
+of God: into the sphere of thoughts like these, vivid and solemn,
+transcending the region of sense and corporeity, carrying the mind away to
+an ideal world, where the things of this earth obtained a new reality by
+virtue of their relation to an invisible and infinite Beyond, the modern
+arts in their infancy were thrust. There was nothing finite here or
+tangible, no gladness in the beauty of girlish foreheads or the swiftness
+of a young man's limbs, no simple idealisation of natural delightfulness.
+The human body, which the figurative arts must needs use as the vehicle of
+their expression, had ceased to have a value in and for itself, had ceased
+to be the true and adequate investiture of thoughts demanded from the
+artist. At best it could be taken only as the symbol of some inner
+meaning, the shrine of an indwelling spirit nobler than itself; just as a
+lamp of alabaster owes its beauty and its worth to the flame it more than
+half conceals, the light transmitted through its scarce transparent walls.
+
+In ancient art those moral and spiritual qualities which the Greeks
+recognised as truly human and therefore divine, allowed themselves to be
+incarnated in well-selected types of physical perfection. The deities of
+the Greek mythology were limited to the conditions of natural existence:
+they were men and women of a larger mould and freer personality; less
+complex, inasmuch as each completed some one attribute; less thwarted in
+activity, inasmuch as no limit was assigned to exercise of power. The
+passions and the faculties of man, analysed by unconscious psychology, and
+deified by religious fancy, were invested by sculpture with appropriate
+forms, the tact of the artist selecting corporeal qualities fitted to
+impersonate the special character of each divinity. Nor was it possible
+that, the gods and goddesses being what they were, exact analogues should
+not be found for them in idealised humanity. In a Greek statue there was
+enough soul to characterise the beauty of the body, to render her due meed
+of wisdom to Pallas, to distinguish the swiftness of Hermes from the
+strength of Heracles, or to contrast the virginal grace of Artemis with
+the abundance of Aphrodite's charms. At the same time the spirituality
+that gave its character to each Greek deity, was not such that, even in
+thought, it could be dissociated from corporeal form. The Greeks thought
+their gods as incarnate persons; and all the artist had to see to, was
+that this incarnate personality should be impressive in his marble.
+
+Christianity, on the other hand, made the moral and spiritual nature of
+man all-essential. It sprang from an earlier religion, that judged it
+impious to give any form to God. The body and its terrestrial activity
+occupied but a subordinate position in its system. It was the life of the
+soul, separable from this frame of flesh, and destined to endure when
+earth and all that it contains had ended--a life that upon this planet was
+continued conflict and aspiring struggle--which the arts, insofar as they
+became its instrument, were called upon to illustrate. It was the worship
+of a Deity, all spirit, to be sought on no one sacred hill, to be adored
+in no transcendent shape, that they were bound to heighten. The most
+highly prized among the Christian virtues had no necessary connection with
+beauty of feature or strength of limb. Such beauty and such strength at
+any rate were accidental, not essential. A Greek faun could not but be
+graceful; a Greek hero was of necessity vigorous. But S. Stephen might be
+steadfast to the death without physical charm; S. Anthony might put to
+flight the devils of the flesh without muscular force. It is clear that
+the radiant physical perfection proper to the deities of Greek sculpture
+was not sufficient in this sphere.
+
+Again, the most stirring episodes of the Christian mythology involved pain
+and perturbation of the spirit; the victories of the Christian athletes
+were won in conflicts carried on within their hearts and souls--"For we
+wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and
+powers," demoniac leaders of spiritual legions. It is, therefore, no less
+clear that the tranquillity and serenity of the Hellenic ideal, so
+necessary to consummate sculpture, was here out of place. How could the
+Last Judgment, that day of wrath, when every soul, however insignificant
+on earth, will play the first part for one moment in an awful tragedy, be
+properly expressed in plastic form, harmonious and pleasing? And supposing
+that the artist should abandon the attempt to exclude ugliness and
+discord, pain and confusion, from his representation of the _Dies Irae_,
+how could he succeed in setting forth by the sole medium of the human
+body the anxiety and anguish of the soul at such a time? The physical
+form, instead of being adequate to the ideas expressed, and therefore
+helpful to the artist, is a positive embarrassment, a source of weakness.
+The most powerful pictorial or sculpturesque delineation of the Judgment,
+when compared with the pangs inflicted on the spirit by a guilty
+conscience, pangs whereof words may render some account, but which can
+find no analogue in writhings of the limbs or face, must of necessity be
+found a failure. Still more impossible, if we pursue this train of thought
+into another region, is it for the figurative arts to approach the
+Christian conception of God in His omnipotence and unity. Christ Himself,
+the central figure of the Christian universe, the desired of all nations,
+in whom the Deity assumed a human form and dwelt with men, is no fit
+subject for such art at any rate as the Greeks had perfected. The fact of
+His incarnation brought Him indeed within the proper sphere of the fine
+arts; but the religious idea which He represents removed Him beyond the
+reach of sculpture. This is an all-important consideration. It is to this
+that our whole argument is tending. Therefore to enlarge upon this point
+will not be useless.
+
+Christ is specially adored in His last act of love on Calvary; and how
+impossible it is to set that forth consistently with the requirements of
+strictly plastic art, may be gathered by comparing the passion of S.
+Bernard's Hymn to our Lord upon the Cross with all that Winckelmann and
+Hegel have so truly said about the restrained expression, dignified
+generality, and harmonious beauty essential to sculpture. It is the
+negation of tranquillity, the excess of feeling, the absence of
+comeliness, the contrast between visible weakness and invisible
+omnipotence, the physical humiliation voluntarily suffered by Him that
+"ruled over all the angels, that walked on the pavements of heaven, whose
+feet were clothed with stars"--it is all this that gives their force and
+pathos to these stanzas:
+
+    Omnis vigor atque viror
+    Hinc recessit; non admiror:
+    Mors apparet in inspectu,
+    Totus pendens in defectu,
+        Attritus aegrâ macie.
+
+    Sic affectus, sic despectus,
+    Propter me sic interfectus,
+    Peccatori tam indigno
+    Cum amoris in te signo
+        Appare clarâ facie[3].
+
+We have never heard that Pheidias or Praxiteles chose Prometheus upon
+Caucasus for the supreme display of his artistic skill; and even the
+anguish expressed in the group of the Laocoon is justly thought to violate
+the laws of antique sculpture. Yet here was a greater than Prometheus--one
+who had suffered more, and on whose suffering the salvation of the human
+race depended, to exclude whom from the sphere of representation in art
+was the same as confessing the utter impotence of art to grasp the vital
+thought of modern faith. It is clear that the muses of the new age had to
+haunt Calvary instead of Helicon, slaking their thirst at no Castalian
+spring, but at the fount of tears outpoured by all creation for a stricken
+God. What Hellas had achieved supplied no norm or method for the arts in
+this new service.
+
+From what has hitherto been advanced, we may assert with confidence that,
+if the arts were to play an important part in Christian culture, an art
+was imperatively demanded that should be at home in the sphere of intense
+feeling, that should treat the body as the interpreter and symbol of the
+soul, and should not shrink from pain and passion. How far the fine arts
+were at all qualified to express the essential thoughts of Christianity--a
+doubt suggested in the foregoing paragraphs--and how far, through their
+proved inadequacy to perform this task completely, they weakened the hold
+of mediaeval faiths upon the modern mind, are questions to be raised
+hereafter. For the present it is enough to affirm that, least of all the
+arts, could sculpture, with its essential repose and its dependence on
+corporeal conditions, solve the problem. Sculpture had suited the
+requirements of Greek thought. It belonged by right to men who not
+unwillingly accepted the life of this world as final, and who worshipped
+in their deities the incarnate personality of man made perfect. But it
+could not express the cycle of Christian ideas. The desire of a better
+world, the fear of a worse; the sense of sin referred to physical
+appetites, and the corresponding mortification of the flesh; hope,
+ecstasy, and penitence and prayer; all these imply contempt or hatred for
+the body, suggest notions too spiritual to be conveyed by the rounded
+contours of beautiful limbs, too full of struggle for statuesque
+tranquillity. The new element needed a more elastic medium of expression.
+Motives more varied, gradations of sentiment more delicate, the fugitive
+and transient phases of emotion, the inner depths of consciousness, had
+somehow to be seized. It was here that painting asserted its supremacy.
+Painting is many degrees further removed than sculpture from dependence on
+the body in the fulness of its physical proportions. It touches our
+sensibilities by suggestions more indirect, more mobile, and more
+multiform. Colour and shadow, aërial perspective and complicated grouping,
+denied to sculpture, but within the proper realm of painting, have their
+own significance, their real relation to feelings vaguer, but not less
+potent, than those which find expression in the simple human form. To
+painting, again, belongs the play of feature, indicative of internal
+movement, through a whole gamut of modulations inapprehensible by
+sculpture. All that drapery by its partial concealment of the form it
+clothes, and landscape by its sympathies with human sentiment, may supply
+to enhance the passion of the spectator, pertains to painting. This art,
+therefore, owing to the greater variety of means at its disposal, and its
+greater adequacy to express emotion, became the paramount Italian art.
+
+To sculpture in the Renaissance, shorn of the divine right to create gods
+and heroes, was left the narrower field of decoration, portraiture, and
+sepulchral monuments. In the last of these departments it found the
+noblest scope for its activity; for beyond the grave, according to
+Christian belief, the account of the striving, hoping, and resisting soul
+is settled. The corpse upon the bier may bear the stamp of spiritual
+character impressed on it in life; but the spirit, with its struggle and
+its passion, has escaped as from a prison-house, and flown else-whither.
+The body of the dead man, for whom this world is over, and who sleeps in
+peace, awaiting resurrection, and thereby not wholly dead, around whose
+tomb watch sympathising angels or contemplative genii, was, therefore, the
+proper subject for the highest Christian sculpture. Here, if anywhere, the
+right emotion could be adequately expressed in stone, and the moulded form
+be made the symbol of repose, expectant of restored activity. The greatest
+sculptor of the modern age was essentially a poet of Death.
+
+Painting, then, for the reasons already assigned and insisted on, was the
+art demanded by the modern intellect upon its emergence from the stillness
+of the Middle Ages. The problem, however, even for the art of painting was
+not simple. The painters, following the masters of mosaic, began by
+setting forth the history, mythology, and legends of the Christian Church
+in imagery freer and more beautiful than lay within the scope of treatment
+by Romanesque or Byzantine art. So far their task was comparatively easy;
+for the idyllic grace of maternal love in the Madonna, the pathetic
+incidents of martyrdom, the courage of confessors, the ecstasies of
+celestial joy in redeemed souls, the loveliness of a pure life in modest
+virgins, and the dramatic episodes of sacred story, furnish a multitude of
+motives admirably pictorial. There was, therefore, no great obstacle upon
+the threshold, so long as artists gave their willing service to the
+Church. Yet, looking back upon this phase of painting, we are able to
+perceive that already the adaptation of art to Christian dogma entailed
+concessions on both sides. Much, on the one hand, had to be omitted from
+the programme offered to artistic treatment, for the reason that the fine
+arts could not deal with it at all. Much, on the other hand, had to be
+expressed by means which painting in a state of perfect freedom would
+repudiate. Allegorical symbols, like Prudence with two faces, and painful
+episodes of agony and anguish, marred her work of beauty. There was
+consequently a double compromise, involving a double sacrifice of
+something precious. The faith suffered by having its mysteries brought
+into the light of day, incarnated in form, and humanised. Art suffered by
+being forced to render intellectual abstractions to the eye through
+figured symbols.
+
+As technical skill increased, and as beauty, the proper end of art, became
+more rightly understood, the painters found that their craft was worthy of
+being made an end in itself, and that the actualities of life observed
+around them had claims upon their genius no less weighty than dogmatic
+mysteries. The subjects they had striven at first to realise with all
+simplicity now became little better than vehicles for the display of
+sensuous beauty, science, and mundane pageantry. The human body received
+separate and independent study, as a thing in itself incomparably
+beautiful, commanding more powerful emotions by its magic than aught else
+that sways the soul. At the same time the external world, with all its
+wealth of animal and vegetable life, together with the works of human
+ingenuity in costly clothing and superb buildings, was seen to be in every
+detail worthy of most patient imitation. Anatomy and perspective taxed the
+understanding of the artist, whose whole force was no longer devoted to
+the task of bringing religious ideas within the limits of the
+representable. Next, when the classical revival came into play, the arts,
+in obedience to the spirit of the age, left the sphere of sacred subjects,
+and employed their full-grown faculties in the domain of myths and Pagan
+fancies. In this way painting may truly be said to have opened the new era
+of culture, and to have first manifested the freedom of the modern mind.
+When Luca Signorelli drew naked young men for a background to his picture
+of Madonna and the infant Christ, he created for the student a symbol of
+the attitude assumed by fine art in its liberty of outlook over the whole
+range of human interests. Standing before this picture in the Uffizzi, we
+feel that the Church, while hoping to adorn her cherished dogmas with
+aesthetic beauty, had encouraged a power antagonistic to her own, a power
+that liberated the spirit she sought to enthral, restoring to mankind the
+earthly paradise from which monasticism had expelled it.
+
+Not to diverge at this point, and to entertain the difficult problem of
+the relation of the fine arts to Christianity, would be to shrink from the
+most thorny question offered to the understanding by the history of the
+Renaissance. On the very threshold of the matter I am bound to affirm my
+conviction that the spiritual purists of all ages--the Jews, the
+iconoclasts of Byzantium, Savonarola, and our Puritan ancestors--were
+justified in their mistrust of plastic art. The spirit of Christianity and
+the spirit of figurative art are opposed, not because such art is immoral,
+but because it cannot free itself from sensuous associations[4]. It is
+always bringing us back to the dear life of earth, from which the faith
+would sever us. It is always reminding us of the body which piety bids us
+to forget. Painters and sculptors glorify that which saints and ascetics
+have mortified. The masterpieces of Titian and Correggio, for example,
+lead the soul away from compunction, away from penitence, away from
+worship even, to dwell on the delight of youthful faces, blooming colour,
+graceful movement, delicate emotion[5]. Nor is this all: religious motives
+may be misused for what is worse than merely sensuous suggestiveness. The
+masterpieces of the Bolognese and Neapolitan painters, while they pretend
+to quicken compassion for martyrs in their agony, pander to a bestial
+blood-lust lurking in the darkest chambers of the soul[6]. Therefore it is
+that piety, whether the piety of monastic Italy or of Puritan England,
+turns from these aesthetic triumphs as from something alien to itself. When
+the worshipper would fain ascend on wings of ecstasy to God, the infinite,
+ineffable, unrealised, how can he endure the contact of those splendid
+forms, in which the lust of the eye and the pride of life, professing to
+subserve devotion, remind him rudely of the goodliness of sensual
+existence? Art, by magnifying human beauty, contradicts these Pauline
+maxims: "For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain;" "Set your
+affections on things above, not on things on earth;" "Your life is hid
+with Christ in God." The sublimity and elevation it gives to carnal
+loveliness are themselves hostile to the spirit that holds no truce or
+compromise of traffic with the flesh. As displayed in its most perfect
+phases, in Greek sculpture and Venetian painting, art dignifies the actual
+mundane life of man; but Christ, in the language of uncompromising piety,
+means everything most alien to this mundane life--self-denial, abstinence
+from fleshly pleasure, the waiting for true bliss beyond the grave,
+seclusion even from social and domestic ties. "He that loveth father and
+mother more than me, is not worthy of me," "He that taketh not his cross
+and followeth me, is not worthy of me." It is needful to insist upon these
+extremest sentences of the New Testament, because upon them was based the
+religious practice of the Middle Ages, more sincere in their determination
+to fulfil the letter and embrace the spirit of the Gospel than any
+succeeding age has been.[7]
+
+If, then, there really exists this antagonism between fine art glorifying
+human life and piety contemning it, how came it, we may ask, that even in
+the Middle Ages the Church hailed art as her coadjutor? The answer lies in
+this, that the Church has always compromised. The movement of the modern
+world, upon the close of the Middle Ages, offered the Church a compromise,
+which it would have been difficult to refuse, and in which she perceived
+art first no peril to her dogmas. When the conflict of the first few
+centuries of Christianity had ended in her triumph, she began to mediate
+between asceticism and the world. Intent on absorbing all existent
+elements of life and power, she conformed her system to the Roman type,
+established her service in basilicas and Pagan temples, adopted portions
+of the antique ritual, and converted local genii into saints. At the same
+time she utilised the spiritual forces of monasticism, and turned the
+mystic impulse of ecstatics to account. The Orders of the Preachers and
+the Begging Friars became her militia and police; the mystery of Christ's
+presence in the Eucharist was made an engine of the priesthood; the dreams
+of Paradise and Purgatory gave value to her pardons, interdictions,
+jubilees, indulgences, and curses. In the Church the spirit of the
+cloister and the spirit of the world found neutral ground, and to the
+practical accommodation between these hostile elements she owed her wide
+supremacy. The Christianity she formed and propagated was different from
+that of the New Testament, inasmuch as it had taken up into itself a mass
+of mythological anthropomorphic elements. Thus transmuted and
+materialised, thus accepted by the vivid faith of an unquestioning
+populace, Christianity offered a proper medium for artistic activity. The
+whole first period of Italian painting was occupied with the endeavour to
+set forth in form and colour the popular conceptions of a faith at once
+unphilosophical and unspiritual, beautiful and fit for art by reason of
+the human elements it had assumed into its substance. It was natural,
+therefore, that the Church should show herself indulgent to the arts,
+which were effecting in their own sphere what she had previously
+accomplished, though purists and ascetics, holding fast by the original
+spirit of their creed, might remain irreconcilably antagonistic to their
+influence. The Reformation, on the contrary, rejecting the whole mass of
+compromises sanctioned by the Church, and returning to the elemental
+principles of the faith, was no less naturally opposed to fine arts,
+which, after giving sensuous form to Catholic mythology, had recently
+attained to liberty and brought again the gods of Greece.
+
+A single illustration might be selected from the annals of Italian
+painting to prove how difficult even the holiest-minded and most earnest
+painter found it to effect the proper junction between plastic beauty and
+pious feeling. Fra Bartolommeo, the disciple of Savonarola, painted a
+Sebastian in the cloister of S. Marco, where it remained until the
+Dominican confessors became aware, through the avowals of female
+penitents, that this picture was a stumbling-block and snare to souls. It
+was then removed, and what became of it we do not know for certain. Fra
+Bartolommeo undoubtedly intended this ideal portrait of the martyr to be
+edifying. S. Sebastian was to stand before the world as the young man,
+strong and beautiful, who endured to the end and won the crown of
+martyrdom. No other ideas but those of heroism, constancy, or faith were
+meant to be expressed; but the painter's art demanded that their
+expression should be eminently beautiful, and the beautiful body of the
+young man distracted attention from his spiritual virtues to his physical
+perfections. A similar maladjustment of the means of plastic art to the
+purposes of religion would have been impossible in Hellas, where the
+temples of Eros and of Phoebus stood side by side; but in Christian
+Florence the craftsman's skill sowed seeds of discord in the souls of the
+devout[8].
+
+This story is but a coarse instance of the separation between piety and
+plastic art. In truth, the difficulty of uniting them in such a way that
+the latter shall enforce the former, lies far deeper than its powers of
+illustration reach. Religion has its proper end in contemplation and in
+conduct. Art aims at presenting sensuous embodiment of thoughts and
+feelings with a view to intellectual enjoyment. Now, many thoughts are
+incapable of sensuous embodiment; they appear as abstractions to the
+philosophical intellect or as dogmas to the theological understanding. To
+effect an alliance between art and philosophy or art and theology in the
+specific region of either religion or speculation is, therefore, an
+impossibility. In like manner there are many feelings which cannot
+properly assume a sensuous form; and these are precisely religious
+feelings, in which the soul abandons sense, and leaves the actual world
+behind, to seek her freedom in a spiritual region.[9] Yet, while we
+recognise the truth of this reasoning, it would be unscientific to
+maintain that, until they are brought into close and inconvenient contact,
+there is direct hostility between religion and the arts. The sphere of the
+two is separate; their aims are distinct; they must be allowed to perfect
+themselves, each after its own fashion. In the large philosophy of human
+nature, represented by Goethe's famous motto, there is room for both,
+because those who embrace it bend their natures neither wholly to the
+pietism of the cloister nor to the sensuality of art. They find the
+meeting-point of art and of religion in their own humanity, and perceive
+that the antagonism of the two begins when art is set to do work alien to
+its nature, and to minister to what it does not naturally serve.
+
+At the risk of repetition I must now resume the points I have attempted to
+establish in this chapter. As in ancient Greece, so also in Renaissance
+Italy, the fine arts assumed the first place in the intellectual culture
+of the nation. But the thought and feeling of the modern world required an
+aesthetic medium more capable of expressing emotion in its intensity,
+variety, and subtlety than sculpture. Therefore painting was the art of
+arts for Italy. Yet even painting, notwithstanding the range and wealth of
+its resources, could not deal with the motives of Christianity so
+successfully as sculpture with the myths of Paganism. The religion it
+interpreted transcended the actual conditions of humanity, while art is
+bound down by its nature to the limitations of the world we live in. The
+Church imagined art would help her; and within a certain sphere of
+subjects, by vividly depicting Scripture histories and the lives of
+saints, by creating new types of serene beauty and pure joy, by giving
+form to angelic beings, by interpreting Mariolatry in all its charm and
+pathos, and by rousing deep sympathy with our Lord in His Passion,
+painting lent efficient aid to piety. Yet painting had to omit the very
+pith and kernel of Christianity as conceived by devout, uncompromising
+purists. Nor did it do what the Church would have desired. Instead of
+riveting the fetters of ecclesiastical authority, instead of enforcing
+mysticism and asceticism, it really restored to humanity the sense of its
+own dignity and beauty, and helped to proved the untenability of the
+mediaeval standpoint; for art is essentially and uncontrollably free, and,
+what is more, is free precisely in that realm of sensuous delightfulness
+from which cloistral religion turns aside to seek her own ecstatic liberty
+of contemplation.
+
+The first step in the emancipation of the modern mind was taken thus by
+art, proclaiming to men the glad tidings of their goodliness and greatness
+in a world of manifold enjoyment created for their use. Whatever painting
+touched, became by that touch human; piety, at the lure of art, folded her
+soaring wings and rested on the genial earth. This the Church had not
+foreseen. Because the freedom of the human spirit expressed itself in
+painting only under visible images, and not, like heresy, in abstract
+sentences; because this art sufficed for Mariolatry and confirmed the cult
+of local saints; because its sensuousness was not at variance with a
+creed that had been deeply sensualised--the painters were allowed to run
+their course unchecked. Then came a second stage in their development of
+art. By placing the end of their endeavour in technical excellence and
+anatomical accuracy, they began to make representation an object in
+itself, independently of its spiritual significance. Next, under the
+influence of the classical revival, they brought home again the old powers
+of the earth--Aphrodite and Galatea and the Loves, Adonis and Narcissus
+and the Graces, Phoebus and Daphne and Aurora, Pan and the Fauns, and the
+Nymphs of the woods and the waves.
+
+When these dead deities rose from their sepulchres to sway the hearts of
+men in the new age, it was found that something had been taken from their
+ancient bloom of innocence, something had been added of emotional
+intensity. Italian art recognised their claim to stand beside Madonna and
+the Saints in the Pantheon of humane culture; but the painters re-made
+them in accordance with the modern spirit. This slight touch of
+transformation proved that, though they were no longer objects of
+religious devotion, they still preserved a vital meaning for an altered
+age. Having personified for the antique world qualities which, though
+suppressed and ignored by militant and mediaeval Christianity, were
+strictly human, the Hellenic deities still signified those qualities for
+modern Europe, now at length re-fortified by contact with the ancient
+mind. For it is needful to remember that in all movements of the
+Renaissance we ever find a return in all sincerity and faith to the glory
+and gladness of nature, whether in the world without or in the soul of
+man. To apprehend that glory and that gladness with the pure and primitive
+perceptions of the early mythopoets, was not given to the men of the new
+world. Yet they did what in them lay, with senses sophisticated by many
+centuries of subtlest warping, to replace the first, free joy of kinship
+with primeval things. For the painters, far more than for the poets of
+the sixteenth century, it was possible to reproduce a thousand forms of
+beauty, each attesting to the delightfulness of physical existence, to the
+inalienable rights of natural desire, and to the participation of mankind
+in pleasures held in common by us with the powers of earth and sea and
+air.
+
+It is wonderful to watch the blending of elder and of younger forces in
+this process. The old gods lent a portion of their charm even to Christian
+mythology, and showered their beauty-bloom on saints who died renouncing
+them. Sodoma's Sebastian is but Hyacinth or Hylas, transpierced with
+arrows, so that pain and martyrdom add pathos to his poetry of
+youthfulness. Lionardo's S. John is a Faun of the forest, ivy-crowned and
+laughing, on whose lips the word "Repent" would be a gleeful paradox. For
+the painters of the full Renaissance, Roman martyrs and Olympian
+deities--the heroes of the _Acta Sanctorum_, and the heroes of Greek
+romance--were alike burghers of one spiritual city, the city of the
+beautiful and human. What exquisite and evanescent fragrance was educed
+from these apparently diverse blossoms by their interminglement and
+fusion--how the high-wrought sensibilities of the Christian were added to
+the clear and radiant fancies of the Greek, and how the frank sensuousness
+of the Pagan gave body and fulness to the floating wraiths of an ascetic
+faith--remains a miracle for those who, like our master Lionardo, love to
+scrutinise the secrets of twin natures and of double graces. There are not
+a few for whom the mystery is repellent, who shrink from it as from
+Hermaphroditus. These will always find something to pain them in the art
+of the Renaissance.
+
+Having co-ordinated the Christian and Pagan traditions in its work of
+beauty, painting could advance no farther. The stock of its sustaining
+motives was exhausted. A problem that preoccupied the minds of thinking
+men at this epoch was how to harmonise the two chief moments of human
+culture, the classical and the ecclesiastical. Without being as conscious
+of their hostility as we are, men felt that the Pagan ideal was opposed to
+the Christian, and at the same time that a reconciliation had to be
+effected. Each had been worked out separately; but both were needed for
+the modern synthesis. All that aesthetic handling, in this region more
+precocious and more immediately fruitful than pure thought, could do
+towards mingling them, was done by the impartiality of the fine arts.
+Painting, in the work of Raphael, accomplished a more vital harmony than
+philosophy in the writings of Pico and Ficino. A new Catholicity, a
+cosmopolitan orthodoxy of the beautiful, was manifested in his pictures.
+It lay outside his power, or that of any other artist, to do more than to
+extract from both revelations the elements of plastic beauty they
+contained, and to show how freely he could use them for a common purpose.
+Nothing but the scientific method can in the long run enable us to reach
+that further point, outside both Christianity and Paganism, at which the
+classical ideal of a temperate and joyous natural life shall be restored
+to the conscience educated by the Gospel. This, perchance, is the
+religion, still unborn or undeveloped, whereof Joachim of Flora dimly
+prophesied when he said that the kingdom of the Father was past, the
+kingdom of the Son was passing, and the kingdom of the Spirit was to be.
+The essence of it is contained in the whole growth to usward of the human
+mind; and though a creed so highly intellectualised as that will be, can
+never receive adequate expression from the figurative arts, still the
+painting of the sixteenth century forms for it, as it were, a not unworthy
+vestibule. It does so, because it first succeeded in humanising the
+religion of the Middle Ages, in proclaiming the true value of antique
+paganism for the modern mind, and in making both subserve the purposes of
+free and unimpeded art.
+
+Meanwhile, at the moment when painting was about to be exhausted, a new
+art had arisen, for which it remained, within the aesthetic sphere, to
+achieve much that painting could not do. When the cycle of Christian ideas
+had been accomplished by the painters, and when the first passion for
+antiquity had been satisfied, it was given at last to Music to express the
+soul in all its manifold feeling and complexity of movement. In music we
+see the point of departure where art leaves the domain of myths, Christian
+as well as Pagan, and occupies itself with the emotional activity of man
+alone, and for its own sake. Melody and harmony, disconnected from words,
+are capable of receiving most varied interpretations, so that the same
+combinations of sound express the ecstasies of earthly and of heavenly
+love, conveying to the mind of the hearer only that element of pure
+passion which is the primitive and natural ground-material of either. They
+give distinct form to moods of feeling as yet undetermined; or, as the
+Italians put it, _la musica è il lamento dell' amore o la preghiera a gli
+dei_. This, combined with its independence of all corporeal conditions,
+fenders music the true exponent of the spirit in its freedom, and
+therefore the essentially modern art.
+
+For Painting, after the great work accomplished during the Renaissance,
+when the painters ran through the whole domain of thought within the scope
+of that age, there only remained portraiture, history, dramatic incident,
+landscape, _genre_, still life, and animals. In these spheres the art is
+still exercised, and much good work, undoubtedly, is annually produced by
+European painters. But painting has lost its hold upon the centre of our
+intellectual activity. It can no longer give form to the ideas that at the
+present epoch rule the modern world. These ideas are too abstract, too
+much a matter of the understanding, to be successfully handled by the
+figurative arts; and it cannot be too often or too emphatically stated
+that these arts produce nothing really great and universal in relation to
+the spirit of their century, except by a process analogous to the
+mythopoetic. With conceptions incapable of being sensuously apprehended,
+with ideas that lose their value when they are incarnated, they have no
+power to deal. As meteors become luminous by traversing the grosser
+element of our terrestrial atmosphere, so the thoughts that art employs
+must needs immerse themselves in sensuousness. They must be of a nature to
+gain rather than to suffer by such immersion; and they must make a direct
+appeal to minds habitually apt to think in metaphors and myths. Of this
+sort are all religious ideas at a certain stage of their development, and
+this attitude at certain moments of history is adopted by the popular
+consciousness. We have so far outgrown it, have so completely exchanged
+mythology for curiosity, and metaphor for science, that the necessary
+conditions for great art are wanting. Our deepest thoughts about the world
+and God are incapable of personification by any aesthetic process; they
+never enter that atmosphere wherein alone they could become through fine
+art luminous. For the painter, who is the form-giver, they have ceased to
+be shining stars, and are seen as opaque stones; and though divinity be in
+them, it is a deity that refuses the investiture of form.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[2] It may fairly be questioned whether that necessary connection between
+art and religion, which is commonly taken for granted, does in truth
+exist; in other words, whether great art might not flourish without any
+religious content. This, however, is a speculative problem, for present
+and the future rather than the past. Historically, it has always been
+found that the arts in their origin are dependent on religion. Nor is the
+reason far to seek. Art aims at expressing an ideal; and this ideal is
+the transfiguration of human elements into something nobler, felt and
+apprehended by the imagination. Such an ideal, such an all-embracing
+glorification of humanity only exists for simple and unsophisticated
+societies in the form of religion. Religion is the universal poetry which
+all possess; and the artist, dealing with the mythology of his national
+belief, feels himself in vital sympathy with the imagination of the men
+for whom he works. More than the painter is required for the creation of
+great painting, and more than the poet for the exhibition of immortal
+verse. Painters are but the hands, and poets but the voices, whereby
+peoples express their accumulated thoughts and permanent emotions. Behind
+them crowd the generations of the myth-makers; and around them floats the
+vital atmosphere of enthusiasms on which their own souls and the souls of
+their brethren have been nourished.
+
+[3]
+    All Thy strength and bloom are faded:
+    Who hath thus Thy state degraded?
+    Death upon Thy form is written;
+    See the wan worn limbs, the smitten
+        Breast upon the cruel tree!
+
+    Thus despised and desecrated,
+    Thus in dying desolated,
+    Slain for me, of sinners vilest,
+    Loving Lord, on me Thou smilest:
+        Shine, bright face, and strengthen me!
+
+
+
+[4] I am aware that many of my readers will demur that I am confounding
+Christianity with ascetic or monastic Christianity; yet I cannot read the
+New Testament, the _Imitatio Christi_, the _Confessions_ of S. Augustine,
+and the _Pilgrim's Progress_ without feeling that Christianity in its
+origin, and as understood by its chief champions, was and is ascetic. Of
+this Christianity I therefore speak, not of the philosophised
+Christianity, which is reasonably regarded with suspicion by the orthodox
+and the uncompromising. It was, moreover, with Christianity of this
+primitive type that the arts came first into collision.
+
+[5] Titian's "Assumption of the Virgin" at Venice, Correggio's
+"Coronation of the Virgin" at Parma.
+
+[6] Domenichino, Guido, Ribera, Salvator Rosa.
+
+[7] Not to quote again the _Imitatio Christi,_ it is enough to allude to
+S. Francis as shown in the _Fioretti_.
+
+[8] The difficulty of combining the true spirit of piety with the ideal
+of natural beauty in art was strongly felt by Savonarola. Rio (_L'Art
+chrétien_, vol. ii. pp. 422-426) has written eloquently on this subject,
+but without making it plain how Savonarola's condemnation of life studies
+from the nude could possibly have been other than an obstacle to the
+liberal and scientific prosecution of the art of painting.
+
+[9] See Rio, _L'Art chrétien,_ vol. ii. chap. xi. pp. 319-327, for an
+ingenious defence of mystic art. The tales he tells of Bernardino da
+Siena and the blessed Umiliana will not win the sympathy of Teutonic
+Christians, who must believe that semi-sensuous, semi-pious raptures,
+like those described by S. Catherine of Siena and S. Theresa, have
+something in them psychologically morbid.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+ARCHITECTURE
+
+
+Architecture of Mediaeval Italy--Milan, Genoa, Venice--The Despots as
+Builders--Diversity of Styles--Local Influences--Lombard, Tuscan,
+Romanesque, Gothic--Italian want of feeling for Gothic--Cathedrals of
+Siena and Orvieto--Secular Buildings of the Middle Ages--Florence and
+Venice--Private Palaces--Public Halls--Palazzo della Signoria at
+Florence--Arnolfo di Cambio--S. Maria del Fiore--Brunelleschi's
+Dome--Classical Revival in Architecture--Roman Ruins--Three Periods in
+Renaissance Architecture--Their Characteristics--Brunelleschi
+--Alberti--Palace-building--Michellozzo--Decorative Work of the
+Revival--Bramante--Vitoni's Church of the Umiltà at Pistoja--Palazzo del
+Te--Villa Farnesina--Sansovino at Venice--Michael Angelo--The Building of
+S. Peter's--Palladio--The Palazzo della Ragione at Vicenza--Lombard
+Architects--Theorists and Students of Vitruvius--Vignola and
+Scamozzi--European Influence of the Palladian Style--Comparison of
+Scholars and Architects in relation to the Revival of Learning.
+
+
+Architecture is always the first of the fine arts to emerge from barbarism
+in the service of religion and of civic life. A house, as Hegel says, must
+be built for the god, before the image of the god, carved in stone or
+figured in mosaic, can be placed there. Council chambers must be prepared
+for the senate of a State before the national achievements can be painted
+on the walls. Thus Italy, before the age of the Renaissance proper, found
+herself provided with churches and palaces, which were destined in the
+fifteenth and sixteenth centuries to be adorned with frescoes and statues.
+
+It was in the middle of the thirteenth century, during the long struggle
+for independence carried on by the republics of Lombardy and Tuscany
+against the Empire and the nobles, that some of the most durable and
+splendid public works were executed. The domes and towers of Florence and
+of Pisa were rising above the city walls, while the burghers who
+subscribed for their erection were staining the waves of Meloria and the
+cane-brakes of the Arbia with their blood. Lombardy, at the end of her
+duel with Frederick Barbarossa, completed a vast undertaking, by which the
+fields of Milan are still rendered more productive than any other
+pastureland in Europe. The Naviglio Grande, bringing the waters of the
+Ticino through a plain of thirty miles to Milan, was begun in 1179, and
+was finished in 1258. The torrents of S. Gothard and the Simplon, which,
+after filling the Lago Maggiore, seemed destined to run wasteful through a
+wilderness of pebbles to the sea, were thus turned to account; and to this
+great engineering work, as bold as it was simple, Milan owed the wealth
+that placed her princes on a level with the sovereigns of Europe. At the
+same period she built her walls, and closed their circuit with the sixteen
+gates that showed she loved magnificence combined with strength. Genoa,
+between 1276 and 1283, protected her harbours by a gigantic mole, and in
+1295 brought the streams of the Ligurian Alps into the city by an aqueduct
+worthy of old Rome. Venice had to win her very footing from the sea and
+sand. So firmly did she drive her piles, so vigilantly watch their
+preservation, that palaces and cathedrals of marble might be safely reared
+upon the bosom of the deep. Meanwhile, stone bridges began to span the
+rivers of Italy; the streets and squares of towns were everywhere paved
+with flags. Before the first years of the fourteenth century the Italian
+cities presented a spectacle of solid and substantial comfort, very
+startling to northerners who travelled from the unpaved lanes of London
+and the muddy labyrinths of Paris.
+
+Sismondi remarks with just pride that these great works were Republican.
+They were set on foot for the public use, and were constructed at the
+expense of the commonwealths. It is, however, right to add that what the
+communes had begun the princes continued. To the splendid taste of the
+Visconti dynasty, for instance, Milan owed her wonderful Duomo and the
+octagon bell-tower of S. Gottardo. The Certosas of Pavia and Chiaravalle,
+the palace of Pavia, and a host of minor monuments remain in Milan and its
+neighbourhood to prove how much a single family performed for the
+adornment of the cities they had subjugated. And what is true of Milan
+applies to Italy throughout its length and breadth. The Despots held their
+power at the price of magnificence in schemes of public utility. So much
+at least of the free spirit of the communes survived in them, that they
+were always rivalling each other in great works of architecture. Italian
+tyranny implied aesthetic taste and liberality of expenditure.
+
+In no way is the characteristic diversity of the Italian communities so
+noticeable as in their buildings. Each district, each town, has a
+well-defined peculiarity, reflecting the specific qualities of the
+inhabitants and the conditions under which they grew in culture. In some
+cases we may refer this local character to nationality and geographical
+position. Thus the name of the Lombards has been given to a style of
+Romanesque, which prevailed through Northern and Central Italy during the
+period of Lombard ascendency.[10] The Tuscans never forgot the domes of
+their remote ancestors; the Romans adhered closely to Latin traditions;
+the Southerners were affected by Byzantine and Saracenic models. In many
+instances the geology of the neighbourhood determined the picturesque
+features of its architecture. The clay-fields of the valley of the Po
+produced the brickwork of Cremona, Pavia, Crema, Chiaravalle, and
+Vercelli. To their quarries of _mandorlato_ the Veronese builders owed the
+peach-bloom colours of their columned aisles. Carrara provided the Pisans
+with mellow marble for their Baptistery and Cathedral; Monte Ferrato
+supplied Pistoja and Prato with green serpentine; while the _pietra
+serena_ of the Apennines added austerity to the interior of Florentine
+buildings. Again, in other instances, we detect the influence of commerce
+or of conquest. The intercourse of Venice with Alexandria determined the
+unique architecture of S. Mark's. The Arabs and the Normans left
+ineffaceable traces of their sojourn on Palermo. Naples and Messina still
+bear marks upon their churches of French workmen. All along the coasts we
+here and there find evidences of Oriental style imported into mediaeval
+Italy, while the impress of the Spaniard is no less manifest in edifices
+of a later period.
+
+Existing thus in the midst of many potent influences, and surrounded by
+the ruins of past civilisations, the Italians recombined and mingled
+styles of marked variety. The Roman, Byzantine, Saracenic, Lombard, and
+German traditions were blended in their architecture, as the presiding
+genius of each place determined. It followed that master-works of rare and
+subtle invention were produced, while no one type was fully perfected, nor
+can we point to any paramount Italian manner. In Italy what was gained in
+richness and individuality was lost in uniformity and might. Yet we may
+well wonder at the versatile appreciation of all types of beauty that
+these monuments evince. How strange, for example, it is to think of the
+Venetians borrowing the form and structure of their temple from the
+mosques of Alexandria, decking its façade with the horses of Lysippus, and
+panelling the sanctuary with marbles from the harem-floors of Eastern
+emperors; while at the other end of Italy, at Palermo, close beside the
+ruined colonnades of Greek Segesta, Norman kings were embroidering their
+massive churches with Saracenic arabesques and Byzantine mosaics,
+interspersing delicate Arabian tracery with rope-patterns and monsters of
+the deep, and linking Cuphic sentences with Scandinavian runes. Meanwhile,
+at Rome, tombs, baths, and theatres had been turned into fortresses. The
+Orsini held the Mole of Hadrian; the Savelli ensconced themselves in the
+Theatre of Marcellus, and the Colonnesi in the Mausoleum of Augustus; the
+Colosseum and the Arches of Constantine and Titus harboured the
+Frangipani; the Baths of Trajan housed the Capocci; while the Gaetani made
+a castle of Caecilia Metella's tomb. Under those vast resounding vaults
+swarmed a brood of mediaeval _bravi_--like the wasps that hang their
+pear-shaped combs along the cloisters of Pavia. There the ghost of the
+dead empire still sat throned and sceptred. The rites of Christianity were
+carried on beneath Agrippa's dome, in Diocletian's baths, in the
+Basilicas. No other style but that of the imperial people struck root near
+the Eternal City. Among her three hundred churches, Rome can only show one
+Gothic building. Further to the north, where German influences were more
+potent, the cathedrals still displayed, each after its own kind, a sunny
+southern waywardness. Glowing with marbles and mosaics, glittering with
+ornaments, where the foliage of the Corinthian acanthus hides the symbols
+of the Passion, and where birds and Cupids peep from tangled fruits
+beneath grave brows of saints and martyrs; leaning now to the long low
+colonnades of the Basilica, now to the high-built arches of the purely
+Pointed style; surmounting the meeting point of nave and transept with
+Etruscan domes; covering the façade with bas-reliefs, the roof with
+statues; raising the porch-pillars upon lions and winged griffins;
+flanking the nave with bell-towers, or planting them apart like flowers in
+isolation on the open square--these wonderful buildings, the delight and
+joy of all who love to trace variety in beauty, and to note the impress of
+a nation's genius upon its art, seem, like Italy herself, to feel all
+influences and to assimilate all nationalities.
+
+Amid the many styles of architecture contending for mastery in Italy,
+three, before the age of the Revival, bid fair to win the battle. These
+were the Lombard, the Tuscan Romanesque, and the Gothic. Chronologically
+the two former flourished nearly during the same centuries, while Gothic,
+coming from without, suspended their development. But chronology is of
+little help in the history of Italian architecture; its main features
+being, not uniformity of progression, but synchronous diversity and
+salience of local type. What remained fixed through all changes in Italy
+was a bias toward the forms of Roman building, which eventually in the
+Renaissance, becoming scientifically apprehended, determined the taste of
+the whole nation.
+
+It is, perhaps, not wholly fanciful to say that, as the Lombards just
+failed to mould the Italians by conquest into an united people, so their
+architecture fell short of creating one type for the peninsula.[11] From
+some points of view the historian might regret that Italy did not receive
+that thorough subjugation in the eighth century, which would have broken
+down local distinctions. Such regrets, however, are singularly idle; for
+the main currents of the world's history move not by chance; and how,
+moreover, could Italy have fulfilled her destiny without the divers forms
+of political existence that made her what she was? Yet, standing before
+some of the great Lombard churches, we are inclined to speculate, perhaps
+with better reason, what the result would have been if that style of
+architecture could have assumed the complete ascendency over the Italians
+which the Romanesque and Gothic of the North exerted over France and
+England?[12] The pyramidal façade common in these buildings, the campanili
+that suspend aërial lanterns upon plain square towers, the domes rising
+tier over tier from the intersection of nave and transept to end in
+minarets and pinnacles, the low long colonnades of marble pilasters, the
+open porches resting upon lions, the harmonious blending of baked clay and
+rosy-tinted stone, the bold combination of round and pointed arches, and
+the weird invention whereby every string-course and capital has been
+carved with lions, sphinxes, serpents, mermaids, griffins, harpies, winged
+horses, lizards, and knights in armour--all these are elements that might,
+we fancy, have been developed into a noble national style. As it is, the
+churches in question are often more bizarre than really beautiful. Their
+peculiar character, however, is inseparably associated with the long
+reaches of green plain, the lordly rivers, and the background of blue
+hills and snowy Alps that constitute the charm of Lombard landscape.
+
+If Lombard architecture, properly so-called, was partial in its influence
+and confined to a comparatively narrow local sphere, the same is true of
+the Tuscan Romanesque. The church of Samminiato, near Florence [about
+1013], and the cathedral of Pisa [begun 1063], not to mention other less
+eminent examples at Lucca and Pistoja, are sufficient evidences that in
+the darkest period of the Middle Ages the Italians were aiming at an
+architectural Renaissance. The influence of classical models is apparent
+both in the construction and the detail of these basilicas; while the
+deeply grounded preference of the Italian genius for round arches, for
+colonnades of pillars and pilasters, and for large rectangular spaces,
+with low roofs and shallow tribunes, finds full satisfaction in these
+original and noble buildings. It is impossible to refrain from deploring
+that the Romanesque of Tuscany should have been checked in its development
+by the intrusion of the German Gothic. Had it run its course unthwarted, a
+national style suited to the temperament of the people might have been
+formed, and much that was pedantic in the revival of the fifteenth century
+have been obviated.
+
+The place of Gothic architecture in Italy demands fuller treatment. It was
+due partly to the direct influence of German emperors, partly to the
+imperial sympathies of the great nobles, partly to the Franciscan friars,
+who aimed at building large churches cheaply, and partly to the admiration
+excited by the grandeur of the Pointed style as it prevailed in Northern
+Europe, that Gothic--so alien to the Italian genius and climate--took
+root, spread widely, and flourished freely for a season. In thus
+enumerating the conditions favourable to the spread of Gottico-Tedesco, I
+am far from wishing to assert that this style was purely foreign. Italy,
+in common with the rest of Europe, passed by a natural process of
+evolution from the Romanesque to the Pointed manner, and treated the
+latter with an originality that proves a certain natural assimilation. Yet
+the first Gothic church, that of S. Francis at Assisi, was designed by a
+German; the most splendid, that of Our Lady at Milan, is emphatically
+German.[13] During the comparatively brief period of Gothic ascendency the
+Italians never forgot their Latin and Lombard sympathies. The mood of mind
+in which they Gothicised was partial and transient. The evolution of this
+style was, therefore, neither so spontaneous and simple, nor yet so
+uninterrupted and complete, in Italy as in the North. While it produced
+the church of S. Francesco at Assisi and the cathedrals of Siena, Orvieto,
+Lucca, Bologna, Florence, and Milan, together with the town-halls of
+Perugia, Siena, and Florence, it failed to take firm hold upon the
+national taste, and died away before the growing passion for antiquity
+that restored the Italians to a sense of their own intellectual greatness.
+It is clear that, as soon as they were conscious of their vocation to
+revive the culture of the classic age, they at once and for ever abandoned
+the style appropriate to northern feudalism. They seem to have adopted it
+half-unwillingly and to have understood it only in the imperfect way in
+which they comprehended chivalry.
+
+The Italians never rightly apprehended the specific nature of Gothic
+architecture. They could not forget the horizontal lines, flat roofs, and
+blank walls of the Basilica. Like their Roman ancestors, they aimed at
+covering the ground with the smallest possible expenditure of
+construction; to enclose large spaces within simple limits was their first
+object, and the effect of beauty or sublimity was gained by the
+proportions given to the total area. When, therefore, they adopted the
+Gothic style, they failed to perceive that its true merit consists in the
+negation of nearly all that the Latin style holds precious. Horizontal
+lines are as far as possible annihilated; walls are lost in windows;
+aisles and columns, apses and chapels, are multiplied with a view to
+complexity of architectonic effect; flat roofs become intolerable. The
+whole force employed in the construction has an upward tendency, and the
+spire is the completion of the edifice; for to the spire its countless
+soaring lines--lines not of stationary strength, but of ascendent
+growth--converge. All this the Italians were slow to comprehend. The
+campanile, for example, never became an integral part of their buildings.
+It stood alone, and was reserved for its original purpose of keeping the
+bells. The windows, for a reason very natural in Italy, where there is
+rather too much than too little sunlight, were curtailed; and instead of
+the multiplied bays and clustered columns of a northern Gothic aisle, the
+nave of so vast a church as S. Petronio at Bologna is measured by six
+arches raised on simple piers. The façade of an Italian cathedral was
+studied as a screen, quite independently of its relation to the interior;
+in the beautiful church of Crema, for example, the moon at night looks
+through the upper windows of a frontispiece raised far above the low roof
+of the nave. For the total effect of the exterior, as will be apparent to
+anyone who observes the Duomo of Orvieto from behind, no thought was
+taken. In this way the Italians missed the point and failed to perceive
+the poetry of Gothic architecture. Its symbolical significance was lost
+upon them; perhaps we ought to say that the Italian temperament, in art as
+in religion, was incapable of assimilating the vague yet powerful
+mysticism of the Teutonic races.
+
+On the other hand, what they sacrificed of genuine Gothic character, was
+made good after their own fashion. Surface decoration, whether of fresco
+or mosaic, bronze-work or bas-relief, wood-carving or panelling in marble,
+baked clay or enamelled earthenware was never carried to such perfection
+in Gothic buildings of the purer type; nor had sculpture in the North an
+equal chance of detaching itself from the niche and tabernacle, which
+forced it to remain the slave of architecture. Thus the comparative
+defects of Italian Gothic were directly helpful in promoting those very
+arts for which the people had a genius unrivalled among modern nations.
+
+It is only necessary to contrast the two finest cathedrals of this style,
+those of Siena and Orvieto, with two such buildings as the cathedrals of
+Rheims and Salisbury, in order to perceive the structural inferiority of
+the former, as well as their superiority for all subordinate artistic
+purposes. Long straight lines, low roofs, narrow windows, a façade of
+surprising splendour but without a strict relation to the structure of the
+nave and aisles, a cupola surmounting the intersection of nave, choir, and
+transepts; simple tribunes at the east end, a detached campanile, round
+columns instead of clustered piers, a mixture of semicircular and pointed
+arches; these are some of the most salient features of the Sienese Duomo.
+But the material is all magnificent; and the hand, obedient to the
+dictates of an artist's brain, has made itself felt on every square foot
+of the building. Alternate courses of white and black marble, cornices
+loaded with grave or animated portraits of the Popes, sculptured shrines,
+altars, pulpits, reliquaries, fonts and holy-water vases, panels of inlaid
+wood and pictured pavements, bronze candelabra and wrought-iron screens,
+gilding and colour and precious work of agate and lapis lazuli--the
+masterpieces of men famous each in his own line--delight the eye in all
+directions. The whole church is a miracle of richness, a radiant and
+glowing triumph of inventive genius, the product of a hundred
+master-craftsmen toiling through successive centuries to do their best.
+All its countless details are so harmonised by the controlling taste, so
+brought together piece by piece in obedience to artistic instinct, that
+the total effect is ravishingly beautiful. Yet it is clear that no one
+paramount idea, determining and organising all these marvels, existed in
+the mind of the first architect. In true Gothic work the details that
+make up the charm of this cathedral would have been subordinated to one
+architectonic thought; they would not have been suffered to assert their
+individuality, or to contribute, except as servants, to the whole effect.
+The northern Gothic church is like a body with several members; the
+southern Gothic church is an accretion of beautiful atoms. The northern
+Gothic style corresponds to the national unity of federalised races,
+organised by a social hierarchy of mutually dependent classes. In the
+southern Gothic style we find a mirror of political diversity, independent
+personality, burgher-like equality, despotic will. Thus the specific
+qualities of Italy on her emergence from the Middle Ages may be traced by
+no undue exercise of the fancy in her monuments. They are emphatically the
+creation of citizens--of men, to use Giannotti's phrase, distinguished by
+alternating obedience and command, not ranked beneath a monarchy, but
+capable themselves of sovereign power.[14]
+
+What has been said of Siena is no less true of the Duomo of Orvieto.
+Though it seems to aim at a severer Gothic, and though the façade is more
+architecturally planned, a single glance at the exterior of the edifice
+shows that the builders had no lively sense of the requirements of the
+style they used. What can be more melancholy than those blank walls,
+broken by small round recesses protruding from the side chapels of the
+nave, those gaunt and barren angles at the east end, and those few
+pinnacles appended at a venture? It is clear that the spirit of the
+northern Gothic manner has been wholly misconceived. On the other hand,
+the interior is noble. The feeling for space possessed by the architect
+has expressed itself in proportions large and solemn; the area enclosed,
+though somewhat cold and vacuous to northern taste, is at least impressive
+by its severe harmony. But the real attractions of the church are isolated
+details. Wherever the individual artist-mind has had occasion to emerge,
+there our gaze is riveted, our criticism challenged, our admiration won.
+The frescoes of Signorelli, the bas-reliefs of the Pisani, the statuary of
+Lo Scalza and Mosca, the tarsia of the choir stalls, the Alexandrine work
+and mosaics of the façade, the bronzes placed upon its brackets, and the
+wrought acanthus scrolls of its superb pilasters--these are the objects
+for inexhaustible wonder in the cathedral of Orvieto. On approaching a
+building of this type, we must abandon our conceptions of organic
+architecture: only the Greek and northern Gothic styles deserve that
+epithet. We must not seek for severe discipline and architectonic design.
+Instead of one presiding, all-determining idea, we must be prepared to
+welcome a wealth of separate beauties, wrought out by men of independent
+genius, whereby each part is made a masterpiece, and many diverse elements
+become a whole of picturesque rather than architectural impressiveness.
+
+It would not be difficult to extend this kind of criticism to the Duomo of
+Milan. Speaking strictly, a more unlucky combination of different
+styles--the pyramidal façade of Lombard architecture and the long thin
+lights of German Gothic, for example--a clumsier misuse of
+ill-appropriated details in the heavy piers of the nave, or a more
+disastrous adjustment of the monster windows to the main lines of the nave
+and aisles, could scarcely be imagined. Yet no other church, perhaps, in
+Europe leaves the same impression of the marvellous upon the fancy. The
+splendour of its pure white marble, blushing with the rose of evening or
+of dawn, radiant in noonday sunlight, and fabulously fairy-like beneath
+the moon and stars, the multitudes of statues sharply cut against a clear
+blue sky, and gazing at the Alps across that memorable tract of plain, the
+immense space and light-irradiated gloom of the interior, the deep tone of
+the bells above at a vast distance, and the gorgeous colours of the
+painted glass, contribute to a scenical effect unparalleled in
+Christendom.
+
+The two styles, Lombard and Gothic, of which I have been speaking, were
+both in a certain sense exotic. Within the great cities the pith of the
+population was Latin; and no style of building that did not continue the
+tradition of the Romans, in the spirit of the Roman manner, and with
+strict observance of its details, satisfied them. It was a main feature of
+the Renaissance that, when the Italians undertook the task of reuniting
+themselves by study with the past, they abandoned all other forms of
+architecture, and did their best to create one in harmony with the relics
+of Latin monuments. To trace the history of this revived classic
+architecture will occupy me later in this chapter; but for the moment it
+is necessary to turn aside and consider briefly the secular buildings of
+Italy before the date of the Renaissance proper.
+
+About the same time that the cathedrals were being built, the nobles
+filled the towns with fortresses. These at first were gaunt and unsightly;
+how overcrowded with tall bare towers a mediaeval Italian city could be, is
+still shown by San Gemignano, the only existing instance where the
+_torroni_ have been left untouched.[15] In course of time, when the
+aristocracy came to be fused with the burghers, and public order was
+maintained by law in the great cities, these forts made way for spacious
+palaces. The temper of the citizens in each place and the local character
+of artistic taste determined the specific features of domestic as of
+ecclesiastical architecture. Though it is hard to define what are the
+social differences expressed by the large quadrangles of Francesco
+Sforza's hospital at Milan, and the heavy cube of the Riccardi palace at
+Florence, we feel that the _genius loci_ has in each case controlled the
+architect. The sunny spaces of the one building, with its terra-cotta
+traceries of birds and grapes and Cupids, contrast with the stern brown
+mouldings and impenetrable solidity of the other. That the one was raised
+by the munificence of a sovereign in his capital, while the other was the
+dwelling of a burgher in a city proud of its antique sobriety, goes some
+way to explain the difference. In like manner the court-life of a dynastic
+principality produced the castle of Urbino, so diverse in its style and
+adaptation from the ostentatious mansions of the Genoese merchants. It is
+not fanciful to say that the civic life of a free and factious republic is
+represented by the heavy walls and narrow windows of Florentine
+dwelling-places. In their rings of iron, welded between rock and rock
+about the basement, as though for the beginning of a barricade--in their
+torch-rests of wrought metal, gloomy portals and dimly-lighted courts, we
+trace the habits of caution and reserve that marked the men who led the
+parties of Uberti and Albizzi. The Sienese palaces are lighter and more
+elegant in style, as belonging to a people proverbially pleasure-loving;
+while a still more sumptuous and secure mode of life finds expression in
+the open loggie and spacious staircases of Venice. The graceful buildings
+which overhang the Grand Canal are exactly fitted for an oligarchy, sure
+of its own authority and loved of the people. Feudal despotism, on the
+contrary, reigns in the heart of Ferrara, where the Este's stronghold,
+moated, draw-bridged, and portcullised, casting dense shadow over the
+water that protects the dungeons, still seems to threaten the public
+square and overawe the homes of men.
+
+To the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, again, we owe the town halls
+and public palaces that form so prominent a feature in the city
+architecture of Italy. The central vitality of once powerful States is
+symbolised in the _broletti_ of the Lombard cities, dusty and abandoned
+now in spite of their clear-cut terra-cotta traceries. There is something
+strangely melancholy in their desolation. Wandering through the vast hall
+of the Ragione at Padua, where the very shadows seem asleep as they glide
+over the wide unpeopled floor, it is not easy to remember that this was
+once the theatre of eager intrigues, ere the busy stir of the old burgh
+was utterly extinguished. Few of these public palaces have the good
+fortune to be distinguished, like that of the Doge at Venice, by
+world-historical memories and by works of art as yet unrivalled. The
+spirit of the Venetian Republic still lives in that unique building.
+Architects may tell us that its Gothic arcades are melodramatic; sculptors
+may depreciate the decorative work of Sansovino; painters may assert that
+the genius of Titian, Tintoret, and Veronese shines elsewhere with greater
+lustre. Yet the poet clings with ever-deepening admiration to the sea-born
+palace of the ancient mistress of the sea, and the historian feels that
+here, as at Athens, art has made the past towards which he looks eternal.
+
+Two other great Italian houses of the Commonwealth, rearing their towers
+above the town for tocsin and for ward, owe immortality to their intrinsic
+beauty. These are the Palazzo Pubblico of Siena and the Palazzo Vecchio of
+Florence. Few buildings in Europe are more picturesquely fascinating than
+the palace of Siena, with its outlook over hill and dale to cloud-capped
+Monte Amiata. Yet, in spite of its unparalleled position on the curved and
+sloping piazza, where the _contrade_ of Siena have run their _palio_ for
+centuries, this palace lacks the vivid interest attaching to the home
+Arnolfo raised at Florence for the rulers of his native city. During their
+term of office the Priors never quitted the Palace of the Signory. All
+deliberations on state affairs took place within its walls, and its bell
+was the pulse that told how the heart of Florence throbbed. The architect
+of this huge mass of masonry was Arnolfo del Cambio, one of the greatest
+builders of the Middle Ages, a man who may be called the Michael Angelo
+of the thirteenth century[16]. In 1298 he was ordered to erect a
+dwelling-place for the Commonwealth, to the end that the people might be
+protected in their fortress from the violence of the nobles. The building
+of the palace and the levelling of the square around it were attended with
+circumstances that bring forcibly before our minds the stern conditions of
+republican life in mediaeval Italy. A block of houses had to be bought from
+the family of Foraboschi; and their tower, called Torre della Vacca, was
+raised and turned into the belfry of the Priors. There was not room
+enough, however, to construct the palace itself with right angles, unless
+it were extended into the open space where once had stood the houses of
+the Uberti, "traitors to Florence and Ghibellines." In destroying these,
+the burghers had decreed that thenceforth for ever the feet of men should
+pass where the hearths of the proscribed nobles once had blazed. Arnolfo
+begged that he might trespass on this site; but the people refused
+permission. Where the traitors' nest had been, there the sacred
+foundations of the public house should not be laid. Consequently the
+Florentine Palazzo is, was, and will be cramped of its correct
+proportions[17].
+
+No Italian architect has enjoyed the proud privilege of stamping his own
+individuality more strongly on his native city than Arnolfo; and for this
+reason it may be permitted to enlarge upon his labours here. When we take
+our stand upon the hill of Samminiato, the Florence at our feet owes her
+physiognomy in a great measure to this man. The tall tower of the Palazzo
+Vecchio, the bulk of the Duomo, and the long low oblong mass of Santa
+Croce are all his. His too are the walls that define the city of flowers
+from the gardens round about her.[18] Even the master-works of his
+successors subordinate their beauty to his first conception. Giotto's
+campanile, Brunelleschi's cupola, and Orcagna's church of Orsammichele, in
+spite of their undoubted and authentic originality, are placed where he
+had planned.
+
+In 1294 the Florentines determined to rebuild their mother-church upon a
+scale of unexampled grandeur. The commission given to their architect
+displays so strikingly the lordly spirit in which these burghers set about
+the work, that, though it has been often quoted, a portion of the document
+shall be recited here. "Since the highest mark of prudence in a people of
+noble origin is to proceed in the management of their affairs so that
+their magnanimity and wisdom may be evinced in their outward acts, we
+order Arnolfo, head-master of our commune, to make a design for the
+renovation of Santa Reparata in a style of magnificence which neither the
+industry nor the power of man can surpass, that it may harmonise with the
+opinion of many wise persons in this city and state, who think that this
+commune should not engage in any enterprise unless its intention be to
+make the result correspond with that noblest sort of heart which is
+composed of the united will of many citizens."[19] From Giovanni Villani
+we learn what taxes were levied by the Wool-Guild, and set apart in 1331
+for the completion of the building. They were raised upon all goods bought
+or sold within the city in two separate rates, the net produce amounting
+in the first year to 2,000 lire.[20] The cathedral designed by Arnolfo
+was of vast dimensions: it covers 84,802 feet, while that of Cologne
+covers 81,461 feet; and, says Fergusson, "as far as mere conception of
+plan goes, there can be little doubt but that the Florentine cathedral far
+surpasses its German rival."[21] Nothing, indeed, can be imagined more
+noble than the scheme of this huge edifice. Studying its ground-plan, and
+noting how the nave unfolds into a mighty octagon, which in its turn
+displays three well-proportioned apses, we are induced to think that a
+sublimer thought has never been expressed in stone. At this point,
+however, our admiration receives a check. In the execution of the parts
+the builder dwarfed what had been conceived on so magnificent a scale;
+aiming at colossal simplicity, he failed to secure the multiplicity of
+subordinated members essential to the total effect of size. "Like all
+inexperienced architects, he seems to have thought that greatness of parts
+would add to the greatness of the whole, and in consequence used only four
+great arches in the whole length of his nave, giving the central aisle a
+width of fifty-five feet clear. The whole width is within ten feet of that
+of Cologne, and the height about the same; and yet, in appearance, the
+height is about half, and the breadth less than half, owing to the better
+proportion of the parts and to the superior appropriateness in the details
+on the part of the German cathedral."[22] The truth of these remarks will
+be felt by every one on whom the ponderous vacuity of the interior has
+weighed. Other notable defects there are too in this building, proceeding
+chiefly from the Italian misconception of Gothic style. The windows are
+few and narrow, so that little light even at noonday struggles through
+them; and broad barren spaces of grey walls oppress the eye. Externally
+the whole church is panelled with parti-coloured marbles, according to
+Florentine custom; but this panelling bears no relation to the structure:
+it is so much surface decoration possessing value chiefly for the
+colourist. Arnolfo died before the dome, as he designed it, could be
+placed upon the octagon, and nothing is known for certain about the form
+he meant it to assume. It seems, however, probable that he intended to
+adopt something similar to the dome of Chiaravalle, which ends, after a
+succession of narrowing octagons, in a slender conical pyramid.[23]
+Subordinate spires would then have been placed at each of the four angles
+where the nave and transepts intersect; and the whole external effect, for
+richness and variety, would have outrivalled that of any European
+building. It is well known that the erection of the dome was finally
+entrusted to Brunelleschi in 1420. Arnolfo's church now sustains in air an
+octagonal cupola of the simplest possible design, in height and size
+rivalling that of S. Peter's. It was thus that the genius of the
+Renaissance completed what the genius of the Middle Ages had begun. But in
+Italy there was no real break between the two periods. Though Arnolfo
+employed the Pointed style in his design, we find nothing genuinely Gothic
+in the church. It has no pinnacles, flying buttresses, side chapels, or
+subordinate supports. To use the phrase of Michelet, who has chosen the
+dramatic episode of Brunelleschi's intervention in the rearing of the dome
+for a parable of the Renaissance, "the colossal church stood up simply,
+naturally, as a strong man in the morning rises from his bed without the
+need of staff or crutch."[24] This indeed is the glory of Italian as
+compared with Northern architecture. The Italians valued the strength of
+simple perspicuity: all the best works of their builders are geometrical
+ideas of the purest kind translated into stone. It is, however, true that
+the gain of vast aërial space was hardly sufficient to compensate for the
+impression of emptiness they leave upon the senses. We feel this very
+strongly when we study the model prepared by Bramante's pupil, Cristoforo
+Rocchi, for the cathedral of Pavia; yet here we see the neo-Latin genius
+of the Italian artist working freely in an element exactly suited to his
+powers. When the same order of genius sought to express its conception
+through the language of the Gothic style, the result was invariably
+defective.[25]
+
+The classical revival of the fifteenth century made itself immediately
+felt in architecture; and Brunelleschi's visit to Rome in 1403 may be
+fixed as the date of the Renaissance in this art. Gothic, as we have
+already seen, was an alien in Italy. Its importation from the North had
+checked the free development of national architecture, which in the
+eleventh century began at Pisa by a conscious return to classic details.
+But the reign of Gothic was destined to be brief. Petrarch and Boccaccio,
+as I showed in my last volume, turned the whole intellectual energy of the
+Florentines into the channels of Latin and Greek scholarship.[26] The
+ancient world absorbed all interests, and the Italians with one will shook
+themselves free of the medieval style they never rightly understood, and
+which they henceforth stigmatised as barbarous.[27]
+
+The problem that occupied all the Renaissance architects was how to
+restore the manner of ancient Rome as far as possible, adapting it to the
+modern requirements of ecclesiastical, civic, and domestic buildings. Of
+Greek art they knew comparatively nothing: nor indeed could Greek
+architecture have offered for their purpose the same plastic elements as
+Roman--itself a derived style, admitting of easier adjustment to modern
+uses than the inflexibly pure art of Greece. At the same time they
+possessed but imperfect fragments of Roman work. The ruins of baths,
+theatres, tombs, temple-fronts, and triumphal arches, were of little
+immediate assistance in the labour of designing churches and palaces. All
+that the architects could do, after familiarising themselves with the
+remains of ancient Rome, and assimilating the spirit of Roman art, was to
+clothe their own inventions with classic details. The form and structure
+of their edifices were modern; the parts were copied from antique models.
+A want of organic unity and structural sincerity is always the result of
+those necessities under which a secondary and adapted style must labour;
+and thus the pseudo-Roman buildings even of the best Renaissance period
+display faults similar to those of the Italian Gothic. While they are
+remarkable for grandeur of effect in all that concerns the distribution of
+light and shade, the covering and enclosing of space, and the disposition
+of masses, they show at best but a superficial correspondence between the
+borrowed forms and the construction these are used to mask.[28] The
+edifices of this period abound in more or less successful shams, in
+surface decoration more or less pleasing to the eye; their real greatness,
+meanwhile, consists in the feeling for spatial proportions and for linear
+harmonies possessed by their architects.
+
+Three periods in the development of Renaissance architecture may be
+roughly marked.[29] The first, extending from 1420 to 1500, is the age of
+experiment and of luxuriant inventiveness. The second embraces the first
+forty years of the sixteenth century. The most perfect buildings of the
+Italian Renaissance were produced within this short space of time. The
+third, again comprising about forty years, from 1540 to 1580, leads onward
+to the reign of mannerism and exaggeration, called by the Italians
+_barocco_. In itself the third period is distinguished by a scrupulous
+purism bordering upon pedantry, strict adherence to theoretical rules, and
+sacrifice of inventive qualities to established canons. To do more than
+briefly indicate the masterpieces of these three periods, would be
+impossible in a work that does not pretend to treat of architecture
+exhaustively: and yet to omit all notice of the builders of this age and
+of their styles, would be to neglect the most important art-phase of the
+time I have undertaken to illustrate.
+
+In the first period we are bewildered by the luxuriance of creative powers
+and by the rioting of the fancy in all forms of beauty indiscriminately
+mingled. In general we detect a striving after effects not fully realised,
+and a tendency to indulge in superfluous ornament without regard for
+strictness of design. The imperfect comprehension of classical models and
+the exuberant vivacity of the imagination in the fifteenth century account
+for the florid work of this time. Something too is left of mediaeval fancy;
+the details borrowed from the antique undergo fantastic transmutation at
+the hands of men accustomed to the vehement emotion of the romantic ages.
+Whatever the Renaissance took from antique art, it was at first unable to
+assimilate either the moderation of the Greeks or the practical sobriety
+of the Romans. Christianity had deepened and intensified the sources of
+imaginative life; and just as reminiscences of classic style impaired
+Italian Gothic, so now a trace of Gothic is perceptible in the would-be
+classic work of the Revival. The result of these combined influences was a
+wonderful and many-featured hybrid, best represented in one monument by
+the façade of the Certosa at Pavia. While characterising the work of the
+earlier Renaissance as fused of divers manners, we must not forget that it
+was truly living, full of purpose, and according to its own standard
+sincere. It was a new birth; no mere repetition of something dead and
+gone, but the product of vivid forces stirred to original creativeness by
+admiration for the past. It corresponded, moreover, with exquisite
+exactitude to the halting of the conscience between Christianity and
+Paganism, and to the blent beauty that the poets loved. On reeds dropped
+from the hands of dead Pan the artists of this period, each in his, own
+sphere, piped ditties of romance.
+
+To these general remarks upon the style of the first period the Florentine
+architects offer an exception; and yet the first marked sign of a new era
+in the art of building was given at Florence. Purity of taste and firmness
+of judgment, combined with scientific accuracy, were always distinctive of
+Florentines. To such an extent did these qualities determine their
+treatment of the arts that acute critics have been found to tax them--and
+in my opinion justly--with hardness and frigidity.[30] Brunelleschi in
+1425 designed the basilica of S. Lorenzo after an original but truly
+classic type, remarkable for its sobriety and correctness. What he had
+learned from the ruins of Rome he here applied in obedience to his own
+artistic instinct. S. Lorenzo is a columnar edifice with round arches and
+semicircular apses. Not a form or detail in the whole church is strictly
+speaking at variance with Roman precedent; and yet the general effect
+resembles nothing we possess of antique work. It is a masterpiece of
+intelligent Renaissance adaptation. The same is true of S. Spirito, built
+in 1470, after Brunelleschi's death, according to his plans. The
+extraordinary capacity of this great architect will, however, win more
+homage from ordinary observers when they contemplate the Pitti Palace and
+the cupola of the cathedral. Both of these are master-works of personal
+originality. What is Roman in the Pitti Palace, is the robust simplicity
+of massive strength; but it is certain that no patrician of the republic
+or the empire inhabited a house at all resembling this. The domestic
+habits of the Middle Ages, armed for self-defence, and on guard against
+invasion from without, still find expression in the solid bulk of this
+forbidding dwelling-place, although its majesty and largeness show that
+the reign of milder and more courtly manners has begun. To speak of the
+cupola of the Duomo in connection with a simple revival of Roman taste,
+would be equally inappropriate. It remains a tour de force of individual
+genius, cultivated by the experience of Gothic vault-building, and
+penetrated with the greatness of imperial Rome. Its spirit of dauntless
+audacity and severe concentration alone is antique.
+
+Almost contemporary with Brunelleschi was Leo Battista Alberti, a
+Florentine, who, working upon somewhat different principles, sought more
+closely to reproduce the actual elements of Roman architecture.[31] In
+his remodelling of S. Francesco at Rimini the type he followed was that of
+the triumphal arch, and what was finished of that wonderful façade,
+remains to prove how much might have been made of well-proportioned
+pilasters and nobly curved arcades.[32] The same principle is carried out
+in S. Andrea at Mantua. The frontispiece of this church is a gigantic arch
+of triumph; the interior is noticeable for its simple harmony of parts,
+adopted from the vaulted baths of Rome. The combination of these antique
+details in an imposing structure implied a high imaginative faculty at a
+moment when the rules of classic architecture had not been as yet reduced
+to method. Yet the weakness of Alberti's principle is revealed when we
+consider that here the lofty central arch of the façade serves only for a
+decoration. Too high and spacious even for the chariots of a Roman
+triumph, it forms an inappropriate entrance to the modest vestibule of a
+Christian church.
+
+Like Brunelleschi, Alberti applied his talents to the building of a palace
+in Florence that became a model to subsequent architects. The Palazzo
+Rucellai retains many details of the mediaeval Tuscan style, especially in
+the windows divided by slender pilasters. But the three orders introduced
+by way of surface decoration, the doorways, and the cornices, are
+transcripts from Roman ruins. This building, one of the most beautiful in
+Italy, was copied by Francesco di Giorgio and Bernardo Fiorentino for the
+palaces they constructed at Pienza.
+
+This was the age of sumptuous palace-building; and for no purpose was the
+early Renaissance style better adapted than for the erection of
+dwelling-houses that should match the free and worldly splendour of those
+times. The just medium between mediaeval massiveness and classic simplicity
+was attained in countless buildings beautiful and various beyond
+description. Bologna is full of them; and Urbino, in the Ducal Palace,
+contains one specimen unexampled in extent and unique in interest. Yet
+here, as in all departments of fine art, Florence takes the lead. After
+Brunelleschi and Alberti came Michellozzo, the favourite architect of
+Cosimo de' Medici; Benedetto da Majano; Giuliano and Antonio di San Gallo;
+and Il Cronaca. Cosimo de' Medici, having said that "envy is a plant no
+man should water," denied himself the monumental house designed by
+Brunelleschi, and chose instead the modest plan of Michellozzo.
+Brunelleschi had meant to build the Casa Medici along one side of the
+Piazza di S. Lorenzo; but when Cosimo refused his project, he broke up the
+model he had made, to the great loss of students of this age of
+architecture. Michellozzo was then commissioned to raise the mighty, but
+comparatively humble, Riccardi Palace at the corner of the Via Larga,
+which continued to be the residence of the Medici through all their
+chequered history, until at last they took possession of the Palazzo
+Pitti.[33] The most beautiful of all Florentine dwelling-houses designed
+at this period is that which Benedetto da Majano built for Filippo
+Strozzi. Combining the burgher-like austerity of antecedent ages with a
+grandeur and a breadth of style peculiar to the Renaissance, the Palazzo
+Strozzi may be chosen as the perfect type of Florentine domestic
+architecture.[34] Other cities were supplied by Florence with builders,
+and Milan owed her fanciful Ospedale Maggiore at this epoch to Antonio
+Filarete, a Florentine. This great edifice illustrates the emancipation
+from fixed rule that distinguishes much of the architecture of the earlier
+Renaissance. The detail is not unfrequently Gothic, especially in the
+pointed windows; but the feeling of the whole structure, in its airy space
+and lightness, delicate terra-cotta mouldings, and open loggie, is truly
+Cinque Cento.[35]
+
+In no other style than this of the earlier Renaissance is the builder more
+inseparably connected with the decorator. The labours of the stone-carver,
+who provided altars chased with Scripture histories in high relief,
+pulpits hung against a column of the nave, tombs with canopies and floral
+garlands, organ galleries enriched with bas-reliefs of singing boys,
+ciboria with kneeling and adoring angels, marble tabernacles for relics,
+vases for holy water, fonts and fountains, and all the indescribable
+wealth of scrolls and friezes around doors and screens and balustrades
+that fence the choir, are added to those of the bronze-founder, with his
+mighty doors and pendent lamps, his candelabra sustained by angels,
+torch-rests and rings, embossed basements for banners of state, and
+portraits of recumbent senators or prelates.[36] The wood carver
+contributes _tarsia_ like that of Fra Giovanni da Verona.[37] The worker
+in wrought iron welds such screens as guard the chapel of the Sacra
+Cintola at Prato. The Robbias prepare their delicately-toned reliefs for
+the lunettes above the doorways. Modellers in clay produce the terra-cotta
+work of the Certosa, or the carola of angels who surround the little
+cupola behind the church of S. Eustorgio at Milan.[38] Meanwhile mosaics
+are provided for the dome or let into the floor;[39] agates and marbles
+and lapis lazuli are pieced together for altar fronts and panellings;[40]
+stalls are carved into fantastic patterns, and heavy roofs are embossed
+with figures of the saints and armorial emblems.[41] Tapestry is woven
+from the designs of excellent masters;[42] great painters contribute
+arabesques of fresco or of stucco mixed with gilding, and glass is
+coloured from the outlines of such draughtsmen as Ghiberti.
+
+Some of the decorative elements I have hastily enumerated, will be treated
+in connection with the respective arts of sculpture and painting. The
+fact, meanwhile, deserves notice that they received a new development in
+relation to architecture during the first period of the Renaissance, and
+that they formed, as it were, an integral part of its main aesthetical
+purpose. Strip a chapel of the fifteenth century of ornamental adjuncts,
+and an uninteresting shell is left: what, for instance, would the façades
+of the Certosa and the Cappella Colleoni be without their sculptured and
+inlaid marbles? The genius of the age found scope in subordinate details,
+and the most successful architect was the man who combined in himself a
+feeling for the capacities of the greatest number of associated arts. As
+the consequence of this profuse expenditure of loving care on every
+detail, the monuments of architecture belonging to the earlier Renaissance
+have a poetry that compensates for structural defects; just as its wildest
+literary extravagances--the _Hypnerotomachia Poliphili_, for
+instance--have a charm of wanton fancy and young joy that atones to
+sympathetic students for intolerable pedantries.
+
+In the second period the faults of the first group of Renaissance builders
+were in a large measure overcome, and their striving after the production
+of new yet classic form was more completely realised. The reckless
+employment of luxuriant decoration yielded to a chastened taste, without
+the sacrifice of beauty or magnificence. Style was refined; the
+construction of large buildings was better understood, and the instinct
+for what lies within the means of a revived and secondary manner was more
+true.
+
+To Bramante must be assigned the foremost place among the architects of
+the golden age.[43] Though little of his work survives entire and
+unspoiled, it is clear that he exercised the profoundest influence over
+both successors and contemporaries. What they chiefly owed to him, was the
+proper subordination of beauty in details to the grandeur of simplicity
+and to unity of effect. He came at a moment when constructive problems had
+been solved, when mechanical means were perfected, and when the sister
+arts had reached their highest point. His early training in Lombardy
+accustomed him to the adoption of clustered piers instead of single
+columns, to semicircular apses and niches, and to the free use of minor
+cupolas--elements of design introduced neither by Brunelleschi nor by
+Alberti into the Renaissance style of Florence, but which were destined to
+determine the future of architecture for all Italy. Nature had gifted
+Bramante with calm judgment and refined taste; his sense of the right
+limitations of the pseudo-Roman style was exquisite, and his feeling for
+structural symmetry was just. If his manner strikes us as somewhat cold
+and abstract when compared with the more genial audacities of the earlier
+Renaissance, we must remember how salutary was the example of a rigorous
+and modest manner in an age which required above all things to be
+preserved from its own luxuriant waywardness of fancy. It is hard to say
+how much of the work ascribed to Bramante in Northern Italy is genuine;
+most of it, at any rate, belongs to the manner of his youth. The Church of
+S. Maria della Consolazione at Todi, the palace of the Cancelleria at
+Rome, and the unfinished cathedral of Pavia, enable us to comprehend the
+general character of this great architect's refined and noble manner. S.
+Peter's, it may be said in passing, retains, in spite of all subsequent
+modifications, many essentially Bramantesque features--especially in the
+distribution of the piers and rounded niches.
+
+Bramante formed no school strictly so called, though his pupils,
+Cristoforo Rocchi and Ventura Vitoni, carried out his principles of
+building at Pavia and Pistoja. Vitoni's church of the Umiltà in the latter
+city is a pure example of conscientious neo-Roman architecture. It
+consists of a large octagon surmounted by a dome and preceded by a lofty
+vaulted atrium or vestibule. The single round arch of this vestibule
+repeats the _testudo_ of a Roman bath, and the decorative details are
+accurately reproduced from similar monuments. Unfortunately, Giorgio
+Vasari, who was employed to finish the cupola, spoiled its effect by
+raising it upon an ugly attic; it is probable that the church, as designed
+by Vitoni, would have presented the appearance of a miniature Pantheon. At
+Rome the influence of Bramante was propagated through Raphael, Giulio
+Romano, and Baldassare Peruzzi. Raphael's claim to consideration as an
+architect rests upon the Palazzi Vidoni and Pandolfini, the Cappella Chigi
+in S. Maria del Popolo, and the Villa Madama. The last-named building,
+executed by Giulio Romano after Raphael's design, is carried out in a
+style so forcible as to make us fancy that the pupil had a larger share in
+its creation than his teacher. These works, however, sink into
+insignificance before the Palazzo del Te at Mantua, the masterpiece of
+Giulio's genius. This most noble of Italian pleasure-houses remains to
+show what the imagination of a poet-artist could recover from the
+splendour of old Rome and adapt to the use of his own age. The vaults of
+the Thermae of Titus, with their cameos of stucco and frescoed arabesques,
+are here repeated on a scale and with an exuberance of invention that
+surpass the model. Open loggie yield fair prospect over what were once
+trim gardens; spacious halls, adorned with frescoes in the vehement and
+gorgeous style of the Roman school, form a fit theatre for the grand
+parade-life of an Italian prince. The whole is Pagan in its pride and
+sensuality, its prodigality of strength and insolence of freedom. Having
+seen this palace, we do not wonder that the fame of Giulio flew across the
+Alps and lived upon the lips of Shakspere: for in his master-work at
+Mantua he collected, as it were, and epitomised in one building all that
+enthralled the fancy of the Northern nations when they thought of Italy.
+
+A pendant to the Palazzo del Te is the Villa Farnesina, raised on the
+banks of the Tiber by Baldassare Peruzzi for his fellow townsman Agostino
+Chigi of Siena. It is an idyll placed beside a lyric ode, gentler and
+quieter in style, yet full of grace, breathing the large and liberal
+spirit of enjoyment that characterised the age of Leo. The frescoes of
+Galatea and Psyche, executed by Raphael and his pupils, have made this
+villa famous in the annals of Italian painting. The memory of the Roman
+banker's splendid style of living marks it out as no less noteworthy in
+the history of Renaissance manners.[44]
+
+Among the great edifices of this second period we may reckon Jacopo
+Sansovino's buildings at Venice, though they approximate rather to the
+style of the earlier Renaissance in all that concerns exuberance of
+decorative detail. The Venetians, somewhat behind the rest of Italy in the
+development of the fine arts, were at the height of prosperity and wealth
+during the middle period of the Renaissance; and no city is more rich in
+monuments of the florid style. Something of their own delight in sensuous
+magnificence they communicated even to the foreigners who dwelt among
+them. The court of the Ducal Palace, the Scuola di S. Rocco, the Palazzo
+Corner, and the Palazzo Vendramini-Calergi, illustrate the, strong yet
+fanciful _bravura_ style that pleased the aristocracy of Venice. Nowhere
+else does the architecture of the Middle Ages melt by more imperceptible
+degrees into that of the Revival, retaining through all changes the
+impress of a people splendour-loving in the highest sense. The Library of
+S. Mark, built by Sansovino in 1536, remains, however, the crowning
+triumph of Venetian art. It is impossible to contemplate its noble double
+row of open arches without feeling the eloquence of rhetoric so brilliant,
+without echoing the judgment of Palladio, that nothing more sumptuous or
+beautiful had been invented since the age of ancient Rome.
+
+Time would fail to tell of all the architects who crowd the first half of
+the sixteenth century--of Antonio di San Gallo, famous for fortifications;
+of Baccio d'Agnolo, who raised the Campanile of S. Spirito at Florence; of
+Giovanni Maria Falconetto, to whose genius Padua owed so many princely
+edifices; of Michele Sanmicheli, the military architect of Verona, and the
+builder of five mighty palaces for the nobles of his native city. Yet the
+greatest name of all this period cannot be omitted: Michael Angelo must be
+added to the list of builders in the golden age. In architecture, as in
+sculpture, he not only bequeathed to posterity masterpieces of individual
+energy and original invention, in their kind unrivalled; but he also
+prepared for his successors a false way of working, and justified by his
+example the extravagances of the decadence. Without noticing the façade
+designed for S. Lorenzo at Florence, the transformation of the Baths of
+Diocletian into a church, the remodelling of the Capitoline buildings, and
+the continuation of the Palazzo Farnese--works that either exist only in
+drawings or have been confused by later alterations--it is enough here to
+mention the Sagrestia Nuova of S. Lorenzo and the cupola of S. Peter's.
+The sacristy may be looked on either as the masterpiece of a sculptor who
+required fit setting for his statues, or of an architect who designed
+statues to enhance the structure he had planned. Both arts are used with
+equal ease, nor has the genius of Michael Angelo dealt more masterfully
+with the human frame than with the forms of Roman architecture in this
+chapel. He seems to have paid no heed to classic precedent, and to have
+taken no pains to adapt the parts to the structural purpose of the
+building. It was enough for him to create a wholly novel framework for the
+modern miracle of sculpture it enshrines, attending to such rules of
+composition as determine light and shade, and seeking by the slightness of
+mouldings and pilasters to enhance the terrible and massive forms that
+brood above the Medicean tombs. The result is a product of picturesque and
+plastic art, as true to the Michaelangelesque spirit as the Temple of the
+Wingless Victory to that of Pheidias. But where Michael Angelo achieved a
+triumph of boldness, lesser natures were betrayed into bizarrerie; and
+this chapel of the Medici, in spite of its grandiose simplicity, proved a
+stumbling-block to subsequent architects by encouraging them to despise
+propriety and violate the laws of structure. The same may be said with
+even greater truth of the Laurentian Library and its staircase. The false
+windows, repeated pillars, and barefaced aiming at effect, that mark the
+insincerity of the _barocco_ style, are found here almost for the first
+time.
+
+What S. Peter's would have been, if Michael Angelo had lived to finish it,
+can be imagined from his plans and elevations still preserved. It must
+always remain a matter of profound regret that his project was so far
+altered as to sacrifice the effect of the dome from the piazza. This dome
+is Michael Angelo's supreme achievement as an architect. It not only
+preserves all that is majestic in the cupola of Brunelleschi; but it also
+avoids the defects of its avowed model, by securing the entrance of
+abundant light, and dilating the imagination with the sense of space to
+soar and float in. It is the dome that makes S. Peter's what it is--the
+adequate symbol of the Church in an age that had abandoned mediaevalism and
+produced a new type of civility for the modern nations. On the connection
+between the building of S. Peter's and the Reformation I have touched
+already.[45] This mighty temple is the shrine of Catholicity, no longer
+cosmopolitan by right of spiritual empire, but secularised and limited to
+Latin races. At the same time it represents the spirit of a period when
+the Popes still led the world as intellectual chiefs. As the decree for
+its erection was the last act of the Papacy before the schism of the North
+had driven it into blind conflict with advancing culture, so S. Peter's
+remains the monument to after ages of a moment when the Roman Church,
+unterrified as yet by German rebels, dared to share the mundane impulse of
+the classical revival. She had forgotten the catacombs and ruthlessly
+destroyed the Basilica of Constantine. By rebuilding the mother church of
+Western Christianity upon a new plan, she broke with tradition; and if
+Rome has not ceased to be the Eternal City, if all ways are still leading
+to Rome, we may even hazard a conjecture that in the last days of their
+universal monarchy the Popes reared this fane to be the temple of a spirit
+alien to their own. It is at any rate certain that S. Peter's produces an
+impression less ecclesiastical, and less strictly Christian, than almost
+any of the elder and far humbler churches of Europe. Raised by proud and
+secular pontiffs in the heyday of renascent humanism, it seems to wait the
+time when the high priests of a religion no longer hostile to science or
+antagonistic to the inevitable force of progress will chaunt their hymns
+beneath its spacious dome.
+
+The building of S. Peter's was so momentous in modern history, and so
+decisive for Italian architecture, that it may be permitted me to describe
+the vicissitudes through which the structure passed before reaching
+completion. Nicholas V., founder of the secular papacy and chief patron of
+the humanistic movement in Rome, had approved a scheme for thoroughly
+rebuilding and refortifying the pontifical city.[46] Part of this plan
+involved the reconstruction of S. Peter's. The old basilica was to be
+removed, and on its site was to rise a mighty church, shaped like a Latin
+cross, with a central dome and two high towers flanking the vestibule.
+Nicholas died before his project could be carried into effect. Beyond
+destroying the old temple of Probus and marking out foundations for the
+tribune of the new church, nothing had been accomplished;[47] nor did his
+successors until the reign of Julius think of continuing what he had
+begun. In 1506, on the 18th of April, Julius laid the first stone of S.
+Peter's according to the plans provided by Bramante. The basilica was
+designed in the shape of a Greek cross, surmounted by a colossal dome, and
+approached by a vestibule fronted with six columns. As in all the works of
+Bramante, simplicity and dignity distinguished this first scheme.[48] For
+eight years, until his death in 1514, Bramante laboured on the building.
+Julius, the most impatient of masters, urged him to work rapidly. In
+consequence of this haste, the substructures of the new church proved
+insecure, and the huge piers raised to support the cupola were imperfect,
+while the venerable monuments contained in the old church were ruthlessly
+destroyed.[49] After Bramante's death Giuliano di S. Gallo, Fra Giocondo,
+and Raphael successively superintended the construction, each for a short
+period. Raphael, under Leo X., was appointed sole architect, and went so
+far as to alter the design of Bramante by substituting the Latin for the
+Greek cross. Upon his death, Baldassare Peruzzi continued the work, and
+supplied a series of new designs, restoring the ground-plan of the church
+to its original shape. He was succeeded in the reign of Paul III. by
+Antonio di S. Gallo, who once more reverted to the Latin cross, and
+proposed a novel form of cupola with flanking towers for the façade, of
+bizarre rather than beautiful proportions. After a short interregnum,
+during which Giulio Romano superintended the building and did nothing
+remarkable, Michael Angelo was called in 1535 to undertake the sole charge
+of the edifice. He declared that wherever subsequent architects had
+departed from Bramante's project, they had erred. "It is impossible to
+deny that Bramante was as great in architecture as any man has been since
+the days of the ancients. When he first laid the plan of S. Peter's, he
+made it not a mass of confusion, but clear and simple, well lighted, and
+so thoroughly detached that it in no way interfered with any portion of
+the palace."[50] Having thus pronounced himself in general for Bramante's
+scheme, Michael Angelo proceeded to develop it in accordance with his own
+canons of taste. He retained the Greek cross; but the dome, as he
+conceived it, and the details designed for each section of the building,
+differed essentially from what the earlier master would have sanctioned.
+Not the placid and pure taste of Bramante, but the masterful and fiery
+genius of Buonarroti, is responsible for the colossal scale of the
+subordinate parts and variously broken lineaments of the existing church.
+In spite of all changes of direction, the fabric of S. Peter's had been
+steadily advancing. Michael Angelo was, therefore, able to raise the
+central structure as far as the drum of the cupola before his death. His
+plans and models were carefully preserved, and a special papal ordinance
+decreed that henceforth there should be no deviation from the scheme he
+had laid down. Unhappily this rule was not observed. Under Pius V.,
+Vignola and Piero Ligorio did indeed continue his tradition; under Gregory
+XIII., Sixtus V., and Clement VIII., Giacomo della Porta made no
+substantial alterations; and in 1590 Domenico Fontana finished the dome.
+But during the pontificate of Paul V., Carlo Maderno resumed the form of
+the Latin cross, and completed the nave and vestibule, as they now stand,
+upon this altered plan (1614). The consequence is what has been already
+noted--at a moderate distance from the church the dome is lost to view; it
+only takes its true position of predominance when seen from far. In the
+year 1626, S. Peter's was consecrated by Urban VIII., and the mighty work
+was finished. It remained for Bernini to add the colonnades of the piazza,
+no less picturesque in their effect than admirably fitted for the
+pageantry of world-important ceremonial. At the end of the eighteenth
+century it was reckoned that the church had cost but little less than
+fifty million scudi.
+
+Michael Angelo forms the link between the second and third periods of the
+Renaissance. Among the architects of the latter age we have to reckon
+those who based their practice upon minute study of antique writers, and
+who, more than any of their predecessors, realised the long-sought
+restitution of the classic style according to precise scholastic
+canons.[51] A new age had now begun for Italy. The glory and the grace of
+the Renaissance, its blooming time of beauty, and its springtide of young
+strength, were over. Strangers held the reins of power, and the
+Reformation had begun to make itself felt in the Northern provinces of
+Christendom. A colder and more formal spirit everywhere prevailed. The
+sources of invention in the art of painting were dried up. Scholarship had
+pined away into pedantic purism. Correct taste was coming to be prized
+more highly than originality of genius in literature. Nor did architecture
+fail to manifest the operation of this change. The greatest builder of the
+period was Andrea Palladio of Vicenza, who combined a more complete
+analytical knowledge of antiquity with a firmer adherence to rule and
+precedent than even the most imitative of his forerunners. It is useless
+to seek for decorative fancy, wealth of detail, or sallies of inventive
+genius in the Palladian style. All is cold and calculated in the many
+palaces and churches of this master which adorn both Venice and Vicenza;
+they make us feel that creative inspiration has been superseded by the
+labour of the calculating reason. One great public building of Palladio's,
+however--the Palazzo della Ragione at Vicenza--may be cited as, perhaps,
+the culminating point of pure Renaissance architecture. In its simple and
+heroical arcades, its solid columns, and noble open spaces, the strength
+of Rome is realised to the eyes of those who do not penetrate too far
+inside the building.[52] Here, and here only, the architectural problem of
+the epoch--how to bring the art of the ancients back to life and use
+again--was solved according to the spirit and the letter of the past.
+Palladio never equalled this, the earliest of all his many works.
+
+In the first half of the sixteenth century the dictatorship of art had
+been already transferred from Florence and Rome to Lombardy.[53] The
+painters who carried on the great traditions were Venetian. Among the
+architects, Palladio was a native of Vicenza; Giacomo Barozzi, the author
+of the "Treatise on the Orders," took the name by which he is known from
+his birthplace, Vignola; Vincenzo Scamozzi was a fellow-townsman of
+Palladio; Galeazzo Alessi, though born at Perugia, spent his life and
+developed his talents in Genoa; Andrea Formigine, the palace-builder, was
+a Bolognese; Bartolommeo Ammanati alone at Florence exercised the arts of
+sculpture and architecture in their old conjunction. Vignola, Palladio's
+elder by a few years, displays in his work even more of the scholastically
+frigid spirit of the late Renaissance, the narrowing of poetic impulse,
+and the dwindling of vitality, that sadden the second half of the
+sixteenth century in Italy. Scamozzi, labouring at Venice on works that
+Sansovino left unfinished, caught the genial spirit of the old Venetian
+style. Alessi, in like manner, at Genoa, felt the influences of a rich and
+splendour-loving aristocracy. His church of S. Maria di Carignano is one
+of the most successful ecclesiastical buildings of the late Renaissance,
+combining the principles of Bramante and Michael Angelo in close imitation
+of S. Peter's, and adhering in detail to the canons of the new taste.
+
+These canons were based upon a close study of Vitruvius. Palladio,
+Vignola, and Scamozzi were no less ambitious as authors than as
+architects;[54] their minute analysis of antique treatises on the art of
+construction led to the formation of exact rules for the treatment of the
+five classic orders, the proportions of the chief parts used in building,
+and the correct method of designing theatres and palaces, church-fronts
+and cupolas. Thus architecture in its third Renaissance period passed into
+scholasticism.
+
+The masters of this age, chiefly through the weight of their authority as
+writers, exercised a wider European influence than any of their
+predecessors. We English, for example, have given Palladio's name to the
+Italian style adopted by us in the seventeenth century. This selection of
+one man to represent an epoch was due partly no doubt to the prestige of
+Palladio's great buildings in the South, but more, I think, to the
+facility with which his principles could be assimilated. Depending but
+little for effect upon the arts of decoration, his style was easily
+imitated in countries where painting and sculpture were unknown, and where
+a genius like Jean Goujon, the Sansovino of the French, has never been
+developed. To have rivalled the façade of the Certosa would have been
+impossible in London. Yet here Wren produced a cathedral worthy of
+comparison with the proudest of the late Italian edifices. Moreover, the
+principles of taste that governed Europe in the seventeenth century were
+such as found fitter architectural expression in this style than in the
+more genial and capricious manner of the earlier periods.
+
+After reviewing the rise and development of Renaissance architecture, it
+is almost irresistible to compare the process whereby the builders of this
+age learned to use dead forms for the expression of their thoughts, with
+the similar process by which the scholars accustomed themselves to Latin
+metres and the cadences of Ciceronian periods.[55] The object in each case
+was the same--to be as true to the antique as possible, and without
+actually sacrificing the independence of the modern mind, to impose upon
+it the limitations of a bygone civilisation. At first the enthusiasm for
+antiquity inspired architects and scholars alike with a desire to imitate
+_per saltum_, and many works of fervid sympathy and pure artistic
+intuition were produced. In course of time the laws both of language and
+construction were more accurately studied; invention was superseded by
+pedantry; after Poliziano and Alberti came Bembo and Palladio. In
+proportion as architects learned more about Vitruvius, and scholars
+narrowed their taste to Virgil, the style of both became more cramped and
+formal. It ceased at last to be possible to express modern ideas freely in
+the correct Latinity required by cultivated ears, while no room for
+originality, no scope for poetry of invention, remained in the elaborated
+method of the architects. Neo-Latin literature dwindled away to nothing,
+and Palladio was followed by the violent reactionaries of the _barocco_
+mannerism.
+
+In one all-important respect this parallel breaks down. While the labours
+of the Latinists subserved the simple process of instruction, by purifying
+literary taste and familiarising the modern mind with the masterpieces of
+the classic authors, the architects created a new common style for Europe.
+With all its defects, it is not likely that the neo-Roman architecture, so
+profoundly studied by the Italians, and so anxiously refined by their
+chief masters, will ever wholly cease to be employed. In all cases where a
+grand and massive edifice, no less suited to purposes of practical
+utility than imposing by its splendour, is required, this style of
+building will be found the best. Changes of taste and fashion, local
+circumstances, and the personal proclivities of modern architects may
+determine the choice of one type rather than another among the numerous
+examples furnished by Italian masters. But it is not possible that either
+Greek or Gothic should permanently take the place assigned to neo-Roman
+architecture in the public buildings of European capitals.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[10] The question of the genesis of the Lombard style is one of the most
+difficult in Italian art-history. I would not willingly be understood to
+speak of Lombard architecture in any sense different from that in which
+it is usual to speak of Norman. To suppose that either the Lombards or
+the Normans had a style of their own, prior to their occupation of
+districts from the monuments of which they learned rudely to use the
+decayed Roman manner, would be incorrect. Yet it seems impossible to deny
+that both Normans and Lombards in adapting antecedent models added
+something of their own, specific to themselves as Northerners. The
+Lombard, like the Norman or the Rhenish Romanesque, is the first stage in
+the progressive mediaeval architecture of its own district.
+
+[11] I use the term Lombard architecture here, as defined above (p. 31,
+note), for the style of building prevalent in Italy during the Lombard
+occupation, or just after.
+
+[12] The essential difference between Italy and either Northern France or
+England, was that in Italy there existed monuments of Roman greatness,
+which could never be forgotten by her architects. They always worked with
+at least half of their attention turned to the past: nor had they the
+exhilarating sense of free, spontaneous, and progressive invention. This
+point has been well worked out by Mr. Street in the last chapter of his
+hook on the _Architecture of North Italy_.
+
+[13] Even though it be now proved that not Heinrich von Gmunden, but
+Marco Frisone da Campione, not a German, but a Milanese, was the first
+architect, this is none the less true about its style.
+
+[14] See Vol. I., _Age of the Despots_, p. 153.
+
+[15] Pavia, it may be mentioned, has still many towers standing, and the
+two at Bologna are famous.
+
+[16] Arnolfo was born in 1232 at Colle, in the Val d'Elsa. He was a
+sculptor as well as architect, the assistant of Niccola Pisano at Siena,
+and the maker of the tomb of Cardinal de Braye at Orvieto. This tomb is
+remarkable as the earliest instance of the canopy withdrawn by attendant
+angels from the dead man's form, afterwards so frequently adopted by the
+Pisan school.
+
+[17] Giov. Villani, viii. 26.
+
+[18] See Milizia, vol. i. p. 135. These walls were not finished till
+some, time after Arnolfo's death. They lost their ornament of towers in
+the siege of 1529, and they are now being rapidly destroyed.
+
+[19] From Perkins's _Tuscan Sculptors_, vol. i. p. 54. A recent work by
+Signor G.J. Cavallucci, entitled _S. Maria del Fiore_, Firenze, 1881, has
+created a revolution in our knowledge regarding this church.
+
+[20] Giov. Villani, x. 192.
+
+[21] _Illustrated Handbook of Architecture_, book vi. chap. i.
+
+[22] _Ib._
+
+[23] See Grüner's _Terra Cotta Architecture of North Italy_, plates 3 and
+4.
+
+[24] Compare what Alberti says in his preface to the Treatise on
+Painting, _Opere_, vol. iv. p. 12. "Chi mai sì duro e sì invido non
+lodasse Pippo architetto vedendo quì struttura si grande, erta sopra i
+cieli, ampla da coprire con sua ombra tutti i popoli toscani, fatta sanza
+alcuno aiuto di travamenti o di copia di legname, quale artificio certo,
+se io ben giudico, come a questi tempi era incredibile potersi, così
+forse appresso gli antiqui fu non saputo nè conosciuto?"
+
+[25] What the church of S. Petronio at Bologna would have been, if it had
+been completed on the scale contemplated, can hardly be imagined. As it
+stands, it is immense, and coldly bare in its immensity. Yet the present
+church is but the nave of a temple designed with transepts and choir. The
+length was to have been 800 feet, the width of the transepts 625, the
+dome 183 feet in diameter. A building so colossal in extent, and so
+monotonously meagre in conception, could not but have been a failure.
+
+[26] Vol. II., _Revival of Learning_, chap, 1.
+
+[27] The following passage quoted from Milizia, _Memorie degli
+Architetti_, Parma, 1781, vol. i. p. 135, illustrates the contemptuous
+attitude of Italian critics to Gothic architecture. After describing
+Arnolfo's building of the Florentine Duomo, he proceeds: "In questo
+Architetto si vide qualche leggiero barlume di buona Architettura, come
+di Pittura in Cimabue suo contemporaneo. Ma in tutte le cose e fisiche e
+morali i passaggi si fanno per insensibili gradagioni; onde per lungo
+tempo ancora si mantenne il corrotto gusto, che si può chiamare
+Arabo-Tedesco."
+
+[28] Observe, for example, the casing of a Gothic church at Rimini by
+Alberti with a series of Roman arches; or the façade of S. Andrea at
+Mantua, where the vast and lofty central arch leads, not into the nave
+itself, but into a shallow vestibule.
+
+[29] See Burckhardt, _Cicerone_, vol. i. p. 167.
+
+[30] See De Stendhal, _Histoire de la Peinture en Italie_, p. 122.
+
+[31] For a notice of his life, see Vol. II., _Revival of Learning_, p.
+247.
+
+[32] The Arch of Augustus at Rimini was the model followed by Alberti in
+this façade. He intended to cover the church with a cupola, as may be
+seen from the design on a medal of Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta. See too
+the letter written by him to Matteo da Bastia, Alberti, _Opere_, vol. iv.
+p. 397.
+
+[33] This ancestral palace of the Medici passed in 1659 to the Marchese
+Gabriele Riccardi, from the Duke Francesco II.
+
+[34] Von Reumont, _Lorenzo de' Medici_, vol. ii. pp. 187-191, may be
+consulted for an interesting account of the building of this Casa Grande
+by Filippo Strozzi. The preparations were made with great caution, lest
+it should seem that a work too magnificent for a simple citizen was being
+undertaken; in particular, Filippo so contrived that the costly _opus
+rusticum_ employed in the construction of the basement should appear to
+have been forced upon him. This is characteristic of Florence in the days
+of Cosimo. The foundation stone was laid in the morning of August 16,
+1489, at the moment when the sun arose above the summits of the
+Casentino. The hour, prescribed by astrologers as propitious, had been
+settled by the horoscope; masses meanwhile were said in several churches,
+and alms distributed.
+
+[35] Antonio Filarete, or Averulino, architect and sculptor, was author
+of a treatise on the building of the ideal city, one of the most curious
+specimens of Renaissance fancy, to judge from the account rendered of the
+manuscript by Rio, vol. iii. pp. 321-328.
+
+[36] Matteo Civitale, Benedetto da Majano, Mino da Fiesole, Luca della
+Robbia, Donatello, Jacopo della Quercia, Lo Scalza, Omodeo, and the
+Sansovini, not to mention less illustrious sculptors, filled the churches
+of Italy with this elaborate stone-work. Among the bronze-founders it is
+enough to name Ghiberti, Antonio Filarete, Antonio Pollajuolo, Donatello
+and his pupil Bertoldo, Andrea Riccio, the master of the candelabrum in
+S. Antonio at Padua, Jacopo Sansovino, the master of the door of the
+sacristy in S. Mark's at Venice, Alessandro Leopardi, the master of the
+standard-pedestals of the Piazza of S. Mark's. I do not mean these lists
+to be in any sense exhaustive, but simply to remind the reader of the
+rare and many-sided men of genius who devoted their abilities to this
+kind of work. Some of their masterpieces will be noticed in detail in the
+chapter on Sculpture.
+
+[37] Especially his work at Monte Oliveto, near Siena, and in the church
+of Monte Oliveto at Naples. The Sala del Cambio at Perugia may also be
+cited as rich in tarsia-work designed by Perugino, while the church of S.
+Pietro de' Cassinensi outside the city is a museum of masterpieces
+executed by Fra Damiano da Bergamo and Stefano da Bergamo from designs of
+Raphael. Not less beautiful are the inlaid wood panels in the Palace of
+Urbino, by Maestro Giacomo of Florence.
+
+[38] The churches and palaces of Lombardy are peculiarly rich in this
+kind of decoration. The façade of the Oratory of S. Bernardino at
+Perugia, designed and executed by Agostino di Duccio, is a masterpiece of
+rare beauty in this style.
+
+[39] Not to mention the Renaissance mosaics of S. Mark's at Venice, the
+cupola of S. Maria del Popolo at Rome, executed in mosaic by Raphael,
+deserves special mention. A work illustrative of this cupola is one of
+Ludwig Grüner's best publications.
+
+[40] South Italy and Florence are distinguished by two marked styles in
+this decoration of inlaid marbles or _opera di commesso_. Compare the
+Medicean chapel in S. Lorenzo, for instance, with the high altar of the
+cathedral of Messina.
+
+[41] The roof of the Duomo at Volterra is a fine specimen.
+
+[42] It will not be forgotten that Raphael's cartoons were made for
+tapestry.
+
+[43] Bramante Lazzari was born at Castel Durante, near Urbino, in 1444.
+He spent the early years of his architect's life in Lombardy, in the
+service of Lodovico Sforza, and came probably to Rome upon his patron's
+downfall in 1499.
+
+[44] See Vol. I., _Age of the Despots_, p. 342.
+
+[45] See Vol. I., _Age of the Despots_, p. 344. See Gregorovius,
+_Geschichte der Stadt Rom_, vol. viii. p. 127, and the quotation there
+translated from Pallavicini's _History of the Council of Trent_.
+
+[46] See Vol. I., _Age of the Despots_, pp. 296-298. Vol. II., _Revival
+of Learning_, pp. 161-166. For his architectural designs see his Life, by
+Manetti, book ii., in Muratori, vol. iii. part ii.
+
+[47] Gregorovius, vol. vii. p. 638.
+
+[48] Besides the great work of Bonanni, _Templi Vaticani Historia_, I may
+refer my readers to the atlas volume of _Illustrations, Architectural and
+Pictorial, of the Genius of Michael Angelo Buonarroti_, compiled by Mr.
+Harford (Colnaghi, 1857). Plates 1 to 7 of that work are devoted to the
+plans of S. Peter's. Plate 4 is specially interesting, since it
+represents in one view the old basilica and the design of Bramante,
+together with those of Antonio di S. Gallo and Michael Angelo.
+
+[49] The subterranean vaults of S. Peter's contain mere fragments of
+tombs, some precious as historical records, some valuable as works of
+art, swept together pell-mell from the ruins of the old basilica.
+
+[50] See the original letter to Ammanati, published from the Archivio
+Buonarroti, by Signor Milanesi, p. 535.
+
+[51] I am far from meaning that the earlier architects had not been
+guided by ancient authors. Alberti's _Treatise on the Art of Building_ is
+a sufficient proof of their study of Vitruvius, and we know that Fabio
+Calvi translated that writer into Italian for Raphael. In the later
+Renaissance this study passed into purism.
+
+[52] It must be confessed that this grandiose and picturesque structure
+is but a shell to mask an earlier Gothic edifice.
+
+[53] Compare Vol. II., _Revival of Learning_, p. 370, for the same
+transference of power in literature from Central to Northern Italy at
+this time.
+
+[54] Palladio's _Four Books of Architecture_, first published at Venice
+in 1570, and Vignola's _Treatise on the Five Orders_, have been
+translated into all the modern languages. Scamozzi projected, and partly
+finished, a comprehensive work on _Universal Architecture_, which was
+printed in 1685 at Venice.
+
+[55] See Vol. II., _Revival of Learning_, chap. viii.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+SCULPTURE
+
+Niccola Pisano--Obscurity of the Sources for a History of Early Italian
+Sculpture--Vasari's Legend of Pisano--Deposition from the Cross at
+Lucca--Study of Nature and the Antique--Sarcophagus at Pisa--Pisan
+Pulpit--Niccola's School--Giovanni Pisano--Pulpit in S. Andrea at
+Pistoja--Fragments of his work at Pisa--Tomb of Benedict XI. at
+Perugia--Bas-reliefs at Orvieto--Andrea Pisano--Relation of Sculpture to
+Painting--Giotto--Subordination of Sculpture to Architecture in
+Italy--Pisano's Influence in Venice--Balduccio of Pisa--Orcagna--The
+Tabernacle of Orsammichele--The Gates of the Florentine Baptistery
+--Competition of Ghiberti, Brunelleschi, and Della Quercia--Comparison
+of Ghiberti's and Brunelleschi's Trial-pieces--Comparison of Ghiberti
+and Della Quercia--The Bas-reliefs of S. Petronio--Ghiberti's
+Education--His Pictorial Style in Bas-relief--His Feeling for the
+Antique--Donatello--Early Visit to Rome--Christian Subjects--Realistic
+Treatment--S. George and David--Judith--Equestrian Statue of
+Gattamelata--Influence of Donatello's Naturalism--Andrea Verocchio--His
+David--Statue of Colleoni--Alessandro Leopardi--Lionardo's Statue of
+Francesco Sforza--The Pollajuoli--Tombs of Sixtus IV. and Innocent
+VIII.--Luca della Robbia--His Treatment of Glazed Earthenware--Agostino
+di Duccio--The Oratory of S. Bernardino at Perugia--Antonio
+Rossellino--Matteo Civitali--Mino da Fiesole--Benedetto da
+Majano--Characteristics and Masterpieces of this Group--Sepulchral
+Monuments--Andrea Contucci's Tombs in S. Maria del Popolo--Desiderio da
+Settignano--Sculpture in S. Francesco at Rimini--Venetian
+Sculpture--Verona--Guido Mazzoni of Modena--Certosa of Pavia--Colleoni
+Chapel at Bergamo--Sansovino at Venice--Pagan Sculpture--Michael Angelo's
+Scholars--Baccio Bandinelli--Bartolommeo Ammanati--Cellini--Gian
+Bologna--Survey of the History of Renaissance Sculpture.
+
+
+In the procession of the fine arts, sculpture always follows close upon
+the steps of architecture, and at first appears in some sense as her
+handmaid. Mediaeval Italy found her Pheidias in a great man of Pisan
+origin, born during the first decade of the thirteenth century. It was
+Niccola Pisano, architect and sculptor, who first breathed with the breath
+of genius life into the dead forms of plastic art. From him we date the
+dawn of the aesthetical Renaissance with the same certainty as from
+Petrarch that of humanism; for he determined the direction not only of
+sculpture but also of painting in Italy. To quote the language of Lord
+Lindsay's panegyric: "Neither Dante nor Shakspere can boast such extent
+and durability of influence; for whatever of highest excellence has been
+achieved in sculpture and painting, not in Italy only but throughout
+Europe, has been in obedience to the impulse he primarily gave, and in
+following up the principle which he first struck out."[56] In truth,
+Niccola Pisano put the artist on the right track of combining the study of
+antiquity with the study of nature; and to him belongs the credit not
+merely of his own achievement, considerable as that may be, but also of
+the work of his immediate scholars and of all who learned from him to
+portray life. From Niccola Pisano onward to Michael Angelo and Cellini we
+trace one genealogy of sculptors, who, though they carried art beyond the
+sphere of his invention, looked back to him as their progenitor. The man
+who first emancipated sculpture from servile bondage, and opened a way for
+the attainment of true beauty, would by the Greeks have been honoured with
+a special cultas as the Hero Eponym of art. It remains for us after our
+own fashion to pay some such homage to Pisano.
+
+The chief difficulty with which the student of early art and literature
+has to deal, is the insufficiency of positive information. Instead of
+accurate dates and well-established facts he finds a legend, rich
+apparently in detail, but liable at every point to doubt, and subject to
+attack by plausible conjecture. In the absence of contemporary documents
+and other trustworthy sources of instruction, he is tempted to substitute
+his own hypotheses for tradition and to reconstruct the faulty outlines of
+forgotten history according to his own ideas of fitness. The Germans have
+been our masters in this species of destructive, dubitative, restorative
+criticism; and it is undoubtedly flattering to the historian's vanity to
+constitute himself a judge and arbiter in cases where tact and ingenuity
+may claim to sift the scattered fragment of confused narration. Yet to
+resist this temptation is in many cases a plain and simple duty.
+Tradition, when not positively disproved, should be allowed to have its
+full value; and a sounder historic sense is exercised in adopting its
+testimony with due caution, than in recklessly rejecting it and
+substituting guesses which the lack of knowledge renders unsubstantial.
+Tradition may err about dates, details, and names. It is just here that
+antiquarian research can render valuable help. But there are occasions
+when the perusal of documents and the exercise of what is called the
+higher criticism afford no surer basis for opinion. If in such cases a
+legend has been formed and recorded, the student will advance further
+toward comprehending the spirit of his subject by patiently considering
+what he knows to be in part perhaps a mythus, than by starting with the
+foregone conclusion that the legend must of necessity be worthless, and
+that his cunning will suffice to supply the missing clue.[57]
+
+Thus much I have said by way of preface to what follows upon Niccola
+Pisano. Almost all we know about him is derived from a couple of
+inscriptions, a few contracts, and his Life by Giorgio Vasari. It is clear
+that Vasari often wrote with carelessness, confusing dates and places, and
+taking no pains to verify the truth of his assertions. Much of Niccola's
+biography reads like a legend in his pages--the popular and oral tradition
+of a great man, whose panegyric it was more easy in the sixteenth century
+to adorn with rhetoric than to chronicle the details of his life with
+scrupulous fidelity. A well-founded conviction of Vasari's frequent
+inaccuracy has induced recent critics to call in question many hitherto
+accepted points about the nationality and training of Pisano. The
+discussion, of their arguments I leave for the appendix, contenting myself
+at present with relating so much of Vasari's legend as cannot, I think,
+reasonably be rejected.[58]
+
+Before the sculptor appeared in Niccola Pisano, he was already a famous
+architect; and it must always be remembered that he and his school
+subordinated the plastic to the constructive arts. It was not until the
+year 1233, or 1237, according to different modern calculations, that he
+executed his first masterpiece in sculpture.[59] This was a "Deposition
+from the Cross," in high relief, placed in a lunette over one of the side
+doors of S. Martino at Lucca. The noble forms of this group, the largeness
+of its style, the breadth of drapery and freedom of action it displays,
+but, above all, the unity of its design, proclaimed that a new era had
+begun for art. In order to appreciate the importance of this relief, it
+is only necessary to compare it with the processional treatment of similar
+subjects upon early Christian sarcophagi, where each figure stands up
+stiff and separate, nor can the controlling and combining artist's thought
+be traced in any effort after composition. Ever since the silver age of
+Hadrian, when a Bithynian slave by his beauty gave a final impulse to the
+Genius of Greece, sculpture had been gradually declining until nothing was
+left but a formal repetition of conventional outlines. The so-called
+Romanesque and Byzantine styles were but the dotage of second childhood,
+fumbling with the methods and materials of an irrecoverable past. It is
+true, indeed, that unknown mediaeval carvers had shown an instinct for the
+beautiful as well as great fertility of grotesque invention. The façades
+of Lombard churches are covered with fanciful and sometimes forcibly
+dramatic groups of animals and men in combat; and contemporaneously with
+Niccola Pisano, many Gothic sculptors of the North were adorning the
+façades and porches of cathedrals with statuary unrivalled in one style of
+loveliness.[60] Yet the founder of a line of progressive artists had not
+arisen, and, except in Italy, the conditions were still wanting under
+which alone the plastic arts could attain to independence. A fresh start,
+at once conscious and scientific, was imperatively demanded. This new
+beginning sculpture took in the brain of Niccola Pisano, who returned from
+the bye-paths of his predecessors to the free field of nature, and who
+learned precious lessons from the fragments of classical sculpture
+existing in his native town. As though to prove the essential dependence
+of the modern revival upon the recovery of antique culture, we find that
+his genius, in spite of its powerful originality and profoundly Christian
+bias, required the confirmation which could only be derived from
+Graeco-Roman precedent. In the Campo Santo at Pisa may still be seen a
+sarcophagus representing the story of Hippolytus and Phaedra, where once
+reposed the dust of Beatrice, the mother of the pious Countess Matilda of
+Tuscany. Studying the heroic nudities and noble attitudes of this
+bas-relief, Niccola rediscovered the right way of art--not by merely
+copying his model, but by divining the secret of the grand style. His work
+at Pisa contains abundant evidence that, while he could not wholly free
+himself from the defects of the later Romanesque manner, betrayed by his
+choice of short and square-set types, he nevertheless learned from the
+antique how to aim at beauty and freedom in his imitation of the living
+human form. A marble vase, sculptured with Indian Bacchus and his train of
+Maenads, gave him further help. From these grave or graceful classic forms,
+satisfied with their own goodliness, and void of inner symbolism, the
+Christian sculptor drank the inspiration of Renaissance art. In the
+"Adoration of the Magi," carved upon his Pisan pulpit, Madonna assumes the
+haughty pose of Theseus' wife; while the high priest, in the
+"Circumcision," displays the majesty of Dionysus leaning on the neck of
+Ampelus. Nor again is the naked vigour of Hippolytus without its echo in
+the figure of the young man--Hercules or Fortitude--upon a bracket of the
+same pulpit. These sculptures of Pisano are thus for us a symbol of what
+happened in the age of the Revival. The old world and the new shook hands;
+Christianity and Hellenism kissed each other. And yet they still remained
+antagonistic--fused externally by art, but severed in the consciousness
+that, during those strange years of dubious impulse, felt the might of
+both. Monks leaning from Pisano's pulpit preached the sinfulness of
+natural pleasure to women whose eyes were fixed on the adolescent beauty
+of an athlete. Not far off was the time when Filarete should cast in
+bronze the legends of Ganymede and Leda for the portals of S. Peter's,
+when Raphael should mingle a carnival of more than pagan sensuality with
+Bible subjects in Leo's Loggie, when Guglielmo della Porta should place
+the naked portrait of Giulia Bella in marble at the feet of Paul III. upon
+his sepulchre.[61]
+
+Niccola, meanwhile, did not follow his Roman models in any slavish spirit.
+They were neither numerous nor excellent enough to compel blind imitation
+or to paralyse inventive impulse. The thoughts to be expressed in marble
+by the first modern artist were not Greek. This in itself saved him from
+that tendency to idle reproduction which proved the ruin of the later
+neo-pagan sculptors. Yet the fragments of antique work he found within his
+reach, helped him to struggle after a higher quality of style, and
+established standards of successful treatment. For the rest, his choice of
+form and the proportions of his figures show that Niccola resorted to
+native Tuscan models. If nothing of his handiwork were left but the
+bas-relief of the "Inferno" on the Pisan pulpit, the torsos of the men
+struggling with demons in that composition would prove this point. It
+remains his crowning merit to have first expressed the mythology of
+Christianity and the sentiment of the Middle Ages with the conscious aim
+of a real artist. And here it may be noticed that, a true Italian, he
+infused but little of intense or mystical emotion into his art. Niccola is
+more of a humanist, if this word may be applied to a sculptor, than some
+of his immediate successors. The hexagonal pulpit in the Baptistery of
+Pisa, the octagonal pulpit in the cathedral of Siena, the fountain in the
+marketplace of Perugia, and the shrine of S. Dominic at Bologna, all of
+them designed and partly finished between 1260 and 1274 by Niccola and his
+scholars, display his mastery over the art of sculpture in the maturity of
+his genius. So highly did the Pisans prize their fellow-townsman's pulpit
+that a law was passed and guardians were appointed for its
+preservation--much in the same way as the Zeus of Pheidias was consigned
+to the care of the Phaidruntai.
+
+Niccola Pisano founded a school. His son Giovanni, and the numerous pupils
+employed upon the monuments just mentioned at Siena, Bologna, and Perugia,
+carried on the tradition of their master, and spread his style abroad
+through Italy. Giovanni Pisano, to whom we owe the Spina Chapel and the
+Campo Santo at Pisa, the façade of the Sienese Duomo, and the altar-shrine
+of S. Donato at Arezzo--four of the purest works of Gothic art in
+Italy--showed a very decided leaning to the vehement and mystic style of
+the Transalpine sculptors. We trace a dramatic intensity in Giovanni's
+work, not derived from his father, not caught from study of the antique,
+and curiously blended with the general characteristics of the Pisan
+school. In spite of the Gothic cusps introduced by Niccola into his
+pulpits, the spirit of his work remained classical. The young Hercules
+holding the lion's cub in his right hand upon his shoulder, while with his
+left he tames the raging lioness, has the true Italian instinct for a
+return to Latin style. The same sympathy with the past is observable in
+the self-restraint and comparative coldness of the bas-reliefs at Pisa.
+The Junonian attitude of Madonna, the senatorial dignity of Simeon, the
+ponderous folding of the drapery, and the massive carriage of the neck
+throughout, denote an effort to revivify an antique manner. What,
+therefore, Niccola effected for sculpture was a classical revival in the
+very depth of the Middle Ages. The case is different with his son
+Giovanni. Profiting by the labours of his father, and following in his
+footsteps, he carried the new art into another region, and brought a
+genius of more picturesque and forcible temper into play. The value of
+this new direction given to sculpture for the arts of Italy, especially
+for painting, cannot be exaggerated. Without Giovanni's intervention, the
+achievement of Niccola might possibly have been as unproductive of
+immediate results as the Tuscan Romanesque, that mediaeval effort after the
+Renaissance, was in architecture.[62]
+
+The Gothic element, so cautiously adopted by Niccola, is used with
+sympathy and freedom by his son, whose masterpiece, the pulpit of S.
+Andrea at Pistoja, might be selected as the supreme triumph of Italian
+Gothic sculpture. The superiority of that complex and consummate work of
+plastic art over the pulpit of the Pisan Baptistery, in all the most
+important qualities of style and composition, can scarcely be called in
+question. Its only serious fault is an exaggeration of the height of the
+pillars in proportion to the size of the hexagon they support. Like the
+pulpits of the Baptistery, of the Duomo of Pisa, and of the Duomo of
+Siena, it combines bas-reliefs and detached statues, carved capitals, and
+sculptured lions, in a maze of marvellous invention; but it has no rival
+in the architectonic effect of harmony, and the masterly feeling for
+balanced masses it displays. The five subjects chosen by Giovanni for his
+bas-reliefs are the "Nativity," the "Adoration of the Magi," the "Massacre
+of the Innocents," the "Crucifixion," and the "Last Judgment." In the
+"Nativity" our Lady is no longer the Roman matron of Niccola's conception,
+but a graceful mother, young in years, and bending with the weakness of
+childbirth. Her attitude, exquisite by the suggestion of tenderness and
+delicacy, is one that often reappears in the later work of the Pisan
+school--for example, in the rough _abozzamento_ in the Campo Santo at
+Pisa, above the north door of the Duomo at Lucca, and at Orvieto on the
+façade of the cathedral; but it has nowhere else been treated with the
+same sense of beauty. The "Massacre of the Innocents," compared with this
+relief, is a tragedy beside an idyll. Here the whole force of Giovanni's
+eminently dramatic genius comes into full play. Not only has he treated
+the usual incidents of mothers struggling with soldiers and bewailing
+their dead darlings, but he has also introduced a motive, which might well
+have been used by subsequent artists in dealing with the same subjects.
+Herod is throned in one corner of the composition; before him stand a
+group of men and women, some imploring the tyrant for mercy, some defying
+him in impotent despair, and some invoking the curse of God upon his head.
+In the "Adoration of the Magi," again, Giovanni shows originality by the
+double action he has chosen to develop. On one side the kings are
+sleeping, while an angel comes to wake them, pointing out the star. On the
+other side they fall at the feet of the Madonna. It will be gathered even
+from these bare descriptions that Giovanni introduced a stir of life and
+movement, and felt his subjects with a poetic intensity, alien to the
+ideal of Graeco-Roman sculpture. He effected a fusion between the grand
+style revived by Niccola and the romantic fervour of the modern
+imagination. It was in this way that the tradition handed down by him
+proved inestimably serviceable to the painters.
+
+The bas-reliefs, however, by no means form the chief attraction of this
+pulpit. At each of its six angles stand saints, evangelists, and angels,
+whose symbolism it is not now so easy to decipher. The most beautiful
+groups are a company of angels blowing the judgment trumpets, and a winged
+youth standing above a winged lion and bull. These groups separate the
+several compartments of the bas-reliefs, and help to form the body of the
+pulpit. Beneath, on capital's of the supporting pillars, stand the Sibyls,
+each with her attendant genius, while prophets lean or crouch within the
+spandrils of the arches. Thus every portion of this master-work is crowded
+with figures--some detached, some executed in relief; and yet, amid so
+great a multitude, the eye is not confused; the total effect is nowhere
+dissipated. The whole seems governed by one constructive thought,
+projected as a perfect unity of composition.[63]
+
+A later work of Giovanni Pisano was the pulpit executed for the cathedral
+of Pisa, now unfortunately broken up. An interesting fragment, one of the
+supporting columns of the octagon which formed the body of this structure,
+still exists in the museum of the Campo Santo. It is an allegorical statue
+of Pisa. The Ghibelline city is personified as a crowned woman, suckling
+children at her breast, and standing on a pedestal supported by the eagle
+of the Empire. She wears a girdle of rope seven times knotted, to betoken
+the rule of Pisa over seven subject islands. At the four corners of her
+throne stand the four human virtues, Prudence, Temperance, Justice, and
+Fortitude, distinguished less by beauty of shape than by determined energy
+of symbolism. Temperance is a naked woman, with hair twisted in the knots
+and curls of a Greek Aphrodite. Justice is old and wrinkled, clothed with
+massive drapery, and holding in her hand the scales. Throughout this
+group there is no attempt to realise forms pleasing to the eye; the
+sculptor has aimed at suggesting to the mind as many points of
+intellectual significance as possible. In spite of ugliness and hardness,
+the "Allegory of Pisa" commands respect by vigour of conception, and
+rivets attention by force of execution.
+
+A more popular and pleasing monument by Giovanni Pisano is the tomb of
+Benedict XI. in the church of S. Domenico at Perugia. The Pope, whose life
+was so obnoxious to the ambition of Philip le Bel that his timely death
+aroused suspicion of poison, lies asleep upon his marble bier with hands
+crossed in an attitude of peaceful expectation.[64] At his head and feet
+stand angels drawing back the curtains that would else have shrouded this
+last slumber of a good man from the eyes of the living.[65] A contrast is
+thus established between the repose of the dead and the ever-watchful
+activity of celestial ministers. Sleep so guarded, the sculptor seeks to
+tell us, must have glorious waking; and when those hands unfold upon the
+Resurrection morning, the hushed sympathy of the attendant angels will
+break into smiles and singing, as they lead the just man to the Lord he
+served in life.
+
+Whether Giovanni Pisano had any share in the sculpture on the façade of
+the cathedral at Orvieto, is not known for certain. Vasari asserts that
+Niccola and his pupils worked upon this series of bas-reliefs, setting
+forth the whole Biblical history and the cycle of Christian beliefs from
+the creation of the world to the last judgment. Yet we know that Niccola
+himself died at least twelve years before the foundation of the church in
+1290; nor is there any proof that his immediate scholars were engaged upon
+the fabric. The Orvietan archives are singularly silent with regard to a
+monument of so large extent and vast importance, which must have taxed to
+the uttermost the resources of the ablest stone-carvers in Italy.[66]
+Meanwhile, what Vasari says is valuable only as a witness to the fame of
+Niccola Pisano. His manner, as continued and developed by his school, is
+unmistakable at Orvieto: but in the absence of direct information, we are
+left to conjecture the conditions under which this, the closing if not the
+crowning achievement of thirteenth-century sculpture, was produced.
+
+When the great founder of Italian art visited Siena in 1266 for the
+completion of his pulpit in the Duomo, he found a guild of sculptors, or
+_taglia-pietri_, in that city, numbering some sixty members, and governed
+by a rector and three chamberlains. Instead of regarding Niccola with
+jealousy, these craftsmen only sought to learn his method. Accordingly it
+seems that a new impulse was given to sculpture in Siena; and famous
+workmen arose who combined this art with that of building. The chief of
+these was Lorenzo Maitani, who died in 1330, having designed and carried
+to completion the Duomo of Orvieto during his lifetime.[67] While engaged
+in this great undertaking, Maitani directed a body of architects,
+stone-carvers, bronze-founders, mosaists, and painters, gathered together
+into a guild from the chief cities of Tuscany. It cannot be proved that
+any of the Pisani, properly so called, were among their number. Lacking
+evidence to the contrary, we must give to Maitani, the master-spirit of
+the company, full credit for the sculpture carried out in obedience to his
+general plan. As the church of S. Francis at Assisi formed an epoch in the
+history of painting, by concentrating the genius of Giotto on a series of
+masterpieces, so the Duomo of Orvieto, by giving free scope to the school
+of Pisa, marked a point in the history of sculpture. It would be difficult
+to find elsewhere even separate works of greater force and beauty
+belonging to this, the first or architectural, period of Italian
+sculpture; and nowhere has the whole body of Christian belief been set
+forth with method more earnest and with vigour more sustained.[68] The
+subjects selected by these unknown craftsmen for illustration in marble,
+are in many instances the same as those afterwards painted in fresco by
+Michael Angelo and Raphael at Borne. Their treatment, for example, of the
+creation of Adam and Eve, adopted in all probability from still earlier
+and ruder workmen, after being refined by the improvements of successive
+generations, may still be observed in the triumphs of the Sistine Chapel
+and the Loggie.[69] It was the practice of Italian artists not to seek
+originality by diverging from the traditional modes of presentation, but
+to prove their mastery by rendering these as perfect and effective as the
+maturity of art could make them. For the Italians, as before them for the
+Greeks, plagiarism was a word unknown, in all cases where it was possible
+to improve upon the invention of less fortunate predecessors. The student
+of art may, therefore, now enjoy the pleasure of tracing sculpturesque or
+pictorial motives from their genesis in some rude fragment to their final
+development in the master-works of a Lionardo or a Raphael, where
+scientific grouping of figures, higher idealisation of style, the
+suggestion of freer movement, and more varied dramatic expression yield at
+last the full flower that the simple germ enfolded.
+
+Among the most distinguished scholars of Niccola Pisano's tradition must
+now be mentioned Andrea da Pontadera, called Andrea Pisano, who carried
+the manner of his master to Florence, and helped to fulfil the destiny of
+Italian sculpture by submitting it to the rising art of painting. Under
+the direction of Giotto he carved statues for the Campanile and the façade
+of S. Maria del Fiore; and in the first gate of the Baptistery, he
+bequeathed a model of bas-relief in bronze, which largely influenced the
+style of masters in the fifteenth century. To overpraise the simplicity
+and beauty of design, the purity of feeling, and the technical excellence
+of Andrea's bronze-work, would be difficult. Many students will always be
+found to prefer his self-restraint and delicacy to the more florid manner
+of Ghiberti.[70] What we chiefly observe in this gate is the control
+exercised by the sister art of painting over his mode of conception and
+treatment. If Giovanni Pisano developed the dramatic and emphatic
+qualities of Gothic sculpture, Andrea was attracted to its allegories; if
+Giovanni infused romantic vehemence of feeling into the frigid classicism
+of his father, Andrea diverged upon another track of picturesque
+delineation. A new sun had now arisen in the heavens of art. This was the
+sun of Giotto, whose genius, eminently pictorial, brought the Italians to
+a true sense of their aesthetical vocation, illuminating with its
+brightness the elder and more technically finished craft of the
+stone-carver. Sculpture, which in the school of Niccola Pisano had been
+subordinate to architecture, became a sub-species of painting in the hands
+of Andrea.
+
+It was thus, as I have elsewhere stated, that the twofold doom of plastic
+art in Italy was accomplished. In order to embody the ideas of
+Christianity, art had to think more of expression than of pure form.
+Expression is the special sphere of painting; and therefore sculpture
+followed the lead of the sister art, as soon as painting was strong enough
+to give that lead, instead of remaining, as in Greece, the mistress of her
+own domain. On the deeper reasons for this subordination of sculpture to
+painting I have dwelt already, while showing that a large class of
+subjects, where physical qualities are comparatively indifferent and of no
+account, were forced upon the artist by Christianity.[71] Humility and
+charity may be found alike in blooming youth or in ascetic age; nor is it
+possible to characterize saints and martyrs by those corporeal
+characteristics which distinguish a runner from a boxer, or a chaste
+huntress from a voluptuous queen of love. Italian sculpture abandoned the
+presentation of the naked human body as useless. The emotions written on
+the face became of more importance than the modelling of the limbs, and
+recourse was had to allegorical symbols or emblematic attitudes for the
+interpretation of the artist's thought. Andrea Pisano's figure of Hope,
+raising hands and eyes toward an offered crown, seems but a repetition of
+the motive expressed by Giotto in the chiaroscuro frescoes of the Arena
+chapel.[72] Owing to similar causes, drapery, which in Greece had served
+to illustrate the structure or the movement of the body it clothed, was
+used by the Italian sculptors to conceal the limbs, and to enhance by
+flowing skirt or sinuous fold or agitated scarf some quality of the
+emotions. The result was that sculpture assumed a place subordinate to
+painting, and that the masterpieces of the early Italian carvers are
+chiefly bas-reliefs--pictures in bronze or marble.[73]
+
+In a like degree, though not for the same reason, sculpture in Italy
+remained subordinate to architecture, until such time as the neo-Hellenism
+of the full Renaissance produced a crowd of pseudo-classic statues,
+destined to take their places--not in churches, but in the courtyards of
+palaces and on the open squares of cities. The cause of this fact is not
+far to seek. In ancient Greece the temple had been erected for the god,
+and the statue dwelt within the cella like a master in his house.
+Christianity forbade an image of the living God; consequently the Church
+had another object than to roof the statue of a deity. It was the
+meeting-place of a congregation bent on worshipping Him who dwells not in
+houses made with hands, and whom the heaven of heavens cannot contain. The
+vast spaces and aërial arcades of mediaeval architecture had their meaning
+in relation to the mystic apprehension of an unseen power. It followed of
+necessity that the carved work destined to decorate a Christian temple
+could never be the main feature of the building. It existed for the
+Church, and not the Church for it.[74]
+
+Through Andrea Pisano the style of Niccola was extended to Venice. There
+is reason to believe that he instructed Filippo Calendario, to whom we
+should ascribe the sculptured corners of the Ducal Palace. Venice,
+however, invariably exercised her own controlling influence over the arts
+of aliens; so we find a larger, freer, richer, and more mundane treatment
+in these splendid carvings than in aught produced by Pisan workmen for
+their native towns of Tuscany.
+
+Nino, the sculptor of the "Madonna della Rosa," the chief ornament of the
+Spina chapel, and Tommaso, both sons of Andrea da Pontadera, together with
+Giovanni Balduccio of Pisa, continued the traditions of the school founded
+by Niccola. Balduccio, invited by Azzo Visconti to Milan, carved the
+shrine of S. Peter Martyr in the church of S. Eustorgio, and impressed his
+style on Matteo da Campione, the sculptor of the shrine of S. Augustine at
+Pavia.[75] These facts, though briefly stated, are not without
+significance. Travellers who have visited the churches of Pavia and Milan,
+after studying the shrine, or _arca_ as Italians call it, of S. Dominic at
+Bologna, must have noticed the ascendency of Pisan style in these three
+Lombard towns, and have felt how widely Niccola's creative genius was
+exercised. Traces of the same influence may perhaps be observed in the
+tombs of the Scaligers at Verona.[76]
+
+The most eminent pupil of Andrea Pisano, however, was a Florentine--the
+great Andrea Arcagnuolo di Cione, commonly known as Orcagna. This man,
+like the more illustrious Giotto, was one among the earliest of those
+comprehensive, many-sided natures produced by Florence for her everlasting
+glory. He studied the goldsmith's craft under his father, Cione, passing
+the years of his apprenticeship, like other Tuscan artists, in the
+technical details of an industry that then supplied the strictest method
+of design. With his brother, Bernardo, he practised painting. Like Giotto,
+he was no mean poet;[77] and like all the higher craftsmen of his age, he
+was an architect. Though the church of Orsammichele owes its present form
+to Taddeo Gaddi, Orcagna, as _capo maëstro_ after Gaddi's death, completed
+the structure; and though the Loggia de' Lanzi, long ascribed to him by
+writers upon architecture, is now known to be the work of Benci di Cione,
+yet Orcagna's Loggia del Bigallo, more modest but not less beautiful,
+prepared the way for its construction. Of his genius as a painter, proved
+by the frescoes in the Strozzi chapel, I shall have to speak hereafter. As
+a sculptor he is best known through the tabernacle of Orsammichele, built
+to enshrine the picture of the Madonna by Ugolino da Siena.[78]
+
+In this monument Orcagna employed carved bas-reliefs and statuettes,
+intaglios and mosaics, incrustations of agates, enamels, and gilded glass
+patterns, with a sense of harmony so refined, and a mastery over each kind
+of workmanship so perfect, that the whole tabernacle is an epitome of the
+minor arts of mediaeval Italy. The subordination of sculpture to
+architectural effect is noticeable; and the Giottesque influence appears
+even more strongly here than in the gate of Andrea Pisano. This influence
+Orcagna received indirectly through his master in stone carving; it
+formed, indeed, the motive force of figurative art during his lifetime.
+The subjects of the "Annunciation," the "Nativity," the "Marriage of the
+Virgin," and the "Adoration of the Three Kings," framed in octagonal
+mouldings at the base of the tabernacle, illustrate the domination of a
+spirit distinct both from the neo-Romanism of Niccola and the Gothicism of
+Giovanni Pisano. That spirit is Florentine in a general sense, and
+specifically Giottesque. Charity, again, with a flaming heart in her hand,
+crowned with a flaming brazier, and suckling a child, is Giottesque not
+only in allegorical conception but also in choice of type and treatment of
+drapery.
+
+While admiring the tabernacle of Orsammichele, we are reminded that
+Orcagna was a goldsmith to begin with, and a painter. Sculpture he
+practised as an accessory. What the artists of Florence gained in delicacy
+of execution, accuracy of modelling, and precision of design by their
+apprenticeship to the goldsmith's trade, was hardly perhaps sufficient to
+compensate for loss of training in a larger style. It was difficult, we
+fancy, for men so educated to conceive the higher purposes of sculpture.
+Contented with elaborate workmanship and beauty of detail, they failed to
+attain to such independence of treatment as may be reached by sculptors
+who do not carry to their work the preconceptions of a narrower
+handicraft. Thus even Orcagna's masterpiece may strike us not as the
+plaything of a Pheidian genius condescending for once to "breathe through
+silver," but of a consummate goldsmith taxing the resources of his craft
+to form a monumental jewel.[79]
+
+The façade of Orvieto was the final achievement of the first or
+architectural period of Italian sculpture. Giotto, Andrea Pisano, and
+Orcagna, formed the transition to the second period. To find one
+characteristic title for the style of the fifteenth century is not easy,
+since it was marked by many distinct peculiarities. If, however, we
+choose to call it pictorial, we shall sufficiently mark the quality of
+some eminent masters, and keep in view the supremacy of painting at this
+epoch. A great public enterprise at Florence brings together in honourable
+rivalry the chief craftsmen of the new age, and marks the advent of the
+Renaissance. When the Signory, in concert with the Arte de' Mercanti,
+decided to complete the bronze gates of the Baptistery in the first year
+of the fifteenth century, they issued a manifesto inviting the sculptors
+of Italy to prepare designs for competition. Their call was answered by
+Giacomo della Quercia of Siena, by Filippo Brunelleschi and Lorenzo di
+Cino Ghiberti of Florence, and by two other Tuscan artists of less note.
+The young Donatello, aged sixteen, is said to have been consulted as to
+the rival merits of the proofs submitted to the judges. Thus the four
+great masters of Tuscan art in its prime met before the Florentine
+Baptistery.[80] Giacomo della Quercia was excluded from the competition at
+an early stage; but the umpires wavered long between Ghiberti and
+Brunelleschi, until the latter, with notable generosity, feeling the
+superiority of his rival, and conscious perhaps that his own laurels were
+to be gathered in the field of architecture, withdrew his claim. In 1403,
+Ghiberti received the commission for the first of the two remaining gates.
+He afterwards obtained the second; and as they were not finished until
+1452, the better part of his lifetime was spent upon them. He received in
+all a sum of 30,798 golden florins for his labour and the cost of the
+material employed.
+
+The trial-pieces prepared by Brunelleschi and Ghiberti are now preserved
+in the Bargello.[81] Their subject is the "Sacrifice of Isaac;" and a
+comparison of the two leaves no doubt of Ghiberti's superiority. The
+faults of Brunelleschi's model are want of repose and absence of
+composition. Abraham rushes in a frenzy of murderous agitation at his son,
+who writhes beneath the knife already at his throat. The angel swoops from
+heaven with extended arms, reaching forth one hand to show the ram to
+Abraham, and clasping the patriarch's wrist with the other. The ram
+meanwhile is scratching his nose with his near hind leg; one of the
+servants is taking a thorn from his foot, while the other fills a cup from
+the stream at which the ass is drinking. Thus each figure has a separate
+uneasy action. Those critics who contend that the unrest of
+sixteenth-century sculpture was due to changes in artistic and religious
+feeling wrought by the Renaissance, would do well to examine this plate,
+and see how much account must be taken of the artist's temperament in
+forming their opinion. Brunelleschi adhered to the style and taste of the
+fifteenth century at its commencement; but the too fervid quality of his
+character impaired his work as a sculptor. Ghiberti, on the other hand,
+translated the calm of his harmonious nature into his composition. The
+angel leans from heaven and points to the ram, which is seated quietly and
+out of sight of the main actors. Isaac kneels in the attitude of a
+submissive victim, though his head is turned aside, as if attracted by the
+rush of pinions through the air; while Abraham has but just lifted his
+hand, and the sacrifice is only suggested as a possibility by the naked
+knife. The two servants are grouped below in conversation, one on each
+side of the browsing ass. This power of telling a story plainly, but
+without dramatic vehemence; of eliminating the painful details of the
+subject, and combining its chief motives into one agreeable whole, gave
+peculiar charm to Ghiberti's manner. It marked him as an artist
+distinguished by good taste.
+
+How Delia Quercia treated the "Sacrifice of Isaac" we do not know. His
+bas-reliefs upon the façade of S. Petronio at Bologna, and round the font
+of S. John's Chapel in the cathedral of Siena, enable us, however, to
+compare his style with that of Ghiberti in the handling of a subject
+common to both, the "Creation of Eve."[82] There is no doubt but that
+Della Quercia was a formidable rival. Had the gates of the Baptistery been
+entrusted to his execution, we might have possessed a masterpiece of more
+heroic style. While smoothness and an almost voluptuous suavity of outline
+distinguish Ghiberti's naked Eve, gliding upheld by angels from the side
+of Adam at her Maker's bidding, Della Quercia's group, by the
+concentration of robust and rugged power, anticipates the style of Michael
+Angelo. Ghiberti treats the subject pictorially, placing his figures in a
+landscape, and lavishing attendant angels. Della Quercia, in obedience to
+the stricter laws of sculpture, restrains his composition to the three
+chief persons, and brings them into close connection. While Adam reclines
+asleep in a beautiful and highly studied attitude, Eve has just stepped
+forth behind him, and God stands robed in massive drapery, raising His
+hand as though to draw her into life. There is, perhaps, an excess of
+dramatic action in the lifted right leg of Eve, and too much of pantomimic
+language in the expressive hands of Eve and her Creator. The robe, again,
+in its voluminous and snaky coils, and the triangular nimbus of the Deity,
+convey an effect of heaviness rather than of majesty. Yet we feel, while
+studying this composition, that it is a noble and original attempt,
+falling but little short of supreme accomplishment. Without this
+antecedent sketch, Michael Angelo might not have matured the most complete
+of all his designs in the Sistine Chapel. The similarity between Delia
+Quercia's bas-relief and Buonarroti's fresco of Eve is incontestable. The
+young Florentine, while an exile in Bologna, and engaged upon the shrine
+of S. Dominic, must have spent hours of study before the sculptures of S.
+Petronio; so that this seed of Della Quercia's sowing bore after many
+years the fruit of world-renowned achievement in Rome.
+
+Two other memorable works of Della Quercia must be parenthetically
+mentioned. These are the Fonte Gaja on the public square of Siena, now
+unhappily restored, and the portrait of Ilaria del Carretto on her tomb in
+the cathedral of Lucca. The latter has long been dear to English students
+of Italian art through words inimitable for their strength of sympathetic
+criticism.[83]
+
+Ghiberti was brought up as a goldsmith by his stepfather, and it is said
+that while a youth he spent much of his leisure in modelling portraits and
+casting imitations of antique gems and coins for his friends. At the same
+time he practised painting. We find him employed in decorating a palace at
+Rimini for Carlo Malatesta, when his stepfather recalled him to Florence,
+in order that he might compete for the gate of the Baptistery. It is
+probable that from this early training Ghiberti derived the delicacy of
+style and smoothness of execution that are reckoned among the chief merits
+of his work. He also developed a manner more pictorial than sculpturesque,
+which justifies our calling him a painter in bronze. When Sir Joshua
+Reynolds remarked, "Ghiberti's landscape and buildings occupied so large a
+portion of the compartments, that the figures remained but secondary
+objects,"[84] his criticism might fairly have been taxed with some
+injustice even to the second of the two gates. Yet, though exaggerated in
+severity, his words convey a truth important for the understanding of this
+period of Italian art.
+
+The first gate may be cited as the supreme achievement of bronze-casting
+in the Tuscan prime. In the second, by the introduction of elaborate
+landscapes and the massing together of figures arranged in multitudes at
+three and sometimes four distances, Ghiberti overstepped the limits that
+separate sculpture from painting. Having learned perspective from
+Brunelleschi, he was eager to apply this new science to his own craft, not
+discerning that it has no place in noble bas-relief. He therefore
+abandoned the classical and the early Tuscan tradition, whereby reliefs,
+whether high or low, are strictly restrained to figures arranged in line
+or grouped together without accessories. Instead of painting frescoes, he
+set himself to model in bronze whole compositions that might have been
+expressed with propriety in colour. The point of Sir Joshua's criticism,
+therefore, is that Ghiberti's practice of distributing figures on a small
+scale in spacious landscape framework was at variance with the severity of
+sculptural treatment. The pernicious effect of his example may be traced
+in much Florentine work of the mid Renaissance period which passed for
+supremely clever when it was produced. What the unique genius of Ghiberti
+made not merely pardonable but even admirable, became under other hands no
+less repulsive than the transference of pictorial effects to painted
+glass.[85]
+
+That Ghiberti was not a great sculptor of statues is proved by his work at
+Orsammichele. He was no architect, as we know from his incompetence to do
+more than impede Brunelleschi in the building of the dome. He came into
+the world to create a new and inimitable style of hybrid beauty in those
+gates of Paradise. His susceptibility to the first influences of the
+classical revival deserves notice here, since it shows to what an extent a
+devotee of Greek art in the fifteenth century could worship the relics of
+antiquity without passing over into imitation. When the "Hermaphrodite"
+was discovered in the vineyard of S. Celso, Ghiberti's admiration found
+vent in exclamations like the following: "No tongue could describe the
+learning and art displayed in it, or do justice to its masterly style."
+Another antique, found near Florence, must, he conjectures, have been
+hidden out of harm's way by "some gentle spirit in the early days of
+Christianity." "The touch only," he adds, "can discover its beauties,
+which escape the sense of sight in any light."[86] It would be impossible
+to express a reverential love of ancient art more tenderly than is done in
+these sentences. So intense was Ghiberti's passion for the Greeks, that he
+rejected Christian chronology and reckoned by Olympiads--a system that has
+thrown obscurity over his otherwise precious notes of Tuscan artists. In
+spite of this devotion, he never appears to have set himself consciously
+to reproduce the style of Greek sculpture, or to have set forth Hellenic
+ideas. He remained unaffectedly natural, and in a true sense Christian.
+The paganism of the Renaissance is a phrase with no more meaning for him
+than for that still more delicate Florentine spirit, Luca della Robbia;
+and if his works are classical, they are so only in Goethe's sense, when
+he pronounced, "the point is for a work to be thoroughly good, and then it
+is sure to be classical."
+
+One great advantage of the early days of the Renaissance over the latter
+was this, that pseudo-paganism and pedantry had not as yet distorted the
+judgment or misdirected the aims of artists. Contact with the antique
+world served only to stimulate original endeavour, by leading the student
+back to the fountain of all excellence in nature, and by exhibiting types
+of perfection in technical processes. To ape the sculptors of Antinous, or
+to bring to life again the gods who died with Pan, was not yet longed for.
+Of the impunity with which a sculptor in that period could submit his
+genius to the service and the study of ancient art without sacrificing
+individuality, Donatello furnishes a still more illustrious example than
+Ghiberti. Early in his youth Donatello journeyed with Brunelleschi to
+Rome, in order to acquaint himself with the monuments then extant. How
+thoroughly he comprehended the classic spirit is proved by the bronze
+patera wrought for his patron Ruberto Martelli, and by the frieze of the
+triumphant Bacchus.[87] Yet the great achievements of his genius were
+Christian in their sentiment and realistic in their style. The bronze
+"Magdalen" of the Florentine Baptistery and the bronze "Baptist" of the
+Duomo at Siena[88] are executed with an unrelenting materialism, not alien
+indeed to the sincerity of classic art, but divergent from antique
+tradition, inasmuch as the ideas of repentant and prophetic asceticism had
+no place in Greek mythology.
+
+Donatello, with the uncompromising candour of an artist bent on marking
+character, felt that he was bound to seize the very pith and kernel of his
+subject. If a Magdalen were demanded of him, he would not condescend to
+model a Venus and then place a book and skull upon a rock beside her; nor
+did he imagine that the bloom and beauty of a laughing Faun were fitting
+attributes for the preacher of repentance. It remained for later artists,
+intoxicated with antique loveliness and corroded with worldly scepticism,
+to reproduce the outward semblance of Greek deities under the pretence of
+setting forth the myths of Christianity. Such compromise had not occurred
+to Donatello. The motive of his art was clearly apprehended, his method
+was sincere; certain phases of profound emotion had to be represented with
+the physical characteristics proper to them. The result, ugly and painful
+as it may sometimes be, was really more concordant with the spirit of
+Greek method than Lionardo's "John" or Correggio's "Magdalen." That is to
+say, it was straightforward and truthful; whereas the strange caprices of
+the later Renaissance too often betrayed a double mind, disloyal alike to
+paganism and to Christianity, in their effort to combine divergent forces.
+It may still be argued that such conceptions as sorrow for sin and
+mortification of the flesh, unflinchingly portrayed by haggard gauntness
+in the saints of Donatello, are unfit for sculpturesque expression.
+
+A more felicitous embodiment of modern feeling was achieved by Donatello
+in "S. George" and "David." The former is a marble statue placed upon the
+north wall of Orsammichele; the latter is a bronze, cast for Cosimo de'
+Medici, and now exhibited in the Bargello.[89] Without striving to
+idealise his models, the sculptor has expressed in both the Christian
+conception of heroism, fearless in the face of danger, and sustained by
+faith. The naked beauty of the boy David and the mailed manhood of S.
+George are raised to a spiritual region by the type of feature and the
+pose of body selected to interpret their animating impulse. These are no
+mere portraits of wrestlers, such, as peopled the groves of Altis at
+Olympia, no ideals of physical strength translated into brass and marble,
+like the "Hercules" of Naples or the Vatican. The one is a Christian
+soldier ready to engage Apollyon in battle to the death; the other the
+boy-hero of a marvellous romance. The body in both is but the shrine of an
+indwelling soul, the instrument and agent of a faith-directed will; and
+the crown of their conflict is no wreath of laurel or of parsley. In other
+words, the value of S. George and David to the sculptor lay not in their
+strength and youthful beauty--though he has endowed them with these
+excellent gifts--so much as in their significance for the eternal struggle
+of the soul with evil. The same power of expressing Christian sentiment in
+a form of perfect beauty, transcending the Greek type by profounder
+suggestion of feeling, is illustrated in the well-known low-relief of an
+angel's head in profile, technically one of Donatello's most masterly
+productions.[90]
+
+It is no part of my present purpose to enumerate the many works of
+Donatello in marble and bronze; yet some allusion to their number and
+variety is necessary in order to show how widely his influence was
+diffused through Italy. In the monuments of Pope John XXIII., of Cardinal
+Brancacci, and of Bartolommeo Aragazzi, he subordinated his genius to the
+treatment of sepulchral and biographical subjects according to
+time-honoured Tuscan usage. They were severally placed in Florence,
+Naples, and Montepulciano. For the cathedral of Prato he executed
+bas-reliefs of dancing boys; a similar series, intended for the
+balustrades of the organ in S. Maria del Fiore, is now preserved in the
+Bargello museum. The exultation of movement has never been expressed in
+stone with more fidelity to the strict rules of plastic art. For his
+friend and patron, Cosimo de' Medici, he cast in bronze the group of
+"Judith and Holofernes"--a work that illustrates the clumsiness of
+realistic treatment, and deserves to be remembered chiefly for its strange
+fortunes. When the Medici fled from Florence in 1494, their palace was
+sacked; the new republic took possession of Donatello's "Judith," and
+placed it on a pedestal before the gate of the Palazzo Vecchio, with this
+inscription, ominous to would-be despots: _Exemplum salutis publicae cives
+posuere. MCCCCXCV_. It now stands near Cellini's "Perseus" under the
+Loggia de' Lanzi. For the pulpits of S. Lorenzo, Donatello made designs of
+intricate bronze bas-reliefs, which were afterwards completed by his pupil
+Bertoldo. These, though better known to travellers, are less excellent
+than the reliefs in bronze wrought by Donatello's own hand for the church
+of S. Anthony at Padua.[91] To that city he was called in 1451, in order
+that he might model the equestrian statue of Gattamelata. It still stands
+on the Piazza, a masterpiece of scientific bronze-founding, the first
+great portrait of a general on horseback since the days of Rome.[92] At
+Padua, in the hall of the Palazzo della Ragione, is also preserved the
+wooden horse, which is said to have been constructed by the sculptor for
+the noble house of Capodilista. These two examples of equestrian modelling
+marked an epoch in Italian statuary.
+
+When Donato di Nicolo di Betto Bardi, called Donatello because men loved
+his sweet and cheerful temper, died in 1466 at the age of eighty, the
+brightest light of Italian sculpture in its most promising period was
+extinguished. Donatello's influence, felt far and wide through Italy, was
+of inestimable value in correcting the false direction toward pictorial
+sculpture which Ghiberti, had he flourished alone at Florence, might have
+given to the art. His style was always eminently masculine. However tastes
+may differ about the positive merits of his several works, there can be no
+doubt that the principles of sincerity, truth to nature, and technical
+accuracy they illustrate, were all-important in an age that lent itself
+too readily to the caprices of the fancy and the puerilities of florid
+taste. To regret that Donatello lacked Ghiberti's exquisite sense of
+beauty, is tantamount to wishing that two of the greatest artists of the
+world had made one man between them.
+
+Donatello did not, in the strict sense of the term, found a school.[93]
+Andrea Verocchio, goldsmith, painter, and worker in bronze, was the most
+distinguished of his pupils. To all the arts he practised, Verocchio
+applied limited powers, a meagre manner, and a prosaic mind. Yet few men
+have exercised at a very critical moment a more decided influence. The
+mere fact that he numbered Lionardo da Vinci, Lorenzo di Credi, and Pietro
+Perugino among his scholars, proves the esteem of his contemporaries; and
+when we have observed that the type of face selected by Lionardo and
+transmitted to his followers, appears also in the pictures of Lorenzo di
+Credi and is first found in the "David" of Verocchio, we have a right to
+affirm that the master of these men was an artist of creative genius as
+well as a careful workman. Florence still points with pride to the
+"Incredulity of Thomas" on the eastern wall of Orsammichele, to the "Boy
+and Dolphin" in the court of the Palazzo Vecchio, and to the "David" of
+this sculptor: but the first is spoiled by heaviness and angularity of
+drapery; the second, though fanciful and marked by fluttering movement, is
+but a caprice; the third outdoes the hardest work of Donatello by its
+realism. Verocchio's "David," a lad of some seventeen years, has the lean,
+veined arms of a stone-hewer or gold-beater. As a faithful portrait of the
+first Florentine prentice who came to hand, this statue might have merit
+but for the awkward cuirass and kilt that partly drape the figure.
+
+The name of Verocchio is best known to the world through the equestrian
+statue of Bartolommeo Colleoni. When this great Condottiere, the last
+surviving general trained by Braccio da Montone, died in 1475, he
+bequeathed a large portion of his wealth to Venice, on condition that his
+statue on horseback should be erected in the Piazza di S. Marco. Colleoni,
+having long held the bâton of the Republic, desired that after death his
+portrait, in his habit as he lived, should continue to look down on the
+scene of his old splendour. By an ingenious quibble the Senators adhered
+to the letter of his will without infringing a law that forbade them to
+charge the square of S. Mark with monuments. They ruled that the piazza in
+front of the Scuola di S. Marco, better known as the Campo di S. Zanipolo,
+might be chosen as the site of Colleoni's statue, and to Andrea Verocchio
+was given the commission for its erection.
+
+Andrea died in 1488 before the model for the horse was finished. The work
+was completed, and the pedestal was supplied by Alessandro Leopardi. To
+Verocchio, profiting by the example of Donatello's "Gattamelata," must be
+assigned the general conception of this statue; but the breath of life
+that animates both horse and rider, the richness of detail that enhances
+the massive grandeur of the group, and the fiery spirit of its style of
+execution were due to the Venetian genius of Leopardi. Verocchio alone
+produced nothing so truly magnificent. This joint creation of Florentine
+science and Venetian fervour is one of the most precious monuments of the
+Renaissance. From it we learn what the men who fought the bloodless
+battles of the commonwealths, and who aspired to principality, were like.
+"He was tall," writes a biographer of Colleoni,[94] "of erect and
+well-knit figure, and of well-proportioned limbs. His complexion tended
+rather to brown, marked withal by bright and sanguine flesh-tints. He had
+black eyes; their brilliancy was vivid, their gaze terrible and
+penetrating. In the outline of his nose and in all his features he
+displayed a manly nobleness combined with goodness and prudence." Better
+phrases cannot be chosen to describe his statue.
+
+While admiring this masterpiece and dwelling on its royal style, we are
+led to deplore most bitterly the loss of the third equestrian statue of
+the Renaissance. Nothing now remains but a few technical studies made by
+Lionardo da Vinci for his portrait of Francesco Sforza. The two elaborate
+models he constructed and the majority of his minute designs have been
+destroyed. He intended, we are told, to represent the first Duke of the
+Sforza dynasty on his charger, trampling the body of a prostrate and just
+conquered enemy. Rubens' transcript from the "Battle of the Standard,"
+enables us to comprehend to some extent how Lionardo might have treated
+this motive. The severe and cautious style of Donatello, after gaining
+freedom and fervour from Leopardi, was adapted to the ideal presentation
+of dramatic passion by Lionardo. Thus Gattamelata, Colleoni, and Francesco
+Sforza would, through their statues, have marked three distinct phases in
+the growth of art. The final effort of Italian sculpture to express human
+activity in the person of a mounted warrior has perished. In this sphere
+we possess nothing which, like the tombs of S. Lorenzo in relation to
+sepulchral statuary, completes a series of development.
+
+If Donatello founded no school, this was far more the case with Ghiberti.
+His supposed pupil, Antonio del Pollajuolo, showed no sign of Ghiberti's
+influence, but struck out for himself a style distinguished by almost
+brutal energy and bizarre realism--characteristics the very opposite to
+those of his master. If the bronze relief of the "Crucifixion" in the
+Bargello be really Pollajuolo's, we may even trace a leaning to Verocchio
+in his manner. The emphatic passion of the women recalls the group of
+mourners round the death-bed of Selvaggia Tornabuoni in Verocchio's
+celebrated bas-relief. Pollajuolo, like so many Florentine artists, was a
+goldsmith, a painter, and a worker in niello, before he took to sculpture.
+As a goldsmith he is said to have surpassed all his contemporaries, and
+his mastery over this art influenced his style in general. What we chiefly
+notice, however, in his choice of subjects is a frenzy of murderous
+enthusiasm, a grimness of imagination, rare among Italian artists. The
+picture in the Uffizzi of "Hercules and Antaeus" and the well-known
+engraving of naked men fighting a series of savage duels in a wood, might
+be chosen as emphatic illustrations of his favourite motives. The fiercest
+emotions of the Renaissance find expression in the clenched teeth,
+strained muscles, knotted brows, and tense nerves, depicted by Pollajuolo
+with eccentric energy. We seem to be assisting at some of those combats _a
+steccato chiuso_ wherein Sixtus IV. delighted, or to have before our eyes
+a fray between Crocensi and Vallensi in the streets of Rome.[95] The same
+remarks apply to the terra-cotta relief by Pollajuolo in the South
+Kensington Museum. This piece displays the struggles of twelve naked men,
+divided into six pairs of combatants. Two of the couples hold short chains
+with the left hand, and seek to stab each other with the right. In the
+case of another two couples the fight is over, and the victor is insulting
+his fallen foe. In each of the remaining pairs one gladiator is on the
+point of yielding to his adversary. There are thus three several moments
+of duel to the death, each illustrated by two couples. The mathematical
+distribution of these dreadful groups gives an effect of frozen passion;
+while the vigorous workmanship displays not only an enthusiasm for
+muscular anatomy, but a real sympathy with blood-fury in the artist.
+
+There was, therefore, a certain propriety in the choice of Pollajuolo to
+cast the sepulchre of Sixtus IV. in bronze at Rome. The best judges
+complain, not without reason, that the allegories surrounding this tomb
+are exaggerated and affected in style; yet the dead Pope, stretched in
+pomp upon his bier, commands more than merely historical interest; while
+the figures, seated as guardians round the old man, terrible in death,
+communicate an impression of monumental majesty. Criticised in detail,
+each separate figure may be faulty. The composition, as a whole, is
+picturesque and grandiose. The same can scarcely be said about the tomb of
+Innocent VIII., erected by Antonio and his brother Piero del Pollajuolo.
+While it perpetuates the memory of an uninteresting Pontiff, it has but
+little, as a work of art, to recommend it. The Pollajuoli were not great
+sculptors. In the history of Italian art they deserve a place, because of
+the vivid personality impressed upon some portions of their work. Few
+draughtsmen carried the study of muscular anatomy so far as Antonio.[96]
+
+Luca della Robbia, whose life embraced the first eighty years of the
+fifteenth century, offers in many important respects a contrast to his
+contemporaries Ghiberti and Donatello, and still more to their immediate
+followers. He made his art as true to life as it is possible to be,
+without the rugged realism of Donatello or the somewhat effeminate graces
+of Ghiberti. The charm of his work is never impaired by scientific
+mannerism--that stumbling-block to critics like De Stendhal in the art of
+Florence; nor does it suffer from the picturesqueness of a sentimental
+style. How to render the beauty of nature in her most delightful
+moments--taking us with him into the holiest of holies, and handling the
+sacred vessels with a child's confiding boldness--was a secret known to
+Luca della Robbia alone. We may well find food for meditation in the
+innocent and cheerful inspiration of this man, whose lifetime coincided
+with a period of sordid passions and debased ambition in the Church and
+States of Italy.
+
+Luca was apprenticed in his youth to a goldsmith; but of what he wrought
+before the age of forty-five, we know but little.[97] At that time his
+faculty had attained full maturity, and he produced the groups of dancing
+children and choristers intended for the organ gallery of the Duomo.
+Wholly free from affectation, and depending for effect upon no merely
+decorative detail, these bas-reliefs deserve the praise bestowed by Dante
+on the sculpture seen in Purgatory:[98]--
+
+    Dinanzi a noi pareva si verace,
+    Quivi intagliato in un atto soave,
+    Che non sembrava immagine che tace.
+
+Movement has never been suggested in stone with less exaggeration, nor
+have marble lips been made to utter sweeter and more varied music. Luca's
+true perception of the limits to be observed in sculpture, appears most
+eminently in the glazed terra-cotta work by which he is best known. An
+ordinary artist might have found the temptation to aim at showy and
+pictorial effects in this material overwhelming. Luca restrained himself
+to pure white on pale blue, and preserved an exquisite simplicity of line
+in all his compositions. There is an almost unearthly beauty in the
+profiles of his Madonnas, a tempered sweetness in the modulation of their
+drapery and attitude, that prove complete mastery in the art of rendering
+evanescent moments of expression, the most fragile subtleties of the
+emotions that can stir a tranquil spirit. Andrea della Robbia, the nephew
+of Luca, with his four sons, Giovanni, Luca, Ambrogio, and Girolamo,
+continued to manufacture the glazed earthenware of Luca's invention. These
+men, though excellent artificers, lacked the fine taste of their teacher.
+Coarser colours were introduced; the eye was dazzled with variety; but the
+power of speaking to the soul as Luca spoke was lost.[99]
+
+After the Della Robbias, this is the place to mention Agostino di Gucci or
+di Duccio,[100] a sculptor who handled terra-cotta somewhat in the manner
+of Donatello's flat-relief, introducing more richness of detail and aiming
+at more passion than Luca's taste permitted. For the oratory of S.
+Bernardino at Perugia he designed the façade partly in stone and partly in
+baked clay--crowded with figures, flying, singing, playing upon
+instruments of music, with waving draperies and windy hair and the ecstasy
+of movement in their delicately modelled limbs. If nothing else remained
+of Agostino's workmanship, this façade alone would place him in the first
+rank of contemporary artists. He owed something, perhaps, to his material;
+for terra-cotta has the charm of improvisation. The hand, obedient to the
+brain, has made it in one moment what it is, and no slow hours of labour
+at the stone have dulled the first caprice of the creative fancy. Work,
+therefore, which, if translated into marble, might have left our sympathy
+unstirred, affects us with keen pleasure in the mould of plastic clay.
+What prodigality of thought and invention has been lavished on the
+terra-cotta models of unknown Italian artists! What forms and faces,
+beautiful as shapes of dreams, and, like dreams, so airy that we think
+they will take flight and vanish, lean to greet us from cloisters and
+palace fronts in Lombardy! To catalogue their multitude would be
+impossible. It is enough to select one instance out of many; this shall be
+taken from the chapel of S. Peter Martyr in S. Eustorgio at Milan. High up
+around the cupola runs a frieze of angels, singing together and dancing
+with joined hands, while bells composed of fruits and flowers hang down
+between them. Each angel is an individual shape of joy; the soul in each
+moves to its own deep melody, but the music made of all is one. Their
+raiment flutters, the bells chime; the chorus of their gladness falls like
+voices through a star-lit heaven, half-heard in dreams and everlastingly
+remembered.
+
+Four sculptors, the younger contemporaries of Luca della Robbia, and
+marked by certain common qualities, demand attention next. All the work of
+Antonio Rossellino, Matteo Civitali, Mino da Fiesole, and Benedetto da
+Majano, is distinguished by sweetness, grace, tranquillity, and
+self-restraint--as though these artists had voluntarily imposed limits on
+their genius, refusing to trespass beyond a traced circle of religious
+subjects, or to aim at effects unrealisable by purity of outline, suavity
+of expression, delicacy of feeling, and urbanity of style. The charm of
+manner they possess in common, can scarcely he defined except by similes.
+The innocence of childhood, the melody of a lute or song-bird as
+distinguished from the music of an orchestra, the rathe tints of early
+dawn, cheerful light on shallow streams, the serenity of a simple and
+untainted nature that has never known the world--many such images occur
+to the mind while thinking of the sculpture of these men. To charge them
+with insipidity, immaturity, and monotony, would be to mistake the force
+of genius and skill displayed by them. We should rather assume that they
+confined themselves to certain types of tranquil beauty, without caring to
+realise more obviously striking effects, and that this was their way of
+meeting the requirements of sculpture considered as a Christian art. The
+melody of their design, meanwhile, is like the purest song-music of
+Pergolese or Salvator Rosa, unapproachably perfect in simple outline, and
+inexhaustibly refreshing.
+
+Though it is possible to characterise the style of these sculptors by some
+common qualities observable in their work, it should rather be the aim of
+criticism to point out their differences. Antonio Rossellino, for example,
+might be distinguished by his leaning toward the manner of Ghiberti, whose
+landscape backgrounds he has adopted in the circular medallions of his
+monumental sculpture. A fine perception of the poetic capabilities of
+Christian art is displayed in Rossellino's idyllic treatment of the
+Nativity--the adoration of the shepherds, the hush of reverential
+stillness in the worship Mary pays her infant son.[101] To the qualities
+of sweetness and tranquillity rare dignity is added in the monument of the
+young Cardinal di Portogallo.[102] The sublimity of the slumber that is
+death has never been more nobly and feelingly portrayed than in the supine
+figure and sleeping features of this most beautiful young man, who lies
+watched by angels beneath a heavy-curtained canopy. The genii of eternal
+repose modelled by Greek sculptors are twin-brothers of Love, on whom
+perpetual slumber has descended amid poppy-fields by Lethe's stream. The
+turmoil of the world is over for them; they will never wake again; they do
+not even dream. Sleep is the only power that still has life in them. But
+the Christian cannot thus conceive the mystery of the soul "fallen on
+sleep." His art must suggest a time of waiting and a time of waking; and
+this it does partly through the ministration of attendant angels, who
+would not be standing there on guard if the clay-cold corpse had no
+futurity, partly by breathing upon the limbs and visage of the dead a
+spirit as of life suspended for a while. Thus the soul herself is imaged
+in the marble "most sweetly slumbering in the gates of dreams."
+
+What Vespasiano tells us of this cardinal, born of the royal house of
+Portugal, adds the virtue of sincerity to Rossellino's work, proving there
+is no flattery of the dead man in his sculpture.[103] "Among his other
+admirable virtues," says the biographer, "Messer Jacopo di Portogallo
+determined to preserve his virginity, though he was beautiful above all
+others of his age. Consequently he avoided all things that might prove
+impediments to his vow, such as free discourse, the society of women,
+balls, and songs. In this mortal flesh he lived as though he had been free
+from it--the life, we may say, rather of an angel than a man. And if his
+biography were written from his childhood to his death, it would be not
+only an ensample, but confusion to the world. Upon his monument the hand
+was modelled from his own, and the face is very like him, for he was most
+lovely in his person, but still more in his soul."
+
+While contemplating this monument of the young cardinal, we feel that the
+Italians of that age understood sepulchral sculpture far better than their
+immediate successors. They knew how to carve the very soul, according to
+the lines which our Webster, a keen observer of all things relating to
+the grave and death, has put into Jolenta's lips:--
+
+                         But indeed,
+    If ever I would have mine drawn to the life,
+    I would have a painter steal it at such time
+    I were devoutly kneeling at my prayers;
+    There is then a heavenly beauty in't; _the soul
+    Moves in the superficies_.
+
+The same Webster condemns that evil custom of aping life and movement on
+the monuments of dead men, which began to obtain when the motives of pure
+repose had been exhausted. "Why," asks the Duchess of Malfi, "do we grow
+fantastical in our death-bed? Do we affect fashion in the grave?" "Most
+ambitiously," answers Bosola; "princes' images on their tombs do not lie
+as they were wont, seeming to pray up to heaven; but with their hands
+under their cheeks (as if they died of the toothache): they are not carved
+with their eyes fixed upon the stars; but, as their minds were wholly bent
+upon the world, the self-same way they seem to turn their faces." A more
+trenchant criticism than this could hardly have been pronounced upon
+Andrea Contucci di Monte Sansavino's tombs of Ascanio Sforza and Girolamo
+della Rovere, if Bosola had been standing before them in the church of S.
+Maria del Popolo when he spoke. Were it the function of monumental
+sculpture to satirise the dead, or to point out their characteristic
+faults for the warning of posterity, then the sepulchres of these worldly
+cardinals of Sixtus IV.'s creation would be artistically justified. But
+the object of art is not this. The idea of death, as conceived by
+Christians, has to be portrayed. The repose of the just, the resurrection
+of the body, and the coming judgment, afford sufficient scope for
+treatment of good men and bad alike. Or if the sculptor have sublime
+imagination, he may, like Michael Angelo, suggest the alternations of the
+day and night, slumber and waking, whereby "our little life is rounded
+with a sleep."
+
+This digression will hardly be thought superfluous when we reflect how
+large a part of the sculptor's energy was spent on tombs in Italy. Matteo
+Civitali of Lucca was at least Rossellino's equal in the sculpturesque
+delineation of spiritual qualities; but the motives he chose for treatment
+were more varied. All his work is penetrated with deep, prayerful, intense
+feeling; as though the artist's soul, poured forth in ecstasy and
+adoration, had been given to the marble. This is especially true of two
+angels kneeling upon the altar of the Chapel of the Sacrament in Lucca
+Cathedral. Civitali, by singular good fortune, was chosen in the best
+years of his life to adorn the cathedral of his native city; and it is
+here, rather than at Genoa, where much of his sculpture may also be seen,
+that he deserves to be studied. For the people of Lucca he designed the
+Chapel of the Santo Volto--a gem of the purest Renaissance
+architecture--and a pulpit in the same style. His most remarkable
+sculpture is to be found in three monuments: the tombs of Domenico Bertini
+and Pietro da Noceto, and the altar of S. Regulus. The last might be
+chosen as an epitome of all that is most characteristic in Tuscan
+sculpture of the earlier Renaissance. It is built against the wall, and
+architecturally designed so as to comprehend a full-length figure of the
+bishop stretched upon his bier and watched by angels, a group of Madonna
+and her child seated above him, a row of standing saints below, and a
+predella composed of four delicately finished bas-reliefs. Every part of
+this complex work is conceived with spirit and executed with care; and the
+various elements are so combined as to make one composition, the body of
+the saint on his sarcophagus forming the central object of the whole.
+
+To do more than briefly mention the minor sculptors of this group would be
+impossible. Mino di Giovanni, called Da Fiesole, was characterised by
+grace that tended to degenerate into formality. The tombs in the Abbey of
+Florence have an almost infantine sweetness of style, which might be
+extremely piquant, were it not that Mino pushed this quality in other
+works to the verge of mannerism.[104] Their architectural features are the
+same as those of similar monuments in Tuscany:--a shallow recess, flanked
+by Renaissance pilasters, and roofed with a semicircular arch; within the
+recess, the full-length figure of the dead man on a marble coffin of
+antique design; in the lunette above, a Madonna carved in low relief.[105]
+Mino's bust of Bishop Salutati in the cathedral church of Fiesole is a
+powerful portrait, no less distinguished for vigorous individuality than
+consummate workmanship. The waxlike finish of the finely chiselled marble
+alone betrays that delicacy which with Mino verged on insipidity. The same
+faculty of character delineation is seen in three profiles, now in the
+Bargello Museum, attributed to Mino. They represent Frederick Duke of
+Urbino, Battista Sforza, and Galeazzo Sforza. The relief is very low,
+rising at no point more than half an inch above the surface of the ground,
+but so carefully modulated as to present a wonderful variety of light and
+shade, and to render the facial expression with great vividness.
+
+Desiderio da Settignano, one of Donatello's few scholars, was endowed with
+the same gift of exquisite taste as his friend Mino da Fiesole;[106] but
+his inventive faculty was bolder, and his genius more robust, in spite of
+the profuse ornamentation and elaborate finish of his masterpiece, the
+tomb of Carlo Marsuppini in S. Croce. The bust he made of Marietta di
+Palla degli Strozzi enables us to compare his style in portraiture with
+that of Mino.[107] It would be hard to find elsewhere a more captivating
+combination of womanly sweetness and dignity. We feel, in looking at these
+products of the best age of Italian sculpture, that the artists who
+conceived them were, in the truest sense of the word, gentle. None but men
+courteous and unaffected could have carved a face like that of Marietta
+Strozzi, breathing the very spirit of urbanity. To express the most
+amiable qualities of a living person in a work of art that should suggest
+emotional tranquillity by harmonious treatment, and indicate the
+temperance of a disciplined nature by self-restraint and moderation of
+style, and to do this with the highest technical perfection, was the
+triumph of fifteenth-century sculpture.
+
+An artist who claims a third place beside Mino and his friend, "il bravo
+Desider si dolce e bello,"[108] is Benedetto da Majano. In Benedetto's
+bas-reliefs at San Gemignano, carved for the altars of those unlovely
+Tuscan worthies, S. Fina and S. Bartolo, we find a pictorial treatment of
+legendary subjects, proving that he had studied Ghirlandajo's frescoes.
+The same is true about his pulpit in S. Croce at Florence, his treatment
+of the story of S. Savino at Faenza, and his "Annunciation" in the church
+of Monte Oliveto at Naples. Benedetto, indeed, may be said to illustrate
+the working of Ghiberti's influence by his liberal use of landscape and
+architectural backgrounds; but the style is rather Ghirlandajo's than
+Ghiberti's. If it was a mistake in the sculptors of that period to
+subordinate their art to painting, the error, we feel, was aggravated by
+the imitation of a manner so prosaic as that of Ghirlandajo. That
+Benedetto began life as a _tarsiatore_ may perhaps help to account for his
+pictorial style in bas-relief.[109] In estimating his total claim as an
+artist, we must not forget that he designed the formidable and splendid
+Strozzi Palace.
+
+It will be observed that all the sculptors hitherto mentioned have been
+Tuscans; and this is due to no mere accident--nor yet to caprice on the
+part of their historian. Though the other districts of Italy produced
+admirable workmen, the direction given to this art proceeded from Tuscany.
+Florence, the metropolis of modern culture, determined the course of the
+aesthetical Renaissance. Even at Rimini we cannot account for the carvings
+in low relief, so fanciful, so delicately wrought, and so profusely
+scattered over the side chapels of S. Francesco, without the intervention
+of two Florentines, Bernardo Ciuffagni and Donatello's pupil Simone; while
+in the palace of Urbino we trace some hand not unlike that of Mino da
+Fiesole at work upon the mouldings of door and architrave, cornice and
+high-built chimney.[110] Not only do we thus find Tuscan craftsmen or
+their scholars employed on all the great public buildings throughout
+Italy; but it also happens that, except in Tuscany, the decoration of
+churches and palaces is not unfrequently anonymous.
+
+This does not, however, interfere with the truth that sculpture, like all
+the arts, assumed a somewhat different character in each Italian city. The
+Venetian stone-carvers leaned from the first to a richer and more
+passionate style than the Florentine, reproducing the types of Cima's and
+Bellini's paintings.[111] Whole families, like the Bregni--classes, like
+the Lombardi--schools, like that of Alessandro Leopardi, worked together
+on the monumental sculpture of S. Zanipolo. In the tombs of the Doges the
+old Pisan motive of the curtains (first used by Arnolfo di Cambio at
+Orvieto, and afterwards with grand effect by Giovanni Pisano at Perugia)
+is expanded into a sumptuous tent-canopy. Pages and genii and mailed
+heroes take the place of angels, and the marine details of Roman reliefs
+are copied in the subordinate decoration. At Verona the mediaeval tombs of
+the Scaligers, with their vast chest-like sarcophagi and mounted warriors,
+exhibit features markedly different from the monuments of Tuscany; while
+the mixture of fresco with sculpture, in monuments like that of the
+Cavalli in S. Anastasia, and in many altar-pieces, is at variance with
+Florentine usage. On the terra-cotta mouldings, so frequent in Lombard
+cities, I have already had occasion to touch briefly. They almost
+invariably display a feeling for beauty more sensuous, with less of
+scientific purpose in their naturalism, than is common in the Tuscan
+style. Guido Mazzoni of Modena, called Il Modanino, may be mentioned as
+the sculptor who freed terra-cotta from its dependence upon architecture,
+and who modelled groups of overpowering dramatic realism. His "Pietà," in
+the Church of Monte Oliveto at Naples, is valuable, less for its
+passionate intensity of expression than for the portraits of Pontano,
+Sannazzaro, and Alfonso of Aragon.[112] This sub-species of sculpture was
+freely employed in North Italy to stimulate devotion, and to impress the
+people with lively pictures of the Passion. The Sacro Monte at Varallo,
+for example, is covered with a multitude of chapels, each one of which
+presents some chapter of Bible history dramatically rendered by life-size
+groups of terra-cotta figures. Some of these were designed by eminent
+painters, and executed by clever modellers in clay. Even now they are
+scarcely less stirring to the mind of a devout spectator than the scenes
+of a mediaeval Mystery may have been.
+
+The Certosa of Pavia, lastly, is the centre of a school of sculpture that
+has little in common with the Florentine tradition. Antonio Amadeo[113]
+and Andrea Fusina, acting in concert with Ambrogio Borgognone the
+painter, gave it in the fifteenth century that character of rich and
+complex decorative beauty which many generations of artists were destined
+to continue and complete. Among the countless sculptors employed upon its
+marvellous façade Amadeo asserts an individuality above the rest, which is
+further manifested in his work in the Cappella Colleoni at Bergamo. We
+there learn to know him, not only as an enthusiastic cultivator of the
+mingled Christian and pagan manner of the _quattrocento_, but as an artist
+in the truest sense of the word sympathetic. The sepulchral portrait of
+Medea, daughter of the great Condottiere, has a grace almost beyond that
+of Della Quercia's "Ilaria."[114] Much, no doubt, is due to the peculiarly
+fragile beauty of the girl herself, who lies asleep with little crisp
+curls clustering upon her forehead, and with a string of pearls around her
+slender throat. But the sensibility to loveliness so delicate, and the
+power to render it in marble with so ethereal a touch upon the rigid
+stone, belong to the sculptor, and win for him our worship.
+
+The list of fifteenth-century sculptors is almost ended; and already, on
+the threshold of the sixteenth, stands the mighty form of Michael Angelo.
+Andrea Contucci da Sansavino and his pupil Jacopo Tatti, called also
+Sansovino, after his master, must, however, next be mentioned as
+continuing the Florentine tradition without subservience to the style of
+Buonarroti. Andrea da Sansavino was a sculptor in whom for the first time
+the faults of the mid-Renaissance period are glaringly apparent. He
+persistently sacrificed simplicity of composition to decorative
+ostentation, and tranquillity of feeling to theatrical effect. The truth
+of this will be acknowledged by all who have studied the tombs of the
+cardinals in S. Maria del Popolo already mentioned,[115] and the
+bas-reliefs upon the Santa Casa at Loreto. In technical workmanship Andrea
+proved himself an able craftsman, modelling marble with the plasticity of
+wax, and lavishing patterns of the most refined invention. Yet the
+decorative prodigality of this master corresponded to the frigid and
+stylistic graces of the neo-Latin poets. It was so much mannerism--adopted
+without real passion from the antique, and applied with a rhetorical
+intention. Those acanthus scrolls and honeysuckle borders, in spite of
+their consummate finish, fail to arrest attention, leaving the soul as
+unstirred as the Ovidian cadences of Bembo.
+
+Jacopo Tatti was a genius of more distinction. Together with San Gallo and
+Bramante he studied the science of architecture in Rome, where he also
+worked at the restoration of newly discovered antiques, and cast in bronze
+a copy of the "Laocoon." Thus equipped with the artistic learning of his
+age, he was called in 1523 by the Doge, Andrea Gritti, to Venice. The
+material pomp of Venice at this epoch, and the pride of her unrivalled
+luxury, affected his imagination so powerfully that his genius, tutored by
+Florentine and Umbrian masters among the ruins of old Rome, became at once
+Venetian. In the history of the Renaissance the names of Titian and
+Aretino, themselves acclimatised aliens, are inseparably connected with
+that of their friend Sansovino. At Venice he lived until his death in
+1570, building the Zecca, the Library, the Scala d'Oro in the Ducal
+Palace, and the Loggietta beneath the bell-tower of S. Mark. In all his
+work he subordinated sculpture to architecture, and his statuary is
+conceived in the _bravura_, manner of Renaissance paganism. Whatever may
+be the faults of Sansovino in both arts, it cannot be denied that he
+expressed, in a style peculiar to himself, the large voluptuous external
+life of Venice at a moment when this city was the Paris or the Corinth of
+Renaissance Europe. At the same time, the shallowness of Sansovino's
+inspiration as a sculptor is patent in his masterpieces of parade--the
+"Neptune" and the "Mars," guarding the Scala d'Oro. Separated from the
+architecture of the court and staircase, they are insignificant in spite
+of their colossal scale. In their place they add a haughty grandeur, by
+the contrast which their flowing forms and arrogant attitudes present to
+the severer lines of the construction. But they are devoid of artistic
+sincerity, and occupy the same relation to true sculpture as flourishes of
+rhetoric, however brilliant, to poetry embodying deep thought or passion.
+At first sight they impose: on further acquaintance we find them chiefly
+interesting as illustrations of a potent civic life upon the wane,
+gorgeous in its decay.
+
+Sansovino was a first-rate craftsman. The most finished specimen of his
+skill is the bronze door of the Sacristy of S. Marco, upon which he is
+said to have worked through twenty years. Portraits of the sculptor,
+Titian, and Pietro Aretino are introduced into the decorative border.
+These heads start from the surface of the gate with astonishing vivacity.
+That Aretino should thus daily assist in effigy at the procession of
+priests bearing the sacred emblems from the sacristy to the high altar of
+S. Mark, is one of the most characteristic proofs of sixteenth-century
+indifference to things holy and things profane.
+
+Jacopo Sansovino marks the final intrusion of paganism into modern art.
+The classical revival had worked but partially and indirectly upon
+Ghiberti and Donatello--not because they did not feel it most intensely,
+but because they clung to nature far more closely than to antique
+precedent. This enthusiasm inspired Sansovino with the best and strongest
+qualities that he can boast; and if his genius had been powerful enough to
+resist the fascination of merely rhetorical effects, he might have
+produced a perfect restoration of the classic style. His was no lifeless
+or pedantic imitation of antique fragments, but a real expression of the
+fervour with which the modern world hailed the discoveries revealed to it
+by scholarship. This is said advisedly. The most beautiful and spirited
+pagan statue of the Renaissance period, justifying the estimate here made
+of Sansovino's genius, is the "Bacchus" exhibited in the Bargello Museum.
+Both the Bacchus and the Satyriscus at his side are triumphs of realism,
+irradiated and idealised by the sculptor's vivid sense of natural
+gladness. Considered as a restitution of the antique manner, this statue
+is decidedly superior to the "Bacchus" of Michael Angelo. While the
+mundane splendour of Venice gave body and fulness to Sansovino's paganism,
+he missed the self-restraint and purity of taste peculiar to the studious
+shades of Florence. In his style, both architectural and sculptural, the
+neo-pagan sensuality of Italy expanded all its bloom.
+
+For the artist at this period a Greek myth and a Christian legend were all
+one. Both afforded the occasion for displaying technical skill in fluent
+forms, devoid of any but voluptuous feeling; while both might be
+subordinated to rich effects of decoration.[116] To this point the
+intellectual culture of the fifteenth century had brought the plastic arts
+of Italy, by a process similar to that which ended in the "Partus
+Virginis" of Sannazzaro. They were still indisputably vigorous, and
+working in accordance with the movement of the modern spirit. Yet the
+synthesis they attempted to effect between heathenism and Christianity, by
+a sheer effort of style, and by indifferentism, strikes us from the point
+of view of art alone, not reckoning religion or morality, as
+unsuccessful. Still, if it be childish on the one hand to deplore that the
+Christian earnestness of the earlier masters had failed, it would be even
+more ridiculous to complain that paganism had not been more entirely
+recovered. The double-mind of the Renaissance, the source of its weakness
+in art as in thought, could not be avoided, because humanity at this
+moment had to lose the mediaeval sincerity of faith, and to assimilate the
+spirit of a bygone civilisation. This, for better or for worse, was the
+phase through which the intellect of modern Europe was obliged to pass;
+and those who have confidence in the destinies of the human race, will not
+spend their strength in moaning over such shortcomings as the periods of
+transition bring inevitably with them. The student of Italian history may
+indeed more reasonably be allowed to question whether the arts, if left to
+follow their own development unchecked, might not have recovered from the
+confusion of the Renaissance and have entered on a stage of nobler
+activity through earnest and unaffected study of nature. But the
+enslavement of the country, together with the counter-Reformation,
+suspended the Renaissance in mid-career; and what remains of Italian art
+is incomplete. Besides, it must be borne in mind that the confusion of
+opinions consequent upon the clash of the modern with the ancient world,
+left no body of generally accepted beliefs to express; nor has the time
+even yet arrived for a settlement and synthesis that shall be favourable
+to the activity of the figurative arts.
+
+Sansovino himself was neither original nor powerful enough, to elevate the
+mixed motives of Renaissance sculpture by any lofty idealisation. To do
+that remained for Michael Angelo. The greatness of Michael Angelo consists
+in this--that while literature was sinking into the frivolity of Academies
+and the filth of the Bernesque "Capitoli," while the barefaced villanies
+of Aretino won him credit, while sensual magnificence formed the ideal of
+artists who were neither Greeks nor Christians, while Ariosto found no
+subject fitter for his genius than a glittering romance, he and he alone
+maintained the Dantesque dignity of the Italian intellect in his
+sculpture. Michael Angelo stands so far apart from other men, and is so
+gigantic a force for good and evil in the history of art, that to estimate
+his life and labour in relation to the Renaissance must form the subject
+of a separate chapter. For the present it is enough to observe that his
+immediate scholars, Raffaello da Montelupo, and Gian Angelo Montorsoli,
+caught little from their master but the mannerism of contorted form and
+agitated action. This mannerism, a blemish even in the strong work of
+Buonarroti, became ridiculous when adopted by men of feeble powers and
+passionless imagination. By straining the art of sculpture to its utmost
+limits, Michael Angelo expressed vehement emotions in marble; and the
+forced attitudes affected in his work had their value as significant of
+spiritual struggle. His imitators showed none of their master's sublime
+force, none of that _terribilità_ which made him unapproachable in social
+intercourse and inimitable in art. They merely fancied that dignity and
+beauty were to be achieved by placing figures in difficult postures,
+exaggerated muscular anatomy, and twisting the limbs of their models upon
+sections of ellipses in uncomfortable attitudes, till the whole of their
+work was writhen into uncouth lines. Buonarroti himself was not
+responsible for these results. He wrought out his own ideal with the
+firmness of a genius that obeys the law of its own nature, doing always
+what it must. That the decadence of sculpture into truculent bravado was
+independent of his direct influence, is further proved by the inefficiency
+of his contemporaries.
+
+Baccio Bandinelli and Bartolommeo Ammanati filled the squares of the
+Italian cities with statues of Hercules and Satyrs, Neptune and
+River-gods. We know not whether to select the vulgarity, the feebleness,
+or the pretentiousness of these pseudo-classical colossi for condemnation.
+They have nothing Greek about them but their names, their nakedness, and
+their association with myths, the significance whereof was never really
+felt by the sculptors. Some of Bandinelli's designs, it is true, are
+vigorous; but they are mere drawings from undraped peasants, life studies
+depicting the human animal. His "Hercules and Cacus," while it deserves
+all the sarcasm hurled at it by Cellini, proves that Bandinelli could not
+rise above the wrestling bout of a porter and a coal-heaver. Nor would it
+be possible to invent a motive less in accordance with Greek taste than
+the conceit of Ammanati's fountain at Castello, where Hercules by
+squeezing the body of Antaeus makes the drinking water of a city spout
+from a giant's mouth. Such pitiful misapplications of an art which is
+designed to elevate the commonplace of human form, and to render permanent
+the nobler qualities of physical existence, show how superficially and
+wrongly the antique spirit had been apprehended.
+
+Some years before his death Ammanati expressed in public his regret that
+he had made so many giants and satyrs, feeling that, by exhibiting forms
+of lust, brutality, and animalism to the gaze of his fellow-countrymen, he
+had sinned against the higher law revealed by Christianity. For a Greek
+artist to have spoken thus would have been impossible. The Faun, the
+Titan, and the Satyr had a meaning for him, which he sought to set forth
+in accordance with the semi-religious, semi-poetical traditions of his
+race; and when he was at work upon a myth of nature-forces, he well knew
+that at the other end of the scale, separated by no spiritual barrier, but
+removed to an almost infinite distance of refinement, Zeus, Phoebus, and
+Pallas claimed his loftier artistic inspiration. Ammanati's confession, on
+the contrary, betrays that schism between the conscience of Christianity
+and the lusts let loose by ill-assimilated sympathy with antique
+heathenism, which was a marked characteristic of the Renaissance. The
+coarser passions, held in check by ecclesiastical discipline, dared to
+emerge into the light of day under the supposed sanction of classical
+examples. What the Visconti and the Borgias practised in their secret
+chambers, the sculptors exposed in marble and the poets in verse. All
+alike, however, were mistaken in supposing that antique precedent
+sanctioned this efflorescence of immorality. No amount of Greek epigrams
+by Strato and Meleager, nor all the Hermaphrodites and Priapi of Rome, had
+power to annul the law of conduct established by the founders of
+Christianity, and ratified by the higher instincts of the Middle Ages. Nor
+again were artists justified before the bar of conscience in selecting the
+baser elements of Paganism for imitation, instead of aiming at Greek
+self-restraint and Roman strength of character. All this the men of the
+Renaissance felt when they listened to the voice within them. Their work,
+therefore, in so far as it pretended to be a reconstruction of the antique
+was false. The sensuality it shared in common with many Greek and Roman
+masterpieces, had ceased to be frank and in the true sense pagan. To shake
+off Christianity, and to revert with an untroubled conscience to the
+manners of a bygone age, was what they could not do.
+
+The errors I have attempted to characterise did not, however, prevent the
+better and more careful works of sculpture, executed in illustration of
+classical mythology, from having a true value. The "Perseus" of Cellini
+and some of Gian Bologna's statues belong to a class of aesthetic
+productions which show how much that is both original and excellent may be
+raised in the hotbed of culture.[117] They express a genuine moment of the
+Renaissance with vigour, and deserve to be ranked with the Latin poetry
+of Poliziano, Bembo, and Pontano. The worst that can be said of them is
+that their inspiration was factitious, and that their motives had been
+handled better in the age of Greek sincerity.
+
+Gian Bologna, born at Douai, but a Florentine by education, devoted
+himself almost exclusively to mythological sculpture. That he was a
+greater sculptor than his immediate predecessors will be affirmed by all
+who have studied his bronze "Mercury," the "Venus of Petraja," and the
+"Neptune" on the fountain of Bologna. Something of the genuine classic
+feeling had passed into his nature. The "Mercury" is not a reminiscence of
+any antique statue. It gives in bronze a faithful and spirited reading of
+Virgil's lines, and is conceived with artistic purity not unworthy of a
+good Greek period. The "Neptune" is something more than a muscular old
+man; and, in its place, it forms one of the most striking ornaments of
+Italy. It is worthy of remark that sculpture, in this stage, continued to
+be decorative. Fountains are among the most successful monuments of the
+late Renaissance. Even Montorsoli's fountain at Messina is in a high sense
+picturesquely beautiful.
+
+Casting a glance backward over the foregoing sketch of Italian sculpture,
+it will be seen that three distinct stages were traversed in the evolution
+of this art. The first may be called architectural, the second pictorial,
+the third neo-pagan. Defined by their artistic purposes, the first
+idealises Christian motives; the second is naturalistic; the third
+attempts an idealisation inspired by revived paganism. As far as the
+Renaissance is concerned, all three are moments in its history; though it
+was only during the third that the influences of the classical revival
+made themselves overwhelmingly felt. Niccola Pisano in the first stage
+marked a fresh point of departure for his art by a return to Graeco-Roman
+standards of the purest type then attainable, in combination with the
+study of nature. Giovanni Pisano effected a fusion between his father's
+manner and the Gothic style. The Pisan sculpture was wholly Christian; nor
+did it attempt to free itself from the service of architecture. Giotto
+opened the second stage by introducing new motives, employed by him with
+paramount mastery in painting. Under his influence the sculptors inclined
+to picturesque effects, and the direction thus given to sculpture lasted
+through the fifteenth century. For the rest, the style of these masters
+was distinguished by a fresh and charming naturalism and by rapid growth
+in technical processes. While assimilating much of the classical spirit,
+they remained on the whole Christian; and herein they were confirmed by
+the subjects they were chiefly called upon to treat, in the decoration of
+altars, pulpits, church façades, and tombs. The revived interest in
+antique literature widened their sympathies and supplied their fancy with
+new material; but there is no imitative formalism in their work. Its
+beauty consists in a certain immature blending of motives chosen almost
+indiscriminately from Christian and pagan mythology, vitalised by the
+imagination of the artist, and presented with the originality of true
+creative instinct. During the third stage the results of prolonged and
+almost exclusive attention to the classics, on the part of the Italians as
+a people, make themselves manifest. Collections of antiquities and
+libraries had been formed in the fifteenth century; the literary energies
+of the nation were devoted to the interpretation of Greek and Latin texts,
+and the manners of society affected paganism. At the same time a worldly
+Church and a corrupt hierarchy had done their utmost to enfeeble the
+spirit of Christianity. That art should prove itself sensitive to this
+phase of intellectual and social life was natural. Religious subjects were
+now treated by the sculptors with superficial formalism and cynical
+indifference, while all their ingenuity was bestowed upon providing pagan
+myths with new forms. How far they succeeded has been already made the
+matter of inquiry. The most serious condemnation of art in this third
+period is that it halted between two opinions, that it could not be
+sincere. But this double-mindedness, as I have tried to show, was
+necessary; and therefore to lament over it is weak. What the Renaissance
+achieved for the modern world was the liberation of the reason, the power
+of starting on a new career of progress. The false direction given to the
+art of sculpture at one moment of this intellectual revival may be
+deplored; and still more deplorable is the corresponding sensual
+debasement of the race who won for us the possibility of freedom. But the
+life of humanity is long and vigorous, and the philosopher of history
+knows well that the sum total of accomplishment at any time must be
+diminished by an unavoidable discount. The Renaissance, like a man of
+genius, had the defects of its qualities.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[56] _Sketches of the History of Christian Art_, vol. ii. p. 102.
+
+[57] Since I wrote the paragraph above, I have chanced to read Mr.
+Buskin's eloquent tirade against the modern sceptical school of critics
+in his "Mornings in Florence," _The Vaulted Book_, pp. 105, 106. With the
+spirit of it I thoroughly agree; feeling that, in the absence of solid
+evidence to the contrary, I would always rather accept sixteenth-century
+Italian tradition with Vasari, than reject it with German or English
+speculators of to-day. This does not mean that I wish to swear by Vasari,
+when he can be proved to have been wrong, but that I regard the present
+tendency to mistrust tradition, only because it is tradition, as in the
+highest sense uncritical.
+
+[58] See Appendix I., on the Pulpits of Pisa and Ravello.
+
+[59] The data is extremely doubtful. Were we to trust internal
+evidence--the evidence of style and handling--we should be inclined to
+name this not the earliest but the latest and ripest of Pisano's works.
+It may be suggested in passing that the form of the lunette was
+favourable to the composition by forcing a gradation in the figures from
+the centre to either side. There is an engraving of this bas-relief in
+Ottley's _Italian School of Design._
+
+[60] Rheims Cathedral, for example, was begun in 1211. Upon its western
+portals is the loveliest of Northern Gothic sculpture.
+
+[61] Antonio Filarete was commissioned, soon after 1431, by Eugenius IV.,
+to make the great gates of S. Peter's. The decorative framework
+represents a multitude of living creatures--snails, snakes, lizards,
+mice, butterflies, and birds--half hidden in foliage, together with the
+best known among Greek myths, the Rape of Proserpine, Diana and Actaeon,
+Europa and the Bull, the Labours of Hercules, &c. Such fables as the Fox
+and the Stork, the Fox and the Crow, and old stories like that of the
+death of Æschylus, are included in this medley. The monument of Paul III.
+is placed in the choir of S. Peter's. Giulia Bella was the mistress of
+Alexander VI., and a sister of the Farnese, who owed his cardinal's hat
+to her influence. To represent her as an allegory of Truth upon her
+brother's tomb might well pass for a grim satire. The Prudence opposite
+is said to be a portrait of the Pope's mother, Giovanna Gaëtani. She
+resembles nothing more than a duenna of the type of Martha in Goethe's
+Faust. Here, again, the allegory would point a scathing sarcasm, if we
+did not remember the naïveté of the Renaissance.
+
+[62] See above, Chapter II, Italian want of feeling for Gothic.
+
+[63] Having said so much about this pulpit of S. Andrea, I am sorry that
+I cannot refer the English reader to any accessible representation of it.
+For its sake alone, if for no other purpose, Pistoja is well worth a
+visit.
+
+[64] It was long believed that he died of eating poisoned figs.
+
+[65] See above, Footnote 16, for the original conception of this motive
+at Orvieto.
+
+[66] See _Il Duomo di Orvieto, descritto ed illustrato per Lodovico
+Luzi_, pp. 330-339.
+
+[67] See Luzi, pp. 317-328, and the first extant commission given in 1310
+to Maitani, which follows, pp. 328-330.
+
+[68] The whole series has been admirably engraved under the
+superintendence of Ludwig Grüner. Special attention may be directed to
+the groups of angels attendant on the Creator in His last day's work; to
+the "Adoration of the Shepherds," distinguished by tender and idyllic
+grace: and to the "Adoration of the Magi," marked no less by majesty. The
+dead breaking open the lids of their sarcophagi and rising to judgment
+are justly famous for spirited action.
+
+[69] In Gothic sculpture of an early date the Bible narrative is
+literally represented. God draws Eve from the open side of sleeping Adam.
+On the façade of Orvieto this motive is less altered than refined. The
+wound in Adam's side is visible, but Eve is coming from behind his
+sleeping body in obedience to the beckoning hand of her Creator. Ghiberti
+in the bronze gate of the Florentine Baptistery still further develops
+the poetic beauty of the motive. Angels lift Eve in the air above Adam,
+in whose side there is now no open wound, and sustain her face to face
+with God, who calls her into life. Della Quercia, on the façade of S.
+Petronio, confines himself to the creative act, expressed by the raised
+hand of the Maker, and the answering attitude of Eve; and this conception
+receives final treatment from Michael Angelo in the frescoes of the
+Sistine.
+
+[70] _Le Tre Porte del Battistero di San Giovanni di Firenze, incise ed
+illustrate_ (Firenze, 1821), contains outlines of all Andrea Pisano's and
+Ghiberti's work.
+
+[71] See above, Chapter I, Greek and Christian Ideals.
+
+[72] See above, Chapter I, Greek and Christian Ideals.
+
+[73] What Giotto himself was, as a designer for sculpture, is shown in
+the little reliefs upon the basement of his campanile.
+
+[74] What has previously been noted in the chapter upon architecture
+deserves repetition here--that the Italian style of building gave more
+scope to independent sculpture, owing to its preference for flat walls,
+and its rejection of multiplied niches, canopies, and so forth, than the
+Northern Gothic. Thus, however subordinated to architecture, sculpture in
+Italy still had more scope for self-assertion than in Germany or France.
+
+[75] See Perkins, _Italian Sculptors_, p. 109, for a description of the
+Arca di S. Agostino, which he assigns to Matteo and Bonino da Campione.
+This shrine, now in the Duomo, was made for the sacristy of S. Pietro in
+Cielo d'Oro, where it stood until the year 1832.
+
+[76] Bonino da Campione, the Milanese, who may have had a hand in the
+Arca di S. Agostino, carved the tomb of Can Signorio. That of Mastino II.
+was executed by another Milanese, Perino.
+
+[77] See Trucchi, _Poesie Italiane inedite_, vol. ii.
+
+[78] See the Illustrated work, _Il Tabernacolo della Madonna d'Or
+sammichele_, Firenze, 1851.
+
+[79] The weighty chapter in Alberti's _Treatise on Painting_, lib. iii.
+cap. 5, might be used to support this paragraph.
+
+[80] Quercia, born 1374; Ghiberti, 1378; Brunelleschi, 1379; Donatello,
+1386.
+
+[81] They are engraved in the work cited above, _Le Tre Porte, seconda
+Porta_, Tavole i. ii.
+
+[82] The bas-reliefs of S. Petronio were executed between 1425 and 1435.
+Those of the font in the chapel of S. John (not the lower church of S.
+John), at Siena, are ascribed to Quercia, and are in his manner; but when
+they were finished I do not know. They set forth six subjects from the
+story of Adam and Eve, with a compartment devoted to Hercules killing the
+Centaur Nessus, and another to Samson or Hercules and the Lion. The
+choice of subjects, affording scope for treatment of the nude, is
+characteristic; so is the energy of handling, though rude in detail. It
+may be worth while to notice here a similar series of reliefs upon the
+façade of the Colleoni Chapel at Bergamo, representing scenes from the
+story of Adam in conjunction with the labours of Hercules.
+
+[83] Ruskin's _Modern Painters_, vol. ii. chap, vii., Repose.
+
+[84] See Flaxman's _Lectures on Sculpture_, p. 310.
+
+[85] This criticism of the "Gate of Paradise" sounds even to the writer
+of it profane, and demands a palinode. Who, indeed, can affirm that he
+would wish the floating figure of Eve, or the three angels at Abraham's
+tent-door, other than they are?
+
+[86] See the _Commentaries of Ghiberti_, printed in vol. i. of Vasari
+(Lemonnier, 1846).
+
+[87] The patera is at South Kensington, the frieze at Florence.
+
+[88] As also the wooden Baptist in the Frari at Venice.
+
+[89] There is another "David," by Donatello, in marble; also in the
+Bargello, scarcely less stiff and ugly than the "Baptist."
+
+[90] The cast was published by the Arundel Society. The original belongs
+to Lord Elcho.
+
+[91] It has been suggested, with good show of reason, that Mantegna was
+largely indebted to these bas-reliefs for his lofty style.
+
+[92] This omits the statues of the Scaligers: but no mediaeval work aimed
+at equal animation. The antique bronze horses at Venice and the statue of
+Marcus Aurelius must have been in Donatello's mind.
+
+[93] The sculptor of a beautiful tomb erected for the Countess of
+Montorio and her infant daughter in the church of S. Bernardino at Aquila
+was probably Andrea dell' Aquila, a pupil of Donatello. See Perkins's
+_Italian Sculptors_, pp. 46, 47.
+
+[94] _Istoria della Vita e Fatti dell' eccellentissimo Capitano di guerra
+Bartolommeo Colleoni_, scritta per Pietro Spino. Republished, 1859.
+
+[95] See Vol. I., _Age of the Despots_, p. 310, note 2.
+
+[96] Crowe and Cavalcaselle, vol. ii. chap, xvi., may be consulted as to
+the several claims of the two brothers.
+
+[97] His bas-reliefs on Giotto's campanile of Grammar, Astronomy,
+Geometry, Plato, Aristotle, &c., are anterior to 1445; and even about
+this date there is uncertainty, some authorities fixing it at 1435.
+
+[98] _Purg._ x. 37, and xi. 68.
+
+[99] Among the very best works of the later Robbian school may be cited
+the frieze upon the façade of the Ospedale del Ceppo at Pistoja,
+representing in varied colour, and with graceful vivacity, the Seven Acts
+of Mercy. Date about 1525.
+
+[100] He calls himself Agostinus Florentine Lapicida on his façade of the
+Oratory of S. Bernardino.
+
+[101] See especially a roundel in the Bargello, and the altar-piece in
+the church of Monte Oliveto at Naples. Those who wish to understand
+Rossellino should study him in the latter place.
+
+[102] In the church of Samminiato, near Florence.
+
+[103] _Vite di Uomini Illustri_, pp. 152-157.
+
+[104] These tombs in the Badia were erected for Count Ugo, Governor of
+Tuscany under Otho II., and for Messer Bernardo Giugni. Mino also made
+the tomb for Pope Paul II., parts of which are preserved in the Grotte of
+S. Peter's. At Rome he carved a tabernacle for S. Maria in Trastevere,
+and at Volterra a ciborium for the Baptistery--one of his most
+sympathetic productions. The altars in the Baglioni Chapel of S. Pietro
+Cassinense at Perugia, in S. Ambrogio at Florence, and in the cathedral
+of Fiesole, and the pulpit in the Duomo at Prato, may be mentioned among
+his best works.
+
+[105] Besides Civitali's altar of S. Regulus, and the tomb of Pietro da
+Noceto already mentioned, Bernardo Rossellino's monument to Lionardo
+Bruni, and Desiderio's monument to Carlo Marsuppini in S. Croce at
+Florence, may be cited as eminent examples of Tuscan sepulchres.
+
+[106] The wooden statue of the Magdalen in Santa Trinità at Florence
+shows Desiderio's approximation to the style of his master. She is a
+careworn and ascetic saint, with the pathetic traces of great beauty in
+her emaciated face.
+
+[107] This bust is in the Palazzo Strozzi at Florence.
+
+[108] So Giovanni Santi, Raphael's father, described Desiderio da
+Settignano.
+
+[109] The following story is told about Benedetto's youth. He made two
+large inlaid chests or _cassoni_, adorned with all the skill of a worker
+in tarsia, or wood-mosaic, and carried these with him to King Matthias
+Corvinus, of Hungary. Part of his journey was performed by sea. On
+arriving and unpacking his chests, he found that the sea-damp had unglued
+the fragile wood-mosaic, and all his work was spoiled. This determined
+him to practise the more permanent art of sculpture. See Perkins, vol. i.
+p. 228.
+
+[110] For further description of the sculpture at Rimini, I may refer to
+my _Sketches in Italy and Greece_, pp. 250-252. For the student of
+Italian art, who has no opportunity of visiting Rimini, it is greatly to
+be regretted that these reliefs have never yet even in photography been
+reproduced. The palace of Duke Frederick at Urbino was designed by
+Luziano, a Dalmatian architect, and continued by Baccio Pontelli, a
+Florentine. The reliefs of dancing Cupids, white on blue ground, with
+wings and hair gilt, and the children holding pots of roses and
+gilly-flowers, in one of its great rooms, may be selected for special
+mention. Ambrogio or Ambrogino da Milano, none of whose handiwork is
+found in his native district, and who may therefore be supposed to have
+learned and practised his art elsewhere, was the sculptor of these truly
+genial reliefs.
+
+[111] See, for example, the remarkable bas-relief of the Doge Lionardo
+Loredano engraved by Perkins, _Italian Sculptors_, p. 201.
+
+[112] Another Modenese, Antonio Begarelli, born in 1479, developed this
+art of the _plasticatore_, with quite as much pictorial impressiveness,
+and in a style of stricter science, than his predecessor Il Modanino. His
+masterpieces are the "Deposition from the Cross" in S. Francesco, and the
+"Pietà" in S. Pietro, of his native city.
+
+[113] The name of this great master is variously written--Giovanni
+Antonio Amadeo, or Omodeo, or degli Amadei, or de' Madeo, or a
+Madeo--pointing possibly to the town Madeo as his native place. Through a
+long life he worked upon the fabric of the Milanese Duomo, the Certosa of
+Pavia, and the Chapel of Colleoni at Bergamo. To him we owe the general
+design of the façade of the Certosa and the cupola of the Duomo of Milan.
+For the details of his work and an estimate of his capacity, see Perkins,
+_Italian Sculptors_, pp. 127-137.
+
+[114] This statue was originally intended for a chapel built and endowed
+by Colleoni at Basella, near Bergamo. When he determined to erect his
+chapel in S. Maria Maggiore at Bergamo, he entrusted the execution of
+this new work to Amadeo, and the monument of Medea was subsequently
+placed there.
+
+[115] See above, p. 113. I have spelt the name _Sansovino_, when applied
+to Jacopo Tatti, in accordance with time-honoured usage.
+
+[116] To multiply instances is tedious; but notice in this connection the
+Hermaphroditic statue of S. Sebastian at Orvieto, near the western door.
+It is a fair work of Lo Scalza.
+
+[117] This brief allusion to Cellini must suffice for the moment, as I
+intend to treat of him in a separate chapter.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+PAINTING
+
+Distribution of Artistic Gifts in Italy--Florence and Venice
+--Classification by Schools--Stages in the Evolution of Painting--Cimabue
+--The Rucellai Madonna--Giotto--His widespread Activity--The Scope of his
+Art--Vitality--Composition--Colour--Naturalism--Healthiness--Frescoes at
+Assisi and Padua--Legend of S. Francis--The Giotteschi--Pictures of the
+Last Judgment--Orcagna in the Strozzi Chapel--Ambrogio Lorenzetti at
+Pisa--Dogmatic Theology--Cappella degli Spagnuoli--Traini's "Triumph,
+of S. Thomas Aquinas"--Political Doctrine expressed in Fresco--Sala della
+Pace at Siena--Religious Art in Siena and Perugia--The Relation of the
+Giottesque Painters to the Renaissance.
+
+
+It is the duty of the historian of painting to trace the beginnings of art
+in each of the Italian communities, to differentiate their local styles,
+and to explain their mutual connections. For the present generation this
+work is being done with all-sufficient thoroughness and accuracy.[118] The
+historian of culture, on the other hand, for whom the arts form one
+important branch of intellectual activity, may dispense with these
+detailed inquiries, and may endeavour to seize the more general outlines
+of the subject. He need not weigh in balances the claims of rival cities
+to priority, nor hamper his review of national progress by discussing the
+special merits of the several schools. Still there are certain broad facts
+about the distribution of artistic gifts in Italy which it is necessary to
+bear in mind. However much we may desire to treat of painting as a phase
+of national and not of merely local life, the fundamental difficulty of
+Italian history, its complexity and variety, owing to the subdivisions of
+the nation into divers states, must here as elsewhere be acknowledged. To
+deny that each of the Italian centres had its own strong personality in
+art--that painting, as practised in Genoa or Naples, differed from the
+painting of Ferrara or Urbino--would be to contradict a law that has been
+over and over again insisted upon already in these volumes.
+
+The broad outlines of the subject can be briefly stated. Surveying the map
+of Italy, we find that we may eliminate from our consideration the
+north-western and the southern provinces. Not from Piedmont nor from
+Liguria, not from Rome nor from the extensive kingdom of Naples, does
+Italian painting take its origin, or at any period derive important
+contributions.[119] Lombardy, with the exception of Venice, is
+comparatively barren of originative elements.[120] To Tuscany, to Umbria,
+and to Venice, roughly speaking, are due the really creative forces of
+Italian painting; and these three districts were marked by strong
+peculiarities. In art, as in politics, Florence and Venice exhibit
+distinct types of character.[121] The Florentines developed fresco, and
+devoted their genius to the expression of thought by scientific design.
+The Venetians perfected oil-painting, and set forth the glory of the world
+as it appeals to the imagination and the senses. The art of Florence may
+seem to some judges to savour over-much of intellectual dryness; the art
+of Venice, in the apprehension of another class of critics, offers
+something over-much of material richness. More allied to the Tuscan than
+to the Venetian spirit, the Umbrian masters produced a style of genuine
+originality. The cities of the Central Apennines owed their specific
+quality of religious fervour to the influences emanating from Assisi, the
+head-quarters of the _cultus_ of S. Francis. This pietism, nowhere else so
+paramount, except for a short period in Siena, constitutes the
+individuality of Umbria.
+
+With regard to the rest of Italy, the old custom of speaking about schools
+and places, instead of signalising great masters, has led to
+misconception, by making it appear that local circumstances were more
+important than the facts justify. We do not find elsewhere what we find in
+Tuscany, in Umbria, and in Venice--a definite quality, native to the
+district, shared through many generations by all its painters, and
+culminating in a few men of commanding genius. When, for instance, we
+speak of the School of Milan, what we mean is the continuation through
+Lionardo da Vinci and his pupils of the Florentine tradition, as modified
+by him and introduced into the Lombard capital. That a special style was
+developed by Luini, Ferrari, and other artists of the Milanese duchy, so
+that their manner differs essentially from that of Parma and Cremona, does
+not invalidate the importance of this fact about its origin. The name of
+Roman School, again, has been given to Raphael and Michael Angelo together
+with their pupils. The truth is that Rome, for one brief period, during
+the pontificates of Julius and Leo, was the focus of Italian intellect.
+Allured by the patronage of the Papal Curia, not only artists, but
+scholars and men of letters, flocked from all the cities of Italy to
+Rome, where they found a nobler sphere for the exercise of their faculties
+than elsewhere. But Rome, while she lent her imperial quality of grandeur
+to the genius of her aliens, was in no sense originative. Rome produced no
+first-rate master from her own children, if we except Giulio Romano. The
+title of originality is due rather to Padua, the birthplace of Mantegna,
+or to Parma, the city of Correggio, whose works display independence of
+either Florentine or Venetian traditions. Yet these great masters were
+isolated, neither expressing in any definite form the character of their
+districts, nor founding a succession of local artists. Their influence was
+incontestably great, but widely diffused. Bologna and Ferrara, Brescia and
+Bergamo, Cremona and Verona, have excellent painters; and it is not
+difficult to show that in each of these cities art assumed specific
+characters. Yet the interest of the schools in these towns is due mainly
+to the varied influences brought to bear upon them from Venice, Umbria,
+and Milan. In other words they are affiliated, each according to its
+geographical position, to the chief originative centres.
+
+What I have advanced in the foregoing paragraphs is not meant for a
+polemic against the time-honoured division of Italian painters into local
+schools, but for a justification of my own proposed method of treatment.
+Having undertaken to deal with painting as the paramount art-product of
+the Renaissance, it will be my object to point out the leading
+characteristics of aesthetic culture in Italy, rather than to dwell upon
+its specific differences. The Venetian painters I intend to reserve for a
+separate chapter, devoting this and the two next to the general history of
+the art as developed in Tuscany and propagated by Tuscan influences.[122]
+In pursuing this plan I shall endeavour to show how the successive stages
+in the evolution of Italian painting corresponded to similar stages in the
+history of the Renaissance. Beginning as the handmaid of the Church, and
+stimulated by the enthusiasm of the two great popular monastic orders,
+painting was at first devoted to embodying the thoughts of mediaeval
+Christianity. In proportion as the painters fortified themselves by study
+of the natural world, their art became more secular. Mysticism gave way to
+realism. It was felt that much beside religious sentiment was worthy of
+expression. At the same time, about the year 1440, this process of
+secularisation was hastened by the influences of the classical revival,
+renewing an interest in the past life of humanity, and stirring a zeal for
+science. The painters, on the one hand, now aimed at accurate delineation
+of actual things: good perspective, correct drawing, sound portraiture,
+occupied their attention, to the exclusion of more purely spiritual
+motives. On the other hand they conceived an admiration for the fragments
+of the newly discovered antiques, and felt the plastic beauty of Hellenic
+legends. It is futile to attempt, as M. Rio has done, to prove that this
+abandonment of the religious sphere of earlier art was for painting a
+plain decline from good to bad, or to make the more or less of spiritual
+feeling in a painter's style the test of his degree of excellence; nor
+can we by any sophistries be brought to believe that the Popes of the
+fifteenth century were pastoral protectors of solely Christian arts. The
+truth is, that in the Church, in politics, and in society, the fifteenth
+century witnessed a sensible decrease of religious fervour, and a very
+considerable corruption of morality. Painting felt this change; and the
+secularisation, which was inevitable, passed onward into paganism. Yet the
+art itself cannot be said to have suffered, when on the threshold of the
+sixteenth century stand the greatest painters whom the world has
+known--neither Catholics nor Heathens, but, in their strength of full
+accomplished art and science, human. After Italy, in the course of that
+century, had been finally enslaved, then, and not till then, painting
+suffered from the general depression of the national genius. The great
+luminaries were extinguished one by one, till none were left but Michael
+Angelo in Rome, and Tintoret in Venice. The subsequent history of Italian
+painting is occupied with its revival under the influences of the
+counter-Reformation, when a new religious sentiment, emasculated and
+ecstatic, was expressed in company with crude naturalism and cruel
+sensualism by Bolognese and Neapolitan painters.
+
+I need scarcely repeat the tale of Cimabue's picture, visited by Charles
+of Anjou, and borne in triumph through the streets with trumpeters,
+beneath a shower of garlands, to S. Maria Novella.[123] Yet this was the
+birthday festival of nothing less than what the world now values as
+Italian painting. In this public act of joy the people of Florence
+recognised and paid enthusiastic honour to the art arisen among them from
+the dead. If we rightly consider the matter, it is not a little wonderful
+that a whole community should thus have hailed the presence in their midst
+of a new spirit of power and beauty. It proves the widespread sensibility
+of the Florentines to things of beauty, and shows the sympathy which,
+emanating from the people, was destined to inspire and brace the artist
+for his work.[124]
+
+In a dark transept of S. Maria Novella, raised by steps above the level of
+the church, still hangs this famous "Madonna" of the Rucellai--not far,
+perhaps, from the spot where Boccaccio's youths and maidens met that
+Tuesday morning in the year of the great plague; nor far, again, from
+where the solitary woman, beautiful beyond belief, conversed with
+Machiavelli on the morning of the first of May in 1527.[125] We who can
+call to mind the scenes that picture has looked down upon--we who have
+studied the rise and decadence of painting throughout Italy from this
+beginning even to the last work of the latest Bolognese--may do well to
+visit it with reverence, and to ponder on the race of mighty masters whose
+lineage here takes its origin.
+
+Cimabue did not free his style from what are called Byzantine or
+Romanesque mannerisms. To unpractised eyes his saints and angels, with
+their stiff draperies and angular attitudes, though they exhibit
+stateliness and majesty, belong to the same tribe as the grim mosaics and
+gaunt frescoes of his predecessors. It is only after careful comparison
+that we discover, in this picture of the Rucellai for example, a
+distinctly fresh endeavour to express emotion and to depict life. The
+outstretched arms of the infant Christ have been copied from nature, not
+merely borrowed from tradition. The six kneeling angels display variety of
+attitude suited to several shades of devout affection and adoring service.
+The head of the Madonna, heavy as it is and conventional in type, still
+strives to represent maternal affection mingled with an almost melancholy
+reverence. Prolonging our study, we are led to ask whether the painter
+might not have painted more freely had he chosen--whether, in fact, he was
+not bound down to the antique mode of presentation consecrated by devout
+tradition. This question occurs with even greater force before the
+wall-paintings ascribed to Cimabue in the church of S. Francis at Assisi.
+
+It remained for Giotto Bondone, born at Vespignano in 1276, just at the
+date of Niccola Pisano's death, to carry painting in his lifetime even
+further than the Pisan sculptor had advanced the sister art. Cimabue, so
+runs a legend luckily not yet discredited, found the child Giotto among
+the sheep-folds on the solemn Tuscan hill-side, drawing with boyish art
+the outline of a sheep upon a stone.[126] The master recognised his
+talent, and took him from his father's cottage to the Florentine
+_bottega_, much as young Haydn was taken by Renter to S. Stephen's at
+Vienna. Gifted with a large and comprehensive intellect, capable of
+sustained labour, and devoted with the unaffected zeal of a good craftsman
+to his art, Giotto in the course of his long career filled Italy with work
+that taught succeeding centuries of painters. As we travel from Padua in
+the north, where his Arena Chapel sets forth the legend of Mary and the
+life of Christ in a series of incomparable frescoes, southward to Naples,
+where he adorned the convent of S. Chiara, we meet with Giotto in almost
+every city. The "Passion of our Lord" and the "Allegories of S. Francis"
+were painted by him at Assisi. S. Peter's at Borne still shows his mosaic
+of the "Ship of the Church." Florence raises his wonderful bell-tower,
+that lily among campanili, to the sky; and preserves two chapels of S.
+Croce, illuminated by him with paintings from the stories of S. Francis
+and S. John. In the chapel of the Podestà he drew the portraits of Dante,
+Brunetto Latini, and Charles of Valois. And these are but a tithe of his
+productions. Nothing, indeed, in the history of art is more remarkable
+than the fertility of this originative genius, no less industrious in
+labour than fruitful of results for men who followed him. The sound common
+sense, the genial temper, and the humour of the man, as we learn to know
+him in tales made current by Vasari and the novelists, help to explain how
+he achieved so much, with energy so untiring and with excellence so even.
+
+It is no exaggeration to say that Giotto and his scholars, within the
+space of little more than half a century, painted out upon the walls of
+the churches and public palaces of Italy every great conception of the
+Middle Ages. And this they achieved without ascetic formalism,
+energetically, but always reverently, aiming at expressing life and
+dramatising Scripture history. The tale told about Giotto's first essay in
+drawing might be chosen as a parable: he was not found beneath a church
+roof tracing a mosaic, but on the open mountain, trying to draw the
+portrait of the living thing committed to his care.
+
+What, therefore, Giotto gave to art was, before all things else, vitality.
+His Madonnas are no longer symbols of a certain phase of pious awe, but
+pictures of maternal love. The Bride of God suckles her divine infant with
+a smile, watches him playing with a bird, or stretches out her arms to
+take him when he turns crying from the hands of the circumcising priest.
+By choosing incidents like these from real home-life, Giotto, through his
+painting, humanised the mysteries of faith, and brought them close to
+common feeling. Nor was the change less in his method than his motives.
+Before his day painting had been without composition, without charm of
+colour, without suggestion of movement or the play of living energy. He
+first knew how to distribute figures in the given space with perfect
+balance, and how to mass them together in animated groups agreeable to the
+eye. He caught varied and transient shades of emotion, and expressed them
+by the posture of the body and the play of feature. The hues of morning
+and of evening served him. Of all painters he was most successful in
+preserving the clearness and the light of pure, well-tempered colours. His
+power of telling a story by gesture and action is unique in its peculiar
+simplicity. There are no ornaments or accessories in his pictures. The
+whole force of the artist has been concentrated on rendering the image of
+the life conceived by him. Relying on his knowledge of human nature, and
+seeking only to make his subject intelligible, no painter is more
+unaffectedly pathetic, more unconsciously majestic. While under the
+influence of his genius, we are sincerely glad that the requisite science
+for clever imitation of landscape and architectural backgrounds was not
+forthcoming in his age. Art had to go through a toilsome period of
+geometrical and anatomical pedantry, before it could venture, in the
+frescoes of Michael Angelo and Raphael, to return with greater wealth of
+knowledge on a higher level to the divine simplicity of its childhood in
+Giotto.
+
+In the drawing of the figure Giotto was surpassed by many meaner artists
+of the fifteenth century. Nor had he that quality of genius which selects
+a high type of beauty, and is scrupulous to shun the commonplace. The
+faces of even his most sacred personages are often almost vulgar. In his
+choice of models for saints and apostles we already trace the Florentine
+instinct for contemporary portraiture. Yet, though his knowledge of
+anatomy was defective, and his taste was realistic, Giotto solved the
+great problem of figurative art far better than more learned and
+fastidious painters. He never failed to make it manifest that what he
+meant to represent was living. Even to the non-existent he gave the
+semblance of reality. We cannot help believing in his angels leaning
+waist-deep from the blue sky, wringing their hands in agony above the
+Cross, pacing like deacons behind Christ when He washes the feet of His
+disciples, or sitting watchful and serene upon the empty sepulchre. He
+was, moreover, essentially a fresco-painter, working with rapid decision
+on a large scale, aiming at broad effects, and willing to sacrifice
+subtlety to clearness of expression. The health of his whole nature and
+his robust good sense are everywhere apparent in his solid, concrete,
+human work of art. There is no trace of mysticism, no ecstatic piety,
+nothing morbid or hysterical, in his imagination. Imbuing whatever he
+handled with the force and freshness of actual existence, Giotto
+approached the deep things of the Christian faith and the legend of S.
+Francis in the spirit of a man bent simply on realising the objects of his
+belief as facts. His allegories of "Poverty," "Chastity," and "Obedience,"
+at Assisi, are as beautiful and powerfully felt as they are carefully
+constructed. Yet they conceal no abstruse spiritual meaning, but are
+plainly painted "for the poor laity of love to read." The artist poet who
+coloured the virginal form of Poverty, with the briars beneath her feet
+and the roses blooming round her forehead, proved by his well-known
+_canzone_ that he was free from monastic Quixotism, and took a practical
+view of the value of worldly wealth.[127] His homely humour saved him from
+the exaltation and the childishness that formed the weakness of the
+Franciscan revival. By the same firm grasp upon reality he created more
+than mere abstractions in his _chiaroscuro_ figures of the virtues and
+vices at Padua. Fortitude and Justice, Faith and Envy, are gifted by him
+with a real corporeal existence. They seem fit to play their parts with
+other concrete personalities upon the stage of this world's history.
+Giotto in truth possessed a share of that power which belonged to the
+Greek sculptors. He embodies myths in physical forms, adequate to their
+intellectual meaning. This was in part the secret of the influence he
+exercised over the sculptors of the second period;[128] and had the
+conditions of the age been favourable to such development, some of the
+allegorical types created by him might have passed into the Pantheon of
+popular worship as deities incarnate.
+
+The birth of Italian painting is closely connected with the religious life
+of the Italians. The building of the church of S. Francis at Assisi gave
+it the first great impulse; and to the piety aroused by S. Francis
+throughout Italy, but mostly in the valleys of the Apennines, it owed its
+animating spirit in the fourteenth century. The church of Assisi is
+double. One structure of nave, and choir, and transept, is imposed upon
+another; and the walls of both, from floor to coping-stone, are covered
+with fresco-painted pictures taking here the place occupied by mosaic in
+such churches as the cathedral of Monreale, or by coloured glass in the
+northern cathedrals of the pointed style. Many of these frescoes date from
+years before the birth of Giotto. Giunta the Pisan, Gaddo Gaddi, and
+Cimabue, are supposed to have worked there, painfully continuing or feebly
+struggling to throw off the decadent traditions of a dying art. In their
+school Giotto laboured, and modern painting arose with the movement of new
+life beneath his brush. Here, pondering in his youth upon the story of
+Christ's suffering, and in his later manhood on the virtues of S. Francis
+and his vow, he learned the secret of giving the semblance of flesh and
+blood reality to Christian thought. His achievement was nothing less than
+this. The Creation, the Fall, the Redemption of the World, the moral
+discipline of man, the Judgment, and the final state of bliss or
+misery--all these he quickened into beautiful and breathing forms. Those
+were noble days, when the painter had literally acres of walls given him
+to cover; when the whole belief of Christendom, grasped by his own faith,
+and firmly rooted in the faith of the people round him, as yet unimpaired
+by alien emanations from the world of classic culture, had to be set forth
+for the first time in art. His work was then a Bible, a compendium of
+grave divinity and human history, a book embracing all things needful for
+the spiritual and the civil life of man. He spoke to men who could not
+read, for whom there were no printed pages, but whose heart received his
+teaching through the eye. Thus painting was not then what it is now, a
+decoration of existence, but a potent and efficient agent in the education
+of the race. Such opportunities do not occur twice in the same age. Once
+in Greece for the pagan world; once in Italy for the modern world;--that
+must suffice for the education of the human race.
+
+Like Niccola Pisano, Giotto not only founded a school in his native city,
+but spread his manner far and wide over Italy, so that the first period of
+the history of painting is the Giottesque. The Gaddi of Florence,
+Giottino, Puccio Capanna, the Lorenzetti of Siena, Spinello of Arezzo,
+Andrea Orcagna, Domenico Veneziano, and the lesser artists of the Pisan
+Campo Santo, were either formed or influenced by him. To give an account
+of the frescoes of these painters would be to describe how the religious,
+social, and philosophical conceptions of the fourteenth century found
+complete expression in form and colour. By means of allegory and pictured
+scene they drew the portrait of the Middle Age in Italy, performing
+jointly and in combination with the followers of Niccola Pisano what
+Dante had done singly by his poetry.
+
+It has often been remarked that the drama of the life beyond this
+world--its prologue in the courts of death, the tragedy of judgment, and
+the final state of bliss or misery prepared for souls--preoccupied the
+mind of the Italians at the close of the Middle Ages. Every city had its
+pictorial representation of the "Dies Irae;" and within this framework the
+artist was free to set forth his philosophy of human nature, adding such
+touches of satire or admonition as suited his own temper or the
+circumstances of the place for which he worked. Dante's poem has
+immortalised this moment of Italian consciousness, when the belief in
+another world was used to intensify the emotions of this life--when the
+inscrutable darkness toward which men travel became for them a black and
+polished mirror reflecting with terrible luminousness the events of the
+present and the past. So familiar had the Italians become with the theme
+of death artistically treated, that they did not shrink from acted
+pageants of the tragedy of Hell. Giovanni Villani tells us that in 1304
+the companies and clubs of pleasure, formed for making festival throughout
+the town of Florence on the 1st of May, contended with each other for the
+prize of novelty and rarity in sports provided for the people. "Among the
+rest, the Borgo S. Friano had it cried about the streets, that whoso
+wished for news from the other world, should find himself on Mayday on the
+bridge Carraja or the neighbouring banks of Arno. And in Arno they
+contrived stages upon boats and various small craft, and made the
+semblance and figure of Hell there with flames and other pains and
+torments, with men dressed as demons horrible to see; and others had the
+shape of naked souls; and these they gave unto those divers tortures with
+exceeding great crying and groaning and confusion, the which seemed
+hateful and appalling unto eyes and ears. The novelty of the sport drew
+many citizens, and the bridge Carraja, then of wood, was so crowded that
+it brake in several places and fell with the folk upon it, whereby were
+many killed and drowned, and many were disabled; and as the crier had
+proclaimed, so now in death went much folk to learn news of the other
+world."
+
+Such being the temper of the people, we find that some of the greatest
+works of art in this age were paintings of Death and Hell, Heaven and
+Judgment. Orcagna, in the Strozzi Chapel of S. Maria Novella, set forth
+these scenes with a wonderful blending of beauty and grotesque invention.
+In the treatment of the Inferno he strove to delineate the whole geography
+of Dante's first _cantica_, tracing the successive circles and introducing
+the various episodes commemorated by the poet. Interesting as this work
+may be for the illustration of the "Divine Comedy" as understood by
+Dante's immediate successors, we turn from it with a sense of relief to
+admire the saints and angels ranged in goodly row, "each burning upward to
+his point of bliss" whereby the painter has depicted Paradise. Early
+Italian art has nothing more truly beautiful to offer than the white-robed
+Madonna kneeling at the judgment seat of Christ.[129]
+
+It will be felt by every genuine student of art that if Orcagna painted
+these frescoes in S. Maria Novella, whereof there is no doubt, he could
+not have executed the wall-paintings in the Campo Santo at Pisa attributed
+to him by Vasari. To what artists or artist we owe those three grave and
+awful panels, may still be regarded an open question.[130] At the end of
+the southern wall of the cemetery, exposed to a cold and equal north light
+from the cloister windows, these great compositions, after the lapse of
+five centuries, bring us face to face with the most earnest thoughts of
+mediaeval Christianity. Their main purpose seems to be to illustrate the
+advantage of the ascetic over the secular mode of life, and to school men
+into living with the fear of death before their eyes. The first displays
+the solitary vigils, self-imposed penances, cruel temptations, firm
+endurance, and beatific visions of the anchorites in the Thebaid. The
+second is devoted to the triumph of Death over the pomp, strength, wealth,
+and beauty of the world. The third reveals a grimly realistic and yet
+awfully imaginative vision of judgment, such as it has rarely been granted
+to a painter to conceive. Thus to the awakening soul of the Italians, on
+the threshold of the modern era, with the sonnets of Petrarch and the
+stories of Boccaccio sounding in their memories, this terrible master
+presented the three saddest phantoms of the Middle Ages--the spectre of
+death omnipotent, the solitude of the desert as the only refuge from a
+sinful and doomed world, the dread of Divine justice inexorable and
+inevitable. In those piles of the promiscuous and abandoned dead, those
+fiends and angels poised in mid-air struggling for souls, those blind and
+mutilated beggars vainly besieging Death with prayers and imprecations for
+deliverance, while she descends in her robe of woven wire to mow down with
+her scythe the knights and ladies in their garden of delight; again in
+those horses snuffing at the open graves, those countesses and princes
+face to face with skeletons, those serpents coiling round the flesh of
+what was once fair youth or maid, those multitudes of guilty men and women
+trembling beneath the trump of the archangel--tearing their cheeks, their
+hair, their breasts in agony, because they see Hell through the
+prison-bars, and hear the raging of its fiends, and feel the clasp upon
+their wrists and ankles of clawed hairy demon hands; in all this terrific
+amalgamation of sinister and tragic ideas, vividly presented, full of
+coarse dramatic power, and intensified by faith in their material reality,
+the Lorenzetti brethren, if theirs be indeed the hands that painted here,
+summed up the nightmares of the Middle Age and bequeathed an ever
+memorable picture of its desolate preoccupations to the rising world. They
+have called to their aid poetry, and history, and legend. Boccaccio
+supplies them with the garden scene of youths and damsels dancing among
+roses, while the plague is at their gates, and death is in the air above.
+From Petrarch they have borrowed the form and mystic robe of Death
+herself[131]. Uguccione della Faggiuola has sat for the portrait of the
+Captain who must quail before the terrors of the tomb, and Castruccio
+Castracane is the strong man cut off in the blossom of his age. The
+prisons of the Visconti have disgorged their victims, cast adrift with
+maiming that makes life unendurable but does not hasten death.[132] The
+lazar houses and the charnels have been ransacked for forms of grisly
+decay. Thus the whole work is not merely "an hieroglyphical and shadowed
+lesson" of ascetic philosophy; it is also a realisation of mediaeval life
+in its cruellest intensity and most uncompromising truth. For mere beauty
+these painters had but little regard.[133] Their distribution of the
+subjects chosen for treatment on each panel shows, indeed, a keen sense
+for the value of dramatic contrast and a masterly power of varying while
+combining the composition. Their chief aim, however, is to produce the
+utmost realism of effect, to translate the poignancy of passion, the dread
+certainty of doom, into forms of unmistakable fidelity. Therefore they do
+not shrink from prosaic and revolting details. The knight who has to hold
+his nose above the open grave, the lady who presses her cheek against her
+hand with a spasm of distress, the horse who pricks his ears and snorts
+with open nostrils, the grooms who start aside like savage creatures, all
+suggest the loathsomeness of death, its physical repulsiveness. In the
+"Last Judgment" the same kind of dramatic force is used to heighten a
+sublime conception. The crouching attitude and the shrouded face of the
+Archangel Raphael, whose eyes alone are visible above the hand that he has
+thrust forth from his cloak to hide the grief he feels, prove more
+emphatically than any less realistic motive could have done, how
+terrible, even for the cherubic beings to whose guardianship the human
+race has been assigned, will be the trumpet of the wrath of God.[134]
+Studying these frescoes, we cannot but reflect what nerves, what brains,
+what hearts encased in triple brass the men who thought and felt thus must
+have possessed. They make us comprehend not merely the stern and savage
+temper of the Middle Ages, but the intense and fiery ebullition of the
+Renaissance, into which, as by a sudden liberation, so much imprisoned
+pent-up force was driven.
+
+A different but scarcely less important phase of mediaeval thought is
+imaged in the frescoes of the Cappella degli Spagnuoli in S. Maria
+Novella.[135] Dogmatic theology is here in the ascendant. While S. Francis
+bequeathed a legend of singular suavity and beauty, overflowing with the
+milk of charity and mildness, to the Church, S. Dominic assumed the
+attitude of the saint militant and orthodox. Dante's words about him--
+
+                         L'amoroso drudo[136]
+    Della fede Cristiana, il santo atleta,
+    Benigno a' suoi, ed a' nemici crudo,
+
+omit nothing that is needed to characterise the impression produced upon
+the Christian world by this remorseless foe of heresy, this champion of
+the faith who dealt in butcheries and burnings. S. Francis taught love; S.
+Dominic taught wrath: and both, perhaps, were needed for the safety of the
+mediaeval Church--the one by resuscitating the spirit of the Gospels, the
+other by resisting the intrusion of alien ideals ere the time for their
+triumph had arrived. What the painters of these frescoes undertook to
+delineate for the Dominicans of Florence, was the fabric of society
+sustained and held together by the action of inquisitors and doctors
+issued from their order. The Pope with his Cardinals, the Emperor with his
+Council, represent the two chief forces of Christendom, as conceived by
+the mediaeval jurists and the school of Dante. Seated on thrones, they are
+ready to rise in defence of Holy Church, symbolised by a picture of S.
+Maria del Fiore. At their feet the black and white hounds of the Dominican
+order--_Domini canes_, according to the monkish pun--are hunting heretical
+wolves. Opposite this painting is the apotheosis of S. Thomas Aquinas.
+Beneath the footstool of this "dumb ox of Sicily," as he was called,
+grovel the heresiarchs--Arius, Sabellius, Averroes. At again a lower
+level, as though supporting the saint on either hand, are ranged seven
+sacred and seven profane sciences, each with its chief representative.
+Thus Rhetoric and Cicero, Civil Law and Justinian, Speculative Theology
+and the Areopagite, Practical Theology and Peter Lombard, Geometry and
+Euclid, Arithmetic and Abraham, are grouped together. It will be seen
+that the whole learning of the Middle Age--its philosophy as well as its
+divinity--is here combined as in a figured abstract, for the wise to
+comment on and for the simple to peruse. None can avoid drawing the lesson
+that knowledge exists for the service of the Church, and that the Church,
+while she instructs society, will claim complete obedience to her decrees.
+The _ipse dixit_ of the Dominican author of the "Summa" is law.
+
+Such frescoes, by no means uncommon in Dominican cloisters, still retain
+great interest for the student of scholastic thought. In the church of S.
+Maria Sopra Minerva at Rome, where Galileo was afterwards compelled to
+sign his famous retractation, Filippino Lippi painted another triumph of S.
+Thomas, conceived in the spirit of Taddeo Gaddi's, but expressed with the
+freedom of the middle Renaissance. Nor should we neglect to notice the
+remarkable picture by Traini in S. Caterina at Pisa. Here the doctor of
+Aquino is represented in an aureole surrounded by a golden sphere or disc,
+on the edge of which are placed the four evangelists, together with Moses
+and S. Paul.[137] At his side, within the burnished sphere, Plato and
+Aristotle stand upright, holding the "Timaeus" and the "Ethics" in their
+hands. Christ in glory is above the group, emitting from His mouth three
+rays upon the head of S. Thomas. Single rays descend in like manner upon
+the evangelists and Moses and S. Paul. They, like Plato and Aristotle,
+hold open books; and rays from these eight volumes converge upon the head
+of the angelical doctor, who becomes the focus, as it were, of all the
+beams sent forth from Christ and from the classic teachers, whether
+directly effused or transmitted through the writers of the Bible. S.
+Thomas lastly holds a book open in his hand, and carries others on his
+lap; while lines of light are shed from these upon two bands of the
+faithful, chiefly Dominican monks, arranged on each side of his footstool.
+Averroes lies prostrate beneath his feet with his book face downwards,
+lightning-smitten by a shaft from the leaves of the volume in the saint's
+hand, whereon is written: _veritatem meditabitur guttur meum et labia mea
+detestabuntur impium_.[138]
+
+This picture, afterwards repeated by Benozzo Gozzoli with some change in
+the persons,[139] has been minutely described, because it is important to
+bear in mind the measure of inspiration conceded by the mediaeval Church to
+the fathers of Greek philosophy, and her utter detestation of the
+peripatetic traditions transmitted through the Arabic by Averroes.
+Averroes, though Dante placed him with the great souls of pagan
+civilisation in the first circle of Inferno,[140] was regarded as the
+protagonist of infidelity. The myth of incredulity that gathered round his
+memory and made him hated in the Middle Ages, has been traced with
+exquisite delicacy by Renan,[141] who shows that his name became a
+rallying point for freethinkers. Scholars like Petrarch were eager to
+confute his sect, and artists used him as a symbol of materialistic
+disbelief. Thus we meet with Averroes among the lost souls in the Pisan
+Campo Santo, distinguished as usual by his turban and long beard. On the
+other hand, the frank acceptance of pagan philosophy, insofar as it could
+be accommodated to the doctrine of the Church, finds full expression in
+the art of this early period. On the walls of the Palazzo Pubblico at
+Siena were painted the figures of Curius Dentatus and Cato,[142] while
+the pavement of the Duomo showed Hermes Trismegistus instructing both a
+pagan and a Christian, and Socrates ascending the steep hill of virtue.
+Perugino, some years later, decorated the Sala del Cambio at Perugia with
+the heroes, philosophers, and worthies of the ancient world. We are thus
+led by a gradual progress up to the final achievement of Raphael in the
+Vatican. Separating the antique from the Christian tradition, but placing
+them upon an equality in his art, Raphael made the "School of Athens" an
+epitome of Greek and Roman wisdom, while in the "Dispute of the Sacrament"
+he symbolised the Church in heaven and Church on earth.
+
+Another class of ideas, no less illustrative of mediaevalism, can be
+studied in the Palazzo Pubblico at Siena. There, on the walls of the Sala
+della Pace or de' Nove, may be seen the frescoes whereby Ambrogio
+Lorenzetti expressed theories of society and government peculiar to his
+age.[143] The panels are three in number. In the first the painter has
+delineated the Commune of Siena by an imperial male figure in the prime of
+life, throned on a judgment-seat, holding a sceptre in his right hand and
+a medallion of Justice in his left.[144] He wears no coronet, but a
+burgher's cap; and beneath his footstool are the Roman twins, suckled by
+the she-wolf.[145] Above his head in the air float Faith, Charity, and
+Hope--the Christian virtues; while Justice, Temperance, Magnanimity,
+Prudence, Fortitude, and Peace, six women, crowned, and with appropriate
+emblems, are enthroned beside him. The majestic giant of the Commune
+towers above them all in bulk and stature, as though to indicate the
+people's sovereignty. The virtues are his assessors and inspirers--he is
+King. Beneath the daïs occupied by these supreme personages, are ranged on
+either hand mailed and visored cavaliers, mounted on chargers, the
+guardians of the State. All the citizens in their degrees advance toward
+the throne, carrying between them, pair by pair, a rope received from the
+hands of Concord; while some who have transgressed her laws, are being
+brought with bound hands to the judgment-seat. Concord herself, being less
+the virtue of the government than of the governed, is seated on a line
+with the burghers in a place apart beneath the throne of Civil Justice,
+who is allegorised as the dispenser of rewards and punishments, as well as
+controller of the armed force and the purse of the community. The whole of
+this elaborate allegory suffers by the language of description. Those who
+have seen it, and who are familiar with Sienese chronicles, feel that,
+artistically laboured as the painter's work may be, every figure had a
+passionate and intense meaning for him[146]. His picture is the epitome of
+government conducted by a sovereign people. Nor can we fail to be struck
+with the beauty of some details. The pale earnest faces of the horsemen
+are eminently chivalrous, with knightly honour written on their calm and
+fearless features. Peace, reclining at ease upon her pillow, is a lovely
+woman in loose raiment, her hair wreathed with blossoms, in her hand an
+olive branch, her feet reposing upon casque and shield. She is like a
+painted statue, making us wonder whether the artist had not copied her
+from the "Aphrodite" of Lysippus, ere the Sienese destroyed this statue in
+their dread of paganism[147].
+
+In the other two panels of this hall Ambrogio Lorenzetti painted the
+contrast of good and bad government, harmony and discord. A city full of
+brawls and bloodshed is set in opposition to one where the dance and viol
+do not cease. Merchants are plundered as they issue from the gates on one
+side; on the other, trains of sumpter mules are securely winding along
+mountain paths. Tyranny, with all the vices for his council and with
+Terror for prime minister, presides over the ill-governed town. The
+burghers of the happy commune follow trade or pleasure, as they list; a
+beautiful winged genius, inscribed "Securitas," floats above their
+citadel. It should be added that in both these pictures the architecture
+is the same; for the painter has designed to teach how different may be
+the state of one and the same city according to its form of government.
+Such then were the vivid images whereby Ambrogio Lorenzetti expressed the
+mediaeval curse of discord, and the ideal of a righteous rule. It is only
+necessary to read the "Diario Sanese" of Allegretto Allegretti in order to
+see that he drew no fancy picture. The torchlight procession of burghers
+swearing amity by couples in the cathedral there described, receives exact
+pictorial illustration in the fresco of the Sala della Pace[148]. Siena,
+by her bloody factions and her passionate peacemakings, expressed in
+daily action what the painter had depicted on her palace walls.
+
+The method of treatment adopted for these chapters has obliged me to give
+priority to Florence, and to speak of the two Lorenzetti, Pietro in the
+Pisan Campo Santo and Ambrogio in the Sala della Pace at Siena, as though
+they were followers of Giotto; so true is it that the main currents of
+Tuscan art were governed by Florentine influences, and that Giotto's
+genius made itself felt in all the work of his immediate successors. It
+must, however, be observed that painting had an independent origin among
+the Sienese, and that Guido da Siena may claim to rank even earlier than
+Cimabue.[149] In the year 1260, just before engaging in their duel with
+Florence, the Sienese dedicated their city to the Virgin; and the victory
+of Montaperti, following immediately upon this vow, gave a marked impulse
+to their piety.[150] The early masters of Siena devoted themselves to
+religious paintings, especially to pictures of Madonna suited for chapels
+and oratories. We find upon these mystic panels an ecstasy of adoration
+and a depth of fervour which are alien to the more sober spirit of
+Florence, combined with an almost infantine delight in pure bright
+colours, and in the decorative details of the miniaturist.
+
+The first great painter among the Sienese was Duccio di Buoninsegna.[151]
+The completion of his masterpiece--a picture of the Majesty of the Virgin,
+executed for the high altar of the Duomo--marked an epoch in the history
+of Siena. Nearly two years had been spent upon it; the painter receiving
+sixteen soldi a day from the Commune, together with his materials, in
+exchange for his whole time and skill and labour. At last, on June 9,
+1310, it was carried from Duccio's workshop to its place in the cathedral.
+A procession was formed by the clergy, with the archbishop at their head,
+followed by the magistrates of the Commune, and the chief men of the Monte
+de' Nove. These great folk crowded round their Lady; after came a
+multitude of burghers bearing tapers; while the rear was brought up by
+women and children. The bells rang and trumpets blew as this new image of
+the Sovereign Mistress of Siena was borne along the summer-smiling streets
+of her metropolis to take its throne in her high temple. Duccio's
+altar-piece presented on one face to the spectator a Virgin seated with
+the infant Christ upon her lap, and receiving the homage of the patron
+saints of Siena. On the other, he depicted the principal scenes of the
+Gospel story and the Passion of our Lord in twenty-eight compartments.
+What gives peculiar value to this elaborate work of Sienese art is, that
+in it Duccio managed to combine the tradition of an early hieratic style
+of painting with all the charm of brilliant colouring and with dramatic
+force of presentation only rivalled at that time by Giotto. Independently
+of Giotto, he performed at a stroke what Cimabue and his pupil had
+achieved for the Florentines, and bequeathed to the succeeding painters of
+Siena a tradition of art beyond which they rarely passed.
+
+Far more than their neighbours at Florence, the Sienese remained fettered
+by the technical methods and the pietistic formulae of the earliest
+religious painting. To make their conventional representations of
+Madonna's love and woe and glory burn with all the passion of a fervent
+spirit, and to testify their worship by the oblation of rich gifts in
+colouring and gilding massed around her, was their earnest aim. It
+followed that, when they attempted subjects on a really large scale, the
+faults of the miniaturist clung about them. I need hardly say that
+Ambrogio and Pietro Lorenzetti form notable exceptions to this general
+statement. It may be applied, however, with some truth to Simone Martini,
+the painter, who during his lifetime enjoyed a celebrity only second to
+that of Giotto.[152] Like Giotto, Simone exercised his art in many parts
+of Italy. Siena, Pisa, Assisi, Orvieto, Naples, and Avignon can still
+boast of wall and easel pictures from his hand; and though it has been
+suggested that he took no part in the decoration of the Cappella degli
+Spagnuoli, the impress of his manner remains at Florence in those noble
+frescoes of the "Church Militant" and the "Consecration of S.
+Dominic."[153] Simone's first undisputed works are to be seen at Siena and
+at Assisi, where we learn what he could do as a _frescante_ in competition
+with the ablest Florentines. In the Palazzo Pubblico of his native city he
+painted a vast picture of the Virgin enthroned beneath a canopy and
+surrounded by saints;[154] while at Assisi he put forth his whole power in
+portraying the legend of S. Martin. In all his paintings we trace the
+skill of an exquisite and patient craftsman, elaborately careful to finish
+his work with the utmost refinement, sensitive to feminine beauty, full of
+delicate inventiveness, and gifted with a rare feeling for grace. These
+excellent qualities tend, however, towards affectation and over-softness;
+nor are they fortified by such vigour of conception or such majesty in
+composition as belong to the greatest _trecentisti_. The Lorenzetti alone
+soared high above the Sienese mannerism into a region of masculine
+imaginative art. We feel Simone's charm mostly in single heads and
+detached figures, some of which at Assisi have incomparable sweetness.
+"Molles Senae," the delicate and femininely variable, fond of all things
+brilliant, and unstable through defect of sternness, was the fit mother of
+this ingenious and delightful master.
+
+After the days of Duccio and Simone Martini, of Ambrogio and Pietro
+Lorenzetti, were over, there remained but little for the Sienese to do in
+painting. Taddeo di Bartolo continued the tradition of Duccio as the later
+Giottesques continued that of Giotto. His most remarkable wall-painting is
+a fresco of the Apostles visiting the Virgin, the motive of which is
+marked by great originality.[155] Our Lady is seated in an open loggia
+with a company of holy men and women round her. Descending from the sky
+and floating through the arches are three of the Apostles, while one who
+has just alighted from his aërial transit kneels and folds his hands in
+adoration. Seldom have the longing and the peace of loving worship been
+more poetically expressed than here. The seated, kneeling, standing, and
+flying figures are admirably grouped together; their draperies are
+dignified and massive; and the architectural accessories help the
+composition by dividing it into three balanced sections.
+
+Such power of depicting movement was rare in the fourteenth century. To
+find its analogue, we must betake ourselves to the frescoes of Spinello
+Aretino, a master more decidedly Giottesque than his contemporary Taddeo
+di Bartolo.[156] A Gabriel, rushing down from heaven to salute Madonna,
+with all the whirr of arch-angelic pinions and the glory of Paradise
+around him, is a fine specimen of Spinello's vehemence. The same quality,
+more tempered, is noticeable in his frescoes of the legend of S. Ephesus
+at Pisa.[157] Few faces in the paintings of any period are more
+fascinating than the profiles under steel-blue battle-caps of that godlike
+pair--the knightly saint and the Archangel Michael--breaking by the
+irresistible force of their onset and their calm youthful beauty through
+the mailed ranks of the Sardinian pagans. Spinello was essentially a
+warlike painter; among the best of his compositions may be named the
+series of pictures from the history of the Venetian campaign against
+Frederick Barbarossa.[158] It is a pity that the war of liberation carried
+on by the Lombard communes with the Empire should have left but little
+trace on Italian art; and therefore these paintings of Spinello, in
+addition to their intrinsic merit, have rare historical interest.
+Delighting in the gleam of armour and the shock of speared warriors,
+Spinello communicated something of this fiery spirit even to his saints.
+The monks of Samminiato near Florence employed him in 1388 to paint their
+newly-finished sacristy with the legend of S. Benedict. In the execution
+of this task Spinello displayed his usual grandeur and vigour, treating
+the grey-robed brethren of Monte Cassino like veritable champions of a
+militant Church. When he died in 1410, it might have been truly said that
+the flame of the torch kindled by Giotto was at last extinguished.
+
+The student of history cannot but notice with surprise that a city famed
+like Siena for its vanity, its factious quarrels, and its delicate
+living, should have produced an almost passionately ardent art of
+piety.[159] The same reflections are suggested at Perugia, torn by the
+savage feuds of the Oddi and Baglioni, at warfare with Assisi, reduced to
+exhaustion by the discords of jealous parties, yet memorable in the
+history of painting as the head-quarters of the pietistic Umbrian school.
+The contradiction is, however, in both cases more apparent than real. The
+people both of Siena and Perugia were highly impressible and emotional,
+quick to obey the promptings of their passion, whether it took the form of
+hatred or of love, of spiritual fervour or of carnal violence. Yielding at
+one moment to the preachings of S. Bernardino, at another to the
+persuasions of Grifonetto degli Baglioni, the Perugians won the character
+of being fiends or angels according to the temper of their leaders; while
+Siena might boast with equal right of having given birth to S. Catherine
+and nurtured Beccadelli. The religious feeling was a passion with them on
+a par with all the other movements of their quick and mobile temperament:
+it needed ecstatic art for its interpretation. What was cold and sober
+would not satisfy the men of these two cities. The Florentines, more
+justly balanced, less abandoned to the frenzies of impassioned impulse,
+less capable of feeling the rapt exaltation of the devotee, expressed
+themselves in art distinguished for its intellectual power, its sanity,
+its scientific industry, its adequacy to average human needs. Therefore,
+Florentine influences determined the course of painting in Central Italy.
+Therefore Giotto, who represented the Florentine genius in the fourteenth
+century, set his stamp upon the Lorenzetti. The mystic painters of Umbria
+and Siena have their high and honoured place in the history of Italian
+art. They supply an element which, except in the work of Fra Angelico, was
+defective at Florence; but to the Florentines was committed the great
+charge of interpreting the spirit of Italian civilisation in all its
+branches, not for the cloister only, or the oratory, but for humanity at
+large, through painting.
+
+Giotto and his followers, then, in the fourteenth century painted, as we
+have seen, the religious, philosophical, and social conceptions of their
+age. As artists, their great discovery was the secret of depicting life.
+The ideas they expressed belonged to the Middle Ages. But by their method
+and their spirit they anticipated the Renaissance. In executing their work
+upon the walls of palaces and churches, they employed a kind of fresco.
+Fresco was essentially the Florentine vehicle of expression. Among the
+peoples of Central Italy it took the place of mosaic in Sicily, Ravenna,
+and Venice, as the means of communicating ideas by forms to the unlettered
+laity, and as affording to the artist the widest and the freest sphere for
+the expression of his thoughts.[160]
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[118] In the _History of Painting in Italy_, by Messrs. Crowe and
+Cavalcaselle.
+
+[119] Nothing is more astonishing than the sterility of Genoa and of
+Rome. Neither in sculpture nor in painting did these cities produce
+anything memorable, though Genoa was well placed for receiving the
+influences of Pisa, and had the command of the marble quarries of
+Carrara, while Rome was the resort of all the art-students of Italy. The
+very early eminence of Apulia in architecture and the plastic arts led to
+no results.
+
+[120] Milan, it is true, produced a brilliant school of sculptors, and
+the Certosa of Pavia is a monument of her spontaneous artistic genius.
+But in painting, until the date of Lionardo's advent, she achieved
+little.
+
+[121] See Vol. I., _Age of the Despots_, pp. 182-188, for the
+constitutional characteristics of Florence and Venice; and Vol. II.,
+_Revival of Learning_, pp. 118-120, for the intellectual supremacy of
+Florence.
+
+[122] A glance at the map shows to what a large extent the Italians owed
+the progress of their arts to Tuscany. Pisa, as we have already seen,
+took the lead in sculpture. Florence, at a somewhat later period, revived
+painting, while Siena contemporaneously developed a style peculiar to
+herself. This Sienese style--thoroughly Tuscan, though different from
+that of Florence--exercised an important influence over the schools of
+Umbria, and gave a peculiar quality to Perugian painting. Through Piero
+della Francesca, a native of Borgo San Sepolcro, the Florentine tradition
+was extended to Umbria and the Roman States. Perugia might be even
+geographically claimed for Tuscany, inasmuch as the Tiber divides the old
+Etrurian territory from the Umbrians and the duchy of Spoleto. Lionardo
+was a Tuscan settled as an alien in Milan. Raphael, though a native of
+Urbino, derived his training from Florence, indirectly through his father
+and his master Perugino, more immediately from Fra Bartolommeo and
+Michael Angelo.
+
+[123] If Vasari is to be trusted, this visit of Charles of Anjou to
+Cimabue's studio took place in 1267; but neither the Malespini nor
+Villani mention it, and the old belief that the Borgo Allegri owed its
+name to the popular rejoicing at that time is now somewhat discredited.
+See Vasari, Le Monnier, 1846, vol. i. p. 225, note 4. Gino Capponi, in
+his _Storia della Repubblica di Firenze_, vol. i. p. 157, refuses however
+to reject the legend.
+
+[124] See Capponi, vol. i. pp. 59, 78, for a description of the gay and
+courteous living of the Florentines upon the end of the thirteenth
+century.
+
+[125] See the _Descrizione della Peste di Firenze_.
+
+[126] I wish I could here transcribe the most beautiful passage from
+Ruskin's _Giotto and his Works in Padua_, pp. 11, 12, describing the
+contrast between the landscape of Valdarno and the landscape of the hills
+of the Mugello district. I can only refer readers to the book, printed
+for the Arundel Society, 1854.
+
+[127] See Trucchi, _Poesie Italiane Inedite_, vol. ii. p. 8.
+
+[128] See above, Chapter III, Relation of Sculpture to Painting.
+
+[129] The wonderful beauty of Orcagna's faces, profile after profile laid
+together like lilies in a garden border, can only be discovered after
+long study. It has been my good fortune to examine, through the kindness
+of Mrs. Higford Burr, of Aldermaston, a large series of tracings, taken
+chiefly by the Right Hon. A. H. Layard, from the frescoes of Giottesque
+and other early masters, which, by the selection of simple form in
+outline, demonstrate not only the grand composition of these religious
+paintings, but also the incomparable loveliness of their types. How great
+the _Trecentisti_ were as draughtsmen, how imaginative was the beauty of
+their conception, can be best appreciated by thus artificially separating
+their design from their colouring. The semblance of archaism disappears,
+and leaves a vision of pure beauty, delicate and spiritual. The
+collection to which I have alluded was made some years ago, when access
+to the wall-paintings of Italy for the purpose of tracing was still
+possible. It includes nearly the whole of Lorenzetti's work in the Sala
+della Pace, much of Giotto, the Gozzoli frescoes at S. Gemignano,
+frescoes of the Veronese masters and of the Paduan Baptistery, a great
+deal of Piero della Francesca, Mantegna, Luini, Gaudenzio Ferrari,
+Pinturicchio, Masolino, &c. The earliest masters of Arezzo, Pisa, Siena,
+Urbino are copiously illustrated, while few burghs or hamlets of the
+Tuscan and Umbrian districts have been left unvisited.
+
+[130] See Crowe and Cavalcaselle, vol. i. pp. 445-451, for a discussion
+of the question. They incline to the authorship of Pietro and Ambrogio
+Lorenzetti. But the last Florentine edition of Vasari renders this
+opinion doubtful.
+
+[131]
+    Ed una donna involta in veste negra,
+    Con un furor qual io non so se mai
+    Al tempo de' giganti fosse a Flegra.
+        _Trionfo della Morte_, cap. i. 31.
+
+
+[132] On a scroll above these wretches is written this legend:--
+
+    Dacchè prosperitade ci ha lasciati,
+    O morte, medicina d'ogni pena,
+    Deh vieni a darne omai l'ultima cena.
+
+
+[133] This might be used as an argument against the Lorenzetti
+hypothesis; for their work at Siena is eminently beautiful.
+
+[134] The attitude and the eyes of this archangel have an imaginative
+potency beyond that of any other motive used by any painter to suggest
+the terror of the _Dies Irae_. Simplicity and truth of vision in the
+artist have here touched the very summit of intense dramatic
+presentation.
+
+[135] The "Triumph of S. Thomas Aquinas," in this cloister-chapel, has
+long been declared the work of Taddeo Gaddi. "The Triumph of the Church
+Militant," and the "Consecration of S. Dominic," used to be ascribed, on
+the faith of Vasari, to Simone Martini of Siena. Independently of its
+main subject, this vast wall-painting is specially interesting on account
+of its portraits. The work has a decidedly Sienese character; but recent
+critics are inclined to assign it to a certain Andrea, of Florence. See
+Crowe and Cavalcaselle, vol. ii. p. 89. The same critics doubt the hand
+of Taddeo Gaddi in the "Triumph of S. Thomas," vol. i. p. 374, and remark
+that "these productions of the art of the fourteenth century are, indeed,
+second-class works, executed by pupils of the Sienese and Florentine
+school, and unworthy of the high praise which has ever been given to
+them." Whatever may be ultimately thought about the question of their
+authorship and pictorial merit, their interest to the student of Italian
+painting in relation to mediaeval thought will always remain indisputable.
+Few buildings in the length and breadth of Italy possess such claims on
+our attention as the Cappella degli Spagnuoli.
+
+[136] The amorous fere of the Christian faith, the holy athlete, gentle
+to his own, and to his foes cruel.
+
+[137] Everything outside this golden region is studded with stars to
+signify an epoyranios topos or heaven of heavens. S. Thomas and
+the Greeks are inside the golden sphere of science, and below on earth
+are the heresiarchs and faithful. Rosini gives a faithful outline of this
+picture in his Atlas of Illustrations.
+
+[138] "For my mouth shall speak truth; and wickedness is an abomination
+to my lips."--Prov. viii. 7.
+
+[139] Gozzoli's picture is now in the Louvre. I think Guillaume de Saint
+Amour takes the place of Averroes.
+
+[140] _Inf._ iv. 144.
+
+[141] _Averroès et l'Averroïsme_, pp. 236-316.
+
+[142] In the chapel. They are the work of Taddeo di Bartolo, and bear
+this inscription: "Specchiatevi in costoro, voi che reggete." The
+mediaeval painters of Italy learned lessons of civility and government as
+willingly from classical tradition, as they deduced the lessons of piety
+and godly living from the Bible. Herein they were akin to Dante, who
+chose Virgil for the symbol of the human understanding and Beatrice for
+the symbol of divine wisdom, revealed to man in Theology.
+
+[143] He began his work in 1337.
+
+[144] A similar mode of symbolising the Commune is chosen in the
+bas-reliefs of Archbishop Tarlati's tomb at Arezzo, where the discord of
+the city is represented by an old man of gigantic stature, throned and
+maltreated by the burghers, who are tearing out his hair by handfuls.
+Over this figure is written "Il Comune Pelato."
+
+[145] These were adopted as the ensign of Siena, in the Middle Ages.
+
+[146] In the year 1336, just before Ambrogio began to paint, the Sienese
+Republic had concluded a league with Florence for the maintenance of the
+Guelf party. The Monte de' Nove still ruled the city with patriotic
+spirit and equity, and had not yet become a forceful oligarchy. The power
+of the Visconti was still in its cradle; the great plague had not
+devastated Tuscany. As early as 1355 the whole of the fair order
+represented by Ambrogio was shaken to the foundation, and Siena deserved
+the words applied to it by De Commines. See Vol. L, _Age of the Despots_,
+p. 162, note 2.
+
+[147] Rio, perversely bent on stigmatising whatever in Italian art
+savours of the Renaissance, depreciates this lovely form of Peace. _L'Art
+Chrétien_, vol. i. p. 57.
+
+[148] See Muratori, vol. xxiii., or the passage translated by me in Vol.
+I., _Age of the Despots_, p. 480.
+
+[149] His "Madonna" in S. Domenico is dated 1221. For a full discussion
+of Guido da Siena's date, see Crowe and Cavalcaselle, vol. i. pp.
+180-185.
+
+[150] On their coins the Sienese struck this legend: "Sena vetus Civitas
+Virginis." It will be remembered how the Florentines, two centuries and a
+half later, dedicated their city to Christ as king.
+
+[151] Date of birth unknown; date of death, about 1320.
+
+[152] He is better known as Simone Memmi, a name given to him by a
+mistake of Vasari's. He was born in 1283 at Siena. He died in 1344 at
+Avignon. Petrarch mentions his portrait of Madonna Laura, in the 49th and
+50th sonnets of the "Rime in Vita di Madonna Laura." In another place he
+uses these words about Simone: "Duos ego novi pictores egregios, nec
+formosos, Jottum Florentinum civem, cujus inter modernos fama ingens est,
+et Simonem Senensem."--_Epist. Fam._ lib. v. 17, p. 653. Petrarch
+proceeds to mention that he has also known sculptors, and asserts their
+inferiority to painters in modern times.
+
+[153] See above, Chapter IV, Theology and S. Dominic. Messrs. Crowe and
+Cavalcaselle reject, not without reason, as it seems to me, the tradition
+that Simone painted the frescoes of S. Ranieri in the Campo Santo at
+Pisa. See vol. ii. p. 83. What remains of his work at Pisa is an
+altar-piece in S. Caterina.
+
+[154] To Simone is also attributed the interesting portrait of
+Guidoriccio Fogliani de' Ricci, on horseback, in the Sala del Consiglio.
+This, however, has been so much repainted as to have lost its character.
+
+[155] In S. Francesco at Pisa.
+
+[156] Spinello degli Spinelli was born of a Ghibelline family, exiled
+from Florence, who settled at Arezzo about 1308. He died at Arezzo in
+1410, aged 92, according to some computations.
+
+[157] South wall of the Campo Santo, on the left-hand of the entrance.
+
+[158] In the Sala di Balia of the public palace at Siena.
+
+[159] See _Inferno_, xxix. 121; the sonnets on the months by Cene dalla
+Chitarra, _Poeti del Primo Secolo,_ vol. ii. pp. 196-207; the epithet
+"Molles Senae," given by Beccadelli; and the remarks of De Comines.
+
+[160] I have not thought it necessary to distinguish between tempera and
+fresco. In tempera painting the colours were mixed with egg, gum, and
+other vehicles dissolved in water, and laid upon a dry ground. In fresco
+painting the colours, mixed only with water, were laid upon plaster while
+still damp. The latter process replaced the former for wall-paintings in
+the fourteenth century.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+PAINTING
+
+Mediaeval Motives exhausted--New Impulse toward Technical
+Perfection--Naturalists in Painting--Intermediate Achievement needed
+for the Great Age of Art--Positive Spirit of the Fifteenth
+Century--Masaccio--The Modern Manner--Paolo Uccello--Perspective--Realistic
+Painters--The Model--Piero della Francesca--His Study of Form--Resurrection
+at Borgo San Sepolcro--Melozzo da Forli--Squarcione at Padua--Gentile da
+Fabriano--Fra Angelico--Benozzo Gozzoli--His Decorative Style--Lippo
+Lippi--Frescoes at Prato and Spoleto--Filippino Lippi--Sandro
+Botticelli--His Value for the Student of Renaissance Fancy--His Feeling
+for Mythology--Piero di Cosimo--Domenico Ghirlandajo--In what sense he
+sums up the Age--Prosaic Spirit--Florence hitherto supreme in
+Painting--Extension of Art Activity throughout Italy--Medicean Patronage.
+
+
+After the splendid outburst of painting in the first half of the
+fourteenth century, there came a lull. The thoughts and sentiments of
+mediaeval Italy had been now set forth in art. The sincere and simple style
+of Giotto was worked out. But the new culture of the Revival had not as
+yet sufficiently penetrated the Italians for the painters to express it;
+nor had they mastered the technicalities of their craft in such a manner
+as to render the delineation of more complex forms of beauty possible. The
+years between 1400 and 1470 may be roughly marked out as the second period
+of great, activity in painting. At this time sculpture, under the hands of
+Ghiberti, Donatello, and Luca della Robbia, had reached a higher point
+than the sister art. The debt the sculptors owed to Giotto, they now
+repaid in full measure to his successors, in obedience to the law whereby
+sculpture, though subordinated, as in Italy, to painting, is more
+precocious in its evolution. One of the most marked features of this
+period was the progress in the art of design, due to bronze modelling and
+bas-relief; for the painters, labouring in the workshops of the goldsmiths
+and the stone-carvers, learned how to study the articulation of the human
+body, to imitate the nude, and to aim by means of graduated light and dark
+at rendering the effect of roundness in their drawing. The laws of
+perspective and foreshortening were worked out by Paolo Uccello and
+Brunelleschi. New methods of colouring were attempted by the Peselli and
+the Pollajuoli. Abandoning the conventional treatment of religious themes,
+the artists began to take delight in motives drawn from everyday
+experience. It became the fashion to introduce contemporary costumes,
+striking portraits, and familiar incidents into sacred subjects, so that
+many pictures of this period, though worthless to the student of religious
+art, are interesting for their illustration of Florentine custom and
+character. At the same time the painters began to imitate landscape and
+architecture, loading the background of their frescoes with pompous vistas
+of palaces and city towers, or subordinating their figures to fantastic
+scenery of wood and rock and seashore. Many were naturalists, delighting,
+like Gentile da Fabriano, in the delineation of field flowers and living
+creatures, or, like Piero di Cosimo, in the portrayal of things rare and
+curious. Gardens please their eyes, and birds and beasts and insects.
+Whole menageries and aviaries, for instance, were painted by Paolo
+Uccello. Others, again, abandoned the old ground of Christian story for
+the tales of Greece and Rome; and not the least charming products of the
+time are antique motives treated with the freshness of romantic feeling.
+We look in vain for the allegories of the Giottesque masters: that stage
+of thought has been traversed, and a new cycle of poetic ideas, fanciful,
+idyllic, corresponding to Boiardo's episodes rather than to Dante's
+vision, opens for the artist. Instead of seeking to set forth vast
+subjects with the equality of mediocrity, like the Gaddi, or to invent
+architectonic compositions embracing the whole culture of their age, like
+the Lorenzetti, the painters were now bent upon realising some special
+quality of beauty, expressing some fantastic motive, or solving some
+technical problem of peculiar difficulty. They had, in fact, outgrown the
+childhood of their art; and while they had not yet attained to mastery,
+had abandoned the impossible task of making it the medium of universal
+expression. In this way the manifold efforts of the workers in the first
+half of the fifteenth century prepared the ground for the great painters
+of the Golden Age. It remained for Raphael and his contemporaries to
+achieve the final synthesis of art in masterpieces of consummate beauty.
+But this they could not have done without the aid of those innumerable
+intermediate labourers, whose productions occupy in art the place of
+Bacon's _media axiomata_ in science. Remembering this, we ought not to
+complain that the purpose of painting at this epoch was divided, or that
+its achievements were imperfect. The whole intellectual conditions of the
+country were those of growth, experiment, preparation, and acquisition,
+rather than of full accomplishment. What happened in the field of
+painting, was happening also in the field of scholarship; and we have good
+reason to be thankful that by the very nature of the arts, these tentative
+endeavours have a more enduring charm than the dull tomes of contemporary
+students. Nor, again, is it rational to regret that painting, having
+started with the sincere desire of expressing the hopes and fears that
+agitate the soul of man, and raise him to a spiritual region, should now
+be occupied with lessons in perspective and anatomy. In the twofold
+process of discovering the world and man, this dry ground had inevitably
+to be explored, and its exploration could not fail to cost the sacrifice
+of much that was impassioned and imaginative in the earlier and less
+scientific age of art.[161] The spirit of Cosimo de' Medici, almost
+cynical in its positivism, the spirit of Sixtus IV., almost godless in its
+egotism, were abroad in Italy at this period;[162] indeed, the fifteenth
+century presents at large a spectacle of prosaic worldliness and unideal
+aims. Yet the work done by the artists was the best work of the epoch, far
+more fruitful of results and far more permanently valuable than that of
+Filelfo inveighing in filthy satires against his personal foes, or of
+Beccadelli endeavouring to inoculate modern literature with the virus of
+pagan vices. Petrarch in the fourteenth century had preached the evangel
+of humanism; Giotto in the fourteenth century had given life to painting.
+The students of the fifteenth, though their spirit was so much baser and
+less large than Petrarch's, were following in the path marked out for them
+and leading forward to Erasmus. The painters of the fifteenth, though they
+lacked the unity of aim and freshness of their master, were learning what
+was needful for the crowning and fulfilment of his labours on a loftier
+stage.
+
+Foremost among the pioneers of Renaissance-painting, towering above them
+all by head and shoulders, like Saul among the tribes of Israel, stands
+Masaccio.[163] The Brancacci Chapel of the Carmine at Florence, painted in
+fresco almost entirely by his hand, was the school where all succeeding
+artists studied, and whence Raphael deigned to borrow the composition and
+the figures of a portion of his Cartoons. The "Legend of S. Catherine,"
+painted by Masaccio in 8. Clemente at Rome, though an earlier work, is
+scarcely less remarkable as evidence that a new age had begun for art. In
+his frescoes the qualities essential to the style of the Renaissance--what
+Vasari calls the modern manner--appear precociously full-formed. Besides
+life and nature they have dignity and breadth, the grand and heightened
+manner of emancipated art. Masaccio is not inferior to Giotto in his power
+of telling a story with simplicity; but he understands the value of
+perspective for realising the circumstances of the scene depicted. His
+august groups of the Apostles are surrounded by landscape tranquillising
+to the sense and pleasant to the eye. Mountain-lines and distant horizons
+lend space and largeness to his compositions, and the figures of his men
+and women move freely in a world prepared for them. In Masaccio's
+management of drapery we discern the influence of plastic art; without
+concealing the limbs, which are always modelled with a freedom that
+suggests the power of movement even in stationary attitudes, the
+voluminous folds and broad masses of powerfully coloured raiment invest
+his forms with a nobility unknown before in painting. His power of
+representing the nude is not less remarkable. But what above all else
+renders his style attractive is the sense of aërial space. For the first
+time in art the forms of living persons are shown moving in a transparent
+medium of light, graduated according to degrees of distance, and
+harmonised by tones that indicate an atmospheric unity. In comparing
+Masaccio with Giotto we must admit that, with so much gained, something
+has been sacrificed. Giotto succeeded in presenting the idea, the feeling,
+the pith of the event, and pierced at once to the very ground-root of
+imagination. Masaccio thinks over-much, perhaps, of external form, and is
+intent on air-effects and colouring. He realises the phenomenal truth with
+a largeness and a dignity peculiar to himself. But we ask whether he was
+capable of bringing close to our hearts the secret and the soul of
+spiritual things. Has not art beneath his touch become more scenic, losing
+thereby somewhat of dramatic poignancy?
+
+Born in 1402, Masaccio left Florence in 1429 for Rome, and was not heard
+of by his family again. Thus perished, at the early age of twenty-seven, a
+painter whose work reveals not only the originality of real creative
+genius, but a maturity that moves our wonder. What might he not have done
+if he had lived? Between his style in the Brancacci chapel and that of
+Raphael in the Vatican there seems to be but a narrow gap, which might
+perchance have been passed over by this man, if death had spared him.
+
+Masaccio can by no means be taken as a fair instance of the painters of
+his age. Gifted with exceptional powers, he overleaped the difficulties of
+his art, and arrived intuitively at results whereof as yet no scientific
+certainty had been secured. His contemporaries applied humbler talents to
+severe study, and wrought out by patient industry those principles which
+Masaccio had divined. Their work is therefore at the same time more
+archaic and more pedantic, judged by modern standards. It is difficult to
+imagine a style of painting less attractive than that of Paolo
+Uccello.[164] Yet his fresco of the "Deluge" in the cloisters of S. Maria
+Novella, and his battlepieces--one of which may be seen in the National
+Gallery--taught nearly all that painters needed of perspective. The lesson
+was conveyed in hard, dry, uncouth diagrams, ill-coloured and deficient in
+the quality of animation. At this period the painters, like the sculptors,
+were trained as goldsmiths, and Paolo had been a craftsman of that guild
+before he gave his whole mind to the study of linear perspective and the
+drawing of animals. The precision required in this trade forced artists
+to study the modelling of the human form, and promoted that crude
+naturalism which has been charged against their pictures. Carefully to
+observe, minutely to imitate some actual person--the Sandro of your
+workshop or the Cecco from the marketplace--became the pride of painters.
+No longer fascinated by the dreams of mediaeval mysticism, and unable for
+the moment to invest ideals of the fancy with reality, they meanwhile made
+the great discovery that the body of a man is a miracle of beauty, each
+limb a divine wonder, each muscle a joy as great as sight of stars or
+flowers. Much that is repulsive in the pictures of the Pollajuoli and
+Andrea del Castagno, the leaders in this branch of realism, is due to
+admiration for the newly studied mechanism of the human form. They seem to
+have cared but little to select their types or to accentuate expression,
+so long as they were able to portray the man before them with
+fidelity.[165] The comeliness of average humanity was enough for them; the
+difficulties of reproducing what they saw, exhausted their force. Thus the
+master-works on which they staked their reputation show them emulous of
+fame as craftsmen, while only here and there, in minor paintings for the
+most part, the poet that was in them sees the light. Brunelleschi told
+Donatello the truth when he said that his Christ was a crucified
+_contadino_. Intent on mastering the art of modelling, and determined
+above all things to be accurate, the sculptor had forgotten that something
+more was wanted in a crucifix than the careful study of a robust
+peasant-boy.
+
+A story of a somewhat later date still further illustrates the dependence
+of the work of art upon the model in Renaissance Florence. Jacopo
+Sansovino made the statue of a youthful "Bacchus" in close imitation of a
+lad called Pippo Fabro. Posing for hours together naked in a cold studio,
+Pippo fell into ill health, and finally went mad. In his madness he
+frequently assumed the attitude of the "Bacchus" to which his life had
+been sacrificed, and which is now his portrait. The legend of the painter
+who kept his model on a cross in order that he might the more minutely
+represent the agonies of death by crucifixion, is but a mythus of the
+realistic method carried to its logical extremity.
+
+Piero della Francesca, a native of Borgo San Sepolcro, and a pupil of
+Domenico Veneziano, must be placed among the painters of this period who
+advanced their art by scientific study. He carried the principles of
+correct drawing and solid modelling as far as it is possible for the
+genius of man to do, and composed a treatise on perspective in the vulgar
+tongue. But these are not his only titles to fame. By dignity of
+portraiture, by loftiness of style, and by a certain poetical solemnity of
+imagination, he raised himself above the level of the mass of his
+contemporaries. Those who have once seen his fresco of the "Resurrection"
+in the hall of the Compagnia della Misericordia at Borgo San Sepolcro,
+will never forget the deep impression of solitude and aloofness from all
+earthly things produced by it. It is not so much the admirable grouping
+and masterly drawing of the four sleeping soldiers, or even the majestic
+type of the Christ emergent without effort from the grave, as the
+communication of a mood felt by the painter and instilled into our souls,
+that makes this by far the grandest, most poetic, and most awe-inspiring
+picture of the Resurrection. The landscape is simple and severe, with the
+cold light upon it of the dawn before the sun is risen. The drapery of the
+ascending Christ is tinged with auroral colours like the earliest clouds
+of morning; and His level eyes, with the mystery of the slumber of the
+grave still upon them, seem gazing, far beyond our scope of vision, into
+the region of the eternal and illimitable. Thus, with Piero for
+mystagogue, we enter an inner shrine of deep religious revelation. The
+same high imaginative faculty marks the fresco of the "Dream of
+Constantine" in S. Francesco at Arezzo, where, it may be said in passing,
+the student of art must learn to estimate what Piero could do in the way
+of accurate foreshortening, powerful delineation of solid bodies, and
+noble treatment of drapery.[166] To Piero, again, we owe most precious
+portraits of two Italian princes, Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta and
+Federigo of Urbino, masterpieces[167] of fidelity to nature and sound
+workmanship.
+
+In addition to the many great paintings that command our admiration, Piero
+claims honour as the teacher of Melozzo da Forli and of Luca Signorelli.
+Little is left to show the greatness of Melozzo; but the frescoes
+preserved in the Quirinal are enough to prove that he continued the grave
+and lofty manner of his master.[168] Signorelli bears a name illustrious
+in the first rank of Italian painters; and to speak of him will be soon my
+duty. It was the special merit of these artists to elevate the ideal of
+form and to seek after sublimity, without departing from the path of
+conscientious labour, in an age preoccupied on the one hand with
+technicality and naturalism, on the other with decorative prettiness and
+pietism.
+
+While the Florentine and Umbro-Tuscan masters were perfecting the arts of
+accurate design, a similar direction toward scientific studies was given
+to the painters of Northern Italy at Padua. Michael Savonarola, writing
+his panegyric of Padua about 1440, expressly mentions Perspective as a
+branch of philosophy taught in the high school;[169] and the influence of
+Francesco Squarcione, though exaggerated by Vasari, was not
+inconsiderable. This man, who began life as a tailor or embroiderer, was
+early interested in the fine arts. Like Ciriac of Ancona, he had a taste
+for travel and collection,[170] visiting the sacred soil of Greece and
+sojourning in divers towns of Italy, everywhere making drawings, copying
+pictures, taking casts from statues, and amassing memoranda on the relics
+of antiquity as well as on the methods practised by contemporary painters.
+Equipped with these aids to study, Squarcione returned to Padua, his
+native place, where he opened a kind of school for painters. It is clear
+that he was himself less an artist than an amateur of painting, with a
+turn for teaching, and a conviction, based upon the humanistic instincts
+of his age, that the right way of learning was by imitation of the
+antique. During the course of his career he is said to have taught no less
+than 137 pupils, training his apprentices by the exhibition of casts and
+drawings, and giving them instruction in the science of perspective.[171]
+From his studio issued the mighty Andrea Mantegna, whose life-work, one of
+the most weighty moments in the history of modern art, will be noticed at
+length in the next chapter. For the present it is enough to observe that
+through Squarcione the scientific and humanistic movement of the fifteenth
+century was communicated to the art of Northern Italy. There, as at
+Florence, painting was separated from ecclesiastical tradition, and a new
+starting-point was sought in the study of mathematical principles, and
+the striving after form for its own sake.
+
+Without attempting the detailed history of painting in this period of
+divided energy and diverse effort, it is needful here to turn aside and
+notice those masters of the fifteenth century who remained comparatively
+uninfluenced by the scholastic studies of their contemporaries. Of these,
+the earliest and most notable was Gentile da Fabriano, the last great
+painter of the Gubbian school.[172] In the predella of his masterpiece at
+Florence there is a little panel, which attracts attention as one of the
+earliest attempts to represent a sunrise. The sun has just appeared above
+one of those bare sweeping hill-sides so characteristic of Central Italian
+landscape. Part of the country lies untouched by morning, cold and grey:
+the rest is silvered with the level light, falling sideways on the
+burnished leaves and red fruit of the orange trees, and casting shadows
+from olive branches on the furrows of a new-ploughed field. Along the road
+journey Joseph and Mary and the infant Christ, so that you may call this
+little landscape a "Flight into Egypt," if you choose. Gentile, with all
+his Umbrian pietism, was a painter for whom the fair sights of the earth
+had exquisite value. The rich costumes of the Eastern kings, their train
+of servants, their hawks and horses, hounds and monkeys, are painted by
+him with scrupulous fidelity; and nothing can be more true to nature than
+the wild flowers he has copied in the framework of this picture. Yet we
+perceive that, though he felt in his own way the naturalistic impulse of
+the age, he had scarcely anything in common with masters like Uccello or
+Verocchio.
+
+Still less had Fra Angelico. Of all the painters of this period he most
+successfully resisted the persuasions of the Renaissance, and perfected an
+art that owed little to sympathy with the external world. He thought it a
+sin to study or to imitate the naked form, and his most beautiful faces
+seem copied from angels seen in visions, not from any sons of men. While
+the artists around him were absorbed in mastering the laws of geometry and
+anatomy, Fra Angelico sought to express the inner life of the adoring
+soul. Only just so much of realism, whether in the drawing of the body and
+its drapery, or in the landscape background, as seemed necessary for
+suggesting the emotion or for setting forth the story, found its way into
+his pictures. The message they convey might have been told almost as
+perfectly upon the lute or viol. His world is a strange one--a world not
+of hills and fields and flowers and men of flesh and blood, but one where
+the people are embodied ecstasies, the colours tints from evening clouds
+or apocalyptic jewels, the scenery a flood of light or a background of
+illuminated gold. His mystic gardens, where the ransomed souls embrace,
+and dance with angels on the lawns outside the City of the Lamb, are such
+as were never trodden by the foot of man in any paradise of earth.
+
+Criticism has a hard task in attempting to discern the merit of the
+several painters of this time. It is clear that we must look not to Fra
+Angelico but to Masaccio for the progressive forces that were carrying art
+forward to complete accomplishment. Yet the charm of Masaccio is as
+nothing in comparison with that which holds us spell-bound before the
+sacred and impassioned reveries of the Fiesolan monk. Masaccio had
+inestimable value for his contemporaries. Fra Angelico, now that we know
+all Masaccio can teach, has a quality so unique that we return again and
+again to the contemplation of his visions. Thus it often happens that we
+are tempted to exaggerate the historical importance of one painter
+because he touches us by some peculiar quality, and to over-estimate the
+intrinsic value of another because he was a motive power in his own age.
+Both these temptations should be resolutely resisted by the student who is
+capable of discerning different kinds of excellence and diverse titles to
+affectionate remembrance. Tracing the history of Italian painting is like
+pursuing a journey down an ever-broadening river, whose affluents are
+Giotto and Masaccio, Ghirlandajo, Signorelli, and Mantegna. We have to
+turn aside and land upon the shore, in order to visit the
+heaven-reflecting lakelet, self-encompassed and secluded, called Angelico.
+
+Benozzo Gozzoli, the pupil of Fra Angelico, but in no sense the
+continuator of his tradition, exhibits the blending of several styles by a
+genius of less creative than assimilative force. That he was keenly
+interested in the problems of perspective and foreshortening, and that
+none of the knowledge collected by his fellow-workers had escaped him, is
+sufficiently proved by his frescoes at Pisa. His compositions are rich in
+architectural details, not always chosen with pure taste, but painted with
+an almost infantine delight in the magnificence of buildings. Quaint birds
+and beasts and reptiles crowd his landscapes; while his imagination runs
+riot in rocks and rivers, trees of all variety, and rustic incidents
+adopted from real life. At the same time he felt an enjoyment like that of
+Gentile da Fabriano in depicting the pomp and circumstance of pageantry,
+and no Florentine of the fifteenth century was more fond of assembling the
+personages of contemporary history in groups.[173] Thus he showed himself
+sensitive to the chief influences of the earlier Renaissance, and combined
+the scientific and naturalistic tendencies of his age in a manner not
+devoid of native poetry. What he lacked was depth of feeling, the sense
+of noble form, the originative force of a great mind. His poetry of
+invention, though copious and varied, owed its charm to the unstudied
+grace of improvisation, and he often undertook subjects where his idyllic
+rather than dramatic genius failed to sustain him. It is difficult, for
+instance, to comprehend how M. Rio could devote two pages to Gozzoli's
+"Destruction of Sodom," so comparatively unimpressive in spite of its
+aggregated incidents, when he passes by the "Fulminati" of Signorelli, so
+tragic in its terrible simplicity, with a word.[174]
+
+This painter's marvellous rapidity of execution enabled him to produce an
+almost countless series of decorative works. The best of these are the
+frescoes of the Pisan Campo Santo, of the Riccardi Palace of Florence, of
+San Gemignano, and of Montefalco. It has been well said of Gozzoli that,
+though he attempted grand subjects on a large scale, he could not rise
+above the limitations of a style better adapted to the decoration of
+_cassoni_ than to fresco.[175] Yet within the range of his own powers
+there are few more fascinating painters. His feeling for fresh nature--for
+hunters in the woods at night or dawn, for vintage-gatherers among their
+grapes, for festival troops of cavaliers and pages, and for the
+marriage-dances of young men and maidens--yields a delightful gladness to
+compositions lacking the simplicity of Giotto and the dignity of
+Masaccio.[176] No one knew better how to sketch the quarrels of little
+boys in their nursery, or the laughter of serving-women, or children
+carrying their books to school;[177] and when the idyllic genius of the
+man was applied to graver themes, his fancy supplied him with multitudes
+of angels waving rainbow-coloured wings above fair mortal faces. Bevies of
+them nestle like pigeons on the penthouse of the hut of Bethlehem, or
+crowd together round the infant Christ.[178]
+
+From these observations on the style of Benozzo Gozzoli it will be seen
+that in the evolution of Renaissance culture he may be compared with the
+romantic poets for whom the cheerfulness of nature and the joy that comes
+to men from living in a many-coloured world of inexhaustible delight were
+sufficient sources of inspiration. It should be mentioned lastly that he
+enjoyed the patronage and friendship of the Medicean princes.
+
+Another painter favoured by the Medici was Fra Filippo Lippi, whose life
+and art-work were alike the deviation of a pleasure-loving temperament
+from its natural sphere into the service of the Church. Left an orphan at
+the age of two years, he was brought up by an aunt, who placed him, as a
+boy of eight, in the convent of the Carmine at Florence. For monastic
+duties he had no vocation, and the irregularities of his behaviour caused
+scandal even in that age of cynical indulgence. It can scarcely be doubted
+that the schism between his practice and profession served to debase and
+vulgarise a genius of fine imaginative quality, while the uncongenial work
+of decorating choirs and painting altar-pieces limed the wings of his
+swift spirit with the dulness of routine that savoured of hypocrisy. Bound
+down to sacred subjects, he was too apt to make angels out of
+street-urchins, and to paint the portraits of his peasant-loves for
+Virgins.[179] His delicate sense of natural beauty gave peculiar charm to
+this false treatment of religious themes. Nothing, for example, can be
+more attractive than the rows of angels bearing lilies in his "Coronation
+of the Virgin;"[180] and yet, when we regard them closely, we find that
+they have no celestial quality of form or feature. Their grace is earthly,
+and the spirit breathed upon the picture is the loveliness of colour,
+quiet and yet glowing--blending delicate blues and greens with whiteness
+purged of glare. The beauties as well as the defects of such compositions
+make us regret that Fra Filippo never found a more congenial sphere for
+his imagination. As a painter of subjects half-humorous and half-pathetic,
+or as the illustrator of romantic stories, we fancy that he might have won
+fame rivalled only by the greatest colourists. One such picture it was
+granted him to paint, and this is his masterpiece. In the prime of life he
+was commissioned to decorate the choir of the cathedral at Prato with the
+legends of S. John Baptist and S. Stephen. All of these frescoes are
+noteworthy for their firm grasp upon reality in the portraits of
+Florentine worthies, and for the harmonious disposition of the groups; but
+the scene of Salome dancing before Herod is the best for its poetic
+feeling. Her movement across the floor before the tyrant and his guests at
+table, the quaint fluttering of her drapery, the well-bred admiration of
+the spectators, their horror when she brings the Baptist's head to
+Herodias, and the weak face of the half-remorseful Herod are expressed
+with a dramatic power that shows the genius of a poet painter. And even
+more lovely than Salome are a pair of girls locked in each other's arms
+close by Herodias on the daïs. A natural and spontaneous melody, not only
+in the suggested movements of this scene, but also in the colouring,
+choice of form, and treatment of drapery, makes it one of the most musical
+of pictures ever painted.
+
+Fra Filippo was not so successful in the choir of the cathedral at
+Spoleto, where he undertook; to paint scenes from the life of the Virgin.
+Yet those who have not examined these frescoes, ruinous in their decay and
+spoiled by stupid restoration, can form no just notion of the latent
+capacity of this great master. The whole of the half-dome above the
+tribune is filled with, a "Coronation of Madonna." A circular rainbow
+surrounds both her and Christ. She is kneeling with fiery rays around her,
+glorified by her assumption into heaven. Christ is enthroned, and at His
+side stands a seat prepared for His mother, as soon as the crown that He
+is placing on her head shall have made her Queen. From the outer courts of
+heaven, thronged with multitudes of celestial beings, angels are crowding
+in, breaking the lines of the prismatic aureole, as though the ardour of
+their joy could scarcely be repressed; while the everlasting light of God
+sheds radiance from above, and far below, lies earth with diminished sun
+and moon. The boldness of conception in this singular fresco reveals a
+genius capable of grappling with such problems as Tintoretto solved. Fra
+Filippo died at Spoleto, and left his work unfinished, to the care of his
+assistant, the Fra Diamante. Over his tomb Lorenzo de' Medici caused a
+monument to be erected, and Poliziano wrote Latin couplets to commemorate
+the fame of a painter highly prized by his patrons.
+
+The space devoted in these pages to Fra Lippo Lippi is justified not only
+by the excellence of his own work, but also by the influence he exercised
+over two of the best Florentine painters of the fifteenth century. Whether
+Filippino Lippi was in truth his son by Lucrezia Buti, a novice he is said
+to have carried from her cloister in Prato, has been called in question
+by recent critics; but they adduce no positive arguments for discrediting
+the story of Vasari.[181] There can, however, be no doubt that to the
+Frate, whether he was his father or only his teacher, Filippino owed his
+style. His greatest works were painted in continuation of Masaccio's
+frescoes in the Carmine at Florence. It is the best warrant of their
+excellence that we feel them worthy to hold the place they do, and that
+Raphael transferred one of their motives, the figure of S. Paul addressing
+S. Peter in prison, to his cartoon of "Mars' Hill." That he was not so
+accomplished as Masaccio in the art of composition, that his scale of
+colour is less pleasing, and that his style in general lacks the elevation
+of his mighty predecessor, is not sufficient to place him in any position
+of humiliating inferiority.[182] What above all things interests the
+student of the Renaissance in Filippino's work, is the powerful action of
+revived classicism on his manner. This can be traced better in the Caraffa
+Chapel of S. Maria sopra Minerva at Rome and in the Strozzi Chapel of S.
+Maria Novella at Florence than in the Carmine. The "Triumph of S. Thomas
+Aquinas" and the "Miracle of S. John" are remarkable for an almost
+insolent display of Roman antiquities--not studied, it need scarcely be
+observed, with the scientific accuracy of Alma Tadema--for such science
+was non-existent in the fifteenth century--but paraded with a kind of
+passion. To this delight in antique details Filippino added violent
+gestures, strange attitudes, and affected draperies, producing a general
+result impressive through the artist's energy, but quaint and
+unattractive.
+
+Sandro Botticelli, the other disciple of Fra Lippo, bears a name of
+greater mark. He is one of those artists, much respected in their own
+days, who suffered eclipse from the superior splendour of immediate
+successors, and to whom, through sympathy stimulated by prolonged study of
+the fifteenth century, we have of late paid tardy and perhaps exaggerated
+honours.[183] His fellow-workers seem to have admired him as an able
+draughtsman gifted with a rare if whimsical imagination; but no one
+recognised in him a leader of his age. For us he has an almost unique
+value as representing the interminglement of antique and modern fancy at a
+moment of transition, as embodying in some of his pictures the subtlest
+thought and feeling of men for whom the classic myths were beginning to
+live once more, while new guesses were timidly hazarded in the sphere of
+orthodoxy.[184] Self-confident sensuality had not as yet encouraged
+painters to substitute a florid rhetoric for the travail of their brain;
+nor was enough known about antiquity to make the servile imitation of
+Greek or Roman fragments possible. Yet scholarship had already introduced
+a novel element into the culture of the nation. It was no doubt with a
+kind of wonder that the artists heard of Fauns and Sylvans, and the birth
+of Aphrodite from the waves. Such fables took deep hold upon their fancy,
+stirring them to strange and delicate creations, the offspring of their
+own thought, and no mere copies of marbles seen in statue galleries. The
+very imperfection of these pictures lends a value to them in the eyes of
+the student, by helping him to comprehend exactly how the revelations of
+the humanists affected the artistic sense of Italy.
+
+In the mythological work of Botticelli there is always an element of
+allegory, recalling the Middle Ages and rendering it far truer to the
+feelings of the fifteenth century than to the myths it illustrates. His
+painting of the "Spring," suggested by a passage from Lucretius,[185] is
+exquisitely poetic; and yet the true spirit of the Latin verse has not
+been seized--to have done that would have taxed the energies of
+Titian--but something special to the artist and significant for Medicean
+scholarship has been added. There is none of the Roman largeness and
+freedom in its style; Venus and her Graces are even melancholy, and their
+movements savour of affectation. This combination or confusion of artistic
+impulses in Botticelli, this treatment of pagan themes in the spirit of
+mediaeval mysticism, sometimes ended in grotesqueness. It might suffice to
+cite the pregnant "Aphrodite" in the National Gallery, if the "Mars and
+Venus" in the same collection were not even a more striking instance. Mars
+is a young Florentine, whose throat and chest are beautifully studied from
+the life, but whose legs and belly, belonging no doubt to the same model,
+fall far short of heroic form. He lies fast asleep with the corners of his
+mouth drawn down, as though he were about to snore. Opposite there sits a
+woman, weary and wan, draped from neck to foot in the thin raiment
+Botticelli loved. Four little goat-footed Cupids playing with the armour
+of the sleeping lad complete the composition. These wanton loves are
+admirably conceived and exquisitely drawn; nor indeed can any drawing
+exceed in beauty the line that leads from the flank along the ribs and arm
+of Mars up to his lifted elbow. The whole design, like one of Piero di
+Cosimo's pictures in another key, leaves a strong impression on the mind,
+due partly to the oddity of treatment, partly to the careful work
+displayed, and partly to the individuality of the artist. It gives us keen
+pleasure to feel exactly how a painter like Botticelli applied the dry
+naturalism of the early Florentine Renaissance, as well as his own
+original imagination, to a subject he imperfectly realised. Yet are we
+right in assuming that he meant the female figure in this group for
+Aphrodite, the sleeping man for Ares? A Greek or a Roman would have
+rejected this picture as false to the mythus of Mars and Venus; and
+whether Botticelli wished to be less descriptive than emblematic, might be
+fairly questioned. The face and attitude of that unseductive Venus, wide
+awake and melancholy, opposite her snoring lover, seems to symbolise the
+indignities which women may have to endure from insolent and sottish boys
+with only youth to recommend them. This interpretation, however, sounds
+like satire. We are left to conjecture whether Botticelli designed his
+composition for an allegory of intemperance, the so-called Venus typifying
+some moral quality.
+
+Botticelli's "Birth of Aphrodite" expresses this transient moment in the
+history of the Renaissance with more felicity. It would be impossible for
+any painter to design a more exquisitely outlined figure than that of his
+Venus, who, with no covering but her golden hair, is wafted to the shore
+by zephyrs. Roses fall upon the ruffled waves, and the young gods of the
+air twine hands and feet together as they float. In the picture of
+"Spring" there is the same choice of form, the same purity of line, the
+same rare interlacement in the limbs. It would seem as though Botticelli
+intended every articulation of the body to express some meaning, and this,
+though it enhances the value of his work for sympathetic students, often
+leads him to the verge of affectation. Nothing but a touch of affectation
+in the twined fingers of Raphael and Tobias impairs the beauty of one of
+Botticelli's best pictures at Turin. We feel the same discord looking at
+them as we do while reading the occasional _concetti_ in Petrarch; and all
+the more in each case does the discord pain us because we know that it
+results from their specific quality carried to excess.
+
+Botticelli's sensibility to the refinements of drawing gave peculiar
+character to all his work. Attention has frequently been called to the
+beauty of his roses.[186] Every curl in their frail petals is rendered
+with as much care as though they were the hands or feet of Graces. Nor is
+it, perhaps, a mere fancy to imagine that the corolla of an open rose
+suggested to Botticelli's mind the composition of his best-known picture,
+the circular "Coronation of the Virgin" in the Uffizzi. That masterpiece
+combines all Botticelli's best qualities. For rare distinction of beauty
+in the faces it is unique, while the mystic calm and resignation, so
+misplaced in his Aphrodites, find a meaning here[187]. There is only one
+other picture in Italy, a "Madonna and Child with S. Catherine" in a
+landscape by Boccaccino da Cremona, that in any degree rivals the peculiar
+beauty of its types[188].
+
+Sandro Botticelli was not a great painter in the same sense as Andrea
+Mantegna. But he was a true poet within the limits of a certain sphere. We
+have to seek his parallel among the verse-writers rather than the artists
+of his day. Some of the stanzas of Poliziano and Boiardo, in particular,
+might have been written to explain his pictures, or his pictures might
+have been painted to illustrate their verses[189]. In both Poliziano and
+Boiardo we find the same touch upon antique things as in Botticelli; and
+this makes him serviceable almost above all painters to the readers of
+Renaissance poetry.
+
+The name of Piero di Cosimo has been mentioned incidentally in connection
+with that of Botticelli; and though his life exceeds the limits assigned
+for this chapter, so many links unite him to the class of painters I have
+been discussing, that I can find no better place to speak of him than
+this. His biography forms one of the most amusing chapters in Vasari, who
+has taken great delight in noting Piero's quaint humours and eccentric
+habits, and whose description of a Carnival triumph devised by him is one
+of our most precious documents in illustration of Renaissance
+pageantry.[190] The point that connects him with Botticelli is the
+romantic treatment of classical mythology, best exemplified in his
+pictures of the tale of Perseus and Andromeda.[191] Piero was by nature
+and employment a decorative painter; the construction of cars for
+pageants, and the adornment of dwelling rooms and marriage chests,
+affected his whole style, rendering it less independent and more quaint
+than that of Botticelli. Landscape occupies the main part of his
+compositions, made up by a strange amalgam of the most eccentric
+details--rocks toppling over blue bays, sea-caverns, and fantastic
+mountain ranges. Groups of little figures disposed upon these spaces tell
+the story, and the best invention of the artist is lavished on the form of
+monstrous creatures like the dragon slain by Perseus. There is no attempt
+to treat the classic subject in a classic spirit: to do that, and to fail
+in doing it, remained for Cellini.[192] We have, on the contrary, before
+us an image of the orc, as it appeared to Ariosto's fancy--a creature
+borrowed from romance and made to play its part in a Greek myth. The same
+criticism applies to Piero's picture of the murdered Procris watched by a
+Satyr of the woodland.[193] In creating his Satyr the painter has not had
+recourse to any antique bas-relief, but has imagined for himself a being
+half human, half bestial, and yet wholly real; nor has he portrayed in
+Procris a nymph of Greek form, but a girl of Florence. The strange animals
+and gaudy flowers introduced into the landscape background further remove
+the subject from the sphere of classic treatment. Florentine realism and
+quaint fancy being thus curiously blended, the artistic result may be
+profitably studied for the light it throws upon the so-called Paganism of
+the earlier Renaissance. Fancy at that moment was more free than when
+superior knowledge of antiquity had created a demand for reproductive art,
+and when the painters thought less of the meaning of the fable for
+themselves than of its capability of being used as a machine for the
+display of erudition.
+
+It remains to speak of the painter who closes and at the same time gathers
+up the whole tradition of this period. Domenico Ghirlandajo deserves this
+place of honour not because he had the keenest intuitions, the deepest
+thought, the strongest passion, the subtlest fancy, the loftiest
+imagination--for in all these points he was excelled by some one or other
+of his contemporaries or predecessors--but because his intellect was the
+most comprehensive and his mastery of art the most complete. His life
+lasted from 1449 to 1498, and he did not distinguish himself as a painter
+till he was past thirty.[194] Therefore he does not properly fall within
+the limit of 1470, assigned roughly to this age of transition in
+painting. But in style and spirit he belonged to it, resuming in his own
+work the qualities we find scattered through the minor artists of the
+fifteenth century, and giving them the unity of fusion in a large and
+lucid manner. Like the painters hitherto discussed, he was working toward
+the full Renaissance; yet he reached it neither in ideality nor in
+freedom. His art is the art of the understanding only; and to this the
+masters of the golden age added radiance, sublimity, grace,
+passion--qualities of the imagination beyond the scope of men like
+Ghirlandajo.
+
+It is almost with reluctance that a critic feels obliged to name this
+powerful but prosaic painter as the Giotto of the fifteenth century in
+Florence, the tutelary angel of an age inaugurated by Masaccio. He was a
+consummate master of the science collected by his predecessors. No one
+surpassed him in the use of fresco. His orderly composition, in the
+distribution of figures and the use of architectural accessories, is
+worthy of all praise; his portraiture is dignified and powerful;[195] his
+choice of form and treatment of drapery, noble. Yet we cannot help noting
+his deficiency in the finer sense of beauty, the absence of poetic
+inspiration or feeling in his work, the commonplaceness of his colour, and
+his wearisome reiteration of calculated effects. He never arrests
+attention by sallies of originality, or charms us by the delicacies of
+suggestive fancy. He is always at the level of his own achievement, so
+that in the end we are as tired with able Ghirlandajo as the men of Athens
+with just Aristides. Who, however, but Ghirlandajo could have composed the
+frescoes of "S. Fina" at S. Gemignano, the fresco of the "Death of S.
+Francis" in S. Trinità at Florence, or that again of the "Birth of the
+Virgin" in S. Maria Novella? There is something irritating in pure common
+sense imported into art, and Ghirlandajo's masterpieces are the apotheosis
+of that quality. How correct, how judicious, how sagacious, how
+mathematically ordered! we exclaim; but we gaze without emotion, and we
+turn away without regret. It does not vex us to read how Ghirlandajo used
+to scold his prentices for neglecting trivial orders that would fill his
+purse with money. Similar traits of character pain us with a sense of
+impropriety in Perugino. They harmonise with all we feel about the work of
+Ghirlandajo. It is bitter mortification to know that Michael Angelo never
+found space or time sufficient for his vast designs in sculpture. It is a
+positive relief to think that Ghirlandajo sighed in vain to have the
+circuit of the walls of Florence given him to paint. How he would have
+covered them with compositions, stately, flowing, easy, sober, and
+incapable of stirring any feeling in the soul!
+
+Though Ghirlandajo lacked almost every true poetic quality, he combined
+the art of distributing figures in a given space, with perspective, fair
+knowledge of the nude, and truth to nature, in greater perfection than any
+other single painter of the age he represents; and since these were
+precisely the gifts of that age to the great Renaissance masters, we
+accord to him the place of historical honour. It should be added that,
+like almost all the artists of this epoch, he handled sacred and profane,
+ancient and modern, subjects in the same style, introducing contemporary
+customs and costumes. His pictures are therefore valuable for their
+portraits and their illustration of Florentine life. Fresco was his
+favourite vehicle; and in this preference he showed himself a true master
+of the school of Florence: but he is said to have maintained that mosaic,
+as more durable, was superior to wall-painting. This saying, if it be
+authentic, justifies our criticism of his cold achievement as a painter.
+
+Reviewing the ground traversed in this and the last chapter, we find that
+the painting of Tuscany, and in particular the Florentine section of it,
+has absorbed attention. It is characteristic of the next age that other
+districts of Italy began to contribute their important quota to the
+general culture of the nation. The force generated in Tuscany expanded and
+dilated till every section of the country took part in the movement which
+Florence had been first to propagate. What was happening in scholarship
+began to manifest itself in art, for the same law of growth and
+distribution affected both alike; and thus the local differences of the
+Italians were to some extent abolished. The nation, never destined to
+acquire political union in the Renaissance, possessed at last an
+intellectual unity in its painters and its students, which justifies our
+speaking of the great men of the golden period as Italians and not as
+citizens of such or such a burgh. In the Middle Ages United Italy was an
+Idea to theorists like Dante, who dreamed for her an actual supremacy
+beneath her Emperor's sway in Rome. The reasoning to which they trusted
+proved fallacious, and their hopes were quenched. Instead of the political
+empire of the "De Monarchiâ," a spiritual empire had been created, and the
+Italians were never more powerful in Europe than when their sacred city
+was being plundered by the imperial bandits in 1527. It is necessary, at
+the risk of some repetition, to keep this point before the reader, if only
+as an apology for the method of treatment to be followed in the next
+chapter, where the painters of the mid-Renaissance period will be reviewed
+less in relation to their schools and cities than as representatives of
+the Italian spirit.
+
+Since the intellectual unity gained by the Italians in the age of the
+Renaissance was chiefly due to the Florentines, it is a matter of some
+moment to reconsider the direct influences brought to bear upon the arts
+in Florence during the fifteenth century. I have chosen Ghirlandajo as the
+representative of painting in that period. I have also expressed the
+opinion that his style is singularly cold and prosaic, and have hinted
+that this prosaic and cold quality was caused by a defect of emotional
+enthusiasm, by preoccupation with finite aims. Herein Ghirlandajo did but
+reflect the temper of his age--that temper which Cosimo de' Medici, the
+greatest patron of both art and scholarship in Florence before 1470,
+represented in his life and in his public policy. It concerns us,
+therefore, to take into account the nature of the patronage extended by
+the Medici to art. Excessive praise and blame have been showered upon
+these burgher princes in almost equal quantities; so that, if we were to
+place Roscoe and Rio, as the representatives of conflicting views, in the
+scales together, they would balance each other, and leave the index
+quivering. This bare statement warns the critic to be cautious, and
+inclines him to accept the intermediate conclusion that neither the Medici
+nor the artists could escape the conditions of their century. It is
+specially argued on the one hand against the Medici that they encouraged a
+sensual and worldly style of art, employing the painters to decorate their
+palaces with nude figures, and luring them away from sacred to profane
+subjects. Yet Cosimo gave orders to Donatello for his "David" and his
+"Judith," employed Michellozzo and Brunelleschi to build him convents and
+churches, and filled the library of S. Marco, where Fra Angelico was
+painting, with a priceless collection of MSS. His own private chapel was
+decorated by Benozza Gozzoli. Fra Lippo Lippi and Michael Angelo
+Buonarroti were the house-friends of Lorenzo de' Medici. Leo Battista
+Alberti was a member of his philosophical society. The only great
+Florentine artist who did not stand in cordial relations to the Medicean
+circle, was Lionardo da Vinci. This sufficiently shows that the Medicean
+patronage was commensurate with the best products of Florentine genius;
+nor would it be easy to demonstrate that encouragement, so largely
+exhibited and so intelligently used, could have been in the main injurious
+to the arts.
+
+There is, however, a truth in the old grudge against the Medicean princes.
+They enslaved Florence; and even painting was not slow to suffer from the
+stifling atmosphere of tyranny. Lorenzo deliberately set himself to
+enfeeble the people by luxury, partly because he liked voluptuous living,
+partly because he aimed at popularity, and partly because it was his
+interest to enervate republican virtues. The arts used for the purposes of
+decoration in triumphs and carnival shows became the instruments of
+careless pleasure; and there is no doubt that even earnest painters lent
+their powers with no ill-will and no bad conscience to the service of
+lascivious patrons. "Per la città, in diverse case, fece tondi di sua mano
+e femmine ignude assai," says Vasari about Sandro Botticelli, who
+afterwards became a Piagnone and refused to touch a pencil.[196] We may,
+therefore, reasonably concede that if the Medici had never taken hold on
+Florence, or if the spirit of the times had made them other than they were
+in loftiness of aim and nobleness of heart, the arts of Italy in the
+Renaissance might have shown less of worldliness and materialism. It was
+against the demoralisation of society by paganism, as against the
+enslavement of Florence by her tyrants, that Savonarola strove; and since
+the Medici were the leaders of the classical revival, as well as the
+despots of the dying commonwealth, they justly bear the lion's share of
+that blame which fell in general upon the vices of their age denounced by
+the prophet of S. Marco. We may regard it either as a singular misfortune
+for Italy or as the strongest sign of deep-seated Italian corruption, that
+the most brilliant leaders of culture both at Florence and at
+Rome--Cosimo, Lorenzo, and Giovanni de' Medici--promoted rather than
+checked the debasing influences of the Renaissance, and added the weight
+of their authority to the popular craving for sensuous amusement.
+
+Meanwhile, what was truly great and noble in Renaissance Italy, found its
+proper home in Florence; where the spirit of freedom, if only as an idea,
+still ruled; where the populace was still capable of being stirred to
+super-sensual enthusiasm; and where the flame of the modern intellect
+burned with its purest, whitest lustre.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[161] See Vol. I., _Age of the Despots_, p. 12.
+
+[162] See Vol. II., _Revival of Learning_, pp. 122-129.
+
+[163] His real name was Tommaso di Ser Giovanni, of the family of
+Scheggia. Masaccio means in Tuscan, "Great hulking Tom," just as
+Masolino, his supposed master and fellow-worker, means "Pretty little
+Tom." Masolino was Tommaso di Cristofero Fini, born in 1384 in S. Croce.
+It is now thought that we have but little of his authentic work except
+the frescoes at Castiglione di Olona, near Milan. Masaccio was born at
+San Giovanni, in the upper valley of the Arno, in 1402. He died at Borne
+in 1429.
+
+[164] His family name was Doni. He was born about 1396, and died at the
+age of about 73. He got his name Uccello from his partiality for painting
+birds, it is said.
+
+[165] See above, Chapter III, Andrea Verocchio, for what has been said
+about Verocchio's "David."
+
+[166] A drawing made in red chalk for this "Dream of Constantine" has
+been published in facsimile by Ottley, in his _Italian School of Design_.
+He wrongly attributes it, however, to Giorgione, and calls it a "Subject
+Unknown."
+
+[167] The one in S. Francesco at Rimini, the other in the Uffizzi.
+
+[168] Two angels have recently been published by the Arundel Society who
+have also copied Melozzo's wall-painting of Sixtus IV. in the Vatican. It
+is probable that the picture in the Royal Collection at Windsor, of Duke
+Frederick of Urbino listening to the lecture of a Humanist, is also a
+work of Melozzo's, much spoiled by re-painting. See Vol. II., _Revival of
+Learning_, p. 220.
+
+[169] Muratori, vol. xxiv. 1181.
+
+[170] For Ciriac of Ancona, see Vol. II., _Revival of Learning_, p. 113.
+
+[171] The services rendered by Squarcione to art have been thoroughly
+discussed by Messrs. Crowe and Cavalcaselle, _Painting in North Italy_,
+vol. i. chap. 2. I cannot but think that they underrate the importance of
+his school.
+
+[172] He was born between 1360 and 1370, and he settled at Florence about
+1422, where he opened a _bottega_ in S. Trinità. In 1423 he painted his
+masterpiece, the "Adoration of the Magi," now exhibited in the Florentine
+Academy of Arts.
+
+[173] See, for instance, the valuable portraits of the Medicean family
+with Picino and Poliziano, in the fresco of the "Tower of Babel" at Pisa.
+
+[174] _L'Art Chrétien_, vol. ii. p. 397.
+
+[175] The same remark might be made about the Venetian Bonifazio. It is
+remarkable that the "Adoration of the Magi" was always a favourite
+subject with painters of this calibre.
+
+[176] I may refer to the picture of the hunters in the Taylor Gallery at
+Oxford, the "Vintage of Noah" at Pisa, the attendants of the Magi in the
+Riccardi Palace, and the _Carola_ in the "Marriage of Jacob and Rachel"
+at Pisa.
+
+[177] "Stories of Isaac and Ishmael and of Jacob and Esau" at Pisa, and
+"Story of S. Augustine" at San Gemignano. Nothing can be prettier than
+the school children in the latter series. The group of the little boy,
+horsed upon a bigger boy's back for a whipping, is one of the most
+natural episodes in painting.
+
+[178] Riccardi Chapel.
+
+[179] For an example, the picture of Madonna worshipping the infant
+Christ upheld by two little angels in the Uffizzi.
+
+[180] In the Academy of Fine Arts at Florence.
+
+[181] Crowe and Cavalcaselle, vol. ii. chap. 19. Nothing was more common
+in the practice of Italian arts than for pupils to take their names from
+their masters, in the same way as they took them from their fathers, by
+the prefix _di_ or otherwise.
+
+[182] The most simply beautiful of Filippino's pictures is the
+oil-painting in the Badia at Florence, which represents Madonna attended
+by angels dictating the story of her life to S. Bernard. In this most
+lovely religious picture Filippino comes into direct competition with
+Perugino (see the same subject at Munich), without suffering by the
+contrast. The type of Our lady, striven after by Botticelli and other
+masters of his way of feeling, seems to me more thoroughly attained by
+Filippino than by any of his fellow-workers. She is a woman acquainted
+with grief and nowise distinguished by the radiance of her beauty among
+the daughters of earth. It is measureless love for the mother of his Lord
+that makes S. Bernard bow before her with eyes of wistful adoration and
+hushed reverence.
+
+[183] The study of the fine arts offers few subjects of more curious
+interest than the vicissitudes through which painters of the type of
+Botticelli, not absolutely and confessedly in the first rank, but
+attractive by reason of their relation to the spirit of their age, and of
+the seal of _intimité_ set upon their work have passed. In the last
+century and the beginning of this, our present preoccupation with
+Botticelli would have passed for a mild lunacy, because he has none of
+the qualities then most in vogue and most enthusiastically studied, and
+because the moment in the history of culture he so faithfully represents,
+was then but little understood. The prophecy of Mr. Ruskin, the
+tendencies of our best contemporary art in Mr. Burne Jones's painting,
+the specific note of our recent fashionable poetry, and, more than all,
+our delight in the delicately poised psychological problems of the middle
+Renaissance, have evoked a kind of hero-worship for this excellent artist
+and true poet.
+
+[184] A friend, writing to me from Italy, speaks thus of Botticelli, and
+of the painters associated with him: "When I ask myself what it is I find
+fascinating in him--for instance, which of his pictures, or what element
+in them--I am forced to admit that it is the touch of paganism in him,
+the fairy-story element, _the echo of a beautiful lapsed mythology which
+he has found the means of transmitting._" The words I have printed in
+italics seem to me very true. At the same time we must bear in mind that
+the scientific investigation of nature had not in the fifteenth century
+begun to stand between the sympathetic intellect and the outer world.
+There was still the possibility of that "lapsed mythology," the dream of
+poets and the delight of artists, seeming positively the best form of
+expression for sentiments aroused by nature.
+
+[185] _De Rerum Naturâ_, lib. v. 737.
+
+[186] The rose-tree background in a Madonna belonging to Lord Elcho is a
+charming instance of the value given to flowers by careful treatment.
+
+[187] I cannot bring myself to accept Mr. Pater's reading of the
+Madonna's expression. It seems to me that Botticelli meant to portray the
+mingled awe and tranquillity of a mortal mother chosen for the Son of
+God. He appears to have sometimes aimed at conveying more than painting
+can compass; and, since he had not Lionardo's genius, he gives sadness,
+mournfulness, or discontent, for some more subtle mood. Next to the
+Madonna of the Uffizzi, Botticelli's loveliest religious picture to my
+mind is the "Nativity" belonging to Mr. Fuller Maitland. Poetic
+imagination in a painter has produced nothing more graceful and more
+tender than the dance of angels in the air above, and the embracement of
+the angels and the shepherds on the lawns below.
+
+[188] In the Academy of Fine Arts at Venice. I do not mention this
+picture as a complete pendant to Botticelli's famous _tondo_. The faces
+of S. Catherine and Madonna, however, have something of the rarity that
+is so striking in that work.
+
+[189] I might mention stanzas 122-124 of Poliziano's _Giostra_,
+describing Venus in the lap of Mars; or stanzas 99-107, describing the
+birth of Venus; and from Boiardo's _Orlando Innamorato_, I might quote
+the episode of Rinaldo's punishment by Love (lib. ii. canto xv. 43), or
+the tale of Silvanella and Narcissus (lib. ii. canto xvii. 49).
+
+[190] I hope to make use of this passage in a future section of my work
+on the Italian Poetry of the Renaissance. Therefore I pass by this
+portion of Piero's art-work now.
+
+[191] Uffizzi Gallery.
+
+[192] See the bas-relief upon the pedestal of his "Perseus" in the Loggia
+de' Lanzi.
+
+[193] In the National Gallery.
+
+[194] His family name was Domenico di Currado di Doffo Bigordi. He
+probably worked during his youth and early manhood as a goldsmith and got
+his artist's name from the trade of making golden chaplets for the
+Florentine women. See Vasari, vol. v. p. 66.
+
+[195] What, after all, remains the grandest quality of Ghirlandajo is his
+powerful drawing of characteristic heads. They are as various as they are
+vigorous. What a nation of strong men must the Florentines have been, we
+feel while gazing at his frescoes.
+
+[196] In many houses he painted roundels with his own hand, and of naked
+women plenty.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+PAINTING
+
+Two Periods in the True Renaissance--Andrea Mantegna--His Statuesque
+Design--His Naturalism--Roman Inspiration--Triumph of Julius
+Caesar--Bas-reliefs--Luca Signorelli--The Precursor of Michael
+Angelo--Anatomical Studies--Sense of Beauty--The Chapel of S. Brizio at
+Orvieto--Its Arabesques and Medallions--Degrees in his Ideal--Enthusiasm
+for Organic Life--Mode of treating Classical Subjects--Perugino--His
+Pietistic Style--His Formalism--The Psychological Problem of his
+Life--Perugino's Pupils--Pinturicchio--At Spello and Siena--Francia--Fra
+Bartolommeo--Transition to the Golden Age--Lionardo da Vinci--The Magician
+of the Renaissance--Raphael--The Melodist--Correggio--The Faun--Michael
+Angelo--The Prophet.
+
+
+The Renaissance, so far as Painting is concerned, may be said to have
+culminated between the years 1470 and 1550. These dates, it must be
+frankly admitted, are arbitrary; nor is there anything more unprofitable
+than the attempt to define by strict chronology the moments of an
+intellectual growth so complex, so unequally progressive, and so varied as
+that of Italian art. All that the historian can hope to do, is to strike a
+mean between his reckoning of years and his more subtle calculations based
+on the emergence of decisive genius in special men. An instance of such
+compromise is afforded by Lionardo da Vinci, who belongs, as far as dates
+go, to the last half of the fifteenth century, but who must, on any
+estimate of his achievement, be classed with Michael Angelo among the
+final and supreme masters of the full Renaissance. To violate the order of
+time, with a view to what may here be called the morphology of Italian
+art, is, in his case, a plain duty.
+
+Bearing this in mind, it is still possible to regard the eighty years
+above mentioned as a period no longer of promise and preparation but of
+fulfilment and accomplishment. Furthermore, the thirty years at the close
+of the fifteenth century may be taken as one epoch in this climax of the
+art, while the first half of the sixteenth forms a second. Within the
+former falls the best work of Mantegna, Perugino, Francia, the Bellini,
+Signorelli, Fra Bartolommeo. To the latter we may reckon Michael Angelo,
+Raphael, Giorgione, Correggio, Titian, and Andrea del Sarto. Lionardo da
+Vinci, though belonging chronologically to the former epoch, ranks first
+among the masters of the latter; and to this also may be given Tintoretto,
+though his life extended far beyond it to the last years of the century.
+We thus obtain, within the period of eighty years from 1470 to 1550, two
+subordinate divisions of time, the one including the last part of the
+fifteenth century, the other extending over the best years of the
+sixteenth.
+
+The subdivisions I have just suggested correspond to two distinct stages
+in the evolution of art. The painters of the earlier group win our
+admiration quite as much by their aim as by their achievement. Their
+achievement, indeed, is not so perfect but that they still make some
+demand upon interpretative sympathy in the student. There is, besides, a
+sense of reserved strength in their work. We feel that their motives have
+not been developed to the utmost, that their inspiration is not exhausted;
+that it will be possible for their successors to advance beyond them on
+the same path, not realising more consummate excellence in special points,
+but combining divers qualities, and reaching absolute freedom.
+
+The painters of the second group display mastery more perfect, range of
+faculty more all-embracing. What they design they do; nature and art obey
+them equally; the resources placed at their command are employed with
+facile and unfettered exercise of power. The hand obedient to the brain is
+now so expert that nothing further is left to be desired in the expression
+of the artist's thought.[197] The student can only hope to penetrate the
+master's meaning. To imagine a step further in the same direction is
+impossible. The full flower of the Italian genius has been unfolded. Its
+message to the world in art has been delivered.
+
+Chronology alone would not justify us in drawing these distinctions. What
+really separates the two groups is the different degree in which they
+severally absorbed the spirit and uttered the message of their age. In the
+former the Renaissance was still immature, in the latter it was perfected.
+Yet all these painters deserve in a true sense to be called its children.
+Their common object is art regarded as an independent function, and
+relieved from the bondage of technical impediments. In their work the
+liberty of the modern mind finds its first and noblest expression. They
+deal with familiar and time-honoured Christian motives reverently; but
+they use them at the same time for the exhibition of pure human beauty.
+Pagan influences yield them spirit-stirring inspiration; yet the antique
+models of style, which proved no less embarrassing to their successors
+than Saul's armour was to David, weigh lightly, like a magician's
+breast-plate, upon their heroic strength.
+
+Andrea Mantegna was born near Padua in 1431. Vasari says that in his
+boyhood he herded cattle, and it is probable that he was the son of a
+small Lombard farmer. What led him to the study of the arts we do not
+know; but that his talents were precociously developed, is proved by his
+registration in 1441 upon the books of the painter's guild at Padua. He is
+there described as the adopted son of Squarcione. At the age of seventeen
+he signed a picture with his name. Studying the casts and drawings
+collected by Squarcione for his Paduan school, the young Mantegna found
+congenial exercise for his peculiar gifts.[198] His early frescoes in the
+Eremitani at Padua look as though they had been painted from statues or
+clay models, carefully selected for the grandeur of their forms, the
+nobility of their attitudes, and the complicated beauty of their drapery.
+The figures, arranged on different planes, are perfect in their
+perspective; the action is indicated by appropriate gestures, and the
+colouring, though faint and cold, is scientifically calculated. Yet not a
+man or woman in these wondrous compositions seems to live. Well provided
+with bone and muscle, they have neither blood nor anything suggestive of
+the breath of life within them. It is as though Mantegna had been called
+to paint a people turned to stone, arrested suddenly amid their various
+occupations, and preserved for centuries from injury in some Egyptian
+solitude of dewless sand.
+
+In spite of this unearthly immobility, the Paduan frescoes exercise a
+strange and potent spell. We feel ourselves beneath the sway of a gigantic
+genius, intent on solving the severest problems of his art in preparation
+for the portraiture of some high intellectual abstraction. It should also
+be observed that notwithstanding their frigidity and statuesque composure,
+the pictures of "S. Andrew" and "S. Christopher" in the chapel of the
+Eremitani reveal minute study of real objects. Transitory movements of the
+body are noted and transcribed with merciless precision; an Italian
+hill-side, with its olive trees and winding ways and crown of turrets,
+forms the background of one scene; in another the drama is localised amid
+Renaissance architecture of the costliest style. Rustic types have been
+selected for the soldiers, and commonplace details, down to a patched
+jerkin or a broken shoe, bear witness to the patience and the observation
+of the master. But over all these things the glamour of Medusa's head has
+fallen, turning them to stone. We are clearly in the presence of a painter
+for whom the attractions of nature were subordinated to the fascinations
+of science--a man the very opposite, for instance, to Benozzo Gozzoli. If
+Mantegna had passed away in early manhood, like Masaccio, his fame would
+have been that of a cold and calculating genius labouring after an ideal
+unrealised except in its dry formal elements.
+
+The truth is that Mantegna's inspiration was derived from the
+antique.[199] The beauty of classical bas-relief entered deep into his
+soul and ruled his imagination. In later life he spent his acquired wealth
+in forming a collection of Greek and Roman antiquities.[200] He was,
+moreover, the friend of students, eagerly absorbing the knowledge brought
+to light by Ciriac of Ancona, Flavio Biondo, and other antiquaries; and so
+completely did he assimilate the materials of scholarship, that the spirit
+of a Roman seemed to be re-incarnated in him. Thus, independently of his
+high value as a painter, he embodies for us in art that sincere passion
+for the ancient world which was the dominating intellectual impulse of his
+age.
+
+The minute learning accumulated in the fifteenth century upon the subject
+of Roman military life found noble illustration in his frieze of "Julius
+Caesar's Triumph."[201] Nor is this masterpiece a cold display of
+pedantry. The life we vainly look for in the frescoes of the Eremitani
+chapel may be found here--statuesque, indeed, in style, and stately in
+movement, but glowing with the spirit of revived antiquity. The
+processional pomp of legionaries bowed beneath their trophied arms, the
+monumental majesty of robed citizens, the gravity of stoled and veiled
+priests, the beauty of young slaves, and all the paraphernalia of spoils
+and wreaths and elephants and ensigns are massed together with the
+self-restraint of noble art subordinating pageantry to rules of lofty
+composition. What must the genius of the man have been who could move thus
+majestically beneath the weight of painfully accumulated erudition,
+converting an antiquarian motive into a theme for melodies of line
+composed in the grave Dorian mood?
+
+By no process can the classic purity of this bas-relief be better
+understood than by comparing the original with a transcript made by Rubens
+from a portion of the "Triumph."[202] The Flemish painter strives to add
+richness to the scene by Bacchanalian riot and the sensuality of imperial
+Rome. His elephants twist their trunks, and trumpet to the din of cymbals;
+negroes feed the flaming candelabra with scattered frankincense; the white
+oxen of Clitumnus are loaded with gaudy flowers, and the dancing maidens
+are dishevelled Maenads. But the rhythmic procession of Mantegna, modulated
+to the sound of flutes and soft recorders, carries our imagination back to
+the best days and strength of Rome. His priests and generals, captives and
+choric women, are as little Greek as they are modern. In them awakes to a
+new life the spirit-quelling energy of the republic. The painter's severe
+taste keeps out of sight the insolence and orgies of the empire; he
+conceives Rome as Shakspeare did in "Coriolanus."[203]
+
+In compositions of this type, studied after bas-reliefs and friezes,
+Mantegna displayed a power that was unique. Those who have once seen his
+drawings for Judith with the head of Holofernes, and for Solomon judging
+between the two mothers, will never forget their sculpture. The lines are
+graven on our memory. When this marble master chose to be tragic, his
+intensity was terrible. The designs for a dead Christ carried to the tomb
+among the weeping Maries, concentrate within the briefest space the utmost
+agony; it is as though the very ecstasy of grief had been congealed and
+fixed for ever. What, again, he could produce of purely beautiful within
+the region of religious art, is shown by his "Madonna of the
+Victory."[204] No other painter has given to the soldier saints forms at
+once so heroic and so chivalrously tender.
+
+With regard to the circumstances of Mantegna's biography, it may be said
+briefly that, though of humble birth, he spent the greater portion of his
+life at Court and in the service of princes. It was in 1456, after he had
+distinguished himself by the Paduan frescoes, that he first received an
+invitation from the Marquis Lodovico Gonzaga. Of this sovereign I have
+already had occasion to speak.[205] Reared by Vittorino da Feltre, to whom
+his father had committed almost unlimited authority, Lodovico had early
+learned to estimate the real advantages of culture. It was now his object
+to render his capital no less illustrious by art than by the residence of
+learned men. With this view he offered Mantegna a salary of fifteen ducats
+a month, together with lodging, corn, and fuel--provided the painter would
+place his talents at his service. Mantegna accepted the invitation; but
+numerous engagements prevented him from transferring his household from
+Padua to Mantua until the year 1460. From that date onwards to 1506, when
+he died, Mantegna remained attached to the Gonzaga family serving three
+Marquises in succession, and adorning their palaces, chapels, and
+country-seats with frescoes now, alas! almost entirely ruined. The grants
+of land and presents he received in addition to his salary, enabled him to
+build a villa at Buscoldo, where he resided during the summer, as well as
+to erect a sumptuous mansion in the capital.
+
+Between Mantua, Goito, and Buscoldo, Mantegna spent the last forty-six
+years of his life in continual employment, broken only by a short visit to
+Florence in 1466, and another to Bologna in 1472,[206] and by a longer
+residence in Rome between the years 1488 and 1490. During the latter
+period Innocent VIII. was Pope. He had built a chapel in the Belvedere of
+the Vatican, and wished the greatest painter of the day to decorate it.
+Therefore he wrote to Francesco, Marquis of Mantua, requesting that he
+might avail himself of Mantegna's skill. Francesco, though unwilling to
+part with his painter in ordinary, thought it unadvisable to disappoint
+the Pope. Accordingly he dubbed Mantegna knight, and sent him to Rome. The
+chapel painted in fresco for Innocent was ruthlessly destroyed by Pius
+VI.; and thus the world has lost one of Mantegna's masterpieces, executed
+while his genius was at its zenith. On his return to Mantua he finished
+the decorations of the Castello of the Gonzaghi, and completed his
+greatest surviving work, the "Triumph of Julius Caesar."
+
+By his wife, Nicolosia, the sister of Giovanni and Gentile Bellini,
+Mantegna had several children, one of whom, Francesco, adopted painting as
+a trade. The great artist was by temper arrogant and haughty; nor could he
+succeed in living peaceably with any of his neighbours. It appears that he
+spent habitually more money than he could well afford, freely indulging
+his taste for magnificence, and disbursing large sums in the purchase of
+curiosities. Long before his death his estate had been involved in debt;
+and after his decease, his sons were forced to sell the pictures in his
+studio for the payment of pressing creditors. He was buried in Alberti's
+church of S. Andrea at Mantua, in a chapel decorated at his own expense.
+Over the grave was placed a bronze bust, most noble in modelling and
+perfect in execution. The broad forehead with its deeply cloven furrows,
+the stern and piercing eyes, the large lips compressed with nervous
+energy, the massive nose, the strength of jaw and chin, and the superb
+clusters of the hair escaping from a laurel-wreath upon the royal head,
+are such as realise for us our notion of a Roman in the days of the
+Republic. Mantegna's own genius has inspired this masterpiece, which
+tradition assigns to the medallist Sperando Maglioli. Whoever wrought it,
+must have felt the incubation of the mighty painter's spirit, and have
+striven to express in bronze the character of his uncompromising art.
+
+Of a different temperament, yet not wholly unlike Mantegna in a certain
+iron strength of artistic character, was Luca Signorelli, born about 1441
+at Cortona. The supreme quality of Mantegna was studied purity of outline,
+severe and heightened style. As Landor is distinguished by concentration
+above all the English poets who have made trial of the classic Muse, so
+Mantegna holds a place apart among Italian painters because of his stern
+Roman self-control. Signorelli, on the contrary, made his mark by
+boldness, pushing experiment almost beyond the verge of truth, and
+approaching Michael Angelo in the hardihood of his endeavour to outdo
+nature. Vasari says of him, that "even Michael Angelo imitated the manner
+of Luca, as every one can see;" and indeed Signorelli anticipated the
+greatest master of the sixteenth century, not only in his profound study
+of human anatomy, but also in his resolution to express high thought and
+tragic passion by pure form, discarding all the minor charms of painting.
+Trained in the severe school of Piero della Francesca, he early learned to
+draw from the nude with boldness and accuracy; and to this point, too much
+neglected by his predecessors, he devoted the full powers of his maturity.
+Anatomy he practised, according to the custom of those days, in the
+graveyard or beneath the gibbet. There is a drawing by him in the Louvre
+of a stalwart man carrying upon his back the corpse of a youth. Both are
+naked. The motive seems to have been taken from some lazar-house.
+Life-long study of perspective in its application to the drawing of the
+figure, made the difficulties of foreshortening and the delineation of
+brusque attitude mere child's play to this audacious genius. The most
+rapid movement, the most perilous contortion of bodies falling through the
+air or flying, he depicted with hard, firmly-traced, unerring outline. If
+we dare to criticise the productions of a master so original and so
+accomplished, all we can say is that Signorelli revelled almost too
+wantonly in the display of hazardous posture, and that he sacrificed the
+passion of his theme to the display of science.[207] Yet his genius
+comprehended great and tragic subjects, and to him belongs the credit in
+an age of ornament and pedantry of having made the human body a language
+for the utterance of all that is most weighty in the thought of man.
+
+A story is told by Vasari which brings Signorelli very close to our
+sympathy, and enables us to understand the fascination of pure form he
+felt so deeply. "It is related of Luca that he had a son killed at
+Cortona, a youth of singular beauty in face and person, whom he had
+tenderly loved. In his grief the father caused the boy to be stripped
+naked, and with extraordinary constancy of soul, uttering no complaint
+and shedding no tear, he painted the portrait of his dead son, to the end
+that he might still be able, through the work of his own hand, to
+contemplate that which nature had given him, but which an adverse fortune
+had taken away." So passionate and ardent, so convinced of the
+indissoluble bond between the soul he loved in life and its dead tenement
+of clay, and withal so iron-nerved and stout of will, it behoved that man
+to be, who undertook in the plenitude of his power, at the age of sixty,
+to paint upon the walls of the chapel of S. Brizio at Orvieto the images
+of Doomsday, Resurrection, Heaven, and Hell.[208]
+
+It is a gloomy chapel in the Gothic cathedral of that forlorn Papal
+city--gloomy by reason of bad lighting, but more so because of the
+terrible shapes with which Signorelli has filled it[209]. In no other work
+of the Italian Renaissance, except in the Sistine Chapel, has so much
+thought, engaged upon the most momentous subjects, been expressed with
+greater force by means more simple and with effect more overwhelming.
+Architecture, landscape, and decorative accessories of every kind, the
+usual padding of _quattrocento_ pictures, have been discarded from the
+main compositions. The painter has relied solely upon his power of
+imagining and delineating the human form in every attitude, and under the
+most various conditions. Darting like hawks or swallows through the air,
+huddling together to shun the outpoured vials of the wrath of God,
+writhing with demons on the floor of Hell, struggling into new life from
+the clinging clay, standing beneath the footstool of the Judge, floating
+with lute and viol on the winds of Paradise, kneeling in prayer, or
+clasping "inseparable hands with joy and bliss in overmeasure for
+ever"--these multitudes of living beings, angelic, diabolic, bestial,
+human, crowd the huge spaces of the chapel walls. What makes the
+impression of controlling doom the more appalling, is that we comprehend
+the drama in its several scenes, while the chief actor, the divine Judge,
+at whose bidding the cherubs sound their clarions, and the dead arise, and
+weal and woe are portioned to the saved and damned, is Himself
+unrepresented.[210] We breathe in the presence of embodied consciences,
+submitting, like our own, to an unseen inevitable will.
+
+It would be doing Signorelli injustice at Orvieto to study only these
+great panels. The details with which he has filled all the vacant spaces
+above the chapel stalls and round the doorway, throw new light upon his
+power. The ostensible motive for this elaborate ornamentation is contained
+in the portraits of six poets, who are probably Homer, Virgil, Lucan,
+Horace, Ovid, and Dante, _il sesto tra cotanto senno_.[211] But the
+portraits themselves, though vigorously conceived and remarkable for bold
+foreshortening, are the least part of the whole design. Its originality
+consists in the arabesques, medallions, and _chiaroscuro_ bas-reliefs,
+where the human form, treated as absolutely plastic, supplies the sole
+decorative element. The pilasters by the doorway, for example, are
+composed, after the usual type of Italian _grotteschi_, in imitation of
+antique candelabra, with numerous stages for the exhibition of the
+artist's fancies. Unlike the work of Raphael in the Loggie, these
+pilasters of Signorelli show no birds or beasts, no flowers or foliage,
+fruits or fauns, no masks or sphinxes. They are crowded with naked
+men--drinking, dancing, leaning forward, twisting themselves into strange
+attitudes, and adapting their bodies to the several degrees of the
+framework. The same may be said of the arabesques around the portraits of
+the poets, where men, women, and children, some complete, some ending in
+foliage or in fish-tails, are lavished with a wild and terrible profusion.
+Hippogriffs and centaurs, sirens and dolphins, are here used as adjuncts
+to humanity. Amid this fantastic labyrinth of twisted forms we find
+medallions painted in _chiaroscuro_ with subjects taken chiefly from
+Ovidian and Dantesque mythology. Here every attitude of men in combat and
+in motion has been studied from the nude, and multitudes of figures draped
+and undraped are compressed into the briefest compass. All but the human
+form is sternly eliminated; and the body itself is treated with a mastery
+and a boldness that prove Signorelli to have held its varied capabilities
+firmly in his brain. He could not have worked out all those postures from
+the living model. He played freely with his immense stores of knowledge;
+but his play was the pastime of a Prometheus. Each pose, however
+hazardous, carries conviction with it of sincerity and truth; the life and
+liberty of nature reign throughout. From the whole maze of interlaced and
+wrestling figures the terrible nature of the artist's genius shines forth.
+They are almost all strong men in the prime or past the prime of life,
+chosen for their salient display of vital structure. Signorelli was the
+first, and, with the exception of Michael Angelo, the last painter thus to
+use the body, without sentiment, without voluptuousness, without any
+second intention whatsoever, as the supreme decorative principle. In his
+absolute sincerity he made, as it were, a parade of hard and rugged types,
+scorning to introduce an element of beauty, whether sensuous or ideal,
+that should distract him from the study of the body in and for itself.
+This distinguishes him in the arabesques at Orvieto alike from Mantegna
+and Michael Angelo, from Correggio and Raphael, from Titian and Paolo
+Veronese.
+
+This point is so important for its bearing on Renaissance art that I may
+be permitted to dilate at greater length on Signorelli's choice of types
+and treatment of form in general. Having a special predilection for the
+human body, he by no means confined himself to monotony in its
+presentation. On the contrary, we can trace many distinct grades of
+corporeal expression. First comes the abstract nude, illustrated by the
+"Resurrection" and the arabesques at Orvieto[212]. Contemporary life, with
+all its pomp of costume and insolence of ruffling youth, is depicted in
+the "Fulminati" at Orvieto and in the "Soldiers of Totila" at Monte
+Oliveto[213]. These transcripts from the courts of princes and camps of
+condottieri are invaluable as portraits of the lawless young men who
+filled Italy with the noise of their feuds and the violence of their
+adventures. They illustrate Matarazzo's Perugian chronicle better than any
+other Renaissance pictures; for in frescoes like those of Pinturicchio at
+Siena the same qualities are softened to suit the painter's predetermined
+harmony, whereas Signorelli rejoices in their pure untempered
+character[214]. These, then, form a second stage. Third in degree we find
+the type of highly idealised adolescence reserved by Signorelli for his
+angels. All his science and his sympathy with real life are here
+subordinated to poetic feeling. It is a mistake to say that these angels
+are the young men of Umbria whom he loved to paint in their striped
+jackets, with the addition of wings to their shoulders. The radiant beings
+who tune their citherns on the clouds of Paradise, or scatter roses for
+elect souls, could not live and breathe in the fiery atmosphere of
+sensuous passions to which the Baglioni were habituated. A grave and
+solemn sense of beauty animates these fair male beings, clothed in
+voluminous drapery, with youthful faces and still earnest eyes. Their
+melody, like that of Milton, is severe. Nor are Signorelli's angelic
+beings of one uniform type like the angels of Fra Angelico. The athletic
+cherubs of the "Resurrection," breathing their whole strength into the
+trumpets that awake the dead; the mailed and winged warriors, keeping
+guard above the pit of "Hell," that none may break their prison-bars among
+the damned; the lute-players of "Paradise," with their almost feminine
+sobriety of movement; the flame-breathing seraphs of the day of doom; the
+"Gabriel" of Volterra, in whom strength is translated into
+swiftness:--these are the heralds, sentinels, musicians, executioners, and
+messengers of the celestial court; and each class is distinguished by
+appropriate physical characteristics. At the other end of the scale,
+forming a fourth grade, we may mention the depraved types of humanity
+chosen for his demons--those greenish, reddish, ochreish fiends of the
+"Inferno," whom Signorelli created by exaggerating the more grotesque
+qualities of the nude developed in his arabesques. We thus obtain four
+several degrees of form: the demoniac, the abstract nude, the adolescent
+beauty of young men copied from choice models, and the angelic.
+
+Except in his angels, Signorelli was comparatively indifferent to what is
+commonly considered beauty. He was not careful to select his models, or to
+idealise their type. The naked human body, apart from facial distinction
+or refinement of form, contented him. Violent contrasts of light and
+shadow, accentuating the anatomical structure with rough and angular
+decision, give the effect of illustrative diagrams to his studies. Harmony
+of proportion and the magic of expression are sacrificed to energy
+emergent in a powerful physique. Redundant life, in sinewy limbs, in the
+proud carriage of the head upon the neck, in the sway of the trunk
+backward from the reins, the firmly planted calves and brawny thighs, the
+thick hair, broad shoulders, spare flanks, and massive gluteal muscles of
+a man of twenty-two or upwards, whose growth has been confined to the
+development of animal force, was what delighted him. Yet there is no
+coarseness or animalism properly so called in his style. He was attracted
+by the marvellous mechanism of the human frame--its goodliness regarded as
+the most highly organised of animate existences.
+
+Owing, perhaps, to this exclusive predilection for organic life,
+Signorelli was not great as a colourist. His patches of blues and reds in
+the frescoes of Monte Oliveto are oppressively distinct; his use of dull
+brown for the shading of flesh imparts a disagreeable heaviness to his
+best modelled forms; nor did he often attain in his oil pictures to that
+grave harmony we admire in his "Last Supper" at Cortona. The world of
+light and colour was to him a comparatively untravelled land. It remained
+for other artists to raise these elements of pictorial expression to the
+height reached by Signorelli in his treatment of the nude.
+
+Before quitting the frescoes at Orvieto, some attention should be paid to
+the medallions spoken of above, in special relation to the classicism of
+the earlier Renaissance. Scenes from Dante's "Purgatorio" and subjects
+from the "Metamorphoses" of Ovid are treated here in the same key; but the
+latter, since they engaged Signorelli's fancy upon Greek mythology, are
+the more important for our purpose. Two from the legend of "Orpheus" and
+two from that of "Proserpine" might be chosen as typical of the whole
+series. Mediaeval intensity, curiously at variance with antique feeling, is
+discernible throughout. The satellites of Hades are gaunt and sinewy
+devils, eager to do violence to Eurydice. Pluto himself drives his jarring
+car-wheels up through the lava-blocks and flames of Etna with a fury and a
+vehemence we seek in vain upon antique sarcophagi. Ceres, wandering
+through Sicily in search of her lost daughter, is a gaunt witch with
+dishevelled hair, raising frantic hands to tear her cheeks; while the
+snakes that draw her chariot are no grave symbols of the germinating corn,
+but greedy serpents ready to spit fire against the ravishers of
+Proserpine. Thus the tranquillity and self-restraint of Greek art yield to
+a passionate and trenchant realisation of the actual romance. The most
+thrilling moments in the legend are selected for dramatic treatment, grace
+and beauty being exchanged for vivid presentation. A whole cycle of human
+experience separates these medallions from the antique bas-relief at
+Naples, where Hermes hands the veiled Eurydice to Orpheus, and all three
+are calm. That Signorelli, if he chose to do so, could represent a classic
+myth with more of classic feeling, is shown by his picture of "Pan
+Listening to Olympus"[215]. The nymph, the vineleaf-girdled Faun, and the
+two shepherds, all undraped and drawn with subtle feeling for the melodies
+of line, render this work one of his most successful compositions.
+
+It would be interesting to compare Signorelli's treatment of the antique
+with Mantegna's or Botticelli's. The visions of the pagan world, floating
+before the mind of all men in the fifteenth century, found very different
+interpreters in these three painters--Botticelli adding the quaint alloy
+of his own fancy, Signorelli imparting the semi-savagery of a terrible
+imagination, Mantegna, with the truest instinct and the firmest touch,
+confining himself to the processional pageantry of bas-relief. Yet, were
+this comparison to be instituted, we could hardly refrain from carrying it
+much further. Each great master of the Renaissance had his own relation to
+classical mythology. The mystic sympathies of "Leda and the Swan," as
+imaged severally by Lionardo and Michael Angelo; Correggio's romantic
+handling of the myths of "Danaë" and "Io;" Titian's and Tintoretto's rival
+pictures of "Bacchus and Ariadne;" Raphael's "Galatea;" Pollajuolo's
+"Hercules;" the "Europa" of Veronese; the "Circe" of Dosso Dossi; Palma's
+"Venus;" Sodoma's "Marriage of Alexander"--all these, to mention none but
+pictures familiar to every traveller in Italy, raise for the student of
+the classical Revival absorbing questions relative to the influences of
+pagan myths upon the modern imagination.
+
+Signorelli was chiefly occupied, during the course of his long career,
+upon religious pictures; and the high place he occupies in the history of
+Renaissance culture is due partly to his free abandonment of conventional
+methods in treating sacred subjects. The Uffizzi Gallery contains a
+circular "Madonna" by his hand, with a row of naked men for
+background--the forerunner of Michael Angelo's famous "Holy Family." So
+far had art for art's sake already encroached upon the ecclesiastical
+domain. To discuss Signorelli's merits as a painter of altar-pieces would
+be to extend the space allotted to him far beyond its proper limits. It is
+not as a religious artist that he takes his rank, but as having powerfully
+promoted the rehabilitation of the body achieved for art by the
+Renaissance.
+
+Unlike Mantegna, Signorelli never entered the service of a prince, though
+we have seen that he executed commissions for Lorenzo de' Medici and
+Pandolfo Petrucci. He bore a name which, if not noble, had been more than
+once distinguished in the annals of Tuscany. Residing at his native place,
+Cortona, he there enjoyed the highest reputation, and was frequently
+elected to municipal office. Concerning his domestic life very little is
+known, but what we do know is derived from an excellent source[216]. His
+mother was the sister of Lazzaro, great-grandfather of Giorgio Vasari. In
+his biography of Signorelli, Vasari relates how, when he was himself a boy
+of eight, his illustrious cousin visited the house of the Vasari family at
+Arezzo; and hearing from little Giorgio's grammar-master that he spent his
+time in drawing figures, Luca turned to the child's father and said,
+"Antonio, since Giorgio takes after his family, you must by all means have
+him taught; for even though he should pay attention to literature as well,
+drawing cannot fail to be a source of utility, honour, and recreation to
+him, as it is to every man of worth." Luca's kindness deeply impressed the
+boy, who afterwards wrote the following description of his personal
+qualities: "He was a man of the most excellent habits, sincere and
+affectionate with his friends, sweet of conversation and amusing in
+society, above all things courteous to those who had need of his work, and
+easy in giving instruction to his pupils. He lived splendidly, and took
+delight in dressing handsomely. This excellent disposition caused him to
+be always held in highest veneration both in his own city and abroad."
+
+To turn from Signorelli to Perugino is to plunge at once into a very
+different atmosphere[217]. It is like quitting the rugged gorges of high
+mountains for a valley of the Southern Alps--still, pensive, beautiful,
+and coloured with reflections from an evening sky. Perugino knew exactly
+how to represent a certain mood of religious sentiment, blending meek
+acquiescence with a prayerful yearning of the impassioned soul. His
+Madonnas worshipping the infant Jesus in a tranquil Umbrian landscape, his
+angels ministrant, his pathetic martyrs with upturned holy faces, his
+sexless S. Sebastians and immaculate S. Michaels, display the perfection
+of art able by colour and by form to achieve within a narrow range what it
+desires. What this artist seems to have aimed at, was to create for the
+soul amid the pomps and passions of this world a resting-place of
+contemplation tenanted by saintly and seraphic beings. No pain comes near
+the folk of his celestial city; no longing poisons their repose; they are
+not weary, and the wicked trouble them no more. Their cheerfulness is no
+less perfect than their serenity; like the shades of Hellas, they have
+drunk Lethean waters from the river of content, and all remembrance of
+things sad or harsh has vanished from their minds. The quietude of
+holiness expressed in this ideal region was a legacy to Perugino from
+earlier Umbrian masters; but his technical supremacy in fresco-painting
+and in oils, his correct drawing within certain limits, and his refined
+sense of colour enabled him to realise it more completely than his less
+accomplished predecessors. In his best work the Renaissance set the seal
+of absolute perfection upon pietistic art.
+
+We English are fortunate in possessing one of Perugino's sincerest
+devotional oil pictures[218]. His frescoes of "S. Sebastian" at Panicale,
+and of the "Crucifixion" at Florence, are tolerably well known through
+reproductions[219]; while the "Vision of S. Bernard" at Munich and the
+"Pietà" in the Pitti Gallery are familiar to all travelled students of
+Italian painting. These masterpieces belong to Perugino's best period,
+when his inspiration was fresh, and his enthusiasm for artistic excellence
+was still unimpaired; and when, as M. Rio thinks, the failure of his faith
+had not yet happened. It is only at Perugia, however, in the Sala del
+Cambio, that we are able to gauge the extent of his power and to estimate
+the value of his achievement beyond the pale of strictly religious themes.
+
+Early in the course of his career Perugino seems to have become contented
+with a formal repetition of successful motives, and to have checked the
+growth of his genius by adhering closely to a prescribed cycle of effects.
+The praises of his patrons and the prosperity of his trade proved to his
+keen commercial sense that the raised ecstatic eyes, the upturned oval
+faces, the pale olive skin, the head inclined upon the shoulder, the thin
+fluttering hair, the ribands and the dainty dresses of his holy persons
+found great favour in Umbrian palaces and convents. Thenceforward he
+painted but little else; and when, in the Sala del Cambio, he was obliged
+to treat the representative heroes of Greek and Roman story, he adopted
+the same manner[220]. Leonidas, the lionhearted Spartan, and Cato, the
+austere Roman, who preferred liberty to life, bend their mild heads like
+flowers in Perugino's frescoes, and gather up their drapery in studied
+folds with celestial delicacy. Jove is a reproduction of the Eterno Padre,
+conceived as a benevolent old man for a conventional painting of the
+"Trinity;" and Ganymede is a page-boy with the sweet submissive features
+of Tobias. Already Perugino had opened a manufactory of pietistic
+pictures, and was employing many pupils on his works. He coined money by
+fixing artificially beautiful faces upon artificially elegant figures,
+placing a row of these puppets in a landscape with calm sky behind them,
+and calling the composition by the name of some familiar scene. His
+inspiration was dead, his invention exhausted; his chief object seemed to
+be to make his trade thrive.
+
+Perugino will always remain a problem to the psychologist who believes in
+physiognomy, as well as to the student of the passionate times in which he
+lived. His hard unsympathetic features in the portraits at Perugia and
+Florence do not belie, but rather win credence for Vasari's tales about
+his sordid soul.[221] Local traditions and contemporary rumours, again,
+give colour to what Vasari relates about his infidelity; while the
+criminal records of Florence prove that he was not over-scrupulous to keep
+his hands from violence.[222] How could such a man, we ask ourselves, have
+endured to pass a long life in the _fabrication of devotional pictures?_
+Whence did he derive the sentiment of masterpieces, for piety only
+equalled by those of Fra Angelico, either in his own nature or in the
+society of a city torn to pieces by the factions of the Baglioni? How,
+again, was it possible for an artist who at times touched beauty so ideal,
+to be contented with the stencilling by his pupils of conventional figures
+on canvases to which he gave his name? Taking these questions separately,
+we might reply that "there is no art to find the mind's construction in
+the face;" that painting in the sixteenth century was a trade regulated by
+the demand for particular wares; that men can live among ruffians without
+sharing their mood; that the artist and the moral being are separate, and
+may not be used to interpret each other. Yet, after giving due weight to
+such answers, Perugino, being what he was, living at the time he did, not
+as a recluse, but as a prosperous _impresario_ of painting, and
+systematically devoting his powers to pietistic art, must be for us a
+puzzle. That the quietism of his highly artificial style should have been
+fashionable in Perugia, while the Baglioni were tearing each other to
+pieces, and the troops of the Vitelli and the Borgia were trampling upon
+Umbria, is one of the most striking paradoxes of an age rich in dramatic
+contradictions.
+
+It is much to be regretted, with a view to solving the question of
+Perugino's personality in relation to his art, that his character does not
+emerge with any salience from the meagre notices we have received
+concerning him, and that we know but little of his private life. Vasari
+tells us that he married a very beautiful girl, and that one of his chief
+pleasures was to see this wife handsomely dressed at home and abroad. He
+often decked her out in clothes and jewels with his own hand. For the
+rest, we find in Perugino, far more than in either Mantegna or Signorelli,
+an instance of the simple Italian craftsman, employing numerous
+assistants, undertaking contract work on a large scale, and striking keen
+bargains with his employers. Both at Florence and at Perugia he opened a
+_bottega_; and by the exercise of his trade as a master-painter, he
+realised enough money to buy substantial estates in those cities, as well
+as in his birthplace.[223] In all the greatest artworks of the age he took
+his part. Thus we find him painting in the Sistine Chapel between 1484 and
+1486, treating with the commune of Orvieto for the completion of the
+chapel of S. Brizio in 1489, joining in the debate upon the façade of S.
+Maria del Fiore in 1491, giving his opinion upon the erection of Michael
+Angelo's "David" at Florence in 1504, and competing with Signorelli,
+Pinturicchio, and Bazzi for the decoration of the Stanze of the Vatican in
+1508. The rising of brighter stars above the horizon during his lifetime
+somewhat dimmed his fame, and caused him much disquietude; yet neither
+Raphael nor Michael Angelo interfered with the demand for his pictures,
+which continued to be lively till the very year of his death. That he was
+jealous of these younger rivals, appears from the fact that he brought an
+action against Michael Angelo for having called his style stupid and
+antiquated. In the celebrated phrase cast at him by the blunt and scornful
+master of a new art-mystery[224], we discern the abrupt line of division
+between time-honoured tradition and the _maniera moderna_ of the full
+Renaissance. The old Titans had to yield their place before the new
+Olympian deities of Italian painting. There is something pathetic in the
+retirement of the grey-haired Perugino from Rome, to make way for the
+victorious Phoebean beauty of the boy Raphael.
+
+The influence of Perugino upon Italian art was powerful though transitory.
+He formed a band of able pupils, among whom was the great Raphael; and
+though Raphael speedily abandoned his master's narrow footpath through the
+fields of painting, he owed to Perugino the invaluable benefit of training
+in solid technical methods and traditions of pure taste. From none of his
+elder contemporaries, with the exception of Fra Bartolommeo, could the
+young Raphael have learnt so much that was congenial to his early
+instincts. What, for example, might have befallen him if he had worked
+with Signorelli, it is difficult to imagine; for while nothing is more
+obvious on the one hand than Raphael's originality, his strong
+assimilative bias is scarcely less remarkable. The time has not yet come
+to speak of Raphael; nor will space suffice for detailed observations on
+his fellow-students in the workshop at Perugia. The place occupied by
+Perugino in the evolution of Italian painting is peculiar. In the middle
+of a positive and worldly age, declining fast to frigid scepticism and
+political corruption, he set the final touch of technical art upon the
+devotion transmitted from earlier and more enthusiastic centuries. The
+flower of Umbrian piety blossomed in the masterpieces of his youth, and
+faded into dryness in the affectations of his manhood. Nothing was left on
+the same line for his successors.
+
+Among these, Bernardo Pinturicchio can here alone be mentioned. A thorough
+naturalist, though saturated with the mannerism of the Umbrian school,
+Pinturicchio was not distracted either by scientific or ideal aims from
+the clear and fluent presentation of contemporary manners and costumes. He
+is a kind of Umbrian Gozzoli, who brings us here and there in close
+relation to the men of his own time, and has in consequence a special
+value for the student of Renaissance life. His wall-paintings in the
+library of the cathedral of Siena are so well preserved that we need not
+seek elsewhere for better specimens of the decorative art most highly
+prized in the first years of the sixteenth century[225]. These frescoes
+have a richness of effect and a vivacity of natural action, which, in
+spite of their superficiality, render them highly charming. The life of
+Æneas Sylvius Piccolomini, Pius II., is here treated like a legend. There
+is no attempt at representing the dress of half a century anterior to the
+painter's date, or at rendering accurate historic portraiture. Both Pope
+and Emperor are romantically conceived, and each portion of the tale is
+told as though it were a fit in some popular ballad. So much remains of
+Perugian affectation as gives a kind of childlike grace to the studied
+attitudes and many-coloured groups of elegant young men.
+
+We must always be careful to distinguish the importance of an artist
+considered as the exponent of his age from that which he may claim by
+virtue of some special skill or some peculiar quality of feeling. The art
+of Perugino, for example, throws but little light upon the Renaissance
+taken as a whole. Intrinsically valuable because of its technical
+perfection and its purity of sentiment, it was already in the painter's
+lifetime superseded by a larger and a grander manner. The progressive
+forces of the modern style found their channels outside him. This again is
+true of Francesco Raibolini, surnamed Francia from his master in the
+goldsmith's craft. Francia is known to Englishmen as one of the most
+sincerely pious of Christian painters by his incomparable picture of the
+"Dead Christ" in our National Gallery. The spirituality that renders Fra
+Angelico unintelligible to minds less ecstatically tempered than his own,
+is not found in such excess in Francia, nor does his work suffer from the
+insipidity of Perugino's affectation. Deep religious feeling is combined
+with physical beauty of the purest type in a masterpiece of tranquil
+grace. A greater degree of _naïveté_ and naturalness compensates for the
+inferiority of Francia's to Perugino's supremely perfect handling. This is
+true of Francia's numerous pictures at Bologna; where indeed, in order to
+be rightly known, he should be studied by all lovers of the _quattrocento_
+style in its most delightful moments[226]. For mastery over oil painting
+and for charm of colour Francia challenges comparison with what is best in
+Perugino, though he did not quite attain the same technical excellence.
+
+One more painter must delay us yet awhile within the limits of the
+fifteenth century. Bartolommeo di Paolo del Fattorino, better known as
+Baccio della Porta or Fra Bartolommeo, forms at Florence the connecting
+link between the artists of the earlier Renaissance and the golden
+age[227]. By chronological reckoning he is nearly a quarter of a century
+later than Lionardo da Vinci, and is the exact contemporary of Michael
+Angelo. As an artist, he has thoroughly outgrown the _quattrocento_ style,
+and falls short only by a little of the greatest. In assigning him a place
+among the predecessors and precursors of the full Renaissance, I am
+therefore influenced rather by the range of subjects he selected, and by
+the character of his genius, than by calculations of time or estimate of
+ability.
+
+Fra Bartolommeo was sent, when nine years old, into the workshop of Cosimo
+Rosselli, where he began his artist's life by colour-grinding, sweeping
+out the shop, and errand-running. It was in Cosimo's _bottega_ that he
+made acquaintance with Mariotto Albertinelli, who became his intimate
+friend and fellow-worker. In spite of marked differences of character,
+disagreements upon the fundamental matters of politics and religion, and
+not unfrequent quarrels, these men continued to be comrades through the
+better part of their joint lives. Baccio was gentle, timid, yielding, and
+industrious. Mariotto was wilful, obstinate, inconsequent, and flighty,
+Baccio fell under the influence of Savonarola, professed himself a
+_piagnone_, and took the cowl of the Dominicans[228]. Mariotto was a
+partisan of the Medici, an uproarious _pallesco_, and a loose liver, who
+eventually deserted the art of painting for the calling of an innkeeper.
+Yet so sweet was the temper of the Frate, and so firm was the bond of
+friendship established in boyhood between this ill-assorted couple, that
+they did not part company until 1512, three years before Mariotto's death
+and five before that of Bartolommeo. During their long association the
+task of designing fell upon the Frate, while Albertinelli took his orders
+and helped to work out his conceptions. Both were excellent craftsmen and
+consummate colourists, as is proved by the pictures executed by each
+unassisted. Albertinelli's "Salutation" in the Uffizzi yields no point of
+grace and vigour to any of his more distinguished coadjutor's paintings.
+
+The great contributions made by Fra Bartolommeo to the art of Italy were
+in the double region of composition and colouring. In his justly
+celebrated fresco of S. Maria Nuova at Florence--a "Last Judgment" with a
+Christ enthroned amid a choir of Saints--he exhibited for the first time a
+thoroughly scientific scheme of grouping based on geometrical principles.
+Each part is perfectly balanced in itself, and yet is necessary to the
+structure of the whole. The complex framework may be subdivided into
+numerous sections no less harmoniously ordered than is the total scheme to
+which they are subordinated. Simple figures--the pyramid and the triangle,
+upright, inverted, and interwoven like the rhymes in a sonnet--form the
+basis of the composition. This system was adhered to by the Frate in all
+his subsequent works. To what extent it influenced the style of Raphael,
+will be afterwards discussed. As a colourist, Fra Bartolommeo was equal to
+the best of his contemporaries, and superior to any of his rivals in the
+school of Florence. Few painters of any age have combined harmony of tone
+so perfectly with brilliance and richness. It is a real joy to contemplate
+the pure and splendid folds of the white drapery he loved to place in the
+foreground of his altar-pieces. Solidity and sincerity distinguish his
+work in every detail, while his feeling is remarkable for elevation and
+sobriety. All that he lacks, is the boldness of imagination, the depth of
+passion, and the power of thought, that are indispensable to genius of the
+highest order. Gifted with a sympathetic and a pliant, rather than a
+creative and self-sustained nature, he was sensitive to every influence.
+Therefore we find him learning much in his youth from Lionardo, deriving a
+fresh impulse from Raphael, and endeavouring in his later life, after a
+visit to Rome in 1514, to "heighten his style," as the phrase went, by
+emulating Michael Angelo. The attempt to tread the path of Buonarroti was
+a failure. What Fra Bartolommeo sought to gain in majesty, he lost in
+charm. His was essentially a pure and gracious manner, upon which
+sublimity could not be grafted. The gentle soul, who dropped his weapon
+when the convent of S. Marco was besieged by the Compagnacci[229], and who
+vowed, if heaven preserved him in the tumult, to become a monk, had none
+of Michael Angelo's _terribilità_. Without possessing some share of that
+spirit, it was vain to aggrandise the forms and mass the raiment of his
+prophets in imitation of the Sistine.
+
+Nature made Fra Bartolommeo the painter of adoration[230]. His masterpiece
+at Lucca--the "Madonna della Misericordia"--is a poem of glad worship, a
+hymn of prayerful praise. Our Lady stands elate, between earth and heaven,
+appealing to her Son for mercy. At her footstool are her suppliants, the
+men and women and little children of the city she has saved. The peril is
+past. Salvation has been won; and the song of thanksgiving ascends from
+all those massed and mingled forms in unison. Not less truly is the great
+unfinished picture of "Madonna surrounded by the Patron Saints of
+Florence" a poem of adoration[231]. This painting was ordered by the
+Gonfalonier Piero Soderini, the man who dedicated Florence to Christ as
+King. He intended it to take its place in the hall of the Consiglio
+Grande, where Michael Angelo and Lionardo gained their earliest laurels.
+Before it could be finished, the Republic perished.[232] "That," says Rio,
+"is the reason why he left but an imperfect work--for those at least who
+are only struck by what is wanting in it. Others will at first regard it
+with the interest attaching to unfinished poems, interrupted by the
+jailer's call or by the stern voice of the executioner. Then they will
+study it in all its details, in order to appreciate its beauties; and that
+appreciation will be the more perfect in proportion as a man is the more
+fully penetrated with its dominant idea, and with the attendant
+circumstances that bring this home to him. It is not against an abstract
+enemy that the intercession of the celestial powers is here invoked: it is
+not by a caprice of the painter or his patron that, in the group of
+central figures, S. Anne attracts attention before the Holy Virgin, not
+only by reason of her pre-eminence, but also through the intensity of her
+heavenward prayer, and again through her beauty, which far surpasses that
+of nearly all "Madonnas" painted by Fra Bartolommeo."[233] But artist and
+patron had indeed good reason, in this crisis of the Commonwealth, to
+select as the most eminent advocate for Florence at the bar of Heaven that
+saint, on whose day, July 26, 1343, had been celebrated the emancipation
+of the city from its servitude to Walter of Brienne.
+
+The great event of Fra Bartolommeo's life was the impression produced on
+him by Savonarola.[234] Having listened to the Dominican's terrific
+denunciations of worldliness and immorality, he carried his life studies
+to the pyre of vanities, resolved to assume the cowl, and renounced his
+art. Between 1499, when he was engaged in painting the "Last Judgment" of
+S. Maria Nuova, and 1506, he is supposed never to have touched the pencil.
+When he resumed it Savonarola had been burned for heresy, and Fra
+Bartolommeo was a brother in his convent of S. Marco. Savonarola has
+sometimes been described as an iconoclast, obstinately hostile to the fine
+arts. This is by no means a true account of the crusade he carried on
+against the pagan sensuality of his contemporaries. He desired that art
+should remain the submissive handmaid of the Church and the willing
+servant of pure morality. While he denounced the heathenism of the style
+in vogue at Florence, and forbade the study of the nude, he strove to
+encourage religious painting, and established a school for its exercise in
+the cloister of S. Marco. It was in this monastic _bottega_ that Fra
+Bartolommeo, in concert with his friend Albertinelli, worked for the
+benefit of the convent after the year 1506. The reforms Savonarola
+attempted in the fine arts as in manners, by running counter to the
+tendencies of the Renaissance at a moment when society was too corrupt to
+be regenerated, and the passion for antiquity was too powerful to be
+restrained, proved of necessity ineffective. It may further be said that
+the limitations he imposed would have been fatal to the free development
+of art if they had been observed.
+
+Several painters, besides Fra Baccio, submitted to Savonarola's influence.
+Among these the most distinguished were the pure and gentle Lorenzo di
+Credi and Sandro Botticelli, who, after the great preacher's death, is
+said to have abandoned painting. Neither Lorenzo di Credi nor Fra Baccio
+possessed a portion of the prophet's fiery spirit. Had that but found
+expression in their cloistral pictures, one of the most peculiar and
+characteristic flowers of art the world has ever known, would then have
+bloomed in Florence. The mantle of Savonarola, however, if it fell upon
+any painter, fell on Michael Angelo, and we must seek an echo of the
+friar's thunders in the Sistine Chapel. Fra Bartolommeo was too tender and
+too timid. The sublimities of tragic passion lay beyond his scope. Though
+I have ventured to call him the painter of adoration, he did not feel even
+this movement of the soul with the intensity of Fra Angelico. In the
+person of S. Dominic kneeling beneath the cross Fra Angelico painted
+worship as an ecstasy, wherein the soul goes forth with love and pain and
+yearning beyond any power of words or tears or music to express what it
+would utter. To these heights of the ascetic ideal Fra Bartolommeo never
+soared. His sobriety bordered upon the prosaic.
+
+We have now reached the great age of the Italian Renaissance, the age in
+which, not counting for the moment Venice, four arch-angelic natures
+gathered up all that had been hitherto achieved in art since the days of
+Pisano and Giotto, adding such celestial illumination from the sunlight of
+their inborn genius that in them the world for ever sees what art can do.
+Lionardo da Vinci was born in Valdarno in 1452, and died in France in
+1519. Michael Angelo Buonarroti was born at Caprese, in the Casentino, in
+1475, and died at Borne in 1564, having outlived the lives of his great
+peers by nearly half a century. Raphael Santi was born at Urbino in 1483,
+and died in Rome in 1520. Antonio Allegri was born at Correggio in 1494,
+and died there in 1534. To these four men, each in his own degree and
+according to his own peculiar quality of mind, the fulness of the
+Renaissance, in its power and freedom, was revealed. They entered the
+inner shrine, where dwelt the spirit of their age, and bore to the world
+without the message each of them had heard. In their work posterity still
+may read the meaning of that epoch, differently rendered according to the
+difference of gifts in each consummate artist, but comprehended in its
+unity by study of the four together. Lionardo is the wizard or diviner; to
+him the Renaissance offers her mystery and lends her magic. Raphael is the
+Phoebean singer; to him the Renaissance reveals her joy and dowers him
+with her gift of melody. Correggio is the Ariel or Faun; he has surprised
+laughter upon the face of the universe, and he paints this laughter in
+ever-varying movement. Michael Angelo is the prophet and Sibylline seer;
+to him the Renaissance discloses the travail of her spirit; him she endues
+with power; he wrests her secret, voyaging, like an ideal Columbus, the
+vast abyss of thought alone. In order that this revelation of the
+Renaissance in painting should be complete, it is necessary to add a fifth
+power to these four--that of the Venetian masters, who are the poets of
+carnal beauty, the rhetoricians of mundane pomp, the impassioned
+interpreters of all things great and splendid in the pageant of the outer
+world. As Venice herself, by type of constitution and historical
+development, remained sequestered from the rest of Italy, so her painters
+demand separate treatment.[235] It is enough, therefore, for the present
+to remember that without the note they utter the chord of the Renaissance
+lacks its harmony.
+
+Lionardo, the natural son of Messer Pietro, notary of Florence and landed
+proprietor at Vinci, was so beautiful of person that no one, says Vasari,
+has sufficiently extolled his charm; so strong of limb that he could bend
+an iron ring or horse-shoe between his fingers; so eloquent of speech that
+those who listened to his words were fain to answer "Yes" or "No" as he
+thought fit. This child of grace and persuasion was a wonderful musician.
+The Duke of Milan sent for him to play upon his lute and improvise Italian
+canzoni. The lute he carried was of silver, fashioned like a horse's
+head, and tuned according to acoustic laws discovered by himself. Of the
+songs he sang to its accompaniment none have been preserved. Only one
+sonnet remains to show of what sort was the poetry of Lionardo, prized so
+highly by the men of his own generation. This, too, is less remarkable for
+poetic beauty than for sober philosophy expressed with singular brevity of
+phrase.[236]
+
+This story of Da Vinci's lute might be chosen as a parable of his
+achievement. Art and science were never separated in his work; and both
+were not unfrequently subservient to some fanciful caprice, some bizarre
+freak of originality. Curiosity and love of the uncommon ruled his nature.
+By intuition and by persistent interrogation of nature he penetrated many
+secrets of science; but he was contented with the acquisition of
+knowledge. Once found, he had but little care to distribute the results of
+his investigations; at most he sought to use them for purposes of
+practical utility.[237] Even in childhood he is said to have perplexed
+his teachers by propounding arithmetical problems. In his maturity he
+carried anatomy further than Delia Torre; he invented machinery for
+water-mills and aqueducts; he devised engines of war, discovered the
+secret of conical rifle-bullets, adapted paddle-wheels to boats, projected
+new systems of siege artillery, investigated the principles of optics,
+designed buildings, made plans for piercing mountains, raising churches,
+connecting rivers, draining marshes, clearing harbours.[238] There was no
+branch of study whereby nature through the effort of the inquisitive
+intellect might be subordinated to the use of man, of which he was not
+master. Nor, richly gifted as was Lionardo, did he trust his natural
+facility. His patience was no less marvellous than the quickness of his
+insight. He lived to illustrate the definition of genius as the capacity
+for taking infinite pains.
+
+While he was a boy, says Vasari, Lionardo modelled in terra-cotta certain
+heads of women smiling. This was in the workshop of Verocchio, who had
+already fixed a smile on David's face in bronze. When an old man, he left
+"Mona Lisa" on the easel not quite finished, the portrait of a subtle,
+shadowy, uncertain smile. This smile, this enigmatic revelation of a
+movement in the soul, this seductive ripple on the surface of the human
+personality, was to Lionardo a symbol of the secret of the world, an image
+of the universal mystery. It haunted him all through his life, and
+innumerable were the attempts he made to render by external form the magic
+of this fugitive and evanescent charm.
+
+Through long days he would follow up and down the streets of Florence or
+of Milan beautiful unknown faces, learning them by heart, interpreting
+their changes of expression, reading the thoughts through the features.
+These he afterwards committed to paper. We possess many such sketches--a
+series of ideal portraits, containing each an unsolved riddle that the
+master read; a procession of shadows, cast by reality, that, entering the
+camera lucida of the artist's brain, gained new and spiritual
+quality.[239] In some of them his fancy seems to be imprisoned in the
+labyrinths of hair; in others the eyes deep with feeling or hard with
+gemlike brilliancy have caught it, or the lips that tell and hide so much,
+or the nostrils quivering with momentary emotion. Beauty, inexpressive of
+inner meaning, must, we conceive, have had but slight attraction for him.
+We do not find that he drew "a fair naked body" for the sake of its carnal
+charm; his hasty studies of the nude are often faulty, mere memoranda of
+attitude and gesture. The human form was interesting to him either
+scientifically or else as an index to the soul. Yet he felt the influence
+of personal loveliness His favourite pupil Salaino was a youth "of
+singular grace, with curled and waving hair, a feature of personal beauty
+by which Lionardo was always greatly pleased." Hair, the most mysterious
+of human things, the most manifold in form and hue, snakelike in its
+subtlety for the entanglement of souls, had naturally supreme
+attractiveness for the magician of the arts.
+
+With like energy Lionardo bent himself to divine the import of ugliness.
+Whole pages of his sketch-book are filled with squalid heads of shrivelled
+crones and ghastly old men--with idiots, goîtred cretins, criminals, and
+clowns. It was not that he loved the horrible for its own sake; but he was
+determined to seize character, to command the gamut of human physiognomy
+from ideal beauty down to forms bestialised by vice and disease. The story
+related by Giraldi concerning the head of Judas in the "Cenacolo" at
+Milan, sufficiently illustrates the method of Lionardo in creating types
+and the utility of such caricatures as his notebooks contain.[240]
+
+It is told that he brought into his room one day a collection of
+reptiles--lizards, newts, toads, vipers, efts--all creatures that are
+loathsome to the common eye. These, by the magic of imagination, he
+combined into a shape so terrible that those who saw it shuddered.
+Medusa's snake-enwoven head exhaling poisonous vapour from the livid lips;
+Leda, swanlike beside her swan lover; Chimaera, in whom many natures
+mingled and made one; the conflict of a dragon and a lion; S. John
+conceived not as a prophet but as a vine-crowned Faun, the harbinger of
+joy:--over pictorial motives of this kind, attractive by reason of their
+complexity or mystery, he loved to brood; and to this fascination of a
+sphinx-like charm we owe some of his most exquisite drawings. Lionardo
+more than any other artist who has ever lived (except perhaps his great
+predecessor Leo Battista Alberti) felt the primal sympathies that bind
+men to the earth, their mother, and to living things, their brethren.[241]
+Therefore the borderland between humanity and nature allured him with a
+spell half aesthetic and half scientific. In the dawn of Hellas this
+sympathetic apprehension of the world around him would have made him a
+supreme mythopoet. In the dawn of the modern world curiosity claimed the
+lion's share of his genius: nor can it be denied that his art suffered by
+this division of interests. The time was not yet come for accurate
+physiological investigation, or for the true birth of the scientific
+spirit; and in any age it would have been difficult for one man to
+establish on a sound basis discoveries made in so many realms as those
+explored by Lionardo. We cannot, therefore, but regret that he was not
+more exclusively a painter. If, however, he had confined his activity to
+the production of works equal to the "Cenacolo," we should have missed the
+most complete embodiment in one personality of the twofold impulses of the
+Renaissance and of its boundless passion for discovery.
+
+Lionardo's turn for physical science led him to study the technicalities
+of art with fervent industry. Whatever his predecessors had acquired in
+the knowledge of materials, the chemistry of colours, the mathematics of
+composition, the laws of perspective, and the illusions of _chiaroscuro,_
+he developed to the utmost. To find a darker darkness and a brighter
+brightness than had yet been shown upon the painter's canvas; to solve
+problems of foreshortening; to deceive the eye by finely graduated tones
+and subtle touches; to submit the freest play of form to simple figures of
+geometry in grouping, were among the objects he most earnestly pursued.
+At the same time his deep feeling for all things that have life, gave him
+new power in the delineation of external nature. The branching of
+flower-stems, the outlines of fig-leaves, the attitudes of beasts and
+birds in motion, the arching of the fan-palm, were rendered by him with
+the same consummate skill as the dimple on a cheek or the fine curves of a
+young man's lips.[242] Wherever he perceived a difficulty, he approached
+and conquered it. Love, which is the soul of art--Love, the bondslave of
+Beauty and the son of Poverty by Craft--led him to these triumphs. He used
+to buy caged birds in the marketplace that he might let them loose. He was
+attached to horses, and kept a sumptuous stable; and these he would draw
+in eccentric attitudes, studying their anatomy in detail for his statue of
+Francesco Sforza.[243] In the "Battle of the Standard," known to us only
+by a sketch of Rubens,[244] he gave passions to the horse--not human
+passion, nor yet merely equine--but such as horses might feel when placed
+upon a par with men. In like manner the warriors are fiery with bestial
+impulses--leonine fury, wolfish ferocity, fox-like cunning. Their very
+armour takes the shape of monstrous reptiles. To such an extent did the
+interchange of human and animal properties haunt Lionardo's fancy.
+
+From what has been already said we shall be better able to understand
+Lionardo's love of the bizarre and grotesque. One day a vine-dresser
+brought him a very curious lizard. The master fitted it with wings
+injected with quicksilver to give them motion as the creature crawled.
+Eyes, horns, and a beard, a marvellous dragon's mask, were placed upon its
+head. This strange beast lived in a cage, where Lionardo tamed it; but no
+one, says Vasari, dared so much as to look at it.[245] On quaint puzzles
+and perplexing schemes he mused a good part of his life away. At one time
+he was for making wings to fly with; at another he invented ropes that
+should uncoil, strand by strand; again, he devised a system of flat corks,
+by means of which to walk on water.[246] One day, after having scraped the
+intestines of a sheep so thin that he could hold them in the hollow of his
+hand, he filled them with wind from a bellows, and blew and blew until the
+room was choked, and his visitors had to run into corners. Lionardo told
+them that this was a proper symbol of genius.
+
+Such stories form what may be called the legend of Lionardo's life; and
+some of them seem simple, others almost childish.[247] They illustrate
+what is meant when we call him the wizard of the Renaissance. Art, nature,
+life, the mysteries of existence, the infinite capacity of human thought,
+the riddle of the world, all that the Greeks called Pan, so swayed and
+allured him that, while he dreamed and wrought and never ceased from
+toil, he seemed to have achieved but little. The fancies of his brain
+were, perhaps, too subtle and too fragile to be made apparent to the eyes
+of men. He was wont, after years of labour, to leave his work still
+incomplete, feeling that he could not perfect it as he desired: yet even
+his most fragmentary sketches have a finish beyond the scope of lesser
+men. "Extraordinary power," says Vasari, "was in his case conjoined with
+remarkable facility, a mind of regal boldness and magnanimous daring." Yet
+he was constantly accused of indolence and inability to execute.[248]
+Often and often he made vast preparations and accomplished nothing. It is
+well known how the Prior of S. Maria delle Grazie complained that Lionardo
+stood for days looking at his fresco, and for weeks never came near it;
+how the monks of the Annunziata at Florence were cheated out of their
+painting, for which elaborate designs had yet been made; how Leo X.,
+seeing him mix oils with varnish to make a new medium, exclaimed, "Alas!
+this man will do nothing; he thinks of the end before he makes a
+beginning." A good answer to account for the delay was always ready on the
+painter's lips, as that the man of genius works most when his hands are
+idlest; Judas, sought in vain through all the thieves' resorts in Milan,
+is not found; I cannot hope to see the face of Christ except in Paradise.
+Again, when an equestrian statue of Francesco Sforza had been modelled in
+all its parts, another model was begun because Da Vinci would fain show
+the warrior triumphing over a fallen foe.[249] The first motive seemed to
+him tame; the second was unrealisable in bronze. "I can do anything
+possible to man," he wrote to Lodovico Sforza, "and as well as any living
+artist either in sculpture or painting." But he would do nothing as
+taskwork, and his creative brain loved better to invent than to
+execute.[250] "Of a truth," continues his biographer, "there is good
+reason to believe that the very greatness of his most exalted mind, aiming
+at more than could be effected, was itself an impediment; perpetually
+seeking to add excellence to excellence and perfection to perfection. This
+was without doubt the true hindrance, so that, as our Petrarch has it, the
+work was retarded by desire." At the close of that cynical and positive
+century, the spirit whereof was so well expressed by Cosimo de'
+Medici,[251] Lionardo set before himself aims infinite instead of finite.
+His designs of wings to fly with symbolise his whole endeavour. He
+believed in solving the insoluble; and nature had so richly dowered him in
+the very dawntime of discovery, that he was almost justified in this
+delusion. Having caught the Proteus of the world, he tried to grasp him;
+but the god changed shape beneath his touch. Having surprised Silenus
+asleep, he begged from him a song; but the song Silenus sang was so
+marvellous in its variety, so subtle in its modulations, that Lionardo
+could do no more than recall scattered phrases. His Proteus was the spirit
+of the Renaissance. The Silenus from whom he forced the song was the
+double nature of man and of the world.
+
+By ill chance it happened that Lionardo's greatest works soon perished.
+His cartoon at Florence disappeared. His model for Sforza's statue was
+used as a target by French bowmen. His "Last Supper" remains a mere wreck
+in the Convent delle Grazie. Such as it is, blurred by ill-usage and
+neglect, more blurred by impious re-painting, that fresco must be seen by
+those who wish to understand Da Vinci. It has well been called the
+compendium of all his studies and of all his writings; and,
+chronologically, it is the first masterpiece of the perfected
+Renaissance.[252] Other painters had represented the Last Supper as a
+solemn prologue to the Passion, or as the mystical inauguration of the
+greatest Christian sacrament.[253] But none had dared to break the calm of
+the event by a dramatic action. The school of Giotto, Fra Angelico,
+Ghirlandajo, Perugino, even Signorelli, remained within the sphere of
+symbolical suggestion; and their work gained in dignity what it lost in
+intensity. Lionardo combined both. He undertook to paint a moment, to
+delineate the effect of a single word upon twelve men seated at a table,
+and to do this without sacrificing the tranquillity demanded by ideal art,
+and without impairing the divine majesty of Him from whose lips that word
+has fallen. The time has long gone by for detailed criticism or
+description of a painting known to everybody. It is enough to observe that
+the ideal representation of a dramatic moment, the life breathed into each
+part of the composition, the variety of the types chosen to express
+varieties of character, and the scientific distribution of the twelve
+Apostles in four groups of three around the central Christ, mark the
+appearance of a new spirit of power and freedom in the arts. What had
+hitherto been treated with religious timidity, with conventional
+stiffness, or with realistic want of grandeur, was now humanised and at
+the same time transported into a higher intellectual region; and though
+Lionardo discrowned the Apostles of their aureoles, he for the first time
+in the history of painting created a Christ not unworthy to be worshipped
+as the _praesens Deus_. We know not whether to admire most the perfection
+of the painter's art or his insight into spiritual things.[254]
+
+If we are forced to feel that, with Da Vinci, accomplishment fell short of
+power and promise, the case is very different with Raphael. In him there
+was no perplexity, no division of interests. He was fascinated by no
+insoluble mystery and absorbed by no seductive problems. His faculty and
+his artistic purpose were exactly balanced, adequate, and mutually
+supporting. He saw by intuition what to do, and he did it without let or
+hindrance, exercising from his boyhood till his early death an unimpeded
+energy of pure productiveness. Like Mozart, to whom he bears in many
+respects a remarkable resemblance, Raphael was gifted with inexhaustible
+fertility and with unwearied industry. Like Mozart, again, he had a nature
+which converted everything to beauty. Thought, passion, emotion, became in
+his art living melody. We almost forget his strength in admiration of his
+grace; the travail of his intellect is hidden by the serenity of his
+style. There is nothing over-much in any portion of his work, no sense of
+effort, no straining of a situation, not even that element of terror
+needful to the true sublime. It is as though the spirit of young Greece
+had lived in him again, purifying his taste to perfection and restraining
+him from the delineation of things stern or horrible.
+
+Raphael found in this world nothing but its joy, and communicated to his
+ideal the beauty of untouched virginity. Brescia might be sacked with
+sword and flame. The Baglioni might hew themselves to pieces in Perugia.
+The plains of Ravenna might flow with blood. Urbino might change masters
+and obey the viperous Duke Valentino. Raphael, meanwhile, working through
+his short May-life of less than twenty [Handwritten: 40] years, received
+from nature and from man a message that was harmony unspoiled by one
+discordant note. His very person was a symbol of his genius. Lionardo was
+beautiful but stately, with firm lips and penetrating glance; he conquered
+by the magnetism of an incalculable personality. The loveliness of Raphael
+was fair and flexible, fascinating not by power or mystery, but by the
+winning charm of open-hearted sweetness. To this physical beauty, rather
+delicate than strong, he united spiritual graces of the most amiable
+nature. He was gentle, docile, modest, ready to oblige, free from
+jealousy, binding all men to him by his cheerful courtesy.[255] In morals
+he was pure. Indeed, judged by the lax standard of those times, he might
+be called almost immaculate. His intellectual capacity, in all that
+concerned the art of painting, was unbounded; but we cannot place him
+among the many-sided heroes of the Renaissance. What he attempted in
+sculpture, though elegant, is comparatively insignificant; and the same
+may be said about his buildings. As a painter he was capable of
+comprehending and expressing all things without excess or sense of labour.
+Of no other artist do we feel that he was so instinctively, unerringly
+right in what he thought and did.
+
+Among his mental faculties the power of assimilation seems to have been
+developed to an extraordinary degree. He learned the rudiments of his art
+in the house of his father Santi at Urbino, where a Madonna is still
+shown--the portrait of his mother, with a child, perhaps the infant
+Raphael, upon her lap. Starting, soon after his father's death, as a pupil
+of Perugino, he speedily acquired that master's manner so perfectly that
+his earliest works are only to be distinguished from Perugino's by their
+greater delicacy, spontaneity, and inventiveness. Though he absorbed all
+that was excellent in the Peruginesque style, he avoided its affectations,
+and seemed to take departure for a higher flight from the most exquisite
+among his teacher's early paintings. Later on, while still a lad, he
+escaped from Umbrian conventionality by learning all that was valuable in
+the art of Masaccio and Fra Bartolommeo. To the latter master, himself
+educated by the influence of Lionardo, Raphael owed more, perhaps, than to
+any other of his teachers. The method of combining figures in masses,
+needful to the general composition, while they preserve a subordinate
+completeness of their own, had been applied with almost mathematical
+precision by the Frate in his fresco at S. Maria Nuova.[256] It reappears
+in all Raphael's work subsequent to his first visit to Florence[257]
+(1504-1506). So great, indeed, is the resemblance of treatment between the
+two painters that we know not well which owed the other most. Many groups
+of women and children in the Stanze, for example--especially in the
+"Miracle of Bolsena" and the "Heliodorus"--seem almost identical with Fra
+Bartolommeo's "Madonna della Misericordia" at Lucca. Finally, when Raphael
+settled in Rome, he laid himself open to the influence of Michael Angelo,
+and drank in the classic spirit from the newly discovered antiques. Here
+at last it seemed as though his native genius might suffer from contact
+with the potent style of his great rival; and there are many students of
+art who feel that Raphael's later manner was a declension from the divine
+purity of his early pictures. There is, in fact, a something savouring of
+overbloom in the Farnesina frescoes, as though the painter's faculty had
+been strained beyond its natural force. Muscles are exaggerated to give
+the appearance of strength, and open mouths are multiplied to indicate
+astonishment and action. These faults may be found even in the Cartoons.
+Yet who shall say that Raphael's power was on the decline, or that his
+noble style was passing into mannerism, after studying both the picture of
+the "Transfiguration" and the careful drawings from the nude prepared for
+this last work?
+
+So delicate was the assimilative tendency in Raphael, that what he learned
+from all his teachers, from Perugino, Fra Bartolommeo, Masaccio, Da Vinci,
+Michael Angelo, and the antique, was mingled with his own style without
+sacrifice of individuality. Inferior masters imitated him, and passed
+their pictures off upon posterity as Raphael's; but to mistake a genuine
+piece of his painting for the performance of another is almost impossible.
+Each successive step he made was but a liberation of his genius, a stride
+toward the full expression of the beautiful he saw and served. He was
+never an eclectic. The masterpieces of other artists taught him how to
+comprehend his own ideal.
+
+Raphael is not merely a man, but a school. Just as in his genius he
+absorbed and comprehended many diverse styles, so are many worthy
+craftsmen included in his single name. Fresco-painters, masters of the
+easel, workmen in mosaic and marquetrie, sculptors, builders,
+arras-weavers, engravers, decorators of ceilings and of floors, all
+laboured under his eye, receiving designs from, his hand, and executing
+what was called thereafter by his name.[258] It was thus partly by his
+facility and energy, partly by the use he made of other men, that Raphael
+was able to achieve so much. In the Vatican he covered the walls and
+ceilings of the Stanze with historical and symbolical frescoes that
+embrace the whole of human knowledge. The cramping limits of
+ecclesiastical tradition are transcended. The synod of the antique sages
+finds a place beside the synod of the Fathers and the company of Saints.
+Parnassus and the allegory of the virtues front each other. The legend of
+Marsyas and the mythus of the Fall are companion pictures. A new
+catholicity, a new orthodoxy of the beautiful, appears. The Renaissance in
+all its breadth and liberality of judgment takes ideal form. Nor is there
+any sense of discord; for the genius of Raphael views both revelations,
+Christian and pagan, from a point of view of art above them. To his pure
+and unimpeded faculty the task of translating motives so diverse into
+mutually concordant shapes was easy. On the domed ceilings of the Loggie
+he painted sacred history in a series of exquisitely simple compositions,
+known as Raphael's Bible. The walls and pilasters were adorned with
+arabesques that anticipated the discovery of Pompeii, and surpassed the
+best of Roman frescoes in variety and freedom. With his own hands he
+coloured the incomparable "Triumph of Galatea" in Agostino Chigi's villa
+on the Tiber, while his pupils traced the legend of Cupid and Psyche from
+his drawings on the roof of the great banquet hall. Remaining within the
+circuit of Rome, we may turn from the sibyls of S. Maria della Pace to the
+genii of the planets in S. Maria del Popolo, from the "Violin-player" of
+the Sciarra palace to the "Transfiguration" in the Vatican: wherever we
+go, we find the masterpieces of this youth, so various in conception, so
+equal in performance. And then, to think that the palaces and
+picture-galleries of Europe are crowded with his easel-pictures, that his
+original drawings display a boundless store of prodigal inventive
+creativeness, that the Cartoons, of which England is proud, are alone
+enough to found a mighty master's fame!
+
+The vast mass of Raphael's works is by itself astounding. The accuracy of
+their design and the perfection of their execution are literally
+overwhelming to the imagination, that attempts to realise the conditions
+of his short life. There is nothing, or but very little, of rhetoric in
+all this world of pictures. The brain has guided the hand throughout, and
+the result is sterling poetry. The knowledge, again, expressed in many of
+his frescoes is so thorough that we wonder whether in his body lived again
+the soul of some accomplished sage. How, for example, did he appropriate
+the history of philosophy, set forth so luminously in the "School of
+Athens," that each head, each gesture, is the epitome of some system?
+Fabio Calvi may, indeed, have supplied him with serviceable notes on Greek
+philosophy. But to Raphael alone belongs the triumph of having personified
+the dry elements of learning in appropriate living forms. The same is true
+of the "Parnassus," and, in a less degree, of the "Disputa." To the
+physiognomist these frescoes will always be invaluable. The "Heliodorus,"
+the "Miracle of Bolsena," and the Cartoons, display a like faculty applied
+with more dramatic purpose. Passion and action take the place of
+representative ideas; but the capacity for translating into perfect human
+form what has first been intellectually apprehended by the artist, is the
+same.
+
+If, after estimating the range of thought revealed in this portion of
+Raphael's work, we next consider the labour of the mind involved in the
+distribution of so many multitudes of beautiful and august human figures,
+in the modelling of their drapery, the study of their expression, and
+their grouping into balanced compositions, we may form some notion of the
+magnitude of Raphael's performance. It is, indeed, probable that all
+attempts at reflective analysis of this kind do injustice to the
+spontaneity of the painter's method. Yet, even supposing that the
+"Miraculous Draught of Fishes" or the "School of Athens" were seen by him
+as in a vision, this presumption will increase our wonder at the
+imagination which could hold so rich a store of details ready for
+immediate use. That Raphael paid the most minute attention to the details
+of his work, is shown by the studies made for these two subjects, and by
+the drawings for the "Transfiguration." A young man bent on putting forth
+his power the first time in a single picture that should prove his
+mastery, could not have laboured with more diligence than Raphael at the
+height of his fame and in full possession of his matured faculty.
+
+When, furthermore, we take into account the variety of Raphael's work, we
+arrive at a new point of wonder. The drawing of "Alexander's Marriage with
+Roxana," the "Temptation of Adam by Eve," and the "Massacre of the
+Innocents," engraved by Marc Antonio, are unsurpassed not only as
+compositions, but also as studies of the nude in chosen attitudes,
+powerfully felt and nobly executed. In these designs, which he never used
+for painting, the same high style is successively applied to a pageant, an
+idyll, and a drama.[259] The rapture of Greek art in its most youthful
+moment has never been recaptured by a modern painter with more force and
+fire of fancy than in the "Galatea." The tenderness of Christian feeling
+has found no more exalted expression than in the multitudes of the
+Madonnas, one more lovely than another, like roses on a tree in June, from
+the maidenly "Madonna del Gran' Duca" to the celestial vision of the San
+Sisto, that sublimest lyric of the art of Catholicity.[260] It is only by
+hurrying through a list like this that we can appreciate the many-sided
+perfection of Raphael's accomplishment. How, lastly, was it possible that
+this young painter should have found the time to superintend the building
+of S. Peter's, and to form a plan for excavating Rome in its twelve
+ancient regions?[261]
+
+When Lomazzo assigned emblems to the chief painters of the Renaissance, he
+gave to Michael Angelo the dragon of contemplation, and to Mantegna the
+serpent of sagacity. For Raphael, by a happier instinct, he reserved man,
+the microcosm, the symbol of powerful grace, incarnate intellect. This
+quaint fancy of the Milanese critic touches the truth. What distinguishes
+the whole work of Raphael, is its humanity in the double sense of the
+humane and human. Phoebus, as imagined by the Greeks, was not more
+radiant, more victorious by the marvel of his smile, more intolerant of
+things obscene or ugly. Like Apollo chasing the Eumenides from his
+Delphian shrine, Raphael will not suffer his eyes to fall on what is
+loathsome or horrific. Even sadness and sorrow, tragedy and death, take
+loveliness from him. And here it must be mentioned that he shunned stern
+and painful subjects. He painted no martyrdom, no "Last Judgment," and no
+"Crucifixion," if we except the little early picture belonging to Lord
+Dudley.[262] His men and women are either glorious with youth or dignified
+in hale old age. Touched by his innocent and earnest genius, mankind is
+once more gifted with the harmony of intellect and flesh and feeling, that
+belonged to Hellas. Instead of asceticism, Hellenic temperance is the
+virtue prized by Raphael. Over his niche in the Temple of Fame might be
+written: "I have said ye are gods;"--for the children of men in his ideal
+world are divinized. The godlike spirit of man is all in all. Happy indeed
+was the art that by its limitations and selections could thus early
+express the good news of the Renaissance; while in the spheres of politics
+and ethics, science and religion, we are still far from having learned its
+lesson.
+
+Correggio is the Faun or Ariel of Renaissance painting. Turning to him
+from Raphael, we are naturally first struck by the affinities and
+differences between them. Both drew from their study of the world the
+elements of joy which it contains; but the gladness of Correggio was more
+sensuous than that of Raphael; his intellectual faculties were less
+developed; his rapture was more tumultuous and Bacchantic. Like Raphael,
+Correggio died young; but his brief life was spent in comparative
+obscurity and solitude. Far from the society of scholars and artists,
+ignorant of courts, unpatronised by princes, he wrought for himself alone
+the miracle of brightness and of movement that delights us in his
+frescoes and his easel-pictures.
+
+    Like a poet hidden
+      In the light of thought,
+    Singing hymns unbidden,
+
+was this lyrist of luxurious ecstasy. In his work there was nothing
+worldly; that divides him from the Venetians, whose sensuousness he
+shared: nothing scientific; that distinguishes him from Da Vinci, the
+magic of whose _chiaroscuro_ he comprehended: nothing contemplative; that
+separates him from Michael Angelo, the audacity of whose design in dealing
+with forced attitudes he rivalled, without apparently having enjoyed the
+opportunity of studying his works. The cheerfulness of Raphael, the
+wizardry of Lionardo, and the boldness of Michael Angelo, met in him to
+form a new style, the originality of which is indisputable, and which
+takes us captive--not by intellectual power, but by the impulse of
+emotion. Of his artistic education we know nothing; and when we call him
+the Ariel of painting, this means that we are compelled to think of him as
+an elemental spirit, whose bidding the air and the light and the hues of
+the morning obey.
+
+Correggio created a world of beautiful human beings, the whole condition
+of whose existence is an innocent and radiant wantonness.[263] Over the
+domain of tragedy he had no sway; nor could he deal with subjects
+demanding pregnancy of intellectual meaning. He paints the three Fates for
+instance like young and joyous Bacchantes; if we placed rose-garlands and
+thyrsi in their hands instead of the distaff and the thread of human
+destinies, they might figure upon the panels of a banquet-chamber in
+Pompeii. Nor, again, did he possess that severe and lofty art of
+composition which seeks the highest beauty of design in architectural
+harmony supreme above the melodies of gracefulness in detail. He was
+essentially a lyrical as distinguished from an epical or dramatic poet.
+The unity of his work is derived from the effect of light and atmosphere,
+the inbreathed soul of tremulous and throbbing life, which bathes and
+liquefies the whole. It was enough for him to produce a gleeful symphony
+by the play of light and colour, by the animation of his figures, and by
+the intoxicating beauty of his forms. His angels are genii disimprisoned
+from the chalices of flowers, houris of an erotic Paradise, elemental
+sprites of nature wantoning in Eden in her prime. They belong to the
+generation of the fauns. Like fauns, they combine a certain wildness, a
+dithyrambic ecstasy, a delight in rapid motion as they revel amid clouds
+and flowers, with the permanent and all-pervading sweetness of the
+painter's style. Correggio's sensibility to light and colour--that quality
+which makes him unique among painters--was on a par with his feeling for
+form. Brightness and darkness are woven together on his figures like an
+impalpable veil, aërial and transparent, enhancing the palpitations of
+voluptuous movement which he loved. His colouring does not glow or burn;
+blithesome and delicate, it seems exactly such a beauty-bloom as sense
+requires for its satiety. That cord of jocund colour which may fitly be
+combined with the smiles of daylight, the clear blues found in laughing
+eyes, the pinks that tinge the cheeks of early youth, and the warm yet
+silvery tones of healthy flesh, mingle, as in a pearl-shell, on his
+pictures. Within his own magic circle Correggio reigns supreme; no other
+artist having blent the witcheries of colouring, _chiaroscuro_, and wanton
+loveliness of form, into a harmony so perfect in its sensuous charm. To
+feel his influence, and at the same moment to be the subject of strong
+passion, or intense desire, or heroic resolve, or profound contemplation,
+or pensive melancholy, is impossible. The Northern traveller, standing
+beneath his master-works in Parma, may hear from each of those radiant and
+laughing faces what the young Italian said to Goethe: _Perchè pensa?
+pensando s' invecchia_.
+
+Michael Angelo is the prophet or seer of the Renaissance. It would be
+impossible to imagine a stronger contrast than that which distinguishes
+his art from Correggio's, or lives more different in all their details,
+than those which he and Raphael or Lionardo lived respectively. During the
+eighty-nine years of his earthly pilgrimage he saw Italy enslaved and
+Florence extinguished; it was his exceeding bitter fate to watch the rapid
+decay of the arts and to witness the triumph of sacerdotal despotism over
+liberal thought. To none of these things was he indifferent; and the
+sorrow they wrought in his soul, found expression in his painting.[264]
+Michael Angelo was not framed by nature to fascinate like Lionardo or to
+charm like Raphael. His manners were severe and simple. When he spoke, his
+words were brief and pungent. When he wrote, whether in poetry or prose,
+he used the fewest phrases to express the most condensed meaning. When
+asked why he had not married, he replied that the wife he had--his
+art--cost him already too much trouble. He entertained few friends, and
+shunned society. Brooding over the sermons of Savonarola, the text of the
+Bible, the discourses of Plato, and the poems of Dante, he made his spirit
+strong in solitude by the companionship with everlasting thoughts.
+Therefore, when he was called to paint the Sistine Chapel, he uttered
+through painting the weightiest prophecy the world has ever seen expressed
+in plastic form. His theme is nothing less than the burden of the prophets
+and the Sibyls who preached the coming of a light upon the world, and the
+condemnation of the world which had rejected it, by an inexorable judge.
+Michelet says, not without truth, that the spirit of Savonarola lives
+again in these frescoes. The procession of the four-and-twenty elders,
+arraigned before the people of Brescia to accuse Italy of sin--the voice
+that cried to Florence, "Behold the sword of the Lord, and that swiftly!
+Behold I, even I, do bring a deluge on the earth!" are both seen and heard
+here very plainly. But there is more than Savonarola in this prophecy of
+Michael Angelo's. It contains the stern spirit of Dante, aflame with
+patriotism, passionate for justice. It embodies the philosophy of Plato.
+The creative God, who divides light from darkness, who draws Adam from the
+clay and calls forth new-born Eve in awful beauty, is the Demiurgus of
+the Greek. Again, it carries the indignation of Isaiah, the wild
+denunciations of Ezekiel, the monotonous refrain of Jeremiah--"Ah, Lord,
+Lord!" The classic Sibyls intone their mystic hymns; the Delphic on her
+tripod of inspiration, the Erythraean bending over her scrolls, the
+withered witch of Cumae, the parched prophetess of Libya--all seem to cry,
+"Repent, repent! for the kingdom of the spirit is at hand! Repent and
+awake, for the judgment of the world approaches!" And above these voices
+we hear a most tremendous wail: "The nations have come to the birth; but
+there is not strength to bring forth." That is the utterance of the
+Renaissance, as it had appeared in Italy. She who was first among the
+nations was now last; bound and bleeding, she lay prostrate at the
+temple-gate she had unlocked. To Michael Angelo was given for his
+portion--not the alluring mysteries of the new age, not the joy of the
+renascent world, not the petulant and pulsing rapture of youth: these had
+been divided between Lionardo, Raphael, and Correggio--but the bitter
+burden of the sense that the awakening to life is in itself a pain, that
+the revelation of the liberated soul is itself judgment, that a light is
+shining, and that the world will not comprehend it. Pregnant as are the
+paintings of Michael Angelo with religious import, they are no longer
+Catholic in the sense in which the frescoes of the Lorenzetti and Orcagna
+and Giotto are Catholic. He went beyond the ecclesiastical standing ground
+and reached one where philosophy includes the Christian faith. Thus the
+true spirit of the Renaissance was embodied in his work of art.
+
+Among the multitudes of figures covering the wall above the altar in the
+Sistine Chapel there is one that might well stand for a symbol of the
+Renaissance. It is a woman of gigantic stature in the act of toiling
+upwards from the tomb. Grave clothes impede the motion of her body: they
+shroud her eyes and gather round her chest. Part only of her face and
+throat is visible, where may be read a look of blank bewilderment and
+stupefaction, a struggle with death's slumber in obedience to some inner
+impulse. Yet she is rising slowly, half awake, and scarcely conscious, to
+await a doom still undetermined. Thus Michael Angelo interpreted the
+meaning of his age.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[197] "La man che ubbedisce all' intelletto" is a phrase pregnant with
+meaning, used by Michael Angelo in one of his sonnets. See Guasti, _Le
+Rime di Michael Angelo_, p. 173. Michael Angelo's blunt criticism of
+Perugino, that he was _goffo_, a fool in art, and his rude speech to
+Francia's handsome son, that his father made better forms by night than
+day, sufficiently indicate the different aims pursued by the painters of
+the two periods distinguished above.
+
+[198] Though Mantegna seems to have owed all his training to Padua, it is
+impossible to regard him as what is called a Squarcionesque--one among
+the artistic hacks formed and employed by the Paduan _impresario_ of
+third-rate painting. No other eagle like to him was reared in that nest.
+His greatness belonged to his own genius, assimilating from the meagre
+means of study within his reach those elements which enabled him to
+divine the spirit of the antique and to attempt its reproduction. In
+order to facilitate the explanation of the problem offered by his early
+command of style, it has been suggested with great show of reason that he
+received a strong impression from the work executed in bas-relief by
+Donatello for the church of S. Antonio at Padua. Thus Florentine
+influences helped to form even the original genius of this greatest of
+the Lombard masters.
+
+[199] Vasari, vol. v. p. 163, may be consulted with regard to Mantegna's
+preference for the ideal of statuary when compared with natural beauty,
+as the model for a painter.
+
+[200] See Crowe and Cavalcaselle's _History of Painting in North Italy_,
+vol. i. p. 334, for an account of his antiquarian researches in company
+with Felice Feliciano. His museum was so famous that in 1483 Lorenzo de'
+Medici, passing through Mantua from Venice, thought it worthy of a visit.
+In his old age Mantegna fell into pecuniary difficulties, and had to part
+with his collection. The forced sale of its chief ornament, a bust of
+Faustina, is said to have broken his heart. _Ib._ p. 415.
+
+[201] Painted on canvas in tempera for the Marquis of Mantua, before
+1488, looted by the Germans in 1630, sold to Charles I., resold by the
+Commonwealth, bought back by Charles II., and now exposed, much spoiled
+by time and change, but more by villainous re-painting, on the walls of
+Hampton Court.
+
+[202] An oil painting in the National Gallery.
+
+[203] The so-called "Triumph of Scipio" in the National Gallery seems to
+me in every respect feebler than the Hampton Court Cartoons.
+
+[204] The "Madonna della Vittoria," now in the Louvre Gallery, was
+painted to commemorate the achievements of Francesco Gonzaga in the
+battle of Fornovo. That Francesco, General of the Venetian troops, should
+have claimed that action, the eternal disgrace of Italian soldiery, for a
+victory, is one of the strongest signs of the depth to which the sense of
+military honour had sunk in Italy. But though the occasion of its
+painting was so mean, the impression made by this picture is too powerful
+to be described. It is in every detail grandiose: masculine energy being
+combined with incomparable grace, religious feeling with athletic
+dignity, and luxuriance of ornamentation with severe gravity of
+composition. It is worth comparing this portrait of Francesco Gonzaga
+with his bronze medal, just as Piero della Francesco's picture of
+Sigismondo Malatesta should be compared with Pisanello's medallion.
+
+[205] Vol. II., _Revival of Learning_, p. 212.
+
+[206] Nothing is known about Mantegna's stay in Florence. He went to meet
+the Cardinal Francesco Gonzaga at Bologna. This Cardinal, a great amateur
+of music and connoisseur in relics of antiquity, came to Mantua in
+August, 1472, where the "Orfeo" of Messer Angelo Poliziano was produced
+for his amusement.
+
+[207] That he could conceive a stern and tragic subject, with all the
+passion it required, is, however, proved not only by the frescoes at
+Orvieto, but also by the powerful oil-painting of the "Crucifixion" at
+Borgo San Sepolcro.
+
+[208] This story has been used for verse in a way to heighten its
+romantic colouring. Such as the lines are, I subjoin them for the sake of
+their attempt to emphasize and illustrate Renaissance feeling:--
+
+    "Vasari tells that Luca Signorelli,
+    The morning star of Michael Angelo,
+    Had but one son, a youth of seventeen summers,
+    Who died. That day the master at his easel
+    Wielded the liberal brush wherewith he painted
+    At Orvieto, on the Duomo's walls,
+    Stern forms of Death and Heaven and Hell and Judgment.
+    Then came they to him, cried: 'Thy son is dead,
+    Slain in a duel: but the bloom of life
+    Yet lingers round red lips and downy cheek.'
+    Luca spoke not, but listened. Next they bore
+    His dead son to the silent painting-room,
+    And left on tip toe son and sire alone.
+    Still Luca spoke and groaned not; but he raised
+    The wonderful dead youth, and smoothed his hair,
+    Washed his red wounds, and laid him on a bed,
+    Naked and beautiful, where rosy curtains
+    Shed a soft glimmer of uncertain splendour
+    Life-like upon the marble limbs below.
+    Then Luca seized his palette: hour by hour
+    Silence was in the room; none durst approach:
+    Morn wore to noon, and noon to eve, when shyly
+    A little maid peeped in and saw the painter
+    Painting his dead son with unerring hand-stroke,
+    Firm and dry-eyed before the lordly canvas."
+
+[209] See the article on Orvieto in my _Sketches in Italy and Greece_.
+
+[210] The earlier frescoes of Fra Angelico, on the roof, depict Christ as
+Judge. But there is nothing in common with these works and Signorelli's.
+
+[211] This is the conjecture of Signor Luzi (_Il Duomo di Orvieto_, p.
+168). He bases it upon the Dantesque subjects illustrated, and quotes
+from the "Inferno":--
+
+                   "Omero poeta sovrano;
+    L' altro è Orazio satiro che viene,
+    Ovidio è il terzo, e l' ultimo Lucano."
+
+Nothing is more marked or more deeply interesting than the influence
+exercised by Dante over Signorelli, an influence he shared with Giotto,
+Orcagna, Botticelli, Michael Angelo, the greatest imaginative painters of
+Central Italy.
+
+[212] The background to the circular "Madonna" in the Uffizzi, the
+"Flagellation of Christ" in the Academy at Florence and in the Brera at
+Milan, and the "Adam" at Cortona, belong to this grade.
+
+[213] We may add the pages in a predella representing the "Adoration of
+the Magi" in the Uffizzi.
+
+[214] Vasari mentions the portraits of Nicolo, Paolo, and Vitellozzo
+Vitelli, Gian Paolo, and Orazio Baglioni, among others, in the frescoes
+at Orvieto.
+
+[215] Painted for Lorenzo de' Medici. It is now in the Berlin Museum
+through the neglect of the National Gallery authorities to purchase it
+for England.
+
+[216] I must not omit to qualify Vasari's praise of Luca Signorelli, by
+reference to a letter recently published from the _Archivio Buonarroti,
+Lettere a Diversi_, p. 391. Michael Angelo there addresses the Captain of
+Cortona, and complains that in the first year of Leo's pontificate Luca
+came to him and by various representations obtained from him the sum of
+eighty Giulios, which he never repaid, although he made profession to
+have done so. Michael Angelo was ill at the time, and working with much
+difficulty on a statue of a bound captive for the tomb of Julius. Luca
+gave a specimen of his renowned courtesy by comforting the sculptor in
+these rather sanctimonious phrases: "Doubt not that angels will come from
+heaven, to support your arms and help you."
+
+[217] Pietro, known as Perugino from the city of his adoption, was the
+son of Cristoforo Vannucci, of Città della Pieve. He was born in 1446,
+and died at Fontignano in 1522.
+
+[218] The triptych in the National Gallery.
+
+[219] They have been published by the Arundel Society.
+
+[220] These frescoes were begun in 1499. It may be mentioned that in this
+year, on the refusal of Perugino to decorate the Cappella di S. Brizio,
+the Orvietans entrusted that work to Signorelli.
+
+[221] Uffizzi and Sala del Cambio.
+
+[222] "Fu Pietro persona di assai poca religione, e non se gli potè mai
+far credere l'immortalità dell' anima: anzi, con parole, accomodate al
+suo cervello di porfido, ostinatissimamente ricusò ogni buona vita. Aveva
+ogni sua speranza ne' beni della fortuna, e per danari arebbe fatto ogni
+male contratto." Vasari, vol. vi. p. 50. The local tradition alluded to
+above relates to the difficulties raised by the Church against the
+Christian burial of Perugino: but if he died of plague, as it is believed
+(see C. and C., vol. iii. p. 244), these difficulties were probably
+caused by panic rather than belief in his impiety. For Gasparo Celio's
+note on Perugino's refusal to confess upon his death-bed, saying that he
+preferred to see how an impenitent soul would fare in the other world,
+the reader may consult Rio's _L'Art Chrétien_, vol. ii. p. 269. The
+record of Perugino's arming himself in Dec. 1486, together with a
+notorious assassin, Aulista di Angelo of Perugia, in order to waylay and
+beat a private enemy of his near S. Pietro Maggiore at Florence is quoted
+by Crowe and Cavalcaselle, vol. iii. p. 183.
+
+[223] "Guadagnò molte ricchezze; e in Fiorenza murò e comprò case; ed in
+Perugia ed a Castello della Pieve acquistò molti beni stahili." Vasari,
+vol. vi. p. 50.
+
+[224] "Goffo nell arte." See Vasari, vol. vi. p. 46. See too above, p.
+196.
+
+[225] I select these for comment rather than the frescoes at Spello,
+beautiful as these are, because they have more interest in relation to
+the style of the Renaissance.
+
+[226] The "Assumption" in S. Frediano at Lucca should also be mentioned
+as one of Francia's masterpieces.
+
+[227] His father was a muleteer of Suffignano, who settled at Florence,
+in a house and garden near the gate of S. Piero Gattolino. He was born in
+1475, and he died in 1517.
+
+[228] In S. Domenico at Prato in 1500. He afterwards resided in S. Marco
+at Florence.
+
+[229] May 23, 1498.
+
+[230] In addition to the pictures mentioned above, I may call attention
+to the adoring figure of S. Catherine of Siena, in three large
+paintings--now severally in the Pitti, at Lucca, and in the Louvre.
+
+[231] In the Uffizzi. As a composition, it is the Frate's masterpiece.
+
+[232] See Vol. I., _Age of the Despots_, p. 487, for this consequence of
+the sack of Prato.
+
+[233] _L'Art Chrétien_, vol. ii. p. 515.
+
+[234] Two of our best portraits of Savonarola, the earlier inscribed
+"Hieronymi Ferrariensis a Deo Missi Prophetae Effigies," the later treated
+to represent S. Peter Martyr, are from the hand of Fra Bartolommeo. See
+Crowe and Cavalcaselle, vol. iii. p. 433.
+
+[235] See below, chapter vii.
+
+[236] This sonnet I have translated into English with such closeness to
+the original words as I found possible:--
+
+    He who can do not what he wills, should try
+      To will what he can do; for since 'tis vain
+      To will what can't be compassed, to abstain
+      From idle wishing is philosophy.
+    Lo, all our happiness and grief imply
+      Knowledge or not of will's ability:
+      They therefore can, who will what ought to be.
+      Nor wrest true reason from her seat awry.
+    Nor what a man can, should he always will:
+      Oft seemeth sweet what after is not so;
+      And what I wished, when had, hath cost a tear.
+    Then, reader of these lines, if thou wouldst still
+      Be helpful to thyself, to others dear,
+      Will to can alway what thou ought to do.
+
+[237] See the letter addressed by Lionardo to Lodovico Sforza enumerating
+his claims as a mechanician, military and civil engineer, architect, &c.
+It need scarcely be mentioned that he served Cesare Borgia and the
+Florentine Republic as an engineer, and that much of his time at Milan
+was spent in hydraulic works upon the Adda. It should be added here that
+Lionardo committed the results of his discoveries to writing; but he
+published very little, and that by no means the most precious portion of
+his thoughts. He founded at Milan an Academy of Arts and Sciences, if
+this name may be given to a reunion of artists, scholars, and men of the
+world, to whom it is probable that he communicated his researches in
+anatomy. The _Treatise on Painting_, which bears his name, is a
+compilation from notes and MSS. first printed in 1651.
+
+[238] The folio volume of sketches in the Ambrosian Library at Milan
+contains designs for all these works. The collection in the Royal Library
+at Windsor is no less rich. Among Lionardo's scientific drawings in the
+latter place may be mentioned a series of maps illustrating the river
+system of Central Italy, with plans for improved drainage.
+
+[239] Shelley says of the poet:--
+
+    He will watch from dawn to gloom
+    The lake-reflected sun illume
+    The yellow bees in the ivy bloom;
+    Nor heed nor see what things they be,
+    But from these create he can
+    Forms more real than living man,
+    Nurslings of immortality.
+
+[240] See De Stendhal, _Histoire de la Peinture en Italie_, p. 143, for
+this story.
+
+[241] In the _Treatise on Painting_, da Vinci argues strongly against
+isolating man. He regarded the human being as in truth a microcosm to be
+only understood in relation to the world around him, expressing, as a
+painter, the same thought as Pico. (See Vol. II., _Revival of Learning,_
+p. 35.) Therefore he urges the claims of landscape on the attention of
+artists.
+
+[242] I might refer in detail to four studies of bramble branches,
+leaves, and flowers and fruit, in the royal collection at Windsor, most
+wonderful for patient accuracy and delicate execution: also to drawings
+of oak leaves, wild guelder-rose, broom, columbine, asphodel, bull-rush,
+and wood-spurge in the same collection. These careful studies are as
+valuable for the botanist as for the artist. To render the specific
+character of each plant with greater precision would be impossible.
+
+[243] See the series of anatomical studies of the horse in the Royal
+Collection.
+
+[244] Engraved by Edelinck. The drawing has obvious Lionardesque
+qualities; but how far it may be from the character of the original we
+can guess by Rubens' transcript from Mantegna. (See above, Chapter VI,
+Mantegna's Biography.) De Stendhal says wittily of this work, "C'est
+Virgile traduit par Madame de Staël," op. cit. p. 162.
+
+[245] In the Royal Collection at Windsor there are anatomical drawings
+for the construction of an imaginary quadruped with gigantic claws. The
+bony, muscular, and venous structure of its legs and feet is accurately
+indicated.
+
+[246] See the drawings engraved and published by Gerli in his _Disegni di
+Lionardo da Vinci_, Milan, 1784.
+
+[247] Vasari is the chief source of these legends. Giraldi Lomazzo, the
+Milanese historian of painting, and Bandello, the novelist, supply
+further details. It appears from all accounts that Lionardo impressed his
+contemporaries as a singular and most commanding personality. There is a
+touch of reverence in even the strangest stories, which is wanting in the
+legend of Piero di Cosimo.
+
+[248] Even Michael Angelo, meeting him in Florence, flung in his teeth
+that "he had made the model of a horse to cast in bronze, and could not
+cast it, and through shame left it as it was unfinished." See _Arch. St.
+It._, serie terza, xvi. 226.
+
+[249] In the Royal Collection at Windsor there is a whole series of
+studies for these two statues, together with drawings for the mould in
+which Lionardo intended to cast them. The second of the two is sketched
+with great variety of motive. The horse is rearing; the fallen enemy is
+vainly striving to defend himself; the victor in one drawing is reining
+in his steed, in another is waving a truncheon, in a third is brandishing
+his sword, in a fourth is holding the sword in act to thrust. The designs
+for the pedestals, sometimes treated as a tomb and sometimes as a
+fountain, are equally varied.
+
+[250] "Concevoir," said Balzac, "c'est jouir, c'est fumer des cigarettes
+enchantées; mais sans l'exécution tout s'en va en rêve et en fumée."
+Quoted by Sainte-Beuve, _Causeries du Lundi_, vol. ii. p. 353.
+
+[251] See Vol. II., _Revival of Learning_, p. 128, 129.
+
+[252] It was finished, according to Fra Paciolo, in 1498.
+
+[253] Signorelli, with his usual originality, chose the moment when
+Christ broke bread and gave it to His disciples. In that rare picture at
+Cortona, we see not the betrayed chief but the founder of a new religion.
+
+[254] The Cenacolo alone will not enable the student to understand
+Lionardo. He must give his attention to the master's sketch books, those
+studies in chalk, in tempera, on thin canvas and paper, prepared for the
+stylus or the pen, which Vasari calls the final triumphs of designing,
+and of which, in spite of the loss of many of his books, the surviving
+specimens are very numerous. Some are easily accessible in Gerli,
+Chamberlaine, and the autotype reproductions. It is possible that a
+sympathetic student may get closer to the all-embracing and all-daring
+genius of the magician through these drawings than if he had before him
+an elaborate work in fresco or in oils. They express the many-sided,
+mobile, curious, and subtle genius of the man in its entirety.
+
+[255] "Raffaello, che era la gentilezza stessa ... restavano vinti dalla
+cortesia e dall' arte sua, ma più dal genio della sua buona natura; la
+quale era si piena di gentilezza e si colma di carità, che egli si vedeva
+che fino agli animali l'onoravano, non che gli uomini."--Vasari, vol.
+viii. pp. 6, 60.
+
+[256] See above, Chapter VI, Fra Bartolommeo.
+
+[257] The "Holy Family" at Munich, and the "Madonna del Baldacchino" in
+the Pitti, might be mentioned as experiments on Raphael's part to perfect
+the Frate's scheme of composition.
+
+[258] See Vasari, vol. viii. p. 60, for a description of the concord that
+reigned in this vast workshop. The genius and the gentle nature of
+Raphael penetrated the whole group of artists, and seemed to give them a
+single soul.
+
+[259] The fresco of "Alexander" in the Palazzo Borghese is by an
+imitator.
+
+[260] The "Madonna di San Sisto" was painted for a banner to be borne in
+processions. It is a subtle observation of Rio that the banner, an
+invention of the Umbrian school, corresponds in painting to the hymn in
+poetry.
+
+[261] See Vol. II., _Revival of Learning_, p. 316, for Raphael's letter
+on this subject to Leo X.
+
+[262] "La Spasimo di Sicilia" is the single Passion picture of Raphael's
+maturity. The predella of "Christ carrying the Cross" at Leigh Court, and
+the "Christ showing His Wounds" in the Tosi Gallery at Brescia, are both
+early works painted under Umbrian influence. The Borghese "Entombment,"
+painted for Atalanta Baglioni, a pen-and-ink drawing of the "Pietà" in
+the Louvre collection, Marc Antonio's engraving of the "Massacre of the
+Innocents," and an early picture of the "Agony in the Garden," are all
+the other painful subjects I can now remember.
+
+[263] For a fuller working out of this analysis I must refer to my
+_Sketches in Italy_, article "Parma." Much that follows is a quotation
+from that essay.
+
+[264] Much of the controversy about Michael Angelo, which is continually
+being waged between his admirers and his detractors, might be set at rest
+if it were acknowledged that there are two distinct ways of judging works
+of art. We may regard them simply as appealing to our sense of beauty,
+and affording harmonious intellectual pleasure. Or we may regard them as
+expressing the thought and spirit of their age, and as utterances made by
+men whose hearts burned within them. Critics trained in the study of good
+Greek sculpture, or inclined by temperament to admire the earlier
+products of Italian painting, are apt to pursue the former path
+exclusively. They demand serenity and simplicity. Perturbation and
+violence they denounce as blemishes. It does not occur to them that,
+though the phenomenon is certainly rare, it does occasionally happen that
+a man arises whose art is for him the language of his soul, and who lives
+in sympathetic relation to the sternest interests of his age. If such an
+artist be born when tranquil thought and serene emotions are impossible
+for one who feels the meaning of his times with depth, he must either
+paint and carve lies, or he must abandon the serenity that was both
+natural and easy to the Greek and the earlier Italian. Michael Angelo was
+one of these select artistic natures. He used his chisel and his pencil
+to express, not merely beautiful artistic motives, but what he felt and
+thought about the world in which he had to live: and this world was full
+of the ruin of republics, the corruption and humiliation of society, the
+subjection of Italy to strangers. In Michael Angelo the student of both
+art and history finds an inestimably precious and rare point of contact
+between the inner spirit of an age, and its external expression in
+sculpture and painting.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+VENETIAN PAINTING
+
+Painting bloomed late in Venice--Conditions offered by Venice to
+Art--Shelley and Pietro Aretino--Political circumstances of
+Venice--Comparison with Florence--The Ducal Palace--Art regarded as an
+adjunct to State Pageantry--Myth of Venezia--Heroic Deeds of
+Venice--Tintoretto's Paradise and Guardi's Picture of a Ball--Early
+Venetian Masters of Murano--Gian Bellini--Carpaccio's little Angels--The
+Madonna of S. Zaccaria--Giorgione--Allegory, Idyll, Expression of
+Emotion--The Monk at the Clavichord--Titian, Tintoret, and
+Veronese--Tintoretto's attempt to dramatise Venetian Art--Veronese's
+Mundane Splendour--Titian's Sophoclean Harmony--Their Schools--Further
+Characteristics of Veronese--of Tintoretto--His Imaginative
+Energy--Predominant Poetry--Titian's Perfection of Balance--Assumption of
+Madonna--Spirit common to the Great Venetians.
+
+
+It was a fact of the greatest importance for the development of the fine
+arts in Italy that painting in Venice reached maturity later than in
+Florence. Owing to this circumstance one chief aspect of the Renaissance,
+its material magnificence and freedom, received consummate treatment at
+the hands of Titian, Tintoretto, and Veronese. To idealise the
+sensualities of the external universe, to achieve for colour what the
+Florentines had done for form, to invest the worldly grandeur of human
+life at one of its most gorgeous epochs with the dignity of the highest
+art, was what these great artists were called on to accomplish. Their task
+could not have been so worthily performed in the fifteenth century as in
+the sixteenth, if the development of the aesthetic sense had been more
+premature among the Venetians.
+
+Venice was precisely fitted for the part her painters had to play. Free,
+isolated, wealthy, powerful; famous throughout Europe for the pomp of her
+state equipage, and for the immorality of her private manners; ruled by a
+prudent aristocracy, who spent vast wealth on public shows and on the
+maintenance of a more than imperial civic majesty: Venice, with her
+pavement of liquid chrysoprase, with her palaces of porphyry and marble,
+her frescoed façades, her quays and squares aglow with the costumes of the
+Levant, her lagoons afloat with the galleys of all nations, her churches
+floored with mosaics, her silvery domes and ceilings glittering with
+sculpture bathed in molten gold: Venice luxurious in the light and colour
+of a vaporous atmosphere, where sea-mists rose into the mounded summer
+clouds; arched over by the broad expanse of sky, bounded only by the
+horizon of waves and plain and distant mountain ranges, and reflected in
+all its many hues of sunrise and sunset upon the glassy surface of smooth
+waters: Venice asleep like a miracle of opal or of pearl upon the bosom of
+an undulating lake:--here and here only on the face of the whole globe was
+the unique city wherein the pride of life might combine with the lustre of
+the physical universe to create and stimulate in the artist a sense of all
+that was most sumptuous in the pageant of the world of sense.
+
+There is colour in flowers. Gardens of tulips are radiant, and mountain
+valleys touch the soul with the beauty of their pure and gemlike hues.
+Therefore the painters of Flanders and of Umbria, John van Eyck and
+Gentile da Fabriano, penetrated some of the secrets of the world of
+colour. But what are the purples and scarlets and blues of iris, anemone,
+or columbine, dispersed among deep meadow grasses or trained in quiet
+cloister garden-beds, when compared with that melodrama of flame and gold
+and rose and orange and azure, which the skies and lagoons of Venice yield
+almost daily to the eyes? The Venetians had no green fields and trees, no
+garden borders, no blossoming orchards, to teach them the tender
+suggestiveness, the quaint poetry of isolated or contrasted tints. Their
+meadows were the fruitless furrows of the Adriatic, hued like a peacock's
+neck; they called the pearl-shells of their Lido flowers, _fior di mare_.
+Nothing distracted their attention from the glories of morning and of
+evening presented to them by their sea and sky. It was in consequence of
+this that the Venetians conceived colour heroically, not as a matter of
+missal-margins or of subordinate decoration, but as a motive worthy in
+itself of sublime treatment. In like manner, hedged in by no limitary
+hills, contracted by no city walls, stifled by no narrow streets, but open
+to the liberal airs of heaven and ocean, the Venetians understood space
+and imagined pictures almost boundless in their immensity. Light, colour,
+air, space: those are the elemental conditions of Venetian art; of those
+the painters weaved their ideal world for beautiful and proud humanity.
+
+Shelley's description of a Venetian sunset strikes the keynote to Venetian
+painting:[265]--
+
+    As those who pause on some delightful way,
+    Though bent on pleasant pilgrimage, we stood
+    Looking upon the evening and the flood,
+    Which lay between the city and the shore,
+    Paved with the image of the sky: the hoar
+    And airy Alps, towards the north appeared,
+    Through mist, a heaven-sustaining bulwark, reared
+    Between the east and west; and half the sky
+    Was roofed with clouds of rich emblazonry,
+    Dark purple at the zenith, which still grew
+    Down the steep west into a wondrous hue
+    Brighter than burning gold, even to the rent
+    Where the swift sun yet paused in his descent
+    Among the many-folded hills--they were
+    Those famous Euganean hills, which bear,
+    As seen from Lido through the harbour piles,
+    The likeness of a clump of peaked isles--
+    And then, as if the earth and sea had been
+    Dissolved into one lake of fire, were seen
+    Those mountains towering, as from waves of flame,
+    Around the vaporous sun, from which there came
+    The inmost purple spirit of light, and made
+    Their very peaks transparent. "Ere it fade,"
+    Said my companion, "I will show you soon
+    A better station." So, o'er the lagune
+    We glided: and from that funereal bark
+    I leaned, and saw the city; and could mark
+    How from their many isles, in evening's gleam,
+    Its temples and its palaces did seem
+    Like fabrics of enchantment piled to heaven.
+
+With this we may compare the following extract from a letter, addressed in
+May 1544 to Titian, by one of the most unprincipled of literary bandits
+who have ever disgraced humanity, but who nevertheless was solemnised to
+the spirit of true poetry by the grandiose aspect of nature as it appeared
+to him in Venice. That Pietro Aretino should have so deeply felt the charm
+of natural beauty in an age when even the greatest artists and poets
+sought inspiration in human life rather than the outer world, is a
+significant fact. It seems to illustrate the necessity whereby Venice
+became the cradle of the art of nature.[266] "Having, dear Sir, and my
+best gossip, supped alone to the injury of my custom, or, to speak more
+truly, supped in the company of all the boredoms of a cursed quartan
+fever, which will not let me taste the flavour of any food, I rose from
+table sated with the same disgust with which I had sat down to it. In this
+mood I went and leaned my arms upon the sill outside my window, and
+throwing my chest and nearly all my body on the marble, abandoned myself
+to the contemplation of the spectacle presented by the innumerable boats,
+filled with foreigners as well as people of the city, which gave delight
+not merely to the gazers, but also to the Grand Canal itself, that
+perpetual delight of all who plough its waters. From this animated scene,
+all of a sudden, like one who from mere _ennui_ knows not how to occupy
+his mind, I turned my eyes to heaven, which, from the moment when God made
+it, was never adorned with such painted loveliness of lights and shadows.
+The whole region of the air was what those who envy you, because they are
+unable to be you, would fain express. To begin with, the buildings of
+Venice, though of solid stone, seemed made of some ethereal substance.
+Then the sky was full of variety--here clear and ardent, there dulled and
+overclouded. What marvellous clouds there were! Masses of them in the
+centre of the scene hung above the house-roofs, while the immediate part
+was formed of a grey tint inclining to dark. I gazed astonished at the
+varied colours they displayed. The nearer masses burned with flames of
+sunset; the more remote blushed with a blaze of crimson less afire. Oh,
+how splendidly did Nature's pencil treat and dispose that airy landscape,
+keeping the sky apart from the palaces, just as Titian does! On one side
+the heavens showed a greenish-blue, on another a bluish-green, invented
+verily by the caprice of Nature, who is mistress of the greatest masters.
+With her lights and her darks, there she was harmonising, toning, and
+bringing out into relief, just as she wished. Seeing which, I who know
+that your pencil is the spirit of her inmost soul, cried aloud thrice or
+four tines, 'Oh, Titian! where are you now?'"
+
+In order to understand the destiny of Venice in art, it is not enough to
+concentrate attention on the peculiarities of her physical environment.
+Potent as these were in the creation of her style, the political and
+social conditions of the Republic require also to be taken into account.
+Among Italian cities Venice was unique. She alone was tranquil in her
+empire, unimpeded in her constitutional development, independent of Church
+interference, undisturbed by the cross purposes and intrigues of the
+Despots, inhabited by merchants who were princes, and by a free-born
+people who had never seen war at their gates. The serenity of undisturbed
+security, the luxury of wealth amassed abroad and liberally spent at home,
+gave a physiognomy of ease and proud self-confidence to all her edifices.
+The grim and anxious struggles of the Middle Ages left no mark on Venice.
+How different was this town from Florence, every inch of whose domain
+could tell of civic warfare, whose passionate aspirations after
+independence ended in the despotism of the bourgeois Medici, whose
+repeated revolutions had slavery for their climax, whose grey palaces bore
+on their fronts the stamp of mediaeval vigilance, whose spirit was
+incarnated in Dante the exile, whose enslavement forced from Michael
+Angelo those groans of a chained Titan expressed in the marbles of S.
+Lorenzo! It is not an insignificant, though a slight, detail, that the
+predominant colour of Florence is brown, while the predominant colour of
+Venice is that of mother-of-pearl, concealing within its general whiteness
+every tint that can be placed upon the palette of a painter. The
+conditions of Florence stimulated mental energy and turned the forces of
+the soul inwards. Those of Venice inclined the individual to accept life
+as he found it. Instead of exciting him to think, they disposed him to
+enjoy, or to acquire by industry the means of manifold enjoyment. To
+represent in art the intellectual strivings of the Renaissance was the
+task of Florence and her sons; to create a monument of Renaissance
+magnificence was the task of Venice. Without Venice the modern world could
+not have produced that flower of sensuous and unreflective loveliness in
+painting, which is worthy to stand beside the highest product of the Greek
+genius in sculpture. For Athena from her Parthenon stretches the hand to
+Venezia enthroned in the ducal palace. The broad brows and earnest eyes of
+the Hellenic goddess are of one divine birth and lineage with the golden
+hair and superb carriage of the sea-queen.
+
+It is in the heart of Venice, in the House of the Republic, that the
+Venetian painters, considered as the interpreters of worldly splendour,
+fulfilled their function with the most complete success. Centuries
+contributed to make the Ducal Palace what it is. The massive colonnades
+and Gothic loggias of the external basement date from the thirteenth
+century; their sculpture belongs to the age when Niccola Pisano's genius
+was in the ascendant. The square fabric of the palace, so beautiful in the
+irregularity of its pointed windows, so singular in its mosaic diaper of
+pink and white, was designed at the same early period. The inner court and
+the façade that overhangs the lateral canal, display the handiwork of
+Sansovino. The halls of the palace--spacious chambers where the Senate
+assembled, where ambassadors approached the Doge, where the Savi
+deliberated, where the Council of Ten conducted their inquisition--are
+walled and roofed with pictures of inestimable value, encased in framework
+of carved oak; overlaid with burnished gold. Supreme art--the art of the
+imagination perfected with delicate and skilful care in detail--is made in
+these proud halls the minister of mundane pomp. In order that the gold
+brocade of the ducal robes, that the scarlet and crimson of the Venetian
+senator, might, be duly harmonised by the richness of their surroundings,
+it was necessary that canvases measured by the square yard, and rendered
+priceless by the authentic handiwork of Titian, Tintoret, and Veronese,
+should glow upon the walls and ceilings. A more insolent display of public
+wealth--a more lavish outpouring of human genius in the service of State
+pageantry, cannot be imagined.
+
+Sublime over all allegories and histories depicted in those multitudes of
+paintings, sits Venezia herself enthroned and crowned, the personification
+of haughtiness and power. Figured as a regal lady, with yellow hair
+tightly knotted round a small head poised upon her upright throat and
+ample shoulders, Venice takes her chair of sovereignty--as mistress of the
+ocean to whom Neptune and the Tritons offer pearls, as empress of the
+globe at whose footstool wait Justice with the sword and Peace with the
+olive branch, as a queen of heaven exalted to the clouds. They have made
+her a goddess, those great painters; they have produced a mythus, and
+personified in native loveliness that bride of the sea, their love, their
+lady. The beauty of Venetian women and the glory of Venetian empire find
+their meeting point in her, and live as the spirit of Athens lived in
+Pallas Promachos. On every side, above, around, wherever the eye falls in
+those vast rooms, are seen the deeds of Venice--painted histories of her
+triumphs over emperors and popes and infidels, or allegories of her
+greatness--scenes wherein the Doges perform acts of faith, with S. Mark
+for their protector, and with Venezia for their patroness. The saints in
+Paradise, massed together by Tintoretto and by Palma, mingle with
+mythologies of Greece and Rome, and episodes of pure idyllic painting.
+
+Religion in these pictures was a matter of parade, an adjunct to the
+costly public life of the Republic. We need not, therefore, conclude that
+it was unreal. Such as it was, the religion of the Venetian masters is
+indeed as genuine as that of Fra Angelico or Albert Dürer. But it was the
+faith, not of humble men or of mystics, not of profound thinkers or
+ecstatic visionaries, so much as of courtiers and statesmen, of senators
+and merchants, for whom religion was a function among other functions, not
+a thing apart, not a source of separate and supreme vitality. Even as
+Christians, the Venetians lived a life separate from the rest of Italy.
+Their Church claimed independence of the see of Rome, and the enthusiasm
+of S. Francis was but faintly felt in the lagoons. Siena in her hour of
+need dedicated herself to Madonna; Florence in the hour of her
+regeneration gave herself to Christ; Venice remained under the ensign of
+the leonine S. Mark. While the cities of Lombardy and Central Italy ran
+wild with revivalism and religious panics, the Venetians maintained their
+calm, and never suffered piety to exceed the limits of political prudence.
+There is, therefore, no mystical exaltation in the faith depicted by her
+artists. That Tintoretto could have painted the saints in glory--a
+countless multitude of congregated forms, a sea whereof the waves are
+souls--as a background for State ceremony, shows the positive and
+realistic attitude of mind from which the most imaginative of Venetian
+masters started, when he undertook the most exalted of religious themes.
+Paradise is a fact, we may fancy Tintoretto reasoned; and it is easier to
+fill a quarter of an acre of canvas with a picture of Paradise than with
+any other subject, because the figures can be arranged in concentric tiers
+round Christ and Madonna in glory.
+
+There is a little sketch by Guardi representing a masked ball in the
+Council Chamber where the "Paradise" of Tintoretto fills a wall. The men
+are in periwigs and long waistcoats; the ladies wear hoops, patches, fans,
+high heels, and powder. Bowing, promenading, intriguing, exchanging
+compliments or repartees, they move from point to point; while from the
+billowy surge of saints, Moses with the table of the law and the Magdalen
+with her adoring eyes of penitence look down upon them. Tintoretto could
+not but have foreseen that the world of living pettiness and passion would
+perpetually jostle with his world of painted sublimities and sanctities in
+that vast hall. Yet he did not on that account shrink from the task or
+fail in its accomplishment. Paradise existed: therefore it could be
+painted; and he was called upon to paint it here. If the fine gentlemen
+and ladies below felt out of harmony with the celestial host, so much the
+worse for them. In this practical spirit the Venetian masters approached
+religious art, and such was the sphere appointed for it in the pageantry
+of the Republic. When Paolo Veronese was examined by the Holy Office
+respecting some supposed irreverence in a sacred picture, his answers
+clearly proved that in planning it he had thought less of its spiritual
+significance than of its aesthetic effect.[267]
+
+In the Ducal Palace the Venetian art of the Renaissance culminates; and
+here we might pause a moment to consider the difference between these
+paintings and the mediaeval frescoes of the Palazzo Pubblico at Siena.[268]
+The Sienese painters consecrated all their abilities to the expression of
+thoughts, theories of political self-government in a free State, and
+devotional ideas. The citizen who read the lesson of the Sala della Pace
+was instructed in his duties to God and to the State. The Venetian
+painters, as we have seen, exalted Venice and set forth her acts of power.
+Their work is a glorification of the Republic; but no doctrine is
+inculcated, and no system of thought is conveyed to the mind through the
+eye. Daily pacing the saloons of the palace, Doge and noble were reminded
+of the greatness of the State they represented. They were not invited to
+reflect upon the duties of the governor and governed. Their imaginations
+were dilated and their pride roused by the spectacle of Venice seated
+like a goddess in her home. Of all the secular States of Italy the
+Republic of S. Mark's alone produced this mythical ideal of the body
+politic, self-sustained and independent of the citizens, compelling their
+allegiance, and sustaining them through generations with the life of its
+organic unity.[269] The artists had no reason to paint thoughts and
+theories. It was enough to set forth Venice and to illustrate her acts.
+
+Long before Venetian painting reached a climax in the decorative triumphs
+of the Ducal Palace, the masters of the school had formed a style
+expressive of the spirit of the Renaissance, considered as the spirit of
+free enjoyment and living energy. To trace the history of Venetian
+painting is to follow through its several stages the growth of that
+mastery over colour and sensuous beauty which was perfected in the works
+of Titian and his contemporaries.[270] Under the Vivarini of Murano the
+Venetian school in its infancy began with a selection from the natural
+world of all that struck them as most brilliant. No other painters of
+their age in Italy employed such glowing colours, or showed a more marked
+predilection for the imitation of fruits, rich stuffs, architectural
+canopies, jewels, and landscape backgrounds. Their piety, unlike the
+mysticism of the Sienese and the deep thought of the Florentine masters,
+is somewhat superficial and conventional. The merit of their devotional
+pictures consists of simplicity, vivacity, and joyousness. Our Lady and
+her court of saints seem living and breathing upon earth. There is no
+atmosphere of tranced solemnity surrounding them, like that which gives
+peculiar meaning to similar works of the Van Eycks and Memling--artists,
+by the way, who in many important respects are more nearly allied than any
+others to the spirit of the first age of Venetian painting.[271]
+
+What the Vivarini began, the three Bellini,[272] with Crivelli, Carpaccio,
+Mansueti, Basaiti, Catena, Cima da Conegliano, Bissolo, Cordegliaghi,
+continued. Bright costumes, distinct and sunny landscapes, broad
+backgrounds of architecture, large skies, polished armour, gilded
+cornices, young faces of fisherboys and country girls,[273] grave faces of
+old men brown with sea-wind and sunlight, withered faces of women hearty
+in a hale old age, the strong manhood of Venetian senators, the dignity of
+patrician ladies, the gracefulness of children, the rosy whiteness and
+amber-coloured tresses of the daughters of the Adriatic and lagoons--these
+are the source of inspiration to the Venetians of the second period.
+Mantegna, a few miles distant, at Padua, was working out his ideal of
+severely classical design. Yet he scarcely touched the manner of the
+Venetians with his influence, though Gian Bellini was his brother-in-law
+and pupil, and though his genius, in grasp of matter and in management of
+composition, soared above his neighbours. Lionardo da Vinci at Milan was
+perfecting his problems of psychology in painting, offering to the world
+solutions of the greatest difficulties in the delineation of the spirit by
+expression. Yet not a trace of Lionardo's subtle play of light and shadow
+upon thoughtful features can be discerned in the work of the Bellini. For
+them the mysteries of the inner and the outer world had no attraction. The
+externals of a full and vivid existence fascinated their imagination.
+Their poetry and their piety were alike simple and objective. How to
+depict the world as it is seen--a miracle of varying lights and melting
+hues, a pageant substantial to the touch and concrete to the eyes, a
+combination of forms defined by colours more than outlines--was their
+task. They did not reach their end by anatomy, analysis, and
+reconstruction. They undertook to paint just what they felt and saw.
+
+Very instructive are the wall-pictures of this period, painted not in
+fresco but on canvas by Carpaccio and Gentile Bellini, for the decoration
+of the Scuole of S. Ursula and S. Croce.[274] Not only do these bring
+before us the life of Venice in its manifold reality, but they illustrate
+the tendency of the Venetian masters to express the actual world, rather
+than to formulate an ideal of the fancy or to search the secrets of the
+soul. This realism, if the name can be applied to pictures so poetical as
+those of Carpaccio, is not, like the Florentine realism, hard and
+scientific. A natural feeling for grace and a sense of romance inspire the
+artist, and breathe from every figure that he paints. The type of beauty
+produced is charming by its negligence and _naïveté_; it is not thought
+out with pains or toilsomely elaborated.[275]
+
+Among the loveliest motives used in the altar-pieces of this period might
+be mentioned the boy-angels playing flutes and mandolines beneath Madonna
+on the steps of her throne. There are usually three of them, seated, or
+sometimes standing. They hold their instruments of music as though they
+had just ceased from singing, and were ready to recommence at the pleasure
+of their mistress. Meanwhile there is a silence in the celestial company,
+through which the still voice of the praying heart is heard, a silence
+corresponding to the hushed mood of the worshipper.[276] The children are
+accustomed to the holy place; therefore their attitudes are both reverent
+and natural. They are more earthly than Fra Angelico's melodists, and yet
+they are not precisely of human lineage. It is not, perhaps, too much to
+say that they strike the keynote of Venetian devotion, at once real and
+devoid of pietistic rapture.
+
+Gian Bellini brought the art of this second period to completion. In his
+sacred pictures the reverential spirit of early Italian painting is
+combined with a feeling for colour and a dexterity in its manipulation
+peculiar to Venice. Bellini cannot be called a master of the full
+Renaissance. He falls into the same class as Francia and Perugino, who
+adhered to _quattrocento_ modes of thought and sentiment, while attaining
+at isolated points to the freedom of the Renaissance. In him the
+colourists of the next age found an absolute teacher; no one has surpassed
+him in the difficult art of giving tone to pure tints in combination.
+There is a picture of Bellini's in S. Zaccaria at Venice--Madonna
+enthroned with Saints--where the skill of the colourist may be said to
+culminate in unsurpassable perfection. The whole painting is bathed in a
+soft but luminous haze of gold; yet each figure has its individuality of
+treatment, the glowing fire of S. Peter contrasting with the pearly
+coolness of the drapery and flesh-tints of the Magdalen. No brush-work is
+perceptible. Surface and substance have been elaborated into one
+harmonious richness that defies analysis. Between this picture, so strong
+in its smoothness, and any masterpiece of Velasquez, so rugged in its
+strength, what a wide abyss of inadequate half-achievement, of smooth
+feebleness and feeble ruggedness, exists!
+
+Giorgione, did we but possess enough of his authentic works to judge by,
+would be found the first painter of the true Renaissance among the
+Venetians, the inaugurate of the third and great period.[277] He died at
+the age of thirty-six, the inheritor of unfulfilled renown. Time has
+destroyed the last vestige of his frescoes. Criticism has reduced the
+number of his genuine easel pictures to half a dozen. He exists as a great
+name. The part he played in the development of Venetian art was similar to
+that of Marlowe in the history of our drama. He first cut painting
+altogether adrift from mediaeval moorings, and launched it on the waves of
+the Renaissance liberty. While equal as a colourist to Bellini, though in
+a different and more sensuous region, Giorgione, by the variety and
+inventiveness of his conception, proved himself a painter of the calibre
+of Titian. Sacred subjects he seems to have but rarely treated, unless
+such purely idyllic pictures as the "Finding of Moses" in the Uffizzi, and
+the "Meeting of Jacob and Rachel" at Dresden deserve the name. Allegories
+of deep and problematic meaning, the key whereof has to be found in states
+of the emotion rather than, in thoughts, delighted him. He may be said to
+have invented the Venetian species of romance picture, where an episode in
+a novella forms the motive of the painting.[278] Nor was he deficient in
+tragic power, as the tremendous study for a Lucrece in the Uffizzi
+collection sufficiently proves. In his drawings he models the form without
+outline by massive distribution of light and dark. In style they are the
+very opposite of Lionardo's clearly defined studies touched with the metal
+point upon prepared paper. They suggest colouring, and are indeed the
+designs of a great colourist, who saw things under the conditions of their
+tints and tone.
+
+Of the undisputed pictures by Giorgione, the grandest is the "Monk at the
+Clavichord," in the Pitti Palace at Florence.[279] The young man has his
+fingers on the keys; he is modulating in a mood of grave and sustained
+emotion; his head is turned away towards an old man standing near him. On
+the other side of the instrument is a boy. These two figures are but foils
+and adjuncts to the musician in the middle; and the whole interest of his
+face lies in its concentrated feeling--the very soul of music, as
+expressed in Mr. Robert Browning's "Abt Vogler," passing through his eyes.
+This power of painting the portrait of an emotion, of depicting by the
+features a deep and powerful but tranquil moment of the inner life, must
+have been possessed by Giorgione in an eminent degree. We find it again in
+the so-called "Begrüssung" of the Dresden Gallery.[280] The picture is a
+large landscape, Jacob and Rachel meet and salute each other with a kiss.
+But the shepherd lying beneath the shadow of a chestnut tree beside a well
+has a whole Arcadia of intense yearning in the eyes of sympathy he fixes
+on the lovers. Something of this faculty, it may be said in passing,
+descended to Bonifazio, whose romance pictures are among the most charming
+products of Venetian art, and one of whose singing women in the feast of
+Dives has the Giorgionesque fulness of inner feeling.
+
+Fate has dealt less unkindly with Titian, Tintoret, and Veronese than with
+Giorgione. The works of these artists, in whom the Venetian Renaissance
+attained completion, have been preserved in large numbers and in excellent
+condition. Chronologically speaking, Titian, the contemporary of
+Giorgione, precedes Tintoretto, and Tintoretto is somewhat earlier than
+Veronese.[281] But for the purpose of criticism the three painters may be
+considered together as the representatives of three marked aspects in the
+fully developed Venetian style.
+
+Tintoretto, called by the Italians the thunderbolt of painting, because of
+his vehement impulsiveness and rapidity of execution, soars above his
+brethren by the faculty of pure imagination. It was he who brought to its
+perfection the poetry of _chiaroscuro_, expressing moods of passion and
+emotion by brusque lights, luminous half-shadows, and semi-opaque
+darkness, no less unmistakably than Beethoven by symphonic modulations. He
+too engrafted on the calm and natural Venetian manner something of the
+Michael Angelesque sublimity, and sought to vary by dramatic movement the
+romantic motives of his school. In his work, more than in that of his
+contemporaries, Venetian art ceased to be decorative and idyllic.
+
+Veronese elevated pageantry to the height of serious art. His domain is
+noonday sunlight ablaze on sumptuous dresses and Palladian architecture.
+Where Tintoretto is dramatic, he is scenic. Titian, in a wise harmony,
+without either the Æschylean fury of Tintoretto, or the material
+gorgeousness of Veronese, realised an ideal of pure beauty. Continuing the
+traditions of Bellini and Giorgione, with a breadth of treatment, and a
+vigour of well-balanced faculties peculiar to himself, Titian gave to
+colour in landscape and the human form a sublime yet sensuous poetry no
+other painter in the world has reached.
+
+Tintoretto and Veronese are, both of them, excessive. The imagination of
+Tintoretto is too passionate and daring; it scathes and blinds like
+lightning. The sense of splendour in Veronese is overpoweringly pompous.
+Titian's exquisite humanity, his large and sane nature, gives proper value
+to the imaginative and the scenic elements of the Venetian style, without
+exaggerating either. In his masterpieces thought, colour, sentiment, and
+composition--the spiritual and technical elements of art--exist in perfect
+balance; one harmonious tone is given to all the parts of his production,
+nor can it be said that any quality asserts itself to the injury of the
+rest. Titian, the Sophocles of painting, has infused into his pictures the
+spirit of music, the Dorian mood of flutes and soft recorders, making
+power incarnate in a form of grace.
+
+Round these great men are grouped a host of secondary but distinguished
+painters--Palma with his golden-haired large-bosomed sirens; idyllic
+Bonifazio; dramatic Pordenone, whose frescoes are all motion and
+excitement; Paris Bordone, who mingled on his canvas cream and mulberry
+juice and sunbeams; the Robusti, the Caliari, the Bassani, and others
+whom it would be tedious to mention. One breath, one afflatus, inspired
+them all; and it is due to this coherence in their style and inspiration
+that the school of Venice, taken as a whole, can show more masterpieces by
+artists of the second class than any other in Italy. Superior or inferior
+as they may relatively be among themselves, each bears the indubitable
+stamp of the Venetian Renaissance, and produces work of a quality that
+raises him to high rank among the painters of the world. In the same way
+the spirit of the Renaissance, passing over the dramatists of our
+Elizabethan age, enabled intellects of average force to take rank in the
+company of the noblest. Ford, Massinger, Heywood, Decker, Webster,
+Fletcher, Tourneur, Marston, are seated round the throne at the feet of
+Shakspere, Marlowe, and Jonson.
+
+In order to penetrate the characteristics of Venetian art more thoroughly,
+it will be needful to enter into detailed criticism of the three chief
+masters who command the school. To begin with Veronese. His canvases are
+nearly always large--filled with figures of the size of life, massed
+together in groups or extended in long lines beneath white marble
+colonnades, which enclose spaces of clear sky and silvery clouds. Armour,
+shot silks and satins, brocaded canopies, banners, plate, fruit, sceptres,
+crowns, all things, in fact, that burn and glitter in the sun, form the
+habitual furniture of his pictures. Rearing horses, dogs, dwarfs, cats,
+when occasion serves, are used to add reality, vivacity, grotesqueness to
+his scenes. His men and women are large, well proportioned,
+vigorous--eminent for pose and gesture rather than for grace or
+loveliness--distinguished by adult more than adolescent qualities.
+
+Veronese has no choice type of beauty for either sex. We find in him, on
+the contrary, a somewhat coarse display of animal force in men, and of
+superb voluptuousness in women. He prefers to paint women draped in
+gorgeous raiment, as if he had not felt the beauty of the nude. Their
+faces are too frequently unrefined and empty of expression. His noblest
+creatures are men of about twenty-five, manly, brawny, crisp-haired, full
+of nerve and blood. In all this Veronese resembles Rubens. But he does
+not, like Rubens, strike us as gross, sensual, fleshly;[282] he remains
+proud, powerful, and frigidly materialistic. He raises neither repulsion
+nor desire, but displays with the calm strength of art the empire of the
+mundane spirit. All the equipage of wealth and worldliness, the lust of
+the eye, and the pride of life--such a vision as the fiend offered to
+Christ on the mountain of temptation; this is Veronese's realm. Again, he
+has no flashes of poetic imagination like Tintoretto; but his grip on the
+realities of the world, his faculty for idealising prosaic magnificence,
+is even greater.
+
+Veronese was precisely the painter suited to a nation of merchants, in
+whom the associations of the counting-house and the exchange mingled with
+the responsibilities of the Senate and the passions of princes. He never
+portrayed vehement emotions. There are no brusque movements, no extended
+arms, like those of Tintoretto's Magdalen in the "Pietà" at Milan, in his
+pictures. His Christs and Maries and martyrs of all sorts are composed,
+serious, courtly, well-fed personages, who, like people of the world
+accidentally overtaken by some tragic misfortune, do not stoop to
+distortions or express more than a grave surprise, a decorous sense of
+pain.[283] His angelic beings are equally earthly.
+
+The Venetian Rothschilds no doubt preferred the ceremonial to the
+imaginative treatment of sacred themes; and to do him justice, Veronese
+did not make what would in his case have been the mistake of choosing the
+tragedies of the Bible for representation. It is the story of Esther, with
+its royal audiences, coronations, and processions; the marriage feast at
+Cana; the banquet in the house of Levi, that he selects by preference.
+Even these themes he removes into a region far from Biblical associations.
+His _mise en scène_ is invariably borrowed from luxurious Italian
+palaces--large open courts and _loggie_, crowded with guests and
+lacqueys--tables profusely laden with gold and silver plate. The same love
+of display led him to delight in allegory--not allegory of the deep and
+mystic kind, but of the pompous and processional, in which Venice appears
+enthroned among the deities, or Jupiter fulminates against the vices, or
+the genii of the arts are personified as handsome women and blooming boys.
+In dealing with mythology, again, it is not its poetry that he touches; he
+uses the tale of Europa, for example, as the motive for rich toilettes and
+delightful landscape, choosing the moment that has least in it of pathos.
+These being the prominent features of his style, it remains to be said
+that what is really great in Veronese is the sobriety of his imagination
+and the solidity of his workmanship. Amid so much that is distracting, he
+never loses command over his subject; nor does he degenerate into fulsome
+rhetoric.
+
+Tintoretto is not at home in this somewhat vulgar region of ceremonial
+grandeur. He requires both thought and fancy as the stimulus to his
+creative effort. He cannot be satisfied with reproducing, even in the
+noblest combinations, merely what he sees around him of resplendent and
+magnificent. There must be scope for poetry in the conception and for
+audacity in the projection of his subject, something that shall rouse the
+prophetic faculty and evoke the seer in the artist, or Tintoretto does not
+rise to his own altitude. Accordingly we find that, in contrast with
+Veronese, he selects by preference the most tragic and dramatic subjects
+to be found in sacred history. The Crucifixion, with its agonising deity
+and prostrate groups of women, sunk below the grief of tears;--the
+Temptation in the wilderness, with its passionate contrast of the
+grey-robed Man of Sorrows and the ruby-winged, voluptuous fiend;--the
+Temptation of Adam in Eden, a glowing allegory of the fascination of the
+spirit by the flesh;--Paradise, a tempest of souls, whirled like Lucretian
+atoms or gold dust in sunbeams by the celestial forces that perform the
+movement of the spheres;--the Destruction of the world, where all the
+fountains and rivers and lakes and seas of earth have formed one cataract,
+that thunders with cities and nations on its rapids down a bottomless
+gulf; while all the winds and hurricanes of the air have grown into one
+blast, that carries men like dead leaves up to judgment;--the Plague of
+the fiery serpents, with multitudes encoiled and writhing on a burning
+waste of sand;--the Massacre of the Innocents, with its spilth of blood on
+slippery pavements of porphyry and serpentine;--the Delivery of the tables
+of the law to Moses amid clouds on Sinai, a white ascetic,
+lightning-smitten man emerging in the glory of apparent godhead;--the
+anguish of the Magdalen above her martyred God;--the solemn silence of
+Christ before the throne of Pilate;--the rushing of the wings of Seraphim,
+and the clangour of the trumpet that awakes the dead;--these are the
+soul-stirring themes that Tintoretto handles with the ease of
+mastery.[284]
+
+Meditating upon Tintoretto's choice of such subjects, we feel that the
+profoundest characteristic of his genius is the determination toward
+motives pre-eminently poetic rather than proper to the figurative arts.
+The poet imagines a situation in which the intellectual or emotional life
+is paramount, and the body is subordinate. The painter selects situations
+in which physical form is of the first importance, and a feeling or a
+thought is suggested. But Tintoretto grapples immediately with poetical
+ideas; and he often fails to realise them fully through the inadequacy of
+painting as a medium for such matter. Moses, in the drama of the "Golden
+Calf," for instance, is a poem, not a true picture.[285] The pale ecstatic
+stretching out emaciated arms, presents no beauty of attitude or outline.
+Energy of thought is conspicuous in the figure; and reflection is needed
+to bring out the purpose of the painter.[286]
+
+It is not, however, only in the region of the vast, tempestuous, and
+tragic that Tintoretto finds himself at home. He is equal to every task
+that can be imposed upon the imagination. Provided only that the spiritual
+fount be stirred, the jet of living water gushes forth, pure,
+inexhaustible, and limpid. In his "Marriage of Bacchus and Ariadne," that
+most perfect lyric of the sensuous fancy from which sensuality is
+absent;[287] in his "Temptation of Adam," that symphony of grey and brown
+and ivory more lustrous than the hues of sunset; in his "Miracle of S.
+Agnes," that lamb-like maiden with her snow-white lamb among the soldiers
+and the priests of Rome, Tintoretto has proved beyond all question that
+the fiery genius of Titanic artists can pierce and irradiate the placid
+and the tender secrets of the soul with more consummate mastery than falls
+to the lot of those who make tranquillity their special province.[288]
+
+Paolo Veronese never penetrated to this inner shrine of beauty, this
+Holiest of Holies where the spiritual graces dwell. He could not paint
+waxen limbs, with silver lights and golden and transparent mysteries of
+shadow, like those of Bacchus, Eve, and Ariadne. Titian himself was
+powerless to imagine movement like that of Aphrodite floating in the air,
+or of Madonna adjuring Christ in the "Paradiso," or of Christ Himself
+judging by the silent simplicity of his divine attitude the worldly judge
+at whose tribunal He stands, or of the tempter raising his jewelled arms
+aloft to dazzle with meretricious brilliancy the impassive God above him,
+or of Eve leaning in irresistible seductiveness against the fatal tree, or
+of S. Mark down-rushing through the sky to save the slave that cried to
+him, or of the Mary who has fallen asleep with folded hands from utter
+lassitude of agony at the foot of the cross.
+
+It is in these attitudes, movements, gestures, that Tintoretto makes the
+human form an index and symbol of the profoundest, most tragic, most
+delicious thought and feeling of the inmost soul. In daylight radiancy and
+equable colouring he is surpassed perhaps by Veronese. In mastery of every
+portion of his art, in solidity of execution, and in unwavering hold upon
+his subject, he falls below the level of Titian. Many of his pictures are
+unworthy of his genius--hurriedly designed, rapidly dashed upon the
+canvas, studied by candlelight from artificial models, with abnormal
+effects of light and dark, hastily daubed with pigments that have not
+stood the test of time. He was a gigantic _improvitsatore_: that is the
+worst thing we can say of him. But in the swift intuitions of the
+imagination, in the purities and sublimities of the prophet-poet's soul,
+neither Veronese nor yet even Titian can approach him.
+
+The greatest difficulty meets the critic who attempts to speak of Titian.
+To seize the salient characteristics of an artist whose glory it is to
+offer nothing over-prominent, and who keeps the middle path of perfection,
+is impossible. As complete health may be termed the absence of obtrusive
+sensation, as virtue has been called the just proportion between two
+opposite extravagances, so is Titian's art a golden mean of joy unbroken
+by brusque movements of the passions--a well-tempered harmony in which no
+thrilling note suggests the possibility of discord. In his work the world
+and men cease to be merely what they are; he makes them what they ought to
+be: and this he does by separating what is beautiful in sensuous life from
+its alloy of painful meditation and of burdensome endeavour. The disease
+of thought is unknown in his kingdom; no divisions exist between the
+spirit and the flesh; the will is thwarted by no obstacles. When we think
+of Titian, we are irresistibly led to think of music. His "Assumption of
+Madonna" (the greatest single oil-painting in the world, if we except
+Raphael's "Madonna di San Sisto") can best be described as a symphony--a
+symphony of colour, where every hue is brought into harmonious
+combination--a symphony of movement, where every line contributes to
+melodious rhythm--a symphony of light without a cloud--a symphony of joy
+in which the heavens and earth sing Hallelujah. Tintoretto, in the Scuola
+di San Rocco, painted an "Assumption of the Virgin" with characteristic
+energy and impulsiveness. A group of agitated men around an open tomb, a
+rush of air and clash of seraph wings above, a blaze of glory, a woman
+borne with sideways-swaying figure from darkness into light;--that is his
+picture, all _brio_, excitement, speed. Quickly conceived, hastily
+executed, this painting (so far as clumsy restoration suffers us to judge)
+bears the impress of its author's impetuous genius. But Titian worked by a
+different method. On the earth, among the Apostles, there is action enough
+and passion; ardent faces straining upward, impatient men raising impotent
+arms and vainly divesting themselves of their mantles, as though they too
+might follow her they love. In heaven is radiance, half eclipsing the
+archangel who holds the crown, and revealing the father of spirits in an
+aureole of golden fire. Between earth and heaven, amid choirs of angelic
+children, rises the mighty mother of the faith of Christ, who was Mary and
+is now a goddess, ecstatic yet tranquil, not yet accustomed to the skies,
+but far above the grossness and the incapacities of earth. Her womanhood
+is so complete that those for whom the meaning of her Catholic legend is
+lost, may hail in her humanity personified.
+
+The grand manner can reach no further than in this picture--serene,
+composed, meditated, enduring, yet full of dramatic force and of profound
+feeling. Whatever Titian chose to touch, whether it was classical
+mythology or portrait, history or sacred subject, he treated in this large
+and healthful style. It is easy to tire of Veronese; it is possible to be
+fatigued by Tintoretto. Titian, like nature, waits not for moods or
+humours in the spectator. He gives to the mind joy of which it can never
+weary, pleasures that cannot satiate, a satisfaction not to be repented
+of, a sweetness that will not pall. The least instructed and the simple
+feel his influence as strongly as the wise or learned.
+
+In the course of this attempt to describe the specific qualities of
+Tintoretto, Veronese, and Titian, I have been more at pains to distinguish
+differences than to point out similarities. What they had in common was
+the Renaissance spirit as this formed itself in Venice. Nowhere in Italy
+was art more wholly emancipated from obedience to ecclesiastical
+traditions, without losing the character of genial and natural piety.
+Nowhere was the Christian history treated with a more vivid realism,
+harmonised more simply with pagan mythology, or more completely purged of
+mysticism. The Umbrian devotion felt by Raphael in his boyhood, the
+prophecy of Savonarola, and the Platonism of Ficino absorbed by Michael
+Angelo at Florence, the scientific preoccupations of Lionardo and the
+antiquarian interests of Mantegna, were all alike unknown at Venice. Among
+the Venetian painters there was no conflict between art and religion, or
+art and curiosity--no reaction against previous pietism, no perplexity of
+conscience, no confusion of aims. Titian, Tintoretto, and Veronese were
+children of the people, men of the world, men of pleasure; wealthy,
+urbane, independent, pious:--they were all these by turns; but they were
+never mystics, scholars, or philosophers. In their aesthetic ideal religion
+found a place, nor was sensuality rejected; but the religion was sane and
+manly, the sensuality was vigorous and virile. Not the intellectual
+greatness of the Renaissance, but its happiness and freedom, was what they
+represented.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[265] From the beginning of _Julian and Maddalo_, which relates a ride
+taken by Shelley with Lord Byron, on the Lido, and their visit to the
+madhouse on its neighbouring island. The description, richly coloured and
+somewhat confused in detail, seems to me peculiarly true to Venetian
+scenery. With the exception of Tunis, I know of no such theatre for
+sunset-shows as Venice. Tunis has the same elements of broad lagoons and
+distant hills, but not the same vaporous atmosphere.
+
+[266] _Lettere di Messer Pietro Aretino_, Parigi, MDCIX, lib. iii. p. 48.
+I have made a paraphrase rather than a translation of this rare and
+curious description.
+
+[267] See Yriarte, _Un Patricien de Venise_, p. 439.
+
+[268] See above, Chapter IV, Political Doctrine expressed in Fresco.
+
+[269] See Vol. I., _Age of the Despots_, p. 183.
+
+[270] I must refer my readers to Crowe and Cavalcaselle for an estimate
+of the influence exercised at Venice by Gentile de Fabriano, John
+Alamannus, and the school of Squarcione. Antonello da Messina brought his
+method of oil-painting into the city in 1470, and Gian Bellini learned
+something at Padua from Andrea Mantegna. The true point about Venice,
+however, is that the Venetian character absorbed, assimilated, and
+converted to its own originality whatever touched it.
+
+[271] The conditions of art in Flanders--wealthy, bourgeois, proud,
+free--were not dissimilar to those of art in Venice. The misty flats of
+Belgium have some of the atmospheric qualities of Venice. As Van Eyck is
+to the Vivarini, so is Rubens to Paolo Veronese. This expresses the
+amount of likeness and of difference.
+
+[272] Jacopo and his sons Gentile and Giovanni.
+
+[273] Notice particularly the Contadina type of S. Catherine in a picture
+ascribed to Cordegliaghi in the Venetian Academy.
+
+[274] These Scuole were the halls of meeting for companies called by the
+names of patron saints.
+
+[275] Notice in particular, from the series of pictures illustrating the
+legend of S. Ursula, the very beautiful faces and figures of the saint
+herself, and her young bridegroom, the Prince of Britain. Attendant
+squires and pages in these paintings have all the charm of similar
+subordinate personages in Pinturicchio, with none of his affectation.
+
+[276] The most beautiful of these _angiolini_, with long flakes of flaxen
+hair falling from their foreheads, are in a Sacra Conversazione of
+Carpaccio's in the Academy. Gian Bellini's, in many similar pictures, are
+of the same delicacy.
+
+[277] What follows above about Giorgione is advanced with diffidence,
+since the name of no other great painter has been so freely used to cover
+the works of his inferiors.
+
+[278] Lord Lansdowne's Giorgionesque picture of a young man crowned with
+vine, playing and singing to two girls in a garden, for example. The
+celebrated Concert of the Louvre Gallery, so charming for its landscape
+and so voluptuous in its dreamy sense of Arcadian luxury, is given by
+Crowe and Cavalcaselle to an imitator of Sebastian del Piombo. See
+_History of Painting in North Italy_, vol. ii. p. 147.
+
+[279] Under the fire of Crowe and Cavalcaselle's destructive criticism,
+it would require more real courage than I possess to speak of the
+"Entombment" in the Monte di Pietà at Treviso as genuine. Coarse and
+unselect as are the types of the boy angels, as well as of the young
+athletic giant, who plays the part in it of the dead Christ, this is a
+truly grandiose and striking picture. Nothing proves the average
+greatness of the Venetian masters more than the possibility of
+attributing such compositions to obscure and subordinate craftsmen of the
+school.
+
+[280] Crowe and Cavalcaselle assign this picture with some confidence and
+with fair show of reason, to Cariani, on whom again they father the
+frescoes at Colleoni's Castle of Malpaga. I have ventured to notice it
+above in connection with Giorgione, since it exhibits some of the most
+striking Giorgionesque qualities, and shows the ascendency of his
+imagination over the Venetian School.
+
+[281] Giorgione, b. 1478; d. 1511. Titian, b. 1477, d. 1576. Tintoretto,
+b. 1512; d. 1594. Veronese, b. 1530; d. 1588.
+
+[282] I cannot, for example, imagine Veronese painting anything like
+Rubens' two pictures of the "Last Judgment" at Munich.
+
+[283] For his sacred types see the "Marriage at Cana" in the Louvre, the
+little "Crucifixion" and the "Baptism" of the Pitti, and the "Martyrdom
+of S. Agata" in the Uffizzi.
+
+[284] These examples are mostly chosen from the Scuola di S. Rocco and
+the church of S. Maria dell' Orto at Venice; also from "Pietàs," in the
+Brera and the Pitti, the "Paradise" of the Ducal Palace, and a sketch for
+"Paradise" in the Louvre.
+
+[285] S. Maria dell' Orto.
+
+[286] What is here said about Tintoretto is also true of Michael Angelo.
+His sculpture in S. Lorenzo, compared with Greek sculpture, the norm and
+canon of the perfect in that art, may be called an invasion of the realm
+of poetry or music.
+
+[287] There are probably not few of my readers who, after seeing this
+painting in the Ducal Palace, will agree with me that it is, if not the
+greatest, at any rate the most beautiful, oil picture in existence. In no
+other picture has a poem of feeling and of fancy, a romance of varied
+lights and shades, a symphony of delicately blended hues, a play of
+attitude and movement transitory but in no sense forced or violent, been
+more successfully expressed by means more simple or with effect more
+satisfying. Something of the mythopoeic faculty must have survived in
+Tintoretto, and enabled him to inspire the Greek tale with this intense
+vitality of beauty.
+
+[288] The first of these pictures is in the Ducal Palace, the other two
+in the Academy at Venice.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+LIFE OF MICHAEL ANGELO
+
+Contrast of Michael Angelo and Cellini--Parentage and Boyhood of Michael
+Angelo--Work with Ghirlandajo--Gardens of S. Marco--The Medicean
+Circle--Early Essays in Sculpture--Visit to Bologna--First Visit to
+Rome--The "Pietà" of S. Peter's--Michael Angelo as a Patriot and a Friend
+of the Medici--Cartoon for the Battle of Pisa--Michael Angelo and Julius
+II.--The Tragedy of the Tomb--Design for the Pope's Mausoleum--Visit to
+Carrara--Flight from Rome--Michael Angelo at Bologna--Bronze Statue of
+Julius--Return to Rome--Ceiling of the Sistine Chapel--Greek and Modern
+Art--Raphael--Michael Angelo and Leo X.--S. Lorenzo--The new
+Sacristy--Circumstances under which it was designed and partly
+finished--Meaning of the Allegories--Incomplete state of Michael Angelo's
+Marbles--Paul III.--The "Last Judgment"--Critiques of Contemporaries--The
+Dome of S. Peter's--Vittoria Colonna--Tommaso Cavalieri--Personal Habits
+of Michael Angelo--His Emotional Nature--Last Illness.
+
+
+The life of Italian artists at the time of the Renaissance may be
+illustrated by two biographies. Michael Angelo Buonarroti and Benvenuto
+Cellini were almost opposite in all they thought and felt, experienced and
+aimed at. The one impressed his own strong personality on art; the other
+reflected the light and shadow of the age in the record of his manifold
+existence. Cellini hovered, like some strong-winged creature, on the
+surface of human activity, yielding himself to every impulse, seeking
+every pleasure, and of beauty feeling only the rude animal compulsion.
+Deep philosophic thoughts, ideas of death and judgment, the stern
+struggles of the soul, encompassed Michael Angelo; the service of beauty
+was with him religion. Cellini was the creature of the moment--the glass
+and mirror of corrupt, enslaved, yet still resplendent Italy. In Michael
+Angelo the genius of the Renaissance culminated; but his character was
+rather that of an austere Republican, free and solitary amid the
+multitudes of slaves and courtiers. Michael Angelo made art the vehicle of
+lofty and soul-shaking thought. Cellini brought the fervour of an
+inexhaustibly active nature to the service of sensuality, and taught his
+art to be the handmaid of a soulless paganism. In these two men,
+therefore, we study two aspects of their age. How far both were
+exceptional, need not here be questioned; since their singularity consists
+not so much in being different from other Italians of the sixteenth
+century as in concentrating qualities elsewhere scattered and imperfect.
+
+Michael Angelo was born in 1475 at Caprese, among the mountains of the
+Casentino, where his father Lodovico held the office of Podestà. His
+ancestry was honourable: the Buonarroti even claimed descent, but
+apparently without due reason, from the princely house of Canossa.[289]
+His mother gave him to be suckled by a stone-cutter's wife at Settignano,
+so that in after days he used to say that he had drawn in the love of
+chisels and mallets with his nurse's milk. As he grew, the boy developed
+an invincible determination towards the arts. Lodovico from motives of
+pride and prudence opposed his wishes, but without success. Michael Angelo
+made friends with the lad Granacci, who was apprenticed to Domenico
+Ghirlandajo, and at last induced his father to sign articles for him to
+the same painter. In Ghirlandajo's workshop he learned the rudiments of
+art, helping in the execution of the frescoes at S. Maria Novella, until
+such time as the pupil proved his superiority as a draughtsman to his
+teacher. The rupture between Michael Angelo and Ghirlandajo might be
+compared with that between Beethoven and Haydn. In both cases a proud,
+uncompromising, somewhat scornful student sought aid from a master great
+in his own line but inferior in fire and originality of genius.[290] In
+both cases the moment came when pupil and teacher perceived that the eagle
+could no longer be confined within the hawk's nest, and that henceforth it
+must sweep the skies alone. After leaving Ghirlandajo's _bottega_ at the
+age of sixteen, Michael Angelo did in truth thenceforward through his life
+pursue his art alone. Granacci procured him an introduction to the Medici,
+and the two friends together frequented those gardens of S. Marco where
+Lorenzo had placed his collection of antiquities. There the youth
+discovered his vocation. Having begged a piece of marble and a chisel, he
+struck out the Faun's mask that still is seen in the Bargello. It is worth
+noticing that Michael Angelo seems to have done no merely prentice-work.
+Not a fragment of his labour from the earliest to the latest was
+insignificant, and only such thoughts as he committed to the perishable
+materials of bronze or paper have been lost. There was nothing tentative
+in his genius. Into art, as into a rich land, he came and conquered. In
+like manner, the first sonnet composed by Dante is scarcely less precious
+than the last lines of the "Paradiso." This is true of all the highest
+artistic natures, who need no preparations and have no period of groping.
+
+Lorenzo de' Medici discerned in Michael Angelo a youth of eminent genius,
+and took the lad into his own household. The astonished father found
+himself suddenly provided with a comfortable post and courted for the sake
+of the young sculptor. In Lorenzo's palace the real education of Michael
+Angelo began. He sat at the same table with Ficino, Pico, and Poliziano,
+listening to dialogues on Plato and drinking in the golden poetry of
+Greece. Greek literature and philosophy, expounded by the men who had
+discovered them, and who were no less proud of their discovery than
+Columbus of his passage to the Indies, first moulded his mind to those
+lofty thoughts which it became the task of his life to express in form. At
+the same time he heard the preaching of Savonarola. In the Duomo and the
+cloister of S. Marco another portion of his soul was touched, and he
+acquired that deep religious tone which gives its majesty and terror to
+the Sistine. Much in the same way was Milton educated by the classics in
+conjunction with the Scriptures. Both of these austere natures assimilated
+from pagan art and Jewish prophecy the twofold elements they needed for
+their own imaginative life. Both Michael Angelo and Milton, in spite of
+their parade of classic style, were separated from the Greek world by a
+gulf of Hebrew and of Christian feeling.
+
+While Michael Angelo was thus engaged in studying antique sculpture and in
+listening to Pico and Savonarola, he carved his first bas-relief--a
+"Battle of Hercules with the Centaurs," suggested to him by
+Poliziano.[291] Meantime Lorenzo died. His successor Piero set the young
+man, it is said, to model a snow statue, and then melted like a shape of
+snow himself down from his pedestal of power in Florence. Upon the
+expulsion of the tyrant and the proclamation of the new republic, it was
+dangerous for house-friends of the Casa Medici to be seen in the city.
+Michael Angelo, therefore, made his way to Bologna, where he spent some
+months in the palace of Gian Francesco Aldovrandini, studying Dante and
+working at an angel for the shrine of S. Dominic. As soon, however, as it
+seemed safe to do so, he returned to Florence; and to this period belongs
+the statue of the "Sleeping Cupid," which was sold as an antique to the
+Cardinal Raffaello Riario.
+
+A dispute about the price of this "Cupid" took Michael Angelo in 1496 to
+Rome, where it was destined that the greater portion of his life should he
+spent, and his noblest works of art should be produced. Here, while the
+Borgias were turning the Vatican into a den of thieves and harlots, he
+executed the purest of all his statues--a "Pietà" in marble.[292] Christ
+is lying dead upon his mother's knees. With her right arm she supports his
+shoulders; her left hand is gently raised as though to say, "Behold and
+see!" All that art can do to make death beautiful and grief sublime, is
+achieved in this masterpiece, which was never surpassed by Michael Angelo
+in later years. Already, at the age of four-and-twenty, he had matured his
+"terrible manner." Already were invented in his brain that race of
+superhuman beings, who became the hieroglyphs of his impassioned
+utterance. Madonna has the small head and heroic torso used by this master
+to symbolise force. We feel she has no difficulty in holding the dead
+Christ upon her ample lap and in her powerful arms. Yet while the "Pietà"
+is wholly Michael Angelesque, we find no lack of repose, none of those
+contorted lines that are commonly urged against his manner. It is a sober
+and harmonious composition, combining the profoundest religious feeling
+with classical tranquillity of expression. Again, though the group is
+forcibly original, this effect of originality is produced, as in all the
+best work of the golden age, not by new and startling conception, but by
+the handling of an old and well-worn motive with the grandeur of
+consummate style. What the genius of Italian sculpture had for generations
+been striving after, finds its perfect realisation here. It was precisely
+by thus crowning the endeavours of antecedent artists--by bringing the
+opening buds of painting and sculpture to full blossom, and exhausting the
+resources of a long sustained and common inspiration, that the great
+masters proved their supremacy and rendered an advance beyond their
+vantage ground impossible. To those who saw and comprehended this "Pietà"
+in 1500, it must have been evident that a new power of portraying the very
+soul had been manifested in sculpture--a power unknown to the Greeks
+because it lay outside the sphere of their spiritual experience, and
+unknown to modern artists because it was beyond their faculties of
+execution and conception. Yet who in Rome, among the courtiers of the
+Borgias, had brain or heart to understand these things?
+
+In 1501 Michael Angelo returned to Florence, where he stayed until the
+year 1505. This period was fruitful of results on which his after fame
+depended. The great statue of "David," the two unfinished medallions of
+Madonna in relief, the "Holy Family of the Tribune" painted for Angelo
+Doni, and the Cartoon of the "Battle of Pisa" were now produced; and no
+man's name, not even Lionardo's, stood higher in esteem thenceforward. It
+will be remembered that Savonarola was now dead, but that his constitution
+still existed under the presidency of Pietro Soderini--the _non mai
+abbastanza lodato Cavaliere_, as Pitti calls him, the _anima sciocca_ of
+Machiavelli's epigram.[293] Since Michael Angelo at this time was employed
+in the service of masters who had superseded his old friends and patrons,
+it may be well to review here his attitude in general toward the house of
+Medici. Throughout his lifetime there continued a conflict between the
+artist and the citizen--the artist owing education and employment to
+successive members of that house, the citizen resenting their despotism
+and doing all that in him lay at times to keep them out of Florence. As a
+patriot, as the student of Dante and the disciple of Savonarola, Michael
+Angelo detested tyrants.[294] One of his earliest madrigals, conceived as
+a dialogue between Florence and her exiles, expresses his mind so
+decidedly that I have ventured to translate it;[295] the exiles first
+address Florence, and she answers:--
+
+    "Lady, for joy of lovers numberless
+      Thou wast created fair as angels are.
+      Sure God hath fallen asleep in heaven afar,
+      When one man calls the boon of many his.
+      Give back to streaming eyes
+      The daylight of Thy face, that seems to shun
+      Those who must live defrauded of their bliss!"
+
+    "Vex not your pure desire with tears and sighs;
+      For he who robs you of my light, hath none.
+      Dwelling in fear, sin hath no happiness;
+      Since amid those who love, their joy is less
+      Whose great desire great plenty still curtails,
+      Than theirs who, poor, have hope that never fails."
+
+As an artist, owing his advancement to Lorenzo, he had accepted favours
+binding him by ties of gratitude to the Medici, and even involving him in
+the downfall of their house. For Leo X. he undertook to build the façade
+of S. Lorenzo and the Laurentian Library. For Clement VII. he began the
+statues of the Dukes of Urbino and Nemours. Yet, while accepting these
+commissions from Medicean Popes, he could not keep his tongue from
+speaking openly against their despotism. After the sack of Prato it
+appears from his correspondence that he had exposed himself to danger by
+some expression of indignation.[296] This was in 1512, when Soderini fled
+and left the gates of Florence open to the Cardinal Giovanni de' Medici.
+During the siege of Florence in 1529 he fortified Samminiato, and allowed
+himself to be named one of the Otto di Guerra chosen for the express
+purpose of defending Florence against the Medici.[297] After the fall of
+the city he made peace with Clement by consenting to finish the tombs of
+S. Lorenzo. Yet, while doing all he could to save those insignificant
+dukes from oblivion by the immortality of his art, Michael Angelo was
+conscious of his own and his country's shame. The memorable lines placed
+in the mouth of his "Night," sufficiently display his feeling after the
+final return of the Medici in 1530:[298]--
+
+    Sweet is my sleep, but more to be mere stone,
+    So long as ruin and dishonour reign;
+    To hear nought, to feel nought, is my great gain:
+    Then wake me not, speak in an under-tone.
+
+When Clement VII. died, the last real representative of Michael Angelo's
+old patrons perished, and the sculptor was free to quit Florence for ever.
+During the reign of Duke Cosimo he never set foot in his native city. It
+is thus clear that the patriot, the artist, and the man of honour were at
+odds in him. Loyalty obliged him to serve the family to whom he owed so
+much; he was, moreover, dependent for opportunities of doing great work on
+the very men whose public policy he execrated. Hence arose a compromise
+and a confusion, hard to accommodate with our conception of his upright
+and unyielding temper. Only by voluntary exile, and after age had made him
+stubborn to resist seductive offers, could Michael Angelo act up to the
+promptings of his heart and declare himself a citizen who held no truce
+with tyrants. I have already in this work had occasion to compare Dante,
+Michael Angelo, and Machiavelli.[299] In estimating the conduct of the two
+last, it must not be forgotten that, by the action of inevitable causes,
+republican freedom had become in Italy a thing of the past; and in judging
+between Machiavelli and Michael Angelo, we have to remember that the
+sculptor's work involved no sacrifice of principle or self-respect.
+Carving statues for the tombs of Medicean dukes was a different matter
+from dedicating the "Prince" to them.
+
+This digression, though necessary for the right understanding of Michael
+Angelo's relation to the Medici, has carried me beyond his Florentine
+residence in 1501-1505. The great achievement of that period was not the
+"David" but the Cartoon for the "Battle of Pisa."[300] The hall of the
+Consiglio Grande had been opened, and one wall had been assigned to
+Lionardo. Michael Angelo was now invited by the Signory to prepare a
+design for another side of the state-chamber. When he displayed his
+cartoon to the Florentines, they pronounced that Da Vinci, hitherto the
+undisputed prince of painting, was surpassed. It is impossible for us to
+form an opinion on this matter, since both cartoons are lost beyond
+recovery.[301] We only know that, as Cellini says, "while they lasted,
+they formed the school of the whole world,"[302] and made an epoch in the
+history of art. When we inquire what was the subject of Michael Angelo's
+famous picture, we find that he had aimed at representing nothing of more
+moment than a group of soldiers suddenly surprised by a trumpet-call to
+battle, while bathing in the Arno--a crowd of naked men in every posture
+indicating haste, anxiety, and struggle. Not for its intellectual meaning,
+not for its colour, not for its sentiment, was this design so highly
+prized. Its science won the admiration of artists and the public. At this
+period of the Renaissance the bold and perfect drawing of the body gave an
+exquisite delight. Hence, perhaps, Vasari's vapid talk about "stravaganti
+attitudini," "divine figure," "scorticamenti," and so forth--as if the
+soul of figurative art were in such matters. The science of Michael
+Angelo, which in his own mind was sternly subordinated to thought, had
+already turned the weaker heads of his generation.[303] A false ideal took
+possession of the fancy, and such criticism as that of Vasari and Pietro
+Aretino became inevitable.
+
+Meanwhile, a new Pope had been elected, and in 1505 Michael Angelo was
+once more called to Rome. Throughout his artist's life he oscillated thus
+between Rome and Florence--Florence the city of his ancestry, and Rome the
+city of his soul; Florence where he learnt his art, and Rome where he
+displayed what art can do of highest. Julius was a patron of different
+stamp from Lorenzo the Magnificent. He was not learned in book-lore:
+"Place a sword in my hand!" he said to the sculptor at Bologna: "of
+letters I know nothing." Yet he was no less capable of discerning
+excellence than the Medici himself, and his spirit strove incessantly
+after the accomplishment of vast designs. Between Julius and Michael
+Angelo there existed a strong bond of sympathy due to community of
+temperament. Both aimed at colossal achievements in their respective
+fields of action. The imagination of both was fired by large and simple,
+rather than luxurious and subtle thoughts. Both were _uomini terribili_,
+to use a phrase denoting vigour of character made formidable by an abrupt
+uncompromising temper. Both worked _con furia_, with the impetuosity of
+daemonic natures; and both left the impress of their individuality graven
+indelibly upon their age.
+
+Julius ordered the sculptor to prepare his mausoleum. Michael Angelo
+asked, "Where am I to place it?" Julius replied, "In S. Peter's." But the
+old basilica of Christendom was too small for this ambitious pontiff's
+sepulchre, designed by the audacious artist. It was therefore decreed that
+a new S. Peter's should be built to hold it. In this way the two great
+labours of Buonarroti's life were mapped out for him in a moment. But, by
+a strange contrariety of fate, to Bramante and San Gallo fell respectively
+the planning and the spoiling of S. Peter's. It was only in extreme old
+age that Michael Angelo crowned it with that world's miracle, the dome.
+The mausoleum, to form a canopy for which the building was designed,
+dwindled down at last to the statue of "Moses" thrust out of the way in
+the church of S. Pietro in Vincoli. "La tragedia della Sepoltura," as
+Condivi aptly terms the history of Giulio's monument, began thus in 1505
+and dragged on till 1545.[304] Rarely did Michael Angelo undertake a work
+commensurate with his creative power, but something came to interrupt its
+execution; while tasks outside his sphere, for which he never
+bargained--the painting of the Sistine Chapel, the façade of S. Lorenzo,
+the fortification of Samminiato--were thrust upon him in the midst of
+other more congenial labours. What we possess of his achievement, is a
+_torso_ of his huge designs.
+
+Giulio's tomb, as he conceived it, would have been the most stupendous
+monument of sculpture in the world.[305] That mountain of marble covered
+with figures wrought in stone and bronze, was meant to be the sculptured
+poem of the thought of Death; no mere apotheosis of Pope Julius, but a
+pageant of the soul triumphant over the limitations of mortality. All that
+dignifies humanity--arts, sciences, and laws; the victory that crowns
+heroic effort; the majesty of contemplation, and the energy of
+action--was symbolised upon ascending tiers of the great pyramid; while
+the genii of heaven and earth upheld the open tomb, where lay the dead man
+waiting for the Resurrection. Of this gigantic scheme only one imperfect
+drawing now remains.[306] The "Moses" and the "Bound Captives"[307] are
+all that Michael Angelo accomplished. For forty years the "Moses" remained
+in his workshop. For forty years he cherished a hope that his plan might
+still in part be executed, complaining the while that it would have been
+better for him to have made sulphur matches all his life than to have
+taken up the desolating artist's trade. "Every day," he cries, "I am
+stoned as though I had crucified Christ. My youth has been lost, bound
+hand and foot to this tomb."[308] It was decreed apparently that Michael
+Angelo should exist for after ages as a fragment; and such might Pheidias
+among the Greeks have been, if he had worked for ephemeral Popes and
+bankrupt princes instead of Pericles. Italy in the sixteenth century,
+dislocated, distracted, and drained of her material resources, gave no
+opportunity to artists for the creation of monuments colossal in their
+unity.
+
+Michael Angelo spent eight months at this period among the stone quarries
+of Carrara, selecting marble for the Pope's tomb.[309] There his brain,
+always teeming with gigantic conceptions, suggested to him a new fancy.
+Could not the headland jutting out beyond Sarzana into the Tyrrhene Sea
+be carved by his workmen into a Pharos? To transmute a mountain into a
+statue, holding a city in either hand, had been the dream of a Greek
+artist. Michael Angelo revived the bold thought; but to execute it would
+have been almost beyond his power. Meanwhile, in November 1505, the marble
+was shipped, and the quays of Rome were soon crowded with blocks destined
+for the mausoleum. But when the sculptor arrived, he found that enemies
+had been poisoning the Pope's mind against him, and that Julius had
+abandoned the scheme of the mausoleum. On six successive days he was
+denied entrance to the Vatican, and the last time with such rudeness that
+he determined to quit Rome.[310] He hurried straightway to his house, sold
+his effects, mounted, and rode without further ceremony toward Florence,
+sending to the Pope a written message bidding him to seek for Michael
+Angelo elsewhere in future than in Rome. It is related that Julius,
+anxious to recover what had been so lightly lost, sent several couriers to
+bring him back.[311] Michael Angelo announced that he intended to accept
+the Sultan's commission for building a bridge at Pera, and refused to be
+persuaded to return to Rome. This was at Poggibonsi. When he had reached
+Florence, Julius addressed, himself to Soderini, who, unwilling to
+displease the Pope, induced Michael Angelo to seek the pardon of the
+master he had so abruptly quitted. By that time Julius had left the city
+for the camp; and when Michael Angelo finally appeared before him,
+fortified with letters from the Signory of Florence, it was at Bologna
+that they met. "You have waited thus long, it seems," said the Pope, well
+satisfied but surly, "till we should come ourselves to seek you." The
+prelate who had introduced the sculptor now began to make excuses for him,
+whereupon Julius turned in a fury upon the officious courtier, and had him
+beaten from his presence. A few days after this encounter Michael Angelo
+was ordered to cast a bronze statue of Julius for the frontispiece of S.
+Petronio. The sculptor objected that brass-foundry was not his affair.
+"Never mind," said Julius; "get to work, and we will cast your statue till
+it comes out perfect."[312] Michael Angelo did as he was bid, and the
+statue was set up in 1508 above the great door of the church. The Pope was
+seated, with his right hand raised; in the other were the keys. When
+Julius asked him whether he was meant to bless or curse the Bolognese with
+that uplifted hand, Buonarroti found an answer worthy of a courtier: "Your
+Holiness is threatening this people, if it be not wise." Less than four
+years afterwards Julius lost his hold upon Bologna, the party of the
+Bentivogli returned to power, and the statue was destroyed. A bronze
+cannon, called the "Giulia," was made out of Michael Angelo's masterpiece
+by the best gunsmith of his century, Alfonso Duke of Ferrara.
+
+It seems that Michael Angelo's flight from Rome in 1506 was due not only
+to his disappointment about the tomb, but also to his fear lest Julius
+should give him uncongenial work to do. Bramante, if we may believe the
+old story, had whispered that it was ill-omened for a man to build his own
+sepulchre, and that it would be well to employ the sculptor's genius upon
+the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Accordingly, on his return to Rome in
+1508, this new task was allotted him. In vain did Michael Angelo remind
+his master of the months wasted in the quarries of Carrara; in vain he
+pointed to his designs for the monument, and pleaded that he was not a
+painter by profession.[313] Julius had made up his mind that he should
+paint the Sistine. Was not the cartoon at Florence a sufficient proof that
+he could do this if he chose, and had he not learned the art of fresco in
+the _bottega_ of his master Ghirlandajo? Whatever his original reluctance
+may have been, it was speedily overcome; and the cartoons for the ceiling,
+projected with the unity belonging to a single great conception, were
+ready by the summer of 1508.[314]
+
+The difficulty of his new task aroused the artist's energy. If we could
+accept the legend, whereby contemporaries expressed their admiration for
+this Titanic labour, we should have to believe the impossible--that
+Michael Angelo ground his own colours, prepared his own plaster, and
+completed with his own hand the whole work, after having first conquered
+the obstacles of scaffolding and vault-painting by machines of his own
+invention,[315] and that only twenty months were devoted to the execution
+of a series of paintings almost unequalled in their delicacy, and
+surpassed by few single masterpieces in extent. What may be called the
+mythus of the Sistine Chapel has at last been finally disproved, partly by
+the personal observations of Mr. Heath Wilson, and partly by the
+publication of Michael Angelo's correspondence.[316] Though some
+uncertainty remains as to the exact dates of the commencement and
+completion of the vault, we now know that Michael Angelo continued
+painting it at intervals during four successive years; and though we are
+not accurately informed about his helpers, we no longer can doubt that
+able craftsmen yielded him assistance. On May 10, 1508, he signed a
+receipt for five hundred ducats advanced by Julius for the necessary
+expenses of the undertaking; and on the next day he paid ten ducats to a
+mason for rough plastering and surface-finishing applied to the vault.
+There is good reason to believe that he began his painting during the
+autumn of 1508. On November 1, 1509, a certain portion was uncovered to
+the public; and before the end of the year 1512 the whole was completed.
+Thus, though the legend of Vasari and Condivi has been stripped of the
+miraculous by careful observation and keen-sighted criticism, enough
+remains to justify the sense of wonder that expressed itself in their
+exaggerated statements. No one but Michael Angelo could have done what he
+did in the Sistine Chapel. The conception was entirely his own. The
+execution, except in subordinate details and in matters pertaining to the
+mason's craft, was also his. The rapidity with which he laboured was
+astounding. Mr. Heath Wilson infers from the condition of the plaster and
+the joinings observable in different parts, that the figure of Adam,
+highly finished as it is, was painted in three days. Nor need we strip
+the romance from that time-honoured tale of the great master's solitude.
+Lying on his back beneath the dreary vault, communing with Dante,
+Savonarola, and the Hebrew prophets in the intervals of labour, locking up
+the chapel-doors in order to elude the jealous curiosity of rivals, eating
+but little and scarcely sleeping, he accomplished in sixteen months the
+first part of his gigantic task.[317] From time to time Julius climbed the
+scaffold and inspected the painter's progress. Dreading lest death should
+come before the work were finished, he kept crying, "When will you make an
+end?" "When I can," answered the painter. "You seem to want," rejoined the
+petulant old man, "that I should have you thrown down from the scaffold."
+Then Michael Angelo's brush stopped. The machinery was removed, and the
+frescoes were uncovered in their incompleteness to the eyes of Rome.
+
+Entering the Cappella Sistina, and raising our eyes to sweep the roof, we
+have above us a long and somewhat narrow oblong space, vaulted with round
+arches, and covered from end to end, from side to side, with a network of
+human forms. The whole is coloured like the dusky, tawny, blueish clouds
+of thunderstorms. There is no luxury of decorative art;--no gold, no
+paint-box of vermilion or emerald green, has been lavished here. Sombre
+and aërial, like shapes condensed from vapour, or dreams begotten by Ixion
+upon mists of eve or dawn, the phantoms evoked by the sculptor throng that
+space. Nine compositions, carrying down the sacred history from the
+creation of light to the beginning of sin in Noah's household, fill the
+central compartments of the roof. Beneath these, seated on the spandrils,
+are alternate prophets and sibyls, twelve in all, attesting to the future
+deliverance and judgment of the world by Christ. The intermediate spaces
+between these larger masses, on the roof and in the lunettes of the
+windows, swarm with figures, some naked and some draped--women and
+children, boys and young men, grouped in tranquil attitudes, or adapting
+themselves with freedom to their station on the curves and angles of the
+architecture. In these subordinate creations Michael Angelo deigned to
+drop the terrible style, in order that he might show how sweet and full of
+charm his art could be. The grace of colouring, realised in some of those
+youthful and athletic forms, is such as no copy can represent. Every
+posture of beauty and of strength, simple or strained, that it is possible
+for men to assume, has been depicted here. Yet the whole is governed by a
+strict sense of sobriety. The restlessness of Correggio, the violent
+attitudinising of Tintoretto, belong alike to another and less noble
+spirit.
+
+To speak adequately of these form-poems would be quite impossible.
+Buonarroti seems to have intended to prove by them that the human body has
+a language, inexhaustible in symbolism--every limb, every feature, and
+every attitude being a word full of significance to those who comprehend,
+just as music is a language whereof each note and chord and phrase has
+correspondence with the spiritual world. It may be presumptuous after this
+fashion to interpret the design of him who called into existence the
+heroic population of the Sistine. Yet Michael Angelo has written lines
+which in some measure justify the reading. This is how he closes one of
+his finest sonnets to Vittoria Colonna:
+
+    Nor hath God deigned to show Himself elsewhere
+    More clearly than in human forms sublime;
+    Which, since they image Him, compel my love.
+
+Therefore to him a well-shaped hand, or throat, or head, a neck superbly
+poised on an athletic chest, the sway of the trunk above the hips, the
+starting of the muscles on the flank, the tendons of the ankle, the
+outline of the shoulder when the arm is raised, the backward bending of
+the loins, the curves of a woman's breast, the contours of a body careless
+in repose or strained for action, were all words pregnant with profoundest
+meaning, whereby fit utterance might be given to the thoughts that raise
+man near to God. But, it may be asked, what poems of action as well as
+feeling are to be expressed in this form-language? The answer is simple.
+Paint or carve the body of a man, and, as you do it nobly, you will give
+the measure of both highest thought and most impassioned deed. This is the
+key to Michael Angelo's art. He cared but little for inanimate nature. The
+landscapes of Italy, so eloquent in their sublimity and beauty, were
+apparently a blank to him. His world was the world of ideas, taking
+visible form, incarnating themselves in man. One language the master had
+to serve him in all need--the language of plastic human form; but it was
+to him a tongue as rich in its variety of accent and of intonation as
+Beethoven's harmonies.
+
+In the Sistine Chapel, where plastic art is so supreme, we are bound to
+ask the further question. What was the difference between Michael Angelo
+and a Greek? The Parthenon with its processions of youths and maidens, its
+gods and heroes, rejoicing in their strength, and robed with raiment that
+revealed their living form, made up a symphony of meaning as full as this
+of Michael Angelo, and far more radiant. The Greek sculptor embraced
+humanity in his work no less comprehensively than the Italian; and what he
+had to say was said more plainly in the speech they both could use. But
+between Pheidias and Michael Angelo lay Christianity, the travail of the
+world through twenty centuries. Clear as morning, and calm in the
+unconsciousness of beauty, are those heroes of the youth of Hellas. All
+is grace, repose, strength shown but not asserted. Michael Angelo's Sibyls
+and Prophets are old and wrinkled, bowed with thought, consumed by vigils,
+startled from tranquillity by visions, overburdened with the messages of
+God. The loveliest among them, the Delphic, lifts dilated eyes, as though
+to follow dreams that fly upon the paths of trance. Even the young men
+strain their splendid limbs, and seem to shout or shriek, as if the life
+in them contained some element of pain. "He maketh his angels spirits, and
+his ministers a flame of fire:" this verse rises to our lips when we seek
+to describe the genii that crowd the cornice of the Sistine Chapel. The
+human form in the work of Pheidias wore a joyous and sedate serenity; in
+that of Michael Angelo it is turbid with a strange and awful sense of
+inbreathed agitation. Through the figure-language of the one was spoken
+the pagan creed, bright, unperturbed, and superficial. The sculpture of
+the Parthenon accomplished the transfiguration of the natural man. In the
+other man awakes to a new life of contest, disillusionment, hope, dread,
+and heavenward striving. It was impossible for the Greek and the Italian,
+bearing so different a burden of prophecy, even though they used the same
+speech, to tell the same tale; and this should be remembered by those
+critics who cast exaggeration and contortion in the teeth of Michael
+Angelo. Between the birth of the free spirit in Greece and its second
+birth in Italy, there yawned a sepulchre wherein the old faiths of the
+world lay buried and whence Christ had risen.[318]
+
+The star of Raphael, meanwhile, had arisen over Rome. Between the two
+greatest painters of their age the difference was striking. Michael Angelo
+stood alone, his own master, fashioned in his own school. A band of
+artists called themselves by Raphael's name; and in his style we trace the
+influence of several predecessors. Michael Angelo rarely received visits,
+frequented no society, formed no pupils, and boasted of no friends at
+Court. Raphael was followed to the Vatican by crowds of students; his
+levées were like those of a prince; he counted among his intimates the
+best scholars and poets of the age; his hand was pledged in marriage to a
+cardinal's niece. It does not appear that they engaged in petty rivalries,
+or that they came much into personal contact with each other. While
+Michael Angelo was so framed that he could learn from no man, Raphael
+gladly learned of Michael Angelo; and after the uncovering of the Sistine
+frescoes, his manner showed evident signs of alteration. Julius, who had
+given Michael Angelo the Sistine, set Raphael to work upon the Stanze. For
+Julius were painted the "Miracle of Bolsena" and the "Expulsion of
+Heliodorus from the Temple," scenes containing courtly compliments for the
+old Pope. No such compliments had been paid by Michael Angelo. Like his
+great parallel in music, Beethoven, he displayed an almost arrogant
+contempt for the conventionalities whereby an artist wins the favour of
+his patrons and the world.
+
+After the death of Julius, Leo X., in character the reverse of his fiery
+predecessor, and by temperament unsympathetic to the austere Michael
+Angelo, found nothing better for the sculptor's genius than to set him at
+work upon the façade of S. Lorenzo at Florence. The better part of the
+years between 1516 and 1520 was spent in quarrying marble at Carrara,
+Pietra Santa, and Seravezza. This is the most arid and unfruitful period
+of Michael Angelo's long life, a period of delays and thwarted schemes and
+servile labours. What makes the sense of disappointment greater, is that
+the façade of S. Lorenzo was not even finished.[319] We hurry over this
+wilderness of wasted months, and arrive at another epoch of artistic
+production.
+
+Already in 1520 the Cardinal Giulio de' Medici had conceived the notion of
+building a sacristy in S. Lorenzo to receive the monuments of Cosimo, the
+founder of the house, Lorenzo the Magnificent, Giuliano Duke of Nemours,
+Lorenzo Duke of Urbino, Leo X., and himself.[320] To Michael Angelo was
+committed the design, and in 1521 he began to apply himself to the work.
+Nine years had now elapsed since the roof of the Sistine chapel had been
+finished, and during this time Michael Angelo had produced little except
+the "Christ" of S. Maria sopra Minerva. This new undertaking occupied him
+at intervals between 1521 and 1534, a space of time decisive for the
+fortunes of the Medici in Florence. Leo died, and Giulio after a few years
+succeeded him as Clement VII. The bastards of the house, Ippolito and
+Alessandro, were expelled from Florence in 1527. Rome was sacked by the
+Imperial troops; then Michael Angelo quitted the statues and helped to
+defend his native city against the Prince of Orange. After the failure of
+the Republicans, he was recalled to his labours by command of Clement.
+Sullenly and sadly he quarried marbles for the sacristy. Sadly and
+sullenly he used his chisel year by year, making the very stones cry that
+shame and ruin were the doom of his country. At last in 1534 Clement died.
+Then Michael Angelo flung down his mallet. The monuments remained
+unfinished, and the sculptor set foot in Florence no more.[321]
+
+The Sacristy of S. Lorenzo was built by Michael Angelo and panelled with
+marbles to receive the sculpture he meant to place there.[322] Thus the
+colossal statues of Giuliano and Lorenzo were studied with a view to their
+light and shadow as much as to their form; and this is a fact to be
+remembered by those who visit the chapel where Buonarroti laboured both as
+architect and sculptor. Of the two Medici, it is not fanciful to say that
+the "Duke of Urbino" is the most immovable of spectral shapes eternalised
+in marble; while the "Duke of Nemours," more graceful and elegant, seems
+intended to present a contrast to this terrible thought-burdened
+form.[323] The allegorical figures, stretched on segments of ellipses
+beneath the pedestals of the two dukes, indicate phases of darkness and of
+light, of death and life. They are two women and two men; tradition names
+them "Night" and "Day," "Twilight" and "Dawning." Thus in the statues
+themselves and in their attendant genii we have a series of abstractions,
+symbolising the sleep and waking of existence, action and thought, the
+gloom of death, the lustre of life, and the intermediate states of sadness
+and of hope that form the borderland of both. Life is a dream between two
+slumbers; sleep is death's twin-brother; night is the shadow of death;
+death is the gate of life:--such is the mysterious mythology wrought by
+the sculptor of the modern world in marble. All these figures, by the
+intensity of their expression, the vagueness of their symbolism, force us
+to think and question. What, for example, occupies Lorenzo's brain?
+Bending forward, leaning his chin upon his wrist, placing the other hand
+upon his knee, on what does he for ever ponder? The sight, as Rogers said
+well, "fascinates and is intolerable." Michael Angelo has shot the beaver
+of the helmet forward on his forehead, and bowed his head, so as to clothe
+the face in darkness. But behind the gloom there is no skull, as Rogers
+fancied. The whole frame of the powerful man is instinct with some
+imperious thought. Has he outlived his life and fallen upon everlasting
+contemplation? Is he brooding, injured and indignant, over his own doom
+and the extinction of his race? Is he condemned to witness in immortal
+immobility the woes of Italy he helped to cause? Or has the sculptor
+symbolised in him the burden of that personality we carry with us in this
+life and bear for ever when we wake into another world? Beneath this
+incarnation of oppressive thought there lie, full-length and naked, the
+figures of Dawn and Twilight, Morn and Evening. So at least they are
+commonly called: and these names are not inappropriate; for the breaking
+of the day and the approach of night are metaphors for many transient
+conditions of the soul. It is only as allegories in a large sense,
+comprehending both the physical and intellectual order, and capable of
+various interpretation, that any of these statues can be understood. Even
+the Dukes do not pretend to be portraits: and hence in part perhaps the
+uncertainty that has gathered round them. Very tranquil and noble is
+Twilight: a giant in repose, he meditates, leaning upon his elbow, looking
+down. But Dawn starts from her couch, as though some painful summons had
+reached her sunk in dreamless sleep, and called her forth to suffer. Her
+waking to consciousness is like that of one who has been drowned, and who
+finds the return to life agony. Before her eyes, seen even through the
+mists of slumber, are the ruin and the shame of Italy. Opposite lies
+Night, so sorrowful, so utterly absorbed in darkness and the shade of
+death, that to shake off that everlasting lethargy seems impossible. Yet
+she is not dead. If we raise our voices, she too will stretch her limbs
+and, like her sister, shudder into sensibility with sighs. Only we must
+not wake her; for he who fashioned her, has told us that her sleep of
+stone is great good fortune. Both of these women are large and brawny,
+unlike the Fates of Pheidias in their muscular maturity. The burden of
+Michael Angelo's thought was too tremendous to be borne by virginal or
+graceful beings. He had to make women no less capable of suffering, no
+less world-wearied, than his country.
+
+Standing before these statues, we do not cry. How beautiful! We murmur,
+How terrible, how grand! Yet, after long gazing, we find them gifted with
+beauty beyond grace. In each of them there is a palpitating thought, torn
+from the artist's soul and crystallised in marble. It has been said that
+architecture is petrified music. In the sacristy of S. Lorenzo we feel
+impelled to remember phrases of Beethoven. Each of these statues becomes
+for us a passion, fit for musical expression, but turned like Niobe to
+stone. They have the intellectual vagueness, the emotional certainty, that
+belong to the motives of a symphony. In their allegories, left without a
+key, sculpture has passed beyond her old domain of placid concrete form.
+The anguish of intolerable emotion, the quickening of the consciousness to
+a sense of suffering, the acceptance of the inevitable, the strife of the
+soul with destiny, the burden and the passion of mankind:--that is what
+they contain in their cold chisel-tortured marble. It is open to critics
+of the school of Lessing to object that here is the suicide of sculpture.
+It is easy to remark that those strained postures and writhen limbs may
+have perverted the taste of lesser craftsmen. Yet if Michael Angelo was
+called to carve Medicean statues after the sack of Rome and the fall of
+Florence--if he was obliged in sober sadness to make sculpture a fit
+language for his sorrow-laden heart--how could he have wrought more
+truthfully than thus? To imitate him without sharing his emotions or
+comprehending his thoughts, as the soulless artist of the decadence
+attempted, was without any doubt a grievous error. Surely also we may
+regret, not without reason, that in the evil days upon which he had
+fallen, the fair antique "Heiterkeit" and "Allgemeinheit" were beyond his
+reach.
+
+Michael Angelo left the tombs of the Medici unfinished; nor, in spite of
+Duke Cosimo's earnest entreaties, would he afterwards return to Florence
+to complete them. Lorenzo's features are but rough-hewn; so is the face of
+Night. Day seems struggling into shape beneath his mask of rock, and
+Twilight shows everywhere the tooth-dint of the chisel. To leave
+unfinished was the fate of Michael Angelo--partly too, perhaps, his
+preference; for he was easily deterred from work. Many of his marbles are
+only just begun. The two medallion "Madonnas," the "Madonna and Child" in
+S. Lorenzo, the "Head of Brutus," the "Bound Captives," and the "Pietà" in
+the Duomo of Florence, are instances of masterpieces in the rough. He
+loved to fancy that the form dwelt within the stone, and that the chisel
+disencumbered it of superfluity. Therefore, to his eye, foreseeing what
+the shape would be when the rude envelope was chipped away, the marble
+mask may have taken the appearance of a veil or mantle. He may have found
+some fascination in the incompleteness that argued want of will but not of
+art, and a rough-hewn Madonna may have been to him what a Dryad still
+enclosed within a gnarled oak was to a Greek poet's fancy. We are not,
+however, justified in therefore assuming, as a recent critic has
+suggested, that Michael Angelo sought to realise a certain preconceived
+effect by want of finish. There is enough in the distracted circumstances
+of his life and in his temper, at once passionate and downcast, to account
+for fragmentary and imperfect performance; nor must it be forgotten that
+the manual labour of the sculptor in the sixteenth century was by no means
+so light as it is now. A decisive argument against this theory is that
+Buonarroti's three most celebrated statues--the "Pietà" in S. Peter's, the
+"Moses" and the "Dawn"--are executed with the highest polish it is
+possible for stone to take.[324] That he always aimed at this high finish,
+but often fell below it through discontent and _ennui_ and the importunity
+of patrons, we have the best reason to believe.
+
+Michael Angelo had now reached his fifty-ninth year. Lionardo and Raphael
+had already passed away, and were remembered as the giants of a bygone age
+of gold. Correggio was in his last year. Andrea del Sarto was dead.
+Nowhere except at Venice did Italian art still flourish; and the mundane
+style of Titian was not to the sculptor's taste. He had overlived the
+greatness of his country, and saw Italy in ruins. Yet he was destined to
+survive another thirty years, another lifetime of Masaccio or Raphael, and
+to witness still worse days. When we call Michael Angelo the interpreter
+of the burden and the pain of the Renaissance, we must remember this long
+weary old age, during which in solitude and silence he watched the
+extinction of Florence, the institution of the Inquisition, and the
+abasement of the Italian spirit beneath the tyranny of Spain. His sonnets,
+written chiefly in this latter period of life, turn often on the thought
+of death. His love of art yields to religious hope and fear, and he
+bemoans a youth and manhood spent in vanity. Once when he injured his leg
+by a fall from the scaffolding in the Sistine Chapel, he refused
+assistance, shut himself up at home, and lay waiting for deliverance in
+death. His life was only saved by the forcible interference of friends.
+
+In 1534 a new Eurystheus arose for our Hercules. The Cardinal Alessandro
+Farnese, a fox by nature and infamous through his indulgence for a vicious
+bastard, was made Pope under the name of Paul III.[325] Michael Angelo had
+shed lustre on the reigns of three Popes, his predecessors. For thirty
+years the Farnese had watched him with greedy eyes. After Julius, Leo, and
+Clement, the time was now come for the heroic craftsman to serve Paul. The
+Pope found him at work in his _bottega_ on the tomb of Julius; for the
+"tragedy of the mausoleum" still dragged on. The statue of Moses was
+finished. "That," said Paul, "is enough for one Pope. Give me your
+contract with the Duke of Urbino; I will tear it. Have I waited all these
+years; and now that I am Pope at last, shall I not have you for myself? I
+want you in the Sistine Chapel." Accordingly Michael Angelo, who had
+already made cartoons for the "Last Judgment" in the life of Clement, once
+more laid aside the chisel and took up the brush. For eight years, between
+1534 and 1542, he laboured at the fresco above the high altar of the
+chapel, devoting his terrible genius to a subject worthy of the times in
+which he lived. Since he had first listened while a youth to the
+prophecies of Savonarola, the woes announced in that apocalypse had all
+come true. Italy had been scourged, Rome sacked, the Church chastised.
+And yet the world had not grown wiser; vice was on the increase, virtue
+grew more rare.[326] It was impossible after the experience of the
+immediate past and within view of the present and the future, to conceive
+of God as other than an angry judge, vindictive and implacable.
+
+The "Last Judgment" has long been the most celebrated of Michael Angelo's
+paintings; partly no doubt because it was executed in the plenitude of his
+fame, with the eyes of all Italy upon him; partly because its size arouses
+vulgar wonder, and its theme strikes terror into all who gaze on it. Yet
+it is neither so strong nor so beautiful as the vault-paintings of the
+Sistine. The freshness of the genius that created Eve and Adam, unrivalled
+in their bloom of primal youth, has passed away. Austerity and gloom have
+taken possession of the painter. His style has hardened into mannerism,
+and the display of barren science in difficult posturing and strained
+anatomy has become wilful. Still, whether we regard this fresco as closing
+the long series of "Last Judgments" to be studied on Italian church-walls
+from Giotto downwards; or whether we confine our attention, as
+contemporaries seem to have done, to the skill of its foreshortenings and
+groupings;[327] or whether we analyse the dramatic energy wherewith
+tremendous passions are expressed, its triumph is in either case decided.
+The whole wall swarms with ascending and descending, poised and hovering,
+shapes--men and women rising from the grave before the judge, taking their
+stations among the saved, or sinking with unutterable anguish to the place
+of doom--a multitude that no man can number, surging to and fro in dim
+tempestuous air. In the centre at the top, Christ is rising from His
+throne with the gesture of an angry Hercules, hurling ruin on the guilty.
+He is such as the sins of Italy have made Him. Squadrons of angels,
+bearing the emblems of His passion, whirl around Him like grey
+thunder-clouds, and all the saints lean forward from their vantage ground
+to curse and threaten. At the very bottom bestial features take the place
+of human lineaments, and the terror of judgment has become the torment of
+damnation. Such is the general scope of this picture. Of all its merits,
+none is greater than the delineation of uncertainty and gradual awakening
+to life. The middle region between vigilance and slumber, reality and
+dream, Michael Angelo ruled as his own realm; and a painting of the "Last
+Judgment" enabled him to deal with this metaichmios skotos--this
+darkness in the interval of crossing spears--under its most solemn aspect.
+
+When the fresco was uncovered, there arose a general murmur of
+disapprobation that the figures were all nude. As society became more
+vicious, it grew nice. Messer Biagio, the Pope's master of the ceremonies,
+remarked that such things were more fit for stews and taverns than a
+chapel. The angry painter placed his portrait in Hell with a mark of
+infamy that cast too lurid a light upon this prudish speech. When Biagio
+complained, Paul wittily answered that, had it been Purgatory, he might
+have helped him, but in Hell is no redemption. Even the foul-mouthed and
+foul-hearted Aretino wrote from Venice to the same effect--a letter
+astounding for its impudence.[328] Michael Angelo made no defence. Perhaps
+he reflected that the souls of the Pope himself and Messer Biagio and
+Messer Pietro Aretino would go forth one day naked to appear before the
+judge, with the deformities of sin upon them, as in Plato's "Gorgias." He
+refused, however, to give clothes to his men and women. Daniel da
+Volterra, who was afterwards employed to do this, got the name of
+breeches-maker.
+
+We are hardly able to appreciate the "Last Judgment;" it has been so
+smirched and blackened by the smoke and dust of centuries. And this is
+true of the whole Sistine Chapel.[329] Yet it is here that the genius of
+Michael Angelo in all its terribleness must still be studied. In order to
+characterise the impression produced by even the less awful of these
+frescoes on a sympathetic student, I lay my pen aside and beg the reader
+to weigh what Henri Beyle, the versatile and brilliant critic, pencilled
+in the gallery of the Sistine Chapel on January 13, 1807:[330] "Greek
+sculpture was unwilling to reproduce the terrible in any shape; the
+Greeks had enough real troubles of their own. Therefore, in the realm of
+art, nothing can be compared with the figure of the Eternal drawing forth
+the first man from nonentity. The pose, the drawing, the drapery, all is
+striking: the soul is agitated by sensations that are not usually
+communicated through the eyes. When in our disastrous retreat from Russia,
+it chanced that we were suddenly awakened in the middle of the dark night
+by an obstinate cannonading, which at each moment seemed to gain in
+nearness, then all the forces of a man's nature gathered close around his
+heart; he felt himself in the presence of fate, and, having no attention
+left for things of vulgar interest, he made himself ready to dispute his
+life with destiny. The sight of Michael Angelo's pictures has brought back
+to my consciousness that almost forgotten sensation. Great souls enjoy
+their own greatness: the rest of the world is seized with fear, and goes
+mad."
+
+After the painting of the "Last Judgment," one more great labour was
+reserved for Michael Angelo.[331] By a brief of September, 1535, Paul III.
+had made him the chief architect as well as sculptor and painter of the
+Holy See. He was now called upon to superintend the building of S.
+Peter's, and to this task, undertaken for the repose of his soul without
+emolument, he devoted the last years of his life. The dome of S. Peter's,
+as seen from Tivoli or the Alban hills, like a cloud upon the Campagna, is
+Buonarroti's; but he has no share in the façade that screens it from the
+piazza. It lies beyond the scope of this chapter to relate once more the
+history of the vicissitudes through which S. Peter's went between the days
+of Alberti and Bernini.[332] I can but refer to Michael Angelo's letter
+addressed to Bartolommeo Ammanati, valuable both as setting forth his
+views about the structure, and as rendering the fullest and most glorious
+meed of praise to his old enemy Bramante.[333] All ancient jealousies,
+even had they ever stirred the heart of Michael Angelo, had long been set
+at rest by time and death. The one wish of his soul was to set a worthy
+diadem upon the mother-church of Christianity, repairing by the majesty of
+art what Rome had suffered at the hands of Germany and Spain, and
+inaugurating by this visible sign of sovereignty the new age of
+Catholicity renascent and triumphant.
+
+To the last period of Buonarroti's life (a space of twenty-two years
+between 1542 and 1564) we owe some of his most beautiful
+drawings--sketches for pictures of the Crucifixion made for Vittoria
+Colonna, and a few mythological designs, like the "Rape of Ganymede,"
+composed for Tommaso Cavalieri. His thoughts meanwhile were turned more
+and more, as time advanced, to piety; and many of his sonnets breathe an
+almost ascetic spirit of religion.[334] We see in them the old man
+regretting the years he had spent on art, deploring his enthusiasm for
+earthly beauty, and seeking comfort in the cross alone.
+
+    Painting nor sculpture now can lull to rest
+    My soul, that turns to His great love on high,
+    Whose arms to clasp us on the cross were spread.
+
+It is pleasant to know that these last years were also the happiest and
+calmest. Though he had lost his faithful friend and servant Urbino; though
+his father had died, an old man, and his brothers had passed away before
+him one by one, his nephew Lionardo had married in Florence, and begotten
+a son called Michael Angelo. Thus he had the satisfaction of hoping that
+his name would endure and flourish, as indeed it has done almost to this
+very day in Florence. What consolation this thought must have brought him,
+is clear to those who have studied his correspondence and observed the
+tender care and continual anxiety he had for his kinsmen.[335] Wealth now
+belonged to him: but he had never cared for money; and he continued to
+live like a poor man, dressing soberly and eating sparely, often taking
+but one meal in the day, and that of bread and wine.[336] He slept little,
+and rose by night to work upon his statues, wearing a cap with a candle
+stuck in front of it, that he might see where to drive the chisel home.
+During his whole life he had been solitary, partly by preference, partly
+by devotion to his art, and partly because he kept men at a distance by
+his manner.[337] Not that Michael Angelo was sour or haughty; but he
+spoke his mind out very plainly, had no tolerance for fools, and was apt
+to fly into passions.[338] Time had now softened his temper and removed
+all causes of discouragement. He had survived every rival, and the world
+was convinced of his supremacy. Princes courted him; the Count of Canossa
+was proud to claim him for a kinsman; strangers, when they visited Rome,
+were eager to behold in him its greatest living wonder.[339] His old age
+was the serene and splendid evening of a toilsome day. But better than all
+this, he now enjoyed both love and friendship.
+
+If Michael Angelo could ever have been handsome is more than doubtful.
+Early in his youth the quarrelsome and vain Torrigiani broke his nose with
+a blow of the fist, when they were drawing from Masaccio's frescoes in the
+Carmine together.[340] Thenceforth the artist's soul looked forth from a
+sad face, with small grey eyes, flat nostrils, and rugged weight of
+jutting brows. Good care was thus taken that light love should not trifle
+with the man who was destined to be the prophet of his age in art. Like
+Beethoven, he united a loving nature, sensitive to beauty and desirous of
+affection, with a rude exterior. He seemed incapable of attaching himself
+to any merely mortal object, and wedded the ideal. In that century of
+intrigue and amour, we hear of nothing to imply that Michael Angelo was a
+lover till he reached the age of sixty. How he may have loved in the
+earlier periods of his life, whereof no record now remains, can only be
+guessed from the tenderness and passion outpoured in the poems of his
+latter years. That his morality was pure and his converse without stain,
+is emphatically witnessed by both Vasari and Condivi.[341] But that his
+emotion was intense, and that to beauty in all its human forms he was
+throughout his life a slave, we have his own sonnets to prove.
+
+In the year 1534 he first became acquainted with the noble lady Vittoria,
+daughter of Fabrizio Colonna, and widow of the Marquis of Pescara. She was
+then aged forty-four, and had nine years survived the loss of a husband
+she never ceased to idolise.[342] Living in retirement in Rome, she
+employed her leisure with philosophy and poetry. Artists and men of
+letters were admitted to her society. Among the subjects she had most at
+heart was the reform of the Church and the restoration of religion to its
+evangelical purity. Between her and Michael Angelo a tender affection
+sprang up based upon the sympathy of ardent and high-seeking natures. If
+love be the right name for this exalted and yet fervid attachment, Michael
+Angelo may be said to have loved her with all the pent-up forces of his
+heart. None of his works display a predilection for girlish beauty, and it
+is probable that her intellectual distinction and mature womanhood touched
+him even more than if she had been younger. When they were together in
+Rome they met frequently for conversation on the themes of art and piety
+they both held dear. Of these discourses a charming record has been
+preserved to us by the painter Francis of Holland.[343] When they were
+separated they exchanged poems and wrote letters, some of which remain. On
+the death of Vittoria, in 1547, the light of life seemed to be
+extinguished for our sculptor. It is said that he waited by her bed-side,
+and kissed her hand when she was dying. The sonnets he afterwards composed
+show that his soul followed her to heaven.
+
+Another friend whom Michael Angelo found in this last stage of life, and
+whom he loved with only less warmth than Vittoria, was a young Roman of
+perfect beauty and of winning manners. Tommaso Cavalieri must be mentioned
+next to the Marchioness of Pescara as the being who bound this greatest
+soul a captive.[344] Both Cavalieri and Vittoria are said to have been
+painted by him, and these are the only two portraits he is reported to
+have executed. It may here be remarked that nothing is more characteristic
+of his genius than the determination to see through nature, to pass beyond
+the actual to the abstract, and to use reality only as a stepping-stone to
+the ideal. This artistic Platonism was the source both of his greatness
+and his mannerism. As men choose to follow Blake or Ruskin, they may
+praise or blame him; yet, blame and praise pronounced on such a matter
+with regard to such a man are equally impertinent and insignificant. It is
+enough for the critic to note with reverence that thus and thus the spirit
+that was in him worked and moved.
+
+When we read the sonnets addressed to Vittoria Colonna and Cavalieri, we
+find something inexpressibly pathetic in this pure and fervent worship of
+beauty, when the artist with a soul still young had reached the limit of
+the years of man. Here and there we trace in them an echo of his youth.
+The Platonic dialogues he heard while yet a young man at the suppers of
+Lorenzo, reappear converted to the very substance of his thought and
+style. At the same time Savonarola resumes ascendency over his mind; and
+when he turns to Florence, it is of Dante that he speaks.
+
+At last the moment came when this strong solitary spirit, much suffering
+and much loving, had to render its account. It appears from a letter
+written to Lionardo Buonarroti on February 15, 1564, that his old servant
+Antonio del Francese, the successor of Urbino in his household, together
+with Tommaso Cavalieri and Daniello Ricciarelli of Volterra, attended him
+in his last illness. On the 18th of that month, having bequeathed his
+soul to God, his body to the earth, and his worldly goods to his kinsfolk,
+praying them on their death-bed to think upon Christ's passion, he
+breathed his last. His corpse was transported to Florence, and buried in
+the church of S. Croce, with great pomp and honour, by the Duke, the city,
+and the Florentine Academy.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[289] See Vasari, vol. xii. p. 333, and Gotti's _Vita di Michelangelo
+Buonarroti_, vol. i. p. 4, for a discussion of this claim, and for a
+letter written by Alessandro Count of Canossa, in 1520, to the artist.
+
+[290] That Michael Angelo was contemptuous to brother artists, is proved
+by what Torrigiani said to Cellini: "Aveva per usanza di uccellare tutti
+quelli che dissegnavano." He called Perugino _goffo_, told Francia's son
+that his father made handsomer men by night than by day, and cast in
+Lionardo's teeth that he could not finish the equestrian statue of the
+Duke of Milan. It is therefore not improbable that when, according to the
+legend, he corrected a drawing of Ghirlandajo's, he may have said things
+unendurable to the elder painter.
+
+[291] Engraved in outline in Harford's _Illustrations of the Genius of
+Michael Angelo Buonarroti_, Colnaghi, 1857.
+
+[292] This group, placed in S. Peter's, was made for the French Cardinal
+de Saint Denys. It should be said that the first work of Michael Angelo
+in Rome was the "Bacchus" now in the Florentine Bargello, executed for
+Jacopo Gallo, a Roman gentleman.
+
+[293] Pitti approved of the form of government represented by Soderini.
+Machiavelli despised the want of decision that made him quit Florence,
+and the euêtheia of the man. Hence their curiously conflicting
+phrases.
+
+[294] See the chapter entitled "Della Malitia e pessíme Conditioni del
+Tyranno," in Savonarola's "Tractato circa el reggimento e governo della
+Citta di Firenze composto ad instantia delli excelsi Signori al tempo di
+Giuliano Salviati, Gonfaloniere di Justitia." A more terrible picture has
+never been drawn by any analyst of human vice and cruelty and weakness.
+
+[295] Guasti's edition of the _Rime_, p. 26.
+
+[296] He defends himself thus in a letter to Lodovico Buonarroti: "Del
+caso dei Medici io non ò mai parlato contra di loro cosa nessuna, se non
+in quel modo che s' è parlato generalmente per ogn' uomo, come fu del
+caso di Prato; che se le pietre avessin saputo parlare, n' avrebbono
+parlato."
+
+[297] It seems clear from the correspondence in the Archivio Buonarroti,
+recently published, that when Michael Angelo fled from Florence to Venice
+in 1529, he did so under the pressure of no ignoble panic, but because
+his life was threatened by a traitor, acting possibly at the secret
+instance of Malatesta Baglioni. See Heath Wilson, pp. 326-330.
+
+[298] See Guasti, p. 4.
+
+[299] Vol. I., _Age of the Despots_, p. 251.
+
+[300] To these years we must also assign the two unfinished medallions of
+"Madonna and the infant Christ," the circular oil picture of the "Holy
+Family," painted for Angelo Doni, and the beautiful unfinished picture of
+"Madonna with the boy Jesus and S. John" in the National Gallery. The
+last of these works is one of the loveliest of Michael Angelo's
+productions, whether we regard the symmetry of its composition or the
+refinement of its types. The two groups of two boys standing behind the
+central group on either hand of the Virgin, have incomparable beauty of
+form. The supreme style of the Sistine is here revealed to us in embryo.
+Whether the "Entombment," also unfinished, and also in the National
+Gallery, belongs to this time, and whether it be Michael Angelo's at all,
+is a matter for the experts to decide. To my perception, it is quite
+unworthy of the painter of the Doni "Holy family;" nor can I think that
+his want of practice in oil-painting will explain its want of charm and
+vigour.
+
+[301] It has long been believed that Baccio Bandinelli destroyed Michael
+Angelo's; but Grimm, in his Life of the sculptor (vol. i. p. 376, Eng.
+Tr.), adduces solid arguments against this legend. A few studies,
+together with the engravings of portions by Marc Antonio and Agostino
+Veneziano, enable us to form a notion of the composition. At Holkham
+there is an old copy of the larger portion of the cartoon, which has been
+engraved by Schiavonetti, and reproduced in Harford's _Illustrations_,
+plate x.
+
+[302] _Vita_, p. 23. Cellini, the impassioned admirer of Michael Angelo,
+esteemed this cartoon so highly, that he writes: "Sebbene il divino
+Michelagnolo fece la gran cappella di Papa Julio da poi, non arrivò mai a
+questo segno alla meta: la sua virtù non aggiunse mai da poi alla forza
+di quei primi studj."
+
+[303] The cartoon was probably exhibited in 1505. See Gotti, vol. i. p.
+35.
+
+[304] Gotti, pp. 277-282.
+
+[305] Springer, in his essay, _Michael Agnolo in Rome_, p. 21, makes out
+that this large design was not conceived till after the death of Julius.
+It is difficult to form a clear notion of the many changes in the plan of
+the tomb, between 1505 and 1542, when Michael Angelo signed the last
+contract with the heirs of Julius.
+
+[306] In the Uffizzi at Florence. See Heath Wilson, plate vi.
+
+[307] Boboli Gardens, Bargello, Louvre. These captives are unfinished.
+The "Rachel" and "Leah" at S. Pietro in Vincoli were committed to pupils
+by Michael Angelo.
+
+[308] "Che mi fosso messo a fare zolfanelli.... Son ogni di lapidato,
+come se havessi crucifisso Cristo.... io mi truovo avere perduta tutta la
+mia giovinezza legato a questa sepoltura."
+
+[309] Gotti, p. 42. Grimm makes two visits to Carrara in 1505 and 1506,
+vol. i. pp. 239, 243.
+
+[310] See his letter. Gotti, p. 44.
+
+[311] Our authorities for this episode in Michael Angelo's biography are
+mainly Vasari and Condivi. Though there may be exaggeration in the
+legend, it is certain that a correspondence took place between the Pope
+and the Gonfalonier of Florence, to bring about his return. See Heath
+Wilson, pp. 79-87, and the letter to Giuliano di San Gallo in Milanesi's
+Archivio Buonarroti, p. 377. Michael Angelo appears to have had some
+reason to fear assassination in Rome.
+
+[312] See Michael Angelo's letters to Giovan Francesco Fattucci, and his
+family. Gotti, pp. 55-65.
+
+[313] See the sonnet to Giovanni da Pistoja:--
+
+             La mia pittura morta
+    Difendi orma', Giovanni, e 'l mio onore,
+    Non sendo in loco bon, nè io pittore.
+
+[314] According to the first plan, Michael Angelo bargained with the Pope
+for twelve Apostles in the lunettes, and another part to be filled with
+ornament in the usual manner--"dodici Apostoli nelle lunette, e 'l resto
+un certo partimento ripieno d' adornamenti come si usa." Michael Angelo,
+after making designs for this commission, told the Pope he thought the
+roof would look poor, because the Apostles were poor folk--"perchè furon
+poveri anche loro." He then began his cartoons for the vault as it now
+exists. See the letter to Ser Giovan Francesco Fattucci, in the _Archivio
+Buonarroti_, Milanesi, pp. 426-427. This seems to be the foundation for
+an old story of the Pope's complaining that the Sistine roof looked poor
+without gilding, and Michael Angelo's reply that the Biblical personages
+depicted there were but poor people.
+
+[315] Bramante, the Pope's architect, did in truth fail to construct the
+proper scaffolding, whether through inability or jealousy. Michael Angelo
+designed a superior system of his own, which became a model for future
+architects in similar constructions.
+
+[316] See chapters vi. vii. and viii. of Mr. Charles Heath Wilson's
+admirable _Life of Michel Angelo_. Aurelio Gotti's _Vita di Michel
+Agnolo_, and Anton Springer's _Michael Agnolo in Rome_, deserve to be
+consulted on this passage in the painter's biography.
+
+[317] The conditions under which Michael Angelo worked, without a trained
+band of pupils, must have struck contemporaries, accustomed to Raphael's
+crowds of assistants, with a wonder that justified Vasari's emphatic
+language of exaggeration as to his single-handed labour.
+
+[318] In speaking of the Sistine I have treated Michael Angelo as a
+sculptor, and it was a sculptor who designed those frescoes. _Nè io
+pittore_ is his own phrase. Compare an autotype of "Adam" in the Sistine
+with one of "Twilight" in S. Lorenzo: it is clear that in the former
+Michael Angelo painted what he would have been well pleased to carve. A
+sculptor's genius was needed for the modelling of those many figures; it
+was, moreover, not a painter's part to deal thus drily with colour.
+
+[319] The Laurentian Library, however, was built in 1524.
+
+[320] See Gotti, pp. 150, 155, 158, 159, for the correspondence which
+passed upon the subject, and the various alterations in the plan. As in
+the case of all Michael Angelo's works, except the Sistine, only a small
+portion of the original project was executed.
+
+[321] Cosimo de' Medici found it impossible to induce him to return to
+Florence. See B. Cellini's Life, p. 436, for his way of receiving the
+Duke's overtures.
+
+[322] See above, Chapter II, Michael Angelo.
+
+[323] Vasari names the gloomy statue, called by the Italians _Il
+Penseroso_, "Lorenzo, Duke of Urbino," the sprightly one, "Giuliano, Duke
+of Nemours;" and this contemporary tradition has been recently confirmed
+by an inspection of the Penseroso's tomb (see a letter to the _Academy_,
+March 13, 1875, by Mr. Charles Heath Wilson). Grimm, in his _Life of
+Michael Angelo_, gave plausible aesthetic reasons why we should reverse
+the nomenclature; but the discovery of two bodies beneath the Penseroso,
+almost certainly those of Lorenzo and his supposed son Alessandro,
+justifies Vasari. Neither of these statues can be accepted as a portrait.
+
+[324] The "Bacchus" of the Bargello, the "David," the "Christ," of the
+Minerva, the "Duke of Nemours," and the almost finished "Night," might
+also be mentioned. His chalk drawings of the "Bersaglieri," the "Infant
+Bacchanals," the "Fall of Phaëthon," and the "Punishment of Tityos," now
+in the Royal Collection at Windsor, prove that even in old age Michael
+Angelo carried delicacy of execution as a draughtsman to a point not
+surpassed even by Lionardo. Few frescoes, again, were ever finished with
+more conscientious elaboration than those of the Sistine vault.
+
+[325] See Varchi, at the end of the _Storia Fiorentina_, for episodes in
+the life of Pier Luigi Farnese, and Cellini for a popular estimate of the
+Cardinal, his father.
+
+[326] This extract from Cesare Balbo's _Pensieri sulla Storia d' Italia_,
+Le Monnier, 1858, p. 57, may help to explain the situation: "E se
+lasciando gli uomini e i nomi grandi de' governanti, noi venissimo a
+quella storia, troppo sovente negletta, dei piccoli, dei più, dei
+governati che sono in somma scopo d' ogni sorta di governo; se, coll'
+aiuto delle tante memorie rimaste di quell' secolo, noi ci addestrassimo
+a conoscere la condizione comune e privata degli Italiani di quell' età,
+noi troveremmo trasmesse dai governanti a' governati, e ritornate da
+questi a quelli, tali universali scostumatezze ed immoralità, tali
+fiacchezze e perfidie, tali mollezze e libidini, tali ozi e tali vizi,
+tali avvilimenti insomma e corruzioni, che sembrano appena credibili in
+una età d' incivilmento cristiano."
+
+[327] Vasari's description moves our laughter with its jargon about
+"attitudini bellissime e scorti molto mirabili," when the man, in spite
+of his honest and enthusiastic admiration, is so little capable of
+penetrating the painter's thought. Mr. Ruskin leaves the same impression
+as Vasari: he too makes much talk about attitudes and muscles in Michael
+Angelo, and seems to be on Vasari's level as to comprehending him. The
+difference is that Vasari praises, Ruskin blames; both miss the mark.
+
+[328] "È possibile che voi, che _per essere divino non degnate il
+consortio degli huomini_, haviate ciò fatto nel maggior tempio di
+Dio?.... In un bagno delitioso, non in un choro supremo si conveniva il
+far vostro." Those who are curious may consult Aretino's correspondence
+with Michael Angelo in his published letters (Parigi, 1609), lib. i. p.
+153; lib. ii. p. 9; lib. iii. pp. 45, 122; lib. iv. p. 37.
+
+[329] Braun's autotypes of the vault frescoes show what ravage the lapse
+of time has wrought in them, by the cracking of the plaster, the peeling
+off in places of the upper surface, and the deposit of dirt and cobwebs.
+Mr. Heath Wilson, after careful examination, pronounces that not only
+time, but the wilful hand of man, re-painting and washing the delicate
+tint-coats with corrosive acids, has contributed to their ruin.
+
+[330] _Histoire de la Peinture en Italie_, p. 332.
+
+[331] That is not counting the frescoes of the Cappella Paolina in the
+Vatican, painted about 1544, which are now in a far worse state even than
+the "Last Judgment," and which can never have done more than show his
+style in decadence.
+
+[332] See above, Chapter II, S. Peter's.
+
+[333] See Gotti, p. 307, or _Archivio Buonarroti_, p. 535.
+
+[334] I have reserved my translation of the sonnets that cast most light
+upon Michael Angelo's thought and feeling for an Appendix, No. II.
+
+[335] The majority of Michael Angelo's letters are written on domestic
+matters--about the affairs of his brothers and his father. When they
+vexed him, he would break out into expressions like the following: "Io
+son ito, da dodici anni in qua, tapinando per tutta Italia; sopportato
+ogni vergognia; patito ogni stento; lacerato il corpo mio in ogni fatica;
+messa la vita propria a mille pericoli, solo per aiutar la casa mia."
+They are generally full of good counsel and sound love. How he loved his
+father may be seen in the _terza rima_ poem on his death in 1534.
+
+[336] Notice this expression in a letter to his father, written from
+Rome, about 1512, "Bastivi avere del pane, e vivete ben con Cristo e
+poveramente; come fo io qua, che vivo meschinamente." It does not seem
+that he ever altered this poor way of living. For his hiring at Bologna,
+in 1507, a single room with one bed in it, for himself and his three
+workmen, see Gotti, p. 58. His father in 1500 rebuked him for the
+meanness of his establishment; _ibid_. p. 23. It appears that he was
+always sending money home.
+
+[337] "Io sto qua in grande afanno, e con grandissima fatica di corpo, e
+non ò amici di nessuna sorte, e none voglio: e non ò tanto tempo che io
+possa mangiare el bisognio mio." Letter to Gismondo, published by Grimm.
+See, too, Sebastian del Piombo's letter to him of November 9, 1520: "Ma
+fate paura a ognuno, insino a' papi." Compare, too, the letter of
+Sebastian, Oct. 15, 1512, in which Julius is reported to have said, "È
+terribile, come tu vedi, non se pol praticar con lui." Again, Michael
+Angelo writes: "Sto sempesolo, vo poco attorno e non parlo a persona e
+massino di fiorentini." Gotti, p. 255.
+
+[338] When anything went wrong with him, he became moody and vehement:
+"Non vi maravigliate che io vi abbi scritto alle volte cosi stizosamente,
+che io ò alle volte di gran passione, per molte cagioni che avengono a
+chi è fuor di casa." So he writes to his father in 1498. A letter to
+Luigi del Riccio of 1545, is signed "Michelagnolo Buonarroti non pittore,
+nè scultore, nè architettore, ma quel che voi volete, ma none briaco,
+come vi dissi, in casa."
+
+[339] See the letters of Cosimo de' Medici, Gotti, pp. 301-313, the
+letter of Count Alessandro da Canossa, _ibid._ p. 4, and Pier Vettori's
+letter to Borghini, about the visit of some German gentlemen, _ibid._ p.
+315.
+
+[340] See the story as told by Torrigiani himself in Cellini, ed. Le
+Monnier, p. 23.
+
+[341] After saying that he talked of love like Plato, Condivi continues:
+"Non senti mai uscir di quella bocca se non parole onestissime, e che
+avevan forza d' estinguere nella gioventù ogni incomposto e sfrenato
+desiderio che in lei potesse cadere." Compare Scipione Ammirato, quoted
+by Guasti, "Le Rime," p. xi.
+
+[342] Her intense affection for the Marquis of Pescara, to whom she had
+been betrothed by her father at the age of five, is sufficiently proved
+by those many sonnets and _canzoni_ in which she speaks of him as her
+Sun.
+
+[343] See Grimm, vol. ii.
+
+[344] See the Sonnets translated in my Appendix and in my _Sonnets of
+Michael Angelo and Campanella_, London, Smith & Elder, 1878. See also the
+letters to Cavalieri, quoted by Gotti, pp. 231, 232, 234. It is surely
+strained criticism to conjecture, as Gotti has done, that these epistles
+were meant for Vittoria, though written to Cavalieri. Taken together with
+the sonnets and the letter of Bartolommeo Angiolini (Gotti, p. 233), they
+seem to me to prove only Michael Angelo's warm love for this young man.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+LIFE OF BENVENUTO CELLINI
+
+His Fame--His Autobiography--Its Value for the Student of History,
+Manners, and Character, in the Renaissance--Birth, Parentage, and
+Boyhood--Flute-playing--Apprenticeship to Marcone--Wanderjahr--The
+Goldsmith's Trade at Florence--Torrigiani and England--Cellini leaves
+Florence for Rome--Quarrel with the Guasconti--Homicidal Fury--Cellini a
+Law to Himself--Three Periods in his Manhood--Life in Rome--Diego at the
+Banquet--Renaissance Feeling for Physical Beauty--Sack of Rome--Miracles
+in Cellini's Life--His Affections--Murder of his Brother's
+Assassin--Sanctuary--Pardon and Absolution--Incantation in the
+Colosseum--First Visit to France--Adventures on the Way--Accused of
+Stealing Crown Jewels in Rome--Imprisonment in the Castle of S.
+Angelo--The Governor--Cellini's Escape--His Visions--The Nature of his
+Religion--Second Visit to France--The Wandering Court--Le Petit
+Nesle--Cellini in the French Law Courts--Scene at Fontainebleau--Return to
+Florence--Cosimo de' Medici as a Patron--Intrigues of a petty
+Court--Bandinelli--The Duchess--Statue of Perseus--End of Cellini's
+Life--Cellini and Machiavelli.
+
+
+Few names in the history of Italian art are more renowned than that of
+Benvenuto Cellini. This can hardly be attributed to the value of his
+extant works; for though, while he lived, he was the greatest goldsmith of
+his time, a skilled medallist and an admirable statuary, few of his many
+masterpieces now survive. The plate and armour that bear his name, are
+only in some rare instances genuine; and the bronze "Perseus" in the
+Loggia de' Lanzi at Florence remains almost alone to show how high he
+ranked among the later Tuscan sculptors. If, therefore, Cellini had been
+judged merely by the authentic productions of his art, he would not have
+acquired a celebrity unique among his fellow-workers of the sixteenth
+century. That fame he owes to the circumstance that he left behind him at
+his death a full and graphic narrative of his stormy life. The vivid style
+of this autobiography dictated by Cellini while still engaged in the
+labour of his craft, its animated picture of a powerful character, the
+variety of its incidents, and the amount of information it contains, place
+it high both as a life-romance and also as a record of contemporary
+history. After studying the laboured periods of Varchi, we turn to these
+memoirs, and view the same events from the standpoint of an artisan
+conveying his impressions with plebeian raciness of phrase. The sack of
+Rome, the plague and siege of Florence, the humiliation of Clement VII.,
+the pomp of Charles V. at Rome, the behaviour of the Florentine exiles at
+Ferrara, the intimacy between Alessandro de' Medici and his murderer,
+Lorenzino, the policy of Paul III., and the method pursued by Cosimo at
+Florence, are briefly but significantly touched upon--no longer by the
+historian seeking causes and setting forth the sequence of events, but by
+a shrewd observer interested in depicting his own part in the great game
+of life. Cellini haunted the private rooms of popes and princes; he knew
+the chief actors of his day, just as the valet knows the hero; and the
+picturesque glimpses into their life we gain from him, add the charm of
+colour and reality to history.
+
+At the same time this book presents an admirable picture of an artist's
+life at Rome, Paris, and Florence. Cellini was essentially an Italian of
+the Cinque-cento. His passions were the passions of his countrymen; his
+vices were the vices of his time; his eccentricity and energy and vital
+force were what the age idealised as _virtù_. Combining rare artistic
+gifts with a most violent temper and a most obstinate will, he paints
+himself at one time as a conscientious craftsman, at another as a
+desperate bravo. He obeys his instincts and indulges his appetites with
+the irreflective simplicity of an animal. In the pursuit of vengeance and
+the commission of murder he is self-reliant, coolly calculating, fierce
+and fatal as a tiger. Yet his religious fervour is sincere; his impulses
+are generous; and his heart on the whole is good. His vanity is
+inordinate; and his unmistakable courage is impaired, to Northern
+apprehension, by swaggering bravado.
+
+The mixture of these qualities in a personality so natural and so clearly
+limned renders Cellini a most precious subject for the student of
+Renaissance life and character. Even supposing him to have been
+exceptionally passionate, he was made of the same stuff as his
+contemporaries. We are justified in concluding this not only from
+collateral evidence and from what he tells us, but also from the meed of
+honour he received. In Europe of the present day he could hardly fail to
+be regarded as a ruffian, a dangerous disturber of morality and order. In
+his own age he was held in high esteem and buried by his fellow-citizens
+with public ceremonies. A funeral oration was pronounced over his grave
+"in praise both of his life and works, and also of his excellent
+disposition of mind and body."[345] He dictated the memoirs that paint him
+as bloodthirsty, sensual, and revengeful, in the leisure of his old age,
+and left them with complacency to serve as witness of his manly virtues to
+posterity. Even Vasari, whom he hated, and who reciprocated his ill-will,
+records that "he always showed himself a man of great spirit and veracity,
+bold, active, enterprising, and formidable to his enemies; a man, in
+short, who knew as well how to speak to princes as to exert himself in his
+art."
+
+Enough has been said to prove that Cellini was not inferior to the average
+morality of the Renaissance, and that we are justified in accepting his
+life as a valuable historical document.[346] To give a detailed account of
+a book pronounced by Horace Walpole "more amusing than any novel,"
+received by Parini and Tiraboschi as the most delightful masterpiece of
+Italian prose, translated into German by Goethe, and placed upon his index
+of select works by Auguste Comte, may seem superfluous. Yet I cannot
+afford to omit from my plan the most singular and characteristic episode
+in the private history of the Italian Renaissance. I need it for the
+concrete illustration of much that has been said in this and the preceding
+volumes of my work.
+
+Cellini was born of respectable parents at Florence on the night of All
+Saints' Day in 1500, and was called Benvenuto to record his father's joy
+at having a son.[347] It was the wish of Giovanni Cellini's heart that his
+son should be a musician. Benvenuto in consequence practised the flute for
+many years attentively, though much against his will. At the age of
+fifteen so great was his desire to learn the arts of design that his
+father placed him under the care of the goldsmith Marcone. At the same
+time he tells us in his memoirs: "I continued to play sometimes through
+complaisance to my father either upon the flute or the horn; and I
+constantly drew tears and deep sighs from him every time he heard me."
+While engaged in the workshop of Marcone, Benvenuto came to blows with
+some young men who had attacked his brother, and was obliged to leave
+Florence for a time. At this period he visited Siena, Bologna, and Pisa,
+gaming his livelihood by working in the shops of goldsmiths, and steadily
+advancing in his art.
+
+It must not be thought that this education was a mean one for so great an
+artist. Painting and sculpture in Italy were regarded as trades, and the
+artist had his _bottega_ just as much as the cobbler or the
+blacksmith.[348] I have already had occasion to point out that an
+apprenticeship to goldsmith's work was considered at Florence an almost
+indispensable commencement of advanced art-study.[349] Brunelleschi,
+Botticelli, Orcagna, Verocchio, Ghiberti, Pollajuolo, Ghirlandajo, Luca
+della Robbia, all underwent this training before they applied themselves
+to architecture, painting, and sculpture. As the goldsmith's craft was
+understood in Florence, it exacted the most exquisite nicety in
+performance as well as design. It forced the student to familiarise
+himself with the materials, instruments, and technical processes of art;
+so that, later on in life, he was not tempted to leave the execution of
+his work to journeymen and hirelings.[350] No labour seemed too minute, no
+metal was too mean, for the exercise of the master-workman's skill; nor
+did he run the risk of becoming one of those half-amateurs in whom
+accomplishment falls short of first conception. Art ennobled for him all
+that he was called to do. Whether cardinals required him to fashion silver
+vases for their banquet-tables; or ladies wished the setting of their
+jewels altered; or a pope wanted the enamelled binding of a book of
+prayers; or men-at-arms sent swordblades to be damascened with acanthus
+foliage; or kings desired fountains and statues for their palace courts;
+or poets begged to have their portraits cast in bronze; or generals needed
+medals to commemorate their victories, or dukes new coins for their mint;
+or bishops ordered reliquaries for the altars of their patron saints; or
+merchants sought for seals and signet rings engraved with their device; or
+men of fashion asked for medallions of Leda and Adonis to fasten in their
+caps--all these commissions could be undertaken by a workman like Cellini.
+He was prepared for all alike by his apprenticeship to _orfevria_; and to
+all he gave the same amount of conscientious toil. The consequence was
+that, at the time of the Renaissance, furniture, plate, jewels, and
+articles of personal adornment were objects of true art. The mind of the
+craftsman was exercised afresh in every piece of work. Pretty things were
+not bought, machine-made, by the gross in a warehouse; nor was it
+customary, as now it is, to see the same design repeated with mechanical
+regularity in every house.
+
+In 1518 Benvenuto returned to Florence and began to study the cartoons of
+Michael Angelo. He must have already acquired considerable reputation as a
+workman, for about this time Torrigiani invited him to go to England in
+his company and enter the service of Henry VIII. The Renaissance was now
+beginning to penetrate the nations of the North, and Henry and Francis
+vied with each other in trying to attract foreign artists to their
+capitals. It does not, however, appear that the English king secured the
+services of men so distinguished as Lionardo da Vinci, II Rosso,
+Primaticcio, Del Sarto, and Cellini, who shed an artificial lustre on the
+Court of France. Going to London then was worse than going to Russia now,
+and to take up a lengthy residence among _questi diavoli ... quelle bestie
+di quegli Inglesi_, as Cellini politely calls the English, did not suit a
+Southern taste. He had, moreover, private reasons for disliking
+Torrigiani, who boasted of having broken Michael Angelo's nose in a
+quarrel. "His words," says Cellini, "raised in me such a hatred of the
+fellow that, far from wishing to accompany him to England, I could not
+bear to look at him." It may be mentioned that one of Cellini's best
+points was hero-worship for Michael Angelo. He never speaks of him except
+as _quel divino Michel Agnolo, il mio maestro_, and extols _la bella
+maniera_ of the mighty sculptor to the skies. Torrigiani, as far as we can
+gather from Cellini's description of him, must have been a man of his own
+kidney and complexion: "he was handsome, of consummate assurance, having
+rather the airs of a bravo than a sculptor; above all, his fierce gestures
+and his sonorous voice, with a peculiar manner of knitting his brows, were
+enough to frighten everyone that saw him; and he was continually talking
+of his valiant feats among those bears of Englishmen." The story of
+Torrigiani's death in Spain is worth repeating. A grandee employed him to
+model a Madonna, which he did with more than usual care, expecting a great
+reward. His pay, however, falling short of is expectation, in a fit of
+fury he knocked his statue to pieces. For this act of sacrilege, as it was
+deemed, to the work of his own brain and hand, Torrigiani was thrown into
+the dungeons of the Inquisition. There he starved himself to death in 1522
+in order to escape the fate of being burned. This story helps to explain
+why the fine arts were never well developed in Spain, and why they
+languished after the introduction of the Holy Office into Italy.[351]
+
+Instead of emigrating to England, Benvenuto, after a quarrel with his
+father about the obnoxious flute-playing, sauntered out one morning toward
+the gate of S. Piero Gattolini. There he met a friend called Tasso, who
+had also quarrelled with his parents; and the two youths agreed, upon the
+moment, to set off for Rome. Both were nineteen years of age. Singing and
+laughing, carrying their bundle by turns, and wondering "what the old
+folks would say," they trudged on foot to Siena, there hired a return
+horse between them, and so came to Rome. This residence in Rome only
+lasted two years, which were spent by Cellini in the employment of various
+masters. At the expiration of that time he returned to Florence, and
+distinguished himself by the making of a marriage girdle for a certain
+Raffaello Lapaccini.[352] The fame of this and other pieces of jewellery
+roused against him the envy and malice of the elder goldsmiths, and led to
+a serious fray, in the course of which he assaulted a young man of the
+Guasconti family, and was obliged to fly disguised like a monk to Rome.
+
+As this is the first of Cellini's homicidal quarrels, it is worth while to
+transcribe what he says about it. "One day as I was leaning against the
+shop of these Guasconti, and talking with them, they contrived that a load
+of bricks should pass by at the moment, and Gherardo Guasconti pushed it
+against me in such wise that it hurt me. Turning suddenly and seeing that
+he was laughing, I struck him so hard upon the temple that he fell down
+stunned. Then turning to his cousins, I said, That is how I treat cowardly
+thieves like you; and when they began to show fight, being many together,
+I, finding myself on flame, set hand to a little knife I had, and cried,
+If one of you leaves the shop, let another run for the confessor, for a
+surgeon won't find anything to do here." Nor was he contented with this
+truculent behaviour; for when Gherardo recovered from his blow, and the
+matter had come before the magistrates, Cellini went to seek him in his
+own house. There he stabbed him in the midst of all his family, raging
+meanwhile, to use his own phrase, "like an infuriated bull."[353] It
+appears that on this occasion no one was seriously hurt; but the affair
+proved perilous to Cellini, since it was a mere accident that he had not
+killed more than one of the Guasconti. These affrays recur continually
+among the adventures recorded by Cellini in his Life. He says with comical
+reservation of phrase that he was "naturally somewhat choleric;" and then,
+describes the access of his fury as a sort of fever, lasting for days,
+preventing him from taking food or sleep, making his blood boil in his
+veins, inflaming his eyes, and never suffering him to rest till he
+revenged himself by murder or at least by blows. To enumerate all the
+people he killed or wounded, or pounded to a jelly in public brawls or
+private quarrels, in the pursuit of deliberate _vendetta_ or under a
+sudden impulse of ungovernable rage, would take too long. We are forced by
+an effort to recall to mind the state of society at that time in Italy, in
+order to understand how it is that he can talk with unconcern and even
+self-complacency about his homicides. He makes himself accuser, judge, and
+executioner, and is quite satisfied with the goodness of his cause, the
+justice of his sentence, and the equity of his administration. In a sonnet
+written to Bandinelli, he compares his own victims with the mangled
+statues of that sculptor, much to his own satisfaction.[354]
+
+There is the same callousness of conscience in his record of spiteful acts
+that we should blush to think of--stabs in the dark, and such a piece of
+revenge as cutting the beds to bits in the house of an innkeeper who had
+offended him.[355] Nor does he speak with any shame of the savage cruelty
+with which he punished a woman who was sitting to him as a model, and whom
+he hauled up and down his room by the hair of her head, kicking and
+beating her till he was tired.[356] It is true that on this occasion he
+regrets having spoiled, in a moment of blind passion, the best arms and
+legs that he could find to draw from. Such episodes, to which it is
+impossible to allude otherwise than very briefly, illustrate with
+extraordinary vividness what I have already had occasion to say about the
+Italian sense of honour at this period.[357]
+
+The consciousness of physical courage and the belief in his own moral
+superiority sustained Cellini in all his dangers and in all his crimes.
+Armed with his sword and dagger, and protected by his coat of mail, he was
+ready to stand against the world and fight his way towards any object he
+desired. When a man opposed his schemes or entered into competition with
+him as an artist, he swaggered up with hand on hilt and threatened to run
+him through the body if he did not mind his business. At the same time he
+attributes the success of his own violence in quelling and maltreating
+his opponents to the providence of God. "I do not write this narrative,"
+he says, "from a motive of vanity, but merely to return thanks to God, who
+has extricated me out of so many trials and difficulties; who likewise
+delivers me from those that daily impend over me. Upon all occasions I pay
+my devotions to Him, call upon Him as my defender, and recommend myself to
+His care. I always exert my utmost efforts to extricate myself, but when I
+am quite at a loss, and all my powers fail me, then the force of the Deity
+displays itself--that formidable force which, unexpectedly, strikes those
+who wrong and oppress others, and neglect the great and honourable duty
+which God has enjoined on them." I shall have occasion later on to discuss
+Cellini's religious opinions; but here it may be remarked that the feeling
+of this passage is thoroughly sincere and consistent with the spirit of
+the times. The separation between religion and morality was complete in
+Italy.[358] Men made their own God and worshipped him; and the God of
+Cellini was one who always helped those who began to help themselves by
+taking justice into their own hands.
+
+From the date of his second visit to Rome in 1523, Cellini's life divides
+itself into three periods, the first spent in the service of Popes Clement
+VII. and Paul III., the second in Paris at the Court of Francis, and the
+third at Florence under Cosimo de' Medici.
+
+On arriving in Rome, his extraordinary abilities soon brought him into
+notice at the Court. The Chigi family, the Bishop of Salamanca, and the
+Pope himself employed him to make various jewels, ornaments, and services
+of plate. In consequence of a dream in which his father appeared and
+warned him not to neglect music, under pain of the paternal malediction,
+he accepted a post in the Papal band. The old bugbear of flute-playing
+followed him until his father's death, and then we hear no more of it. The
+history of this portion of his life is among the most entertaining
+passages of his biography. Drawing the Roman ruins, shooting pigeons,
+scouring the Campagna on a pony like a shaggy bear, fighting duels,
+prosecuting love-affairs, defending his shop against robbers, skirmishing
+with Moorish pirates on the shore by Cerveterra, stabbing, falling ill of
+the plague and the French sickness--these adventures diversify the account
+he gives of masterpieces in gold and silver ware. The literary and
+artistic society of Rome at this period was very brilliant. Painters,
+sculptors, and goldsmiths mixed with scholars and poets, passing their
+time alternately in the palaces of dukes and cardinals and in the lodgings
+of gay women. Bohemianism of the wildest type was combined with the
+manners of the great world. A little incident described at some length by
+Cellini brings this varied life before us. There was a club of artists,
+including Giulio Romano and other pupils of Raphael, who met twice a week
+to sup together and to spend the evening in conversation, with music and
+the recitation of sonnets. Each member of this company brought with him a
+lady. Cellini, on one occasion, not being provided for the moment with an
+_innamorata_, dressed up a beautiful Spanish youth called Diego as a
+woman, and took him to the supper. The ensuing scene is described in the
+most vivid manner. We see before us the band of painters and poets, the
+women in their bright costumes, the table adorned with flowers and fruit,
+and, as a background to the whole picture, a trellis of jasmines with dark
+foliage and starry blossoms. Diego, called Pomona, with regard doubtless
+to his dark and ruddy beauty, is unanimously proclaimed the fairest of the
+fair. Then a discovery of his sex is made; and the adventure leads, as
+usual in the doings of Cellini, to daggers, midnight ambushes, and
+vendettas that only end with bloodshed.
+
+An episode of this sort may serve as the occasion for observing that the
+artists of the late Renaissance had become absorbed in the admiration of
+merely carnal beauty. With the exception of Michael Angelo and Tintoretto,
+there was no great master left who still pursued an intellectual ideal.
+The Romans and the Venetians simply sought and painted what was splendid
+and luxurious in the world around them. Their taste was contented with
+well-developed muscles, gorgeous colour, youthful bloom, activity of limb,
+and grace of outline. The habits of the day, voluptuous yet hardy,
+fostered this one-sided development of the arts; while the asceticism of
+the Middle Ages had yielded to a pagan cult of sensuality. To draw _un bel
+corpo ignudo_ with freedom was now the _ne plus ultra_ of achievement. How
+to express thought or to indicate the subtleties of emotion, had ceased to
+be the artist's aim. We have already noticed the passionate love of beauty
+which animated the great masters of the golden age. This, in the less
+elevated natures of the craftsmen who succeeded them, and under the
+conditions of advancing national corruption, was no longer refined or
+restrained by delicacy of feeling or by loftiness of aim. It degenerated
+into soulless animalism. The capacity for perceiving and for reproducing
+what is nobly beautiful was lost. Vulgarity and coarseness stamped
+themselves upon the finest work of men like Giulio Romano. At this crisis
+it was proved how inferior was the neo-paganism of the sixteenth century
+to the paganism of antiquity it aped. Mythology preserved Greek art from
+degradation, and connected a similar enthusiasm for corporeal beauty with
+the thoughts and aspirations of the Hellenic race. The Italians lacked
+this safeguard of a natural religion. To throw the Christian ideal aside,
+and to strive to grasp the classical ideal in exchange, was easy. But
+paganism alone could give them nothing but its vices; it was incapable of
+communicating its real source of life--its poetry, its faith, its cult of
+nature. Art, therefore, as soon as the artists pronounced themselves for
+sensuality, merged in a skilful selection and reproduction of elegant
+forms, and nothing more. A handsome youth upon a pedestal was called a
+god. A duke's mistress on Titian's canvas passed for Aphrodite. Andrea del
+Sarto's faithless wife figured as Madonna. Cellini himself, though
+sensitive to every kind of physical beauty--as we gather from what he
+tells us of Cencio, Diego, Faustina, Paolino, Angelica, Ascanio--has not
+attempted to animate his "Perseus," or his "Ganymede," or his "Diana of
+Fontainebleau," with a vestige of intellectual or moral loveliness. The
+vacancy of their expression proves the degradation of an art that had
+ceased to idealise anything beyond a faultless body. Not thus did the
+Greeks imagine even their most sensual divinities. There is at least a
+thought in Faun and Satyr. Cellini's statues have no thought; their blank
+animalism corresponds to the condition of their maker's soul.[359]
+
+When Rome was carried by assault in 1527, and the Papal Court was besieged
+in the castle of S. Angelo, Cellini played the part of bombardier. It is
+well known that he claims to have shot the Constable of Bourbon dead with
+his own hand, and to have wounded the Prince of Orange; nor does there
+seem to be any adequate reason for discrediting his narrative. It is
+certain that he was an expert marksman, and that he did Clement good
+service by directing the artillery of S. Angelo. If we believed all his
+assertions, however, we should have to suppose that nothing memorable
+happened without his intervention. In his own eyes his whole life was a
+miracle. The very hailstones that fell upon his head could not be grasped
+in both hands. His guns and powder brought down birds no other marksman
+had a chance of hitting. When he was a child, he grasped a scorpion
+without injury, and saw a salamander "living and enjoying himself in the
+hottest flames." After his fever at Rome in 1535, he threw off from his
+stomach a hideous worm--hairy, speckled with green, black, and red--the
+like whereof the doctors never saw.[360] When he finally escaped from the
+dungeons of S. Angelo in 1539, a luminous appearance like an aureole
+settled on his head, and stayed there for the rest of his life.[361] These
+facts are related in the true spirit of Jerome Cardan, Paracelsus, Lord
+Herbert of Cherbury, and Sir Thomas Browne. Cellini doubtless believed in
+them; but they warn us to be cautious in accepting what he says about his
+exploits, since imagination and self-conceit could so far distort his
+judgment.
+
+It may be regretted that Cellini has not given a fuller account of the
+memorable sack of Borne. Yet, confining himself almost wholly to his own
+adventures, he presents a very vivid picture of the sad life led by the
+Pope and cardinals, vainly hoping for succour from Urbino, wrangling
+together about the causes of the tragedy, sewing the crown jewels into
+their doublets, and running the perils of the siege with common soldiers
+on the ramparts. When peace at last was signed, Cellini paid a visit to
+Florence, and found that his father and some other relatives had died of
+plague.[362] His brother Cecchino, however, who was a soldier in the Bande
+Nere of Giovanni de' Medici, and his sister Liperata survived. With them
+he spent a pleasant evening; for Liperata having "for a while lamented her
+father, her sister, her husband, and a little son that she had been
+deprived of, went to prepare supper, and during the rest of the evening
+there was not a word more spoken of the dead, but much about weddings.
+Thus we supped together with the greatest cheerfulness and satisfaction
+imaginable." In these sentences there is no avowal of hard-heartedness;
+only the careless familiarity with loss and danger, engendered by war,
+famine, plague, and personal adventures in those riotous times.[363]
+Cellini gladly risked his life in a quarrel for his friends; but he would
+not sadden the present by reflecting on inevitable accidents. This elastic
+temper permeates his character. His affections were strong, but transient.
+The one serious love-affair he describes, among a multitude of mere
+debaucheries, made him miserable for a few days. His mistress, Angelica,
+ran away, and left him "on the point of losing his senses or dying of
+grief." Yet, when he found her again, a short time sufficed to satisfy his
+longing, and he turned his back with jibes upon her when she bargained
+about money.
+
+It is worthy of notice that, at the same time, he was an excellent son and
+brother. His sister was left a widow with two children; whereupon he took
+them all into his house, without bragging about what appears to have been
+the best action of his life. In the same spirit he conscientiously
+performed what he conceived to be his duty to Cecchino, murdered by a
+musketeer in Rome. After nursing his revenge till he was nearly mad, he
+stole out one evening and stabbed the murderer in the back.[364] So
+violent was the blow that he could not extricate his dagger from the man's
+spine, but had to leave it sticking in his nape. Next to his own egotism
+the strongest feelings in Cellini were domestic; and he showed them at one
+moment by charity to his sister's family, at another by a savage
+assassination.
+
+After killing the musketeer, Cellini retired for refuge to the house of
+Alessandro de' Medici, Duke of Cività di Penna, who had been his brother's
+patron. The matter reached the Pope's ears, for whom Benvenuto was at work
+upon crown jewels. Clement sent for him, and simply said: "Now you have
+recovered your health, Benvenuto, take care of yourself." This shows how
+little they thought of homicide in Rome. After killing a man, some
+powerful protector had to be sought, who was usually a cardinal, since the
+cardinals had right of sanctuary in their palaces. There the assassin lay
+in hiding, in order to avoid his victim's friends and relatives, until
+such time as a pardon and safe-conduct and absolution had been obtained
+from his Holiness. When Cellini, soon after this occurrence, stabbed a
+private enemy, by name Pompeo, two cardinals were anxious to screen him
+from pursuit, and disputed the privilege of harbouring so talented a
+criminal.[365] The Pope, with marvellous good-humour, observed: "I have
+never heard of the death of Pompeo, but often of Benvenuto's provocation;
+so let a safe-conduct be instantly made out, and that will secure him from
+all manner of danger." A friend of Pompeo's who was present, ventured to
+insinuate that this was dangerous policy. The Pope put him down at once by
+saying, "You do not understand these matters; I would have you know that
+men who are unique in their profession, like Benvenuto, are not subject to
+the laws." Whether Paul really said these words, may be doubted; but it is
+clear that much was conceded to a clever workman, and that the laws were a
+mere _brutum fulmen_. No man of spirit appealed to them. Cellini, for
+example, was poisoned by a parish priest near Florence:[366] yet he never
+brought the man to justice; and in the case of his own murders, he only
+dreaded the retaliation of his victims' kinsmen. On one occasion, indeed,
+the civil arm came down upon him; when the city guard attempted to arrest
+him for Pompeo's assassination. He beat them off with swords and sticks;
+and, after all, it appeared that they were only acting at the instigation
+of Pier Luigi Farnese, whom Benvenuto had offended.
+
+During his residence at Rome, Cellini witnessed an incantation conducted
+in the Colosseum by a Sicilian priest and necromancer. The conjurer and
+the artist, accompanied by two friends, and by a boy, who was to act as
+medium, went by night to the amphitheatre. The magic circle was drawn;
+fires were lighted, and perfumes scattered on the flames. Then the
+spirit-seer began his charms, calling in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, or what
+passed for such, upon the leaders of the hosts of hell. The whole hollow
+space now filled with phantoms, surging up by legions, rushing down from
+the galleries, issuing from subterranean caverns, and wheeling to and fro
+with signs of fury. All the party, says Cellini, were thrown into
+consternation, except himself, who, though terribly afraid, kept up the
+fainting spirits of the rest. At last the conjurer summoned courage to
+inquire when Cellini might hope to be restored to his lost love,
+Angelica;--for this was the trivial object of the incantation. The demons
+answered (how we are not told) that he would meet her ere a month had
+passed away. This prophecy, as it happened, was fulfilled. Then they
+redoubled their attacks; the necromancer kept crying out that the peril
+was most imminent, until the matin bells of Rome swung through the
+darkness, freeing them at last from fear. As they walked home, the boy,
+holding the Sicilian by his robe and Benvenuto by his mantle, told them
+that he still saw giants leaping with fantastic gestures on their path,
+now running along the house roofs, and now dancing on the earth. Each one
+of them that night dreamed in his bed of devils.[367]
+
+The interest of this incident is almost wholly picturesque. It throws but
+little light upon the superstitions of the age.[368] The magnitude of the
+Colosseum, the popular legends concerning its magical origin, and the
+terrible uses of blood to which it had been put, invested this building
+with peculiar mystery. Robbers haunted the huge caves. Rubbish and weeds
+choked the passages. Sickly trees soared up from darkness into light among
+the porches, and the moon peered through the empty vomitories. If we call
+imagination to our aid, and place the necromancers and their brazier in
+the centre of this space;--if we fancy the priest's chaunted spells, the
+sacred names invoked in his unholy rites, the shuddering terror of the
+conscience-stricken accomplices, and Cellini with defiant mien but
+quailing heart, we can well believe that he saw more than the amphitheatre
+contained. Whether the spectres were projected by the conjurer from a
+magic lantern on the smoke that issued from his heaps of blazing wood, so
+that the volumes of vapour, agitated by the wind and rolling in thick
+spirals, showed them retreating and advancing, and varying in shape and
+number, is a matter for conjecture. Cellini firmly believed that he had
+been environed by living squadrons of the spirits of the damned.
+
+The next four years were spent by Cellini chiefly in Rome, in peril of his
+life at several seasons, owing to the animosity of Pier Luigi Farnese. One
+journey he took at this period to Venice, passing through Ferrara, where
+he came to blows with the Florentine exiles. It is interesting to find the
+respectable historian Jacopo Nardi involved, if only as a peacemaker, in
+this affray.[369] He also visited Florence and cast dies for Alessandro's
+silver coinage. It was here that he found opportunities of observing the
+perilous intimacy between the Duke of Cività di Penna and his
+cousin--_quel pazzo malinconico filosofo di Lorenzino._[370] In April
+1537, having quarrelled with the Pope, who seems to have adopted Pier
+Luigi's prejudice against him, Cellini set out for France with two of his
+workmen. They passed through Florence, Bologna, Venice, and Padua, staying
+in the last place to model a medallion portrait of Pietro Bembo;[371] then
+they crossed the Grisons by the Bernina and Albula passes. We hear nothing
+about this part of the journey, except that the snow was heavy, and that
+they ran great danger of their lives. Cellini must have traversed some of
+the most romantic scenery of Switzerland at the best season of the year;
+yet not a word escapes him about the beauty of the Alps or the wonder of
+the glaciers, which he saw for the first time. The pleasure we derive from
+contemplating savage scenery was unknown to the Italians of the sixteenth
+century; the height and cold, the gloom and solitude of mountains struck
+them with a sense of terror or of dreariness. On the Lake of Wallenstadt
+Cellini met with a party of Germans, whom he hated as cordially as an
+Athenian of the age of Pericles might have loathed the Scythians for their
+barbarism.[372] The Italians embarked in one boat, the Germans in
+another; Cellini being under the impression that the Northern lakes would
+not be so likely to drown him as those of his own country. However, when a
+storm swept down the hills, he took a terrible fright, and compelled the
+boatmen at the point of the poniard to put him and his company ashore. The
+description of their struggles to drag their heavily laden horses over the
+uneven ground near Wesen, is extremely graphic, and gives a good notion of
+the dangers of the road in those days.[373] That night they "heard the
+watch sing at all hours very agreeably; and as the houses of that town
+were all of wood, he kept bidding them to take care of their fires." Next
+day they arrived, not without other accidents, at Zurich, "a marvellous
+city, as clear and polished as a jewel." Thence by Solothurn, Lausanne,
+Geneva, and Lyons, they made their way to Paris.
+
+This long and troublesome journey led to nothing, for Cellini grew weary
+of following the French Court about from place to place; his health too
+failed him, and he decided that he would rather die in Italy than
+France.[374] Accordingly he returned to Rome, and there, not long after
+his arrival, he was arrested by the order of Pope Paul III.[375] The
+charge against him, preferred by one of his own prentices, was this.
+During the siege of Rome, he had been employed by Clement to melt down the
+tiaras and papal ornaments, in order that the precious stones might be
+conveyed away in secrecy. He did so; and afterwards confessed to having
+kept a portion of the gold filings found in the cinders of his brazier
+during the operation. For this crime Clement gave him absolution.[376]
+Now, however, he was accused of having stolen gold and jewels to the
+amount of nearly eighty thousand ducats. "The avarice of the Pope, but
+more that of his bastard, then called Duke of Castro," inclined Paul to
+believe this charge; and Pier Luigi was allowed to farm the case. Cellini
+was examined by the Governor of Rome and two assessors; in spite of his
+vehement protestations of innocence, the absence of any evidence against
+him, and the sound arguments adduced in his defence, he was committed to
+the castle of S. Angelo. When he received his sentence, he called heaven
+and earth to witness, thanking God that he had "the happiness not to be
+confined for some error of his sinful nature, as generally happens to
+young men." Whereupon "the brute of a Governor replied, Yet you have
+killed enough men in your time." This remark was pertinent; but it
+provoked a torrent of abuse and a long enumeration of his services from
+the virtuous Cellini.
+
+The account of this imprisonment, and especially of the hypochondriacal
+Governor who thought he was a bat and used to flap his arms and squeak
+when night was coming on, is highly entertaining.[377] Not less
+interesting is the description of Cellini's daring escape from the castle.
+In climbing over the last wall, he fell and broke his leg, and was carried
+by a waterman to the palace of the Cardinal Cornaro. There he lay in
+hiding, visited by all the rank and fashion of Rome, who were not a little
+curious to see the hero of so perilous an escapade. Cornaro promised to
+secure his pardon, but eventually exchanged him for a bishopric. This
+remarkable proceeding illustrates the manners of the Papal Court. The
+cardinal wanted a benefice for one of his followers, and the Pope wished
+to get his son's enemy once more into his power. So the two ecclesiastics
+bargained together, and by mutual kind offices attained their several
+ends.
+
+Cellini with his broken leg went back to languish in his prison. He found
+the flighty Governor furious because he had "flown away," eluding his
+bat's eyes and wings. The rigour used towards him made him dread the worst
+extremities. Cast into a condemned cell, he first expected to be flayed
+alive; and when this terror was removed, he perceived the crystals of a
+pounded jewel in his food. According to his own account of this mysterious
+circumstance, Messer Durante Duranti of Brescia, one of Cellini's numerous
+enemies, had given a diamond of small value to be broken up and mixed with
+a salad served to him at dinner. The jeweller to whom this charge was
+entrusted, kept the diamond and substituted a beryl, thinking that the
+inferior stone would have the same murderous properties. To the avarice of
+this man Cellini attributed his escape from a lingering death by
+inflammation of the mucous membrane.[378]
+
+During his first imprisonment he had occupied a fair chamber in the upper
+turret of the castle. He was now removed to a dungeon below ground where
+Fra Fojano, the reformer, had been starved to death. The floor was wet and
+infested with crawling creatures. A few reflected sunbeams slanting from a
+narrow window for two hours of the afternoon, was all the light that
+reached him. Here he lay, alone, unable to move because of his broken leg,
+with his hair and teeth falling away, and with nothing to occupy him but a
+Bible and a volume of Villani's "Chronicles." His spirit, however, was
+indomitable; and the passionate energy of the man, hitherto manifested in
+ungoverned acts of fury, took the form of ecstasy. He began the study of
+the Bible from the first chapter of Genesis, and trusting firmly to the
+righteousness of his own cause, compared himself to all the saints and
+martyrs of Scripture, men of whom the world was not worthy. He sang
+psalms, prayed continually, and composed a poem in praise of his prison.
+With a piece of charcoal he made a great drawing of angels surrounding God
+the Father on the wall. Once only his courage gave way: he determined on
+suicide, and so placed a beam that it should fall on him like a trap. When
+all was ready, an unseen hand took violent hold of him, and dashed him on
+the ground at a considerable distance. From this moment his dungeon was
+visited by angels, who healed his broken leg, and reasoned with him of
+religion.
+
+The mention of these visions reminds us that Cellini had become acquainted
+with Savonarola's writings during his first imprisonment.[379] Impressed
+with the grandeur of the prophet's dreams, and exalted by the reading of
+the Bible, he no doubt mistook his delirious fancies for angelic visitors,
+and in the fervour of his enthusiasm laid claim to inspiration. One of
+these hallucinations is particularly striking. He had prayed that he might
+see the sun at least in trance, if it were impossible that he should look
+on it again with waking eyes. But, while awake and in possession of his
+senses, he was hurried suddenly away and carried to a room, where the
+invisible power sustaining him appeared in human shape, "like a youth
+whose beard is but just growing, with a face most marvellous, fair, but of
+austere and far from wanton beauty." In that room were all the men who had
+ever lived and died on earth; and thence they two went together, and came
+into a narrow street, one side whereof was bright with sunlight. Then
+Cellini asked the angel how he might behold the sun; and the angel pointed
+to certain steps upon the side of a house. Up these Cellini climbed, and
+came into the full blaze of the sun, and, though dazzled by its
+brightness, he gazed steadfastly and took his fill. While he looked, the
+rays fell away upon the left side and the disk shone like a bath of molten
+gold. This surface swelled, and from the glory came the figure of a
+Christ upon the cross, which moved and stood beside the rays. Again the
+surface swelled, and from the glory came the figure of Madonna and her
+Child; and at the right hand of the sun there knelt S. Peter in his
+sacerdotal robes, pleading Cellini's cause; and "full of shame that such
+foul wrong should be done to Christians in his house." This vision
+marvellously strengthened Cellini's soul, and he began to hope with
+confidence for liberty. When free again, he modelled the figures he had
+seen in gold.
+
+The religious phase in Cellini's history requires some special comment,
+since it is precisely at this point that he most faithfully personifies
+the spirit of his age and nation. That he was a devout Catholic there is
+no question. He made two pilgrimages to Loreto, and another to S. Francis
+of Vernia. To S. Lucy he dedicated a golden eye after his recovery from an
+illness. He was, moreover, always anxious to get absolution from the Pope.
+More than this; he continually sustained himself at the great crises of
+his life, when in peril of imprisonment, while defending himself against
+assassins, and again on the eve of casting his "Perseus," by direct and
+passionate appeals to God. Yet his religion had but little effect upon his
+life; and he often used it as a source of moral strength in doing deeds
+repugnant to real piety. Like love, he put it off and on quite easily,
+reverting to it when he found himself in danger or bad spirits, and
+forgetting it again when he was prosperous. Thus in the dungeon of S.
+Angelo he vowed to visit the Holy Sepulchre if God would grant him to
+behold the sun. This vow he forgot until he met with disappointment at the
+Court of Francis, and then he suddenly determined to travel to Jerusalem.
+The offer of a salary of seven hundred crowns restored his spirits, and he
+thought no more about his vow.
+
+While he loved his life so dearly and indulged so freely in the pleasures
+of this earth, he made a virtue of necessity as soon as death approached,
+crying, "The sooner I am delivered from the prison of this world, the
+better; especially as I am sure of salvation, being unjustly put to
+death." His good opinion of himself extended to the certainty he felt of
+heaven. Forgetting his murders and debaucheries, he sustained his courage
+with devotion when all other sources failed. As to the divine government
+of the world, he halted between two opinions. Whether the stars or
+Providence had the upper hand, he could not clearly say; but by the stars
+he understood a power antagonistic to his will, by Providence a force that
+helped him to do what he liked. There is a similar confusion in his mind
+about the Pope. He goes to Clement submissively for absolution from
+homicide and theft, saying, "I am at the feet of your Holiness, who have
+the full power of absolving, and I request you to give me permission to
+confess and communicate, that I may with your favour be restored to the
+divine grace." He also tells Paul that the sight of Christ's vicar, in
+whom there is an awful representation of the divine Majesty, makes him
+tremble. Yet at another time he speaks of Clement being "transformed to a
+savage beast," and talks of him as "that poor man Pope Clement."[380] Of
+Paul he says that he "believed neither in God nor in any other article of
+religion;" he sincerely regrets not having killed him by accident during
+the siege of Rome, abuses him for his avarice, casts his bastards in his
+teeth, and relates with relish the crime of forgery for which in his youth
+he was imprisoned in the castle of S. Angelo.[381] Indeed, the Italians
+treated the Pope as negroes treat their fetishes. If they had cause to
+dislike him, they beat and heaped insults on him--like the Florentines who
+described Sixtus IV. as "leno matris suae, adulterorum minister, diaboli
+vicarius," and his spiritual offspring as "simonia, luxus, homicidium,
+proditio, haeresis." On the other hand, they really thought that he could
+open heaven and shut the gates of hell.
+
+At the end of the year 1539, the Cardinal Ippolito d'Este appeared in Rome
+with solicitations from Francis I. that the Pope would release Cellini and
+allow him to enter his service.[382] Upon this the prison door was opened.
+Cellini returned to his old restless life of violence and pleasure. We
+find him renewing his favourite pastimes--killing, wantoning, disputing
+with his employers, and working diligently at his trade. The temporary
+saint and visionary becomes once more the bravo and the artist. A more
+complete parallel to the consequences of revivalism in Italy could not be
+found.[383] Meanwhile the first period of his history is closed and the
+second begins.
+
+Cellini's account of his residence in France has much historical interest
+besides the charm of its romance. When he first joined the Court, he found
+Francis travelling from city to city with a retinue of eighteen thousand
+persons and twelve thousand horses. Frequently they came to places where
+no accommodation could be had, and the suite were lodged in wretched
+tents. It is not wonderful that Cellini should complain of the French
+being less civilised than the Italians of his time. Francis among his
+ladies and courtiers, pretending to a knowledge of the arts, sauntering
+with his splendid train into the goldsmith's workshop, encouraging
+Cellini's violence with a boyish love of mischief, vain and flattered,
+peevish, petulant, and fond of show, appears upon these pages with a
+life-like vividness.[384] When the time came for settling in Paris, the
+King presented his goldsmith with a castle called Le Petit Nesle, and made
+him lord thereof by letters of naturalisation. This house stood where the
+Institute has since been built; of its extent we may judge from the number
+of occupations carried on within its precincts when Cellini entered into
+possession. He found there a tennis-court, a distillery, a printing press,
+and a factory of saltpetre, besides residents engaged in other trades.
+Cellini's claims were resisted. Probably the occupiers did not relish the
+intrusion of a foreigner. So he stormed the place and installed himself by
+force of arms. Similar violence was needed in order to maintain himself in
+possession; but this Cellini loved, and had he been let alone, it is
+probable he would have died of _ennui_.
+
+Difficulties of all kinds, due in part to his ungovernable temper, in part
+to his ill-regulated life, in part to his ignorance of French habits,
+gathered round him. He fell into disfavour with Madame d'Estampes, the
+mistress of the King; and here it may be mentioned that many of his
+troubles arose from his inability to please noble women.[385] Proud,
+self-confident, overbearing, and unable to command his words or actions,
+Cellini was unfitted to pay court to princes. Then again he quarrelled
+with his brother artists, and made the Bolognese painter, Primaticcio, his
+enemy. After being attacked by assassins and robbers on more than one
+occasion, he was involved in two lawsuits. He draws a graphic picture of
+the French courts of justice, with their judge as grave as Plato, their
+advocates all chattering at once, their perjured Norman witnesses, and the
+ushers at the doors vociferating _Paix, paix, Satan, allez, paix_. In this
+cry Cellini recognised the gibberish at the beginning of the seventh
+canto of Dante's "Inferno." But the most picturesque group in the whole
+scene presented to us is that made by Cellini himself, armed and mailed,
+and attended by his prentices in armour, as they walked into the court to
+browbeat justice with the clamour of their voice. If we are to trust his
+narrative, he fought his way out of one most dangerous trial by simple
+vociferation. Afterwards he took the law, as usual, into his own hands.
+One pair of litigants were beaten; Caterina was nearly kicked to death;
+and the attorneys were threatened with the sword.
+
+In the midst of these disturbances, Cellini began some important works for
+Francis. At Paris the King employed him to make huge silver candelabra,
+and at Fontainebleau to restore the castle gate. For the château of
+Fontainebleau Cellini executed the nymph in bronze, reclining among
+trophies of the chase, which may still be seen in the Louvre. It is a
+long-limbed, lifeless figure, without meaning--a snuff-box ornament
+enlarged to a gigantic size. Francis, who cannot have had good taste in
+art, if what Cellini makes him say be genuine, admired these designs above
+the bronze copies of the Vatican marbles he had recently received. He
+seems to have felt some personal regard for Benvenuto, and to have done
+all he could to retain him in his service. The animosity of Madame
+d'Estampes, and a grudge against his old patron, Ippolito d'Este, however,
+determined the restless craftsman to quit Paris. Leaving his castle, his
+unfinished works, and other property behind him in the care of Ascanio,
+his friend and pupil, he returned alone to Italy. This step, taken in a
+moment of restless pique, was ever after regretted by Cellini, who looked
+back with yearning from Florence to the generosity of Francis.
+
+Cosimo de' Medici was indeed a very different patron from Francis.
+Cautious, little-minded, meddling, with a true Florentine's love of
+bargaining and playing cunning tricks, he pretended to protect the arts,
+but did not understand the part he had assumed. He was always short of
+money, and surrounded by old avaricious servants, through whose hands his
+meagre presents passed. As a connoisseur, he did not trust his own
+judgment, thus laying himself open to the intrigues of inferior artists.
+Henceforward a large part of Cellini's time was wasted in wrangling with
+the Duke's steward, squabbling with Bandinelli and Ammanati, and
+endeavouring to overcome the coldness or to meet the vacillations of his
+patron. Those who wish to gain insight into the life of an artist at Court
+in the sixteenth century, will do well to study attentively the chapters
+devoted by Cellini to his difficulties with the Duchess, and his wordy
+warfares with Bandinelli.[386] This atmosphere of intrigue and animosity
+was not uncongenial to Benvenuto; and as far as words and blows went, he
+almost always got the best of it. Nothing, for example, could be keener
+and more cutting than the very just criticism he made in Bandinelli's
+presence of his "Hercules and Cacus." "Quel bestial buaccio Bandinello,"
+as he delights to name him, could do nothing but retort with vulgar terms
+of insult.[387]
+
+The great achievement of this third period was the modelling and casting
+of the "Perseus." No episode in Cellini's biography is narrated with more
+force than the climax to his long-protracted labours, when at last, amid
+the chaos and confusion of innumerable accidents, the metal in his furnace
+liquefied and filled the mould. After the statue was uncovered in the
+Loggia de' Lanzi, where it now stands, Cellini achieved a triumph
+adequate to his own highest expectations. Odes and sonnets in Italian,
+Greek, and Latin, were written in its praise. Pontormo and Bronzino, the
+painters, loaded it with compliments. Cellini, ruffling with hand on hilt
+in silks and satins through the square, was pointed out to foreigners as
+the great sculptor who had cast the admirable bronze. It was, in truth, no
+slight distinction for a Florentine artist to erect a statue beneath the
+Loggia de' Lanzi in the square of the Signory. Every great event in
+Florentine history had taken place on that piazza. Every name of
+distinction among the citizens of Florence was connected with its
+monuments. To this day we may read the course of Florentine art by
+studying its architecture and sculpture; and not the least of its many
+ornaments, in spite of all that may be said against it, is the "Perseus"
+of Cellini.
+
+Cellini completed the "Perseus" in 1554. His autobiography is carried down
+to the year 1562, when it abruptly terminates. It appears that in 1558 he
+received the tonsure and the first ecclesiastical orders; but two years
+later on he married a wife, and died at the age of sixty-nine, leaving
+three legitimate children. He was buried honourably, and a funeral oration
+was pronounced above his bier in the Chapter House of the Annunziata.
+
+As a man, Cellini excites more interest than as an artist; and for this
+reason I have refrained from entering into minute criticism of his few
+remaining masterpieces. It has been well said that the two extremes of
+society, the statesman and the craftsman, find their point of meeting in
+Machiavelli and Cellini, inasmuch as both recognise no moral authority but
+the individual will.[388] The _virtù_, extolled by Machiavelli is
+exemplified by Cellini. Machiavelli bids his prince ignore the laws;
+Cellini respects no tribunal and takes justice into his own hands. The
+word conscience does not occur in Machiavelli's phraseology of ethics;
+conscience never makes a coward of Cellini, and in the dungeons of S.
+Angelo he is visited by no remorse. If we seek a literary parallel for the
+statesman and the artist in their idealisation of force and personal
+character, we find it in Pietro Aretino. In him, too, conscience is
+extinct; for him, also, there is no respect of King or Pope; he has placed
+himself above law, and substituted his own will for justice. With his pen,
+as Cellini with his dagger, he assassinates; his cynicism serves him for a
+coat of armour. And so abject is society, so natural has tyranny become,
+that he extorts blackmail from monarchs, makes princes tremble, and
+receives smooth answers to his insults from Buonarroti. These three men,
+Machiavelli, Cellini, and Aretino, each in his own line, and with the
+proper differences that pertain to philosophic genius, artistic skill, and
+ribald ruffianism, sufficiently indicate the dissolution of the social
+bond in Italy. They mark their age as the age of adventurers, bandits,
+bullies, Ishmaelites, and tyrants.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[345] "In lode e onor della vita sua e opere d'esso, e buona disposizione
+della anima e del corpo." _La Vita di Benvenuto Cellini_, Firenze, Le
+Monnier, 1852; _Documenti_, p. 578.
+
+[346] I do not by this mean to commit myself to the opinion that Cellini
+is accurate in details or truthful. On the contrary, it is impossible to
+read his life without feeling that his vanity and self-esteem led him to
+exaggeration and mis-statement. The value of the biography consists in
+its picturesqueness, its brilliant and faithful colouring, and its
+unconscious self-revelation of an energetic character.
+
+[347] With regard to his pedigree Cellini tells a ridiculous story about
+a certain Fiorino da Cellino, one of Julius Caesar's captains, who gave
+his name to Florence. For the arms of the Cellini family, see lib. i.
+cap. 50.
+
+[348] To enlarge upon this point is hardly necessary; or it would be easy
+to prove from documentary evidence that artists so eminent as Simone
+Martini, Gentile da Fabriano, Perugino, and Ghirlandajo kept open shops,
+where customers could buy the products of their craft from a
+highly-finished altar-piece down to a painted buckler or a sign to hang
+above the street-door. The commercial status of fine art in Italy was
+highly beneficial to its advancement, inasmuch as it implied a thorough
+technical apprenticeship for learners. The defective side of the system
+was apparent in great workshops like that of Raphael, who undertook
+painting-commissions quite beyond his powers of conscientious execution.
+
+[349] See above, Chapter III, Orcagna's Tabernacle.
+
+[350] See lib. ii. cap. 5, for the description of Francis I. visiting
+Cellini in his work-room. He finds him hammering away at the metal, and
+suggests that he might leave that labour to his prentices. Cellini
+replies that the excellence of his work would suffer if he did not do it
+himself.
+
+[351] See Yriarte, _Vie d'un Gentilhomme de Venise_, p. 439, for a
+process instituted by the Inquisition against Paolo Veronese.
+
+[352] He calls it "un chiavaquore di argento, il quale era in quei tempi
+chiamato cosi. Questo si era una cintura di tre dita larga, che alle
+spose novelle s' usava di fare."
+
+[353] "Si come un toro invelenito."
+
+[354] "Living men have felt my blows: those many maimed and mutilated
+stones one sees, attest to your disgrace: the earth hides my bad work."
+See the lines quoted by Perkins, _Tuscan Sculptors_, vol. ii. p. 140.
+
+[355] Lib. i. cap. 79.
+
+[356] Lib. ii. cap. 34. The whole history of this woman Caterina, and of
+the revenge he took upon her and his prentice Paolo, is one of the most
+extraordinary passages in the life.
+
+[357] See Vol. 1., _Age of the Despots_, pp. 377-380.
+
+[358] See Vol. 1., _Age of the Despots_, pp. 362-363.
+
+[359] This might be further illustrated by analysing Cellini's mode of
+loving. He never rises above animal appetite.
+
+[360] Lib. i. cap. 85. "Nel qual vomito mi usci dello stomaco un verme
+piloso, grande un quarto di braccio: e' peli erano grandi ed il verme era
+bruttissimo, macchiato di diversi colori, verdi, neri e rossi."
+
+[361] Lib. i. cap. 128.
+
+[362] Notice lib. i. cap. 40, p. 90, the dialogue between Cellini and the
+old woman, on his return to the paternal house: "Oh dimmi, gobba
+perversa," &c.
+
+[363] "Per essere il mondo intenebrato di peste e di guerra," is a phrase
+of Cellini's, i. 40.
+
+[364] Lib. i. cap. 51.
+
+[365] Lib. i. cap. 74. Clement was dead, and Paul III. had just been
+elected, 1534. Paul sent Cellini a safe-conduct and pardon for Pompeo's
+murder to Florence in 1535. Lib. i. cap. 81.
+
+[366] Lib. ii. cap. 104.
+
+[367] Lib. i. cap. 64.
+
+[368] See, however, what is said about the mountain villages of Norcia
+being good for incantations. That district in Roman times was famous for
+such superstitions. Burckhardt, _Die Cultur der Renaissance in Italien_,
+pp. 427-428, gives curious information on this topic.
+
+[369] Lib. i. cap. 76.
+
+[370] Lib. i. cap. 88. "That mad melancholy philosopher Lorenzino." Cf.
+i. 80 and 81. "Molte volte lo trovavo a dormicchiare dopo desinare con
+quel suo Lorenzino, che poi l'ammazzò, e non altri; ed io molto mi
+maravigliavo che un duca di quella sorte così si fidava ... il duca' che
+lo teneva quando per pazzericcio, e quando per poltrone." Cf. again, cap.
+89.
+
+[371] This glimpse of Bembo in his Paduan villa is very pleasing. Lib. i.
+cap. 94.
+
+[372] "Quei diavoli di quei gentiluomini tedeschi." This is, however, the
+language he uses about nearly all foreigners--Spaniards, French, and
+English.
+
+[373] Lib. i. cap. 96. "Io ero tutto armato di maglia con istivali grossi
+e con uno scoppietto in mano, e pioveva quanto Iddio ne sapeva mandare,"
+&c.
+
+[374] Lib. i. cap. 98.
+
+[375] _Ib._ cap. 101.
+
+[376] See lib. i. cap. 38, 43.
+
+[377] The Governor, perplexed by Cellini's vaunt that if he only tried he
+was sure he could fly, put him under strict guard, saying, "Benvenuto è
+un pipistrello contrafatto, ed io sono un pipistrello da dovero."
+
+[378] Lib. i. cap. 125.
+
+[379] Lib. i. cap. 105.
+
+[380] "Il Papa diventato così pessima bestia," lib. i. 58; "Il Papa
+entrato in un bestial furore," _ib_. 60; "Quel povero uomo di Papa
+Clemente," _ib_. 103.
+
+[381] _Ib_. 36, 101, 111.
+
+[382] The scene is well described, lib. i. 127. The Pope was wont to have
+a weekly debauch, and the cardinal chose this favourable moment for his
+appeal: "Gli usava una volta la settimana di fare una crapula assai
+gagliarda, perchè da poi la gomitava.... Allora il papa, sentendosi
+appressare all' ora del suo vomito, e perchè la troppa abbundanzia del
+vino ancora faceva l' ufizio suo, disse," &c.
+
+[383] See Vol. I., _Age of the Despots_, p. 485.
+
+[384] See especially the visit to the Paris workshop, lib. ii. cap. 15,
+and the scene in the Gallery at Fontainebleau, ib. 41.
+
+[385] His quarrels, for example, with the Duchess of Florence.
+
+[386] Lib. ii. cap. 83, 84, 87, 70, 71.
+
+[387] "That beastly big ox, Bandinelli." Cf. cap. 70 for the critique. It
+may be said here, in passing, that the insult of Bandinelli, "Oh sta
+cheto, soddomitaccio," seems to have been justified by Benvenuto's
+conduct, though of course he carefully conceals it in his memoirs. After
+the charge brought against him by Cencio, for instance, he thought it
+better to leave Florence.--_Ib_. cap. 61, 62.
+
+[388] Edgar Quinet, _Les Révolutions d'Italie_, p. 358.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE EPIGONI
+
+Full Development and Decline of Painting--Exhaustion of the old
+Motives--Relation of Lionardo to his Pupils--His Legacy to the
+Lombard School--Bernardino Luini--Gaudenzio Ferrari--The Devotion
+of the Sacri Monti--The School of Raphael--Nothing left but
+Imitation--Unwholesome Influences of Rome--Giulio Romano--Michael
+Angelesque Mannerists--Misconception of Michael Angelo--Correggio founds
+no School--Parmigianino--Macchinisti--The Bolognese--After-growth of Art in
+Florence--Andrea del Sarto--His Followers--Pontormo--Bronzino--Revival of
+Painting in Siena--Sodoma--His Influence on Pacchia, Beccafumi,
+Peruzzi--Garofalo and Dosso Dossi at Ferrari--The Campi at
+Cremona--Brescia and Bergamo--The Decadence in the second half of the
+Sixteenth Century--The Counter-Reformation--Extinction of the Renaissance
+Impulse.
+
+
+In the foregoing chapters I have not sought to write again the history of
+art, so much as to keep in view the relation between Italian art and the
+leading intellectual impulses of the Renaissance. In the masters of the
+sixteenth century--Lionardo, Raphael, Michael Angelo, Correggio, and the
+Venetians--the force inherent in the Italian genius for painting reached
+full development. What remained was but an after-bloom rapidly tending to
+decadence. To surpass those men in their own line seemed impossible. What
+they had achieved was so transcendent that imitation satisfied their
+successors; and if they refused imitation, originality had to be sought by
+deviating into extravagances. Meanwhile no new stock of thoughts had been
+acquired; and students of history are now well aware that for really
+great art ideas common to the nation are essential. The motives suggested
+by mediaeval Christianity, after passing through successive stages of
+treatment in the _quattrocento_, had received the grand and humane
+handling of the golden age. The motives of revived paganism in like manner
+were exhausted, and at this time the feeling for antiquity had lost its
+primal freshness. It might seem superfluous to carry this inquiry further,
+when we have thus confessedly attained the culminating point of painting.
+Yet the sketch attempted in this volume would be incomplete and liable to
+misinterpretation, if no account were taken of the legacy bequeathed to
+the next generation by the great masters.
+
+Lionardo da Vinci formed, as we have seen, a school at Milan. It was the
+special good fortune of his pupils that what he actually accomplished,
+bore no proportion to the suggestiveness of his teaching and the fertility
+of his invention. Of finished work he left but little to the world; while
+his sketches and designs, the teeming thoughts of his creative brain, were
+an inestimable heritage. The whole of this rich legacy of masterpieces,
+projected, but not executed, was characterised by a feeling for beauty
+which has fallen to no other painter. When we examine the sketches in the
+Royal Collection at Windsor, we perceive that the exceeding sense of
+loveliness possessed by Lionardo could not have failed to animate his
+pupils with a high spirit of art. At the same time the extraordinary
+variety of his drawing--sometimes reminding us of German method, sometimes
+modern in the manner of French and English draughtsmen--by turns bold and
+delicate, broad and minute in detail--afforded to his school examples of
+perfect treatment in a multiplicity of different styles. There was no
+formality of fixed unalterable precedent in Lionardo, nothing for his
+scholars to repeat with the monotony of mannerism.
+
+It remained for his disciples, each in his own sphere, with inferior
+powers and feebler intellect, to perpetuate the genius of their master.
+Thus the spirit of Lionardo continued to live in Lombardy after he was
+dead. There alone imitation was really fruitful, because it did not imply
+mere copying. Instead of attempting to give a fresh and therefore a
+strained turn to motives that had already received consummate treatment,
+Lionardo's successors were able to execute what he had planned but had not
+carried to completion. Nor was the prestige of his style so oppressive
+through the mass of pictures painted by his hand as to check individuality
+or to prevent the pupil from working out such portions of the master's
+vein as suited his own talent. Each found enough suggested, but not used,
+to give his special faculty free scope. This is in fact the reason why the
+majority of pictures ascribed to Lionardo are really the production of his
+school. They have the excellence of original work, but not such excellence
+as Lionardo could have given them. Their completion is due, as searching
+criticism proves, to lesser men; but the conception belongs to the
+greatest.
+
+Andrea Salaino, Marco d'Oggiono, Francesco Melzi, Giovanni Antonio
+Beltraffio, and Cesare da Sesto, are all of them skilled workmen, losing
+and finding their individuality, as just described, in the manner of their
+master. Salaino brings exquisite delicacy of execution; d'Oggiono, wild
+and bizarre beauty; Melzi, the refinements of a miniaturist; Beltraffio,
+hard brilliancy of light and colour; Cesare da Sesto, somewhat of
+effeminate sweetness; and thus the qualities of many men emerge, to blend
+themselves again in what is Lionardo's own. It is surely not without
+significance that this metempsychosis of genius should have happened in
+the case of Lionardo, himself the magician of Renaissance art, the lover
+of all things double-natured and twin-souled.
+
+Two painters of the Lombard school, Bernardino Luini and Gaudenzio
+Ferrari, demand separate notice. Without Lionardo it is difficult to say
+what Luini would have been: so thoroughly did he appropriate his teacher's
+type of face, and, in oil-painting, his refinement. And yet Luini stands
+on his own ground, in no sense an imitator, with a genius more simple and
+idyllic than Da Vinci's. Little conception of his charm can be formed by
+those who have not seen his frescoes in the Brera and S. Maurizio Maggiore
+at Milan, in the church of the Angeli at Lugano, or in the pilgrimage
+church of Saronno. To the circumstance of his having done his best work in
+places hardly visited until of late years, may in part perhaps be
+attributed the tardy recognition of a painter eminently fitted to be
+popular. Luini was essentially a fresco-painter. None, perhaps, of all the
+greatest Italian _frescanti_ realised a higher quality of brilliancy
+without gaudiness, by the scale of colours he selected and by the purity
+with which he used them in simple combinations. His frescoes are never
+dull or heavy in tone, never glaring, never thin or chalky. He knew how to
+render them both luminous and rich, without falling into the extremes that
+render fresco-paintings often less attractive than oil-pictures. His
+feeling for loveliness of form was original and exquisite. The joy of
+youth found in Luini an interpreter only less powerful and even more
+tender than in Raphael. While he shared with the Venetians their
+sensibility to nature, he had none of their sensuousness or love of pomp.
+In idyllic painting of a truly great type I know of nothing more
+delightful than his figures of young musicians going to the marriage feast
+of Mary, nothing more graceful than the genius ivy-crowned and seated at
+the foot of the cross.[389] The sentiment for naive and artless grace, so
+fully possessed by Luini, gave freshness to his treatment of conventional
+religious themes. Under his touch they appeal immediately to the most
+untutored taste, without the aid of realistic or sensational effects. Even
+S. Sebastian and S. Rocco, whom it is difficult to represent with any
+novelty of attitude or expression, became for him the motives of fresh
+poetry, unsought but truly felt.[390] Among all the Madonnas ever painted
+his picture of Mary with the espalier of white roses, and another where
+she holds the infant Christ to pluck a purple columbine, distinguish
+themselves by this engaging spontaneity. The frescoes of the marriage of
+the Virgin and of S. Catherine carried by angels to Mount Sinai might be
+cited for the same quality of freshness and unstudied poetry.[391]
+
+When the subject demanded the exercise of grave emotion, Luini rose to the
+occasion without losing his simplicity. The "Martyrdom of S. Catherine"
+and the fresco of Christ after the Flagellation are two masterpieces,
+wherein the depths of pathos have been sounded, and not a single note of
+discord is struck.[392] All harsh and disagreeable details are either
+eliminated, or so softened that the general impression, as in Pergolese's
+music, is one of profoundest and yet sweetest sorrow. Luini's genius was
+not tragic. The nearest approach to a dramatic motive in his work is the
+figure of the Magdalen kneeling before the cross, with her long yellow
+hair streaming over her shoulders, and her arms thrown backwards in an
+ecstasy of grief.[393] He did well to choose moments that stir tender
+sympathy--the piety of deep and calm devotion. How truly he felt
+them--more truly, I think, than Perugino in his best period--is proved by
+the correspondence they awake in us. Like melodies, they create a mood in
+the spectator.
+
+What Luini did not learn from Lionardo, was the art of composition. Taken
+one by one, the figures that make up his "Marriage of the Virgin" at
+Saronno, are beautiful; but the whole picture is clumsily constructed; and
+what is true of this, may be said of every painting in which he attempted
+complicated grouping.[394] We feel him to be a great artist only where the
+subject does not demand the symmetrical arrangement of many parts.
+
+Gaudenzio Ferrari was a genius of a different order, more robust, more
+varied, but less single-minded than Luini. His style reveals the
+influences of a many-sided, ill-assimilated education; blending the
+manners of Bramantino, Lionardo, and Raphael without proper fusion. Though
+Ferrari travelled much, and learned his art in several schools, he, like
+Luini, can only be studied in the Milanese district--at his birthplace
+Varallo, at Saronno, Vercelli, and Milan. It is to be regretted that a
+painter of such singular ability, almost unrivalled at moments in the
+expression of intense feeling and the representation of energetic
+movement, should have lacked a simpler training, or have been unable to
+adopt a manner more uniform. There is a strength of wing in his
+imaginative flight, a swiftness and impetuosity in his execution, and a
+dramatic force in his conception, that almost justify Lomazzo's choice of
+the eagle for his emblem. Yet he was unable to collect his powers, or to
+rule them. The distractions of an age that had produced its masterpieces,
+were too strong for him; and what he failed to find was balance. His
+picture of the "Martyrdom of S. Catherine," where reminiscences of Raphael
+and Lionardo mingle with the uncouth motives of an earlier style in a
+medley without unity of composition or harmony of colouring, might be
+chosen as a typical instance of great resources misapplied.[395]
+
+The most pleasing of Ferrari's paintings are choirs of angels, sorrowing
+or rejoicing, some of them exquisitely and originally beautiful, all
+animated with unusual life, and poised upon wings powerful enough to bear
+them--veritable "birds of God."[396] His dramatic scenes from sacred
+history, rich in novel motives and exuberantly full of invention, crowd
+the churches of Vercelli; while a whole epic of the Passion is painted in
+fresco above the altar of S. Maria delle Grazie at Varallo, covering the
+wall from basement to ceiling. The prodigality of power displayed by
+Ferrari makes up for much of crudity in style and confusion in aim; nor
+can we refuse the tribute of warmest admiration to a master, who, when the
+schools of Rome and Florence were sinking into emptiness and bombast,
+preserved the fire of feeling for serious themes. What was deadly in the
+neo-paganism of the Renaissance--its frivolity and worldliness, corroding
+the very sources of belief in men who made of art a decoration for their
+sensuous existence--had not penetrated to those Lombard valleys where
+Ferrari and Luini worked. There the devotion of the Sacri Monti still
+maintained an intelligence between the people and the artist, far more
+fruitful of results to painting than the patronage of splendour-loving
+cardinals and nobles.[397]
+
+Passing from Lionardo to Raphael, we find exactly the reverse of what has
+hitherto been noticed. Raphael worked out the mine of his own thought so
+thoroughly--so completely exhausted the motives of his invention, and
+carried his style to such perfection--that he left nothing unused for his
+followers. We have seen that he formed a school of subordinates in Rome
+who executed his later frescoes after his designs. Some of these men have
+names that can be mentioned--Giulio Romano, of whom more hereafter; Perino
+del Vaga, the decorator of Genoese palaces in a style of overblown but
+gorgeous Raphaelism; Andrea Sabbatini, who carried the Roman tradition
+down to Naples; Francesco Penni, Giovanni da Udine, and Polidoro da
+Caravaggio. Their work, even while superintended by Raphael himself, began
+to show the signs of decadence. In his Roman manner the dramatic element
+was conspicuous; and to carry dramatic painting beyond the limits of good
+style in art is unfortunately easy. The Hall of Constantine, left
+unfinished at his death, still further proved how little his pupils could
+do without him.[398] When Raphael died, the breath whose might sustained
+and made them potent, ceased. For all the higher purposes of genuine art,
+inspiration passed from them as colour fades from eastern clouds at
+sunset, suddenly.
+
+It has been customary to account for this rapid decline of the Roman
+school by referring to the sack of Rome in 1527. No doubt the artists
+suffered at that moment at least as severely as the scholars; their
+dispersion broke up a band of eminent painters, who might in combination
+and competition have still achieved great things. Yet the secret of their
+subsequent failure lay far deeper; partly in the full development of their
+master's style, already described; and partly in the social conditions of
+Rome itself. Patrons, stimulated by the example of the Popes, desired vast
+decorative works; but they expected these to be performed rapidly and at a
+cheap rate. Painters, familiarised with the execution of such
+undertakings, forgot that hitherto the conception had been not theirs but
+Raphael's. Mistaking hand-work for brain-work, they audaciously accepted
+commissions that would have taxed the powers of the master himself.
+Meanwhile moral earnestness and technical conscientiousness were both
+extinct. The patrons required show and sensual magnificence far more than
+thought and substance. They were not, therefore, deterred by the vacuity
+and poor conceptive faculty of the artists from employing them. What the
+age demanded was a sumptuous parade of superficial ornament, and this the
+pupils of Raphael felt competent to supply without much effort. The result
+was that painters who under favourable circumstances might have done some
+meritorious work, became mere journeymen contented with the soulless
+insincerity of cheap effects. Giulio Romano alone, by dint of robust
+energy and lurid fire of fancy flickering amid the smoke of his coarser
+nature, achieved a triumph in this line of labour. His Palazzo del Te will
+always remain the monument of a specific moment in Renaissance history,
+since it is adequate to the intellectual conditions of a race demoralised
+but living still with largeness and a sense of grandeur.
+
+Michael Angelo formed no school in the strict sense of the word. Yet his
+influence was not the less felt on that account, nor less powerful than
+Raphael's in the same direction. During his manhood the painters Sebastian
+del Piombo, Marcello Venusti, and Daniele da Volterra, had endeavoured to
+add the charm of oil-colouring to his designs; and long before his death,
+the seduction of his mighty mannerism had begun to exercise a fatal charm
+for all the schools of Italy. Painters incapable of fathoming his
+intention, unsympathetic to his rare type of intellect, and gifted with
+less than a tithe of his native force, set themselves to reproduce
+whatever may be justly censured in his works. To heighten and enlarge
+their style was reckoned a chief duty of aspiring craftsmen; and it was
+thought that recipes for attaining to this final perfection of the modern
+arts might be extracted without trouble from Michael Angelo's
+masterpieces. Unluckily, in proportion as his fame increased, his
+peculiarities grew with the advance of age more manneristic and defined;
+so that his imitators fixed precisely upon that which sober critics now
+regard as a deduction from his greatness. They failed to perceive that he
+owed his grandeur to his personality; and that the audacities which
+fascinated them, became mere whimsical extravagances when severed from his
+_terribilità_ and sombre simplicity of impassioned thought. His power and
+his spirit were alike unique and uncommunicable, while the admiration of
+his youthful worshippers betrayed them into imitating the externals of a
+style that was rapidly losing spontaneity and sense of beauty. Therefore
+they fancied they were treading in his footsteps and using the grand
+manner when they covered church-roofs and canvases with sprawling figures
+in distorted attitudes. Instead of studying nature, they studied Michael
+Angelo's cartoons, exaggerating by their unintelligent discipleship his
+wilfulness and arbitrary choice of form.
+
+Vasari's and Cellini's criticisms of a master they both honestly revered,
+may suffice to illustrate the false method adopted by these mimics of
+Michael Angelo's ideal. To charge him with faults proceeding from the
+weakness and blindness of the decadence--the faults of men too blind to
+read his art aright, too weak to stand on their own feet without
+him--would be either stupid or malicious. If at the close of the sixteenth
+century the mannerists sought to startle and entrance the world by empty
+exhibitions of muscular anatomy misunderstood, and by a braggadocio
+display of meaningless effects--crowding their compositions with studies
+from the nude, and painting agitated groups without a discernible cause
+for agitation--the crime surely lay with the patrons who liked such
+decoration, and with the journeymen who provided it. Michael Angelo
+himself always made his manner serve his thought. We may fail to
+appreciate his manner and may be incapable of comprehending his thought;
+but only insincere or conceited critics will venture to gauge the latter
+by what they feel to be displeasing in the former. What seems lawless in
+him, follows the law of a profound and peculiar genius, with which,
+whether we like it or not, we must reckon. His imitators were devoid of
+thought and too indifferent to question whether there was any law to be
+obeyed. Like the jackass in the fable, they put on the dead lion's skin of
+his manner, and brayed beneath it, thinking they could roar.
+
+Correggio, again, though he can hardly be said to have founded a school,
+was destined to exercise wide and perilous influence over a host of
+manneristic imitators. Francesco Mazzola, called Il Parmigianino, followed
+him so closely that his frescoes at Parma are hardly distinguishable from
+the master's; while Federigo Baroccio at Urbino endeavoured to preserve
+the sensuous and almost childish sweetness of his style in its
+integrity.[399] But the real attraction of Correggio was only felt when
+the new _barocco_ architecture called for a new kind of decoration. Every
+cupola throughout the length and breadth of Italy began then to be
+painted with rolling clouds and lolling angels. What the wits of Parma had
+once stigmatised as a _ragoût_ of frogs, now seemed the only possible
+expression for celestial ecstasy; and to delineate the joy of heaven upon
+those multitudes of domes and semi-domes was a point of religious
+etiquette. False lights, dubious foreshortenings, shallow colourings,
+ill-studied forms, and motiveless agitation suited the taste that cared
+for gaudy brightness and sensational effects. The painters, for their
+part, found it convenient to adopt a mannerism that enabled them to
+conceal the difficult parts of the figure in feather beds of vapour,
+requiring neither effort of conception nor expenditure of labour on
+drawing and composition. At the same time, the Caracci made Correggio's
+style the object of more serious study; and the history of Bolognese
+painting shows what was to be derived from this master by intelligent and
+conscientious workmen.
+
+Hitherto, I have had principally to record the errors of artists copying
+the external qualities of their great predecessors. It is refreshing to
+turn from the _epigoni_ of the so-called Roman school to masters in whom
+the flame of the Renaissance still burned brightly. Andrea del Sarto, the
+pupil of Piero di Cosimo, but more nearly related in style to Fra
+Bartolommeo than to any other of the elder masters, was himself a
+contemporary of Raphael and Correggio. Yet he must be noticed here;
+because he gave new qualities to the art of Tuscany, and formed a
+tradition decisive for the subsequent history of Florentine painting. To
+make a just estimate of his achievement is a task of no small difficulty.
+The Italians called him "il pittore senza errori," or the faultless
+painter. What they meant by this must have been that in all the technical
+requirements of art, in drawing, composition, handling of fresco and oils,
+disposition of draperies, and feeling for light and shadow, he was above
+criticism. As a colourist he went further and produced more beautiful
+effects than any Florentine before him. His silver-grey harmonies and
+liquid blendings of hues cool, yet lustrous, have a charm peculiar to
+himself alone. We find the like nowhere else in Italy. And yet Andrea del
+Sarto cannot take rank among the greatest Renaissance painters. What he
+lacked was precisely the most precious gift--inspiration, depth of
+emotion, energy of thought. We are apt to feel that even his best pictures
+were designed with a view to solving an aesthetic problem. Very few have
+the poetic charm belonging to the "S. John" of the Pitti or the "Madonna"
+of the Tribune. Beautiful as are many of his types, like the Magdalen in
+the large picture of the "Pietà"[400] we can never be sure that he will
+not break the spell by forms of almost vulgar mediocrity. The story that
+his wife, a worthless woman, sat for his Madonnas, and the legends of his
+working for money to meet pressing needs, seem justified by numbers of his
+paintings, faulty in their faultlessness and want of spirit. Still, after
+making these deductions, we must allow that Andrea del Sarto not
+unworthily represents the golden age at Florence. There is no affectation,
+no false taste, no trickery in his style. His workmanship is always solid;
+his hand unerring. If Nature denied him the soul of a poet, and the stern
+will needed for escaping from the sordid circumstances of his life, she
+gave him some of the highest qualities a painter can desire--qualities of
+strength, tranquillity, and thoroughness, that in the decline of the
+century ceased to exist outside Venice.
+
+Among Del Sarto's followers it will be enough to mention Franciabigio,
+Vasari's favourite in fresco painting, Rosso de' Rossi, who carried the
+Florentine manner into France, and Pontormo, the masterly painter of
+portraits.[401] In the historical pictures of these men, whether sacred
+or secular, it is clear how much was done for Florentine art by Fra
+Bartolommeo and Del Sarto independently of Michael Angelo and Lionardo.
+Angelo Bronzino, the pupil of Pontormo, is chiefly valuable for his
+portraits. Hard and cold, yet obviously true to life, they form a gallery
+of great interest for the historian of Duke Cosimo's reign. His frescoes
+and allegories illustrate the defects that have been pointed out in those
+of Raphael's and Buonarroti's imitators.[402] Want of thought and feeling,
+combined with the presumptuous treatment of colossal and imaginative
+subjects, renders these compositions inexpressibly chilling. The
+psychologist, who may have read a poem from Bronzino's pen, will be
+inclined to wonder how far this barren art was not connected with personal
+corruption.[403] Such speculations are, however, apt to be misleading.
+
+Siena, after a long period of inactivity, received a fresh impulse at the
+same time as Florence. Giovanni Antonio Bazzi, or Razzi, called Il Sodoma,
+was born at Vercelli about 1477. He studied in his youth under Lionardo da
+Vinci, training his own exquisite sense of natural beauty in that
+scientific school. From Milan, after a certain interval of time, he
+removed to Rome, where he became a friend and follower of Raphael. These
+double influences determined a style that never lost its own originality.
+With what delicacy and _naïveté_, almost like a second Luini, but with
+more of humour and sensuousness, he approached historic themes, may be
+seen in his frescoes at Monte Oliveto.[404] They were executed before his
+Roman visit, and show the facility of a most graceful improvisatore. One
+painting representing the "Temptation of Monks by Dancing Women" carries
+the melody of fluent lines and the seduction of fair girlish faces into a
+region of pure poetry. These frescoes are superior to Sodoma's work in the
+Farnesina. Impressed, as all artists were, by the monumental character of
+Borne, and fired by Raphael's example, he tried to abandon his sketchy and
+idyllic style for one of greater majesty and fulness. The delicious
+freshness of his earlier manner was sacrificed; but his best efforts to
+produce a grandiose composition ended in a confusion of individually
+beautiful but ill-assorted motives. Like Luini, Sodoma was never
+successful in pictures requiring combination and arrangement. He lacked
+some sense of symmetry and sought to achieve massiveness by crowding
+figures in a given space. When we compare his group of "S. Catherine
+Fainting under the Stigmata" with the medley of agitated forms that make
+up his picture of the same saint at Tuldo's execution, we see plainly that
+he ought to have confined himself to the expression of very simple
+themes.[405] The former is incomparable for its sweetness; the latter is
+indistinct and wearying, in spite of many details that adorn it. Gifted
+with an exquisite feeling for the beauty of the human body, Sodoma
+excelled himself when he was contented with a single figure. His "S.
+Sebastian," notwithstanding its wan and faded colouring, is still the very
+best that has been painted.[406] Suffering, refined and spiritual, without
+contortion or spasm, could not be presented with more pathos in a form of
+more surpassing loveliness. This is a truly demonic picture in the
+fascination it exercises and the memory it leaves upon the mind. Part of
+its unanalysable charm may be due to the bold thought of combining the
+beauty of a Greek Hylas with the Christian sentiment of martyrdom. Only
+the Renaissance could have produced a hybrid so successful, because so
+deeply felt.
+
+Sodoma's influence at Siena, where he lived a picturesque life, delighting
+in his horses and surrounding himself with strange four-footed pets of all
+sorts, soon produced a school of worthy masters. Girolamo del Pacchia,
+Domenico Beccafumi, and Baldassare Peruzzi, though they owed much to the
+stimulus of his example, followed him in no servile spirit. Indeed, it may
+be said that Pacchia's paintings in the Oratory of S. Bernardino, though
+they lacked his siren beauty, are more powerfully composed; while
+Peruzzi's fresco of "Augustus and the Sibyl," in the church of
+Fontegiusta, has a monumental dignity unknown to Sodoma. Beccafumi is apt
+to leave the spectator of his paintings cold. From inventive powers so
+rich and technical excellence so thorough, we demand more than he can
+give, and are therefore disappointed. His most interesting picture at
+Siena is the "Stigmatisation of S. Catherine," famous for its mastery of
+graduated whites. Much of the paved work of the Duomo is attributed to his
+design. Both Beccafumi and Peruzzi felt the cold and manneristic Roman
+style of rhetoric injuriously.
+
+To mention the remaining schools of Italy in detail would be superfluous.
+True art still flourished at Ferrara, where Garofalo endeavoured to carry
+on the Roman manner of Raphael without the necessary strength or ideality,
+but also without the soulless insincerity of the mannerists. His best
+quality was colouring, gemlike and rich; but this found little scope for
+exercise in the dry and laboured style he affected. Dosso Dossi fared
+better, perhaps through having never experienced the seductions of Rome.
+His glowing colour and quaint fancy give the attraction of romance to
+many of his pictures. The "Circe," for example, of the Borghese Palace, is
+worthy to rank with the best Renaissance work. It is perfectly original,
+not even suggesting the influence of Venice by its deep and lustrous hues.
+No painting is more fit to illustrate the "Orlando Innamorato." Just so,
+we feel in looking at it, did Dragontina show herself to Boiardo's fancy.
+Ariosto's Alcina belongs to a different family of magnificent witches.
+
+Cremona, at this epoch, had a school of painters, influenced almost
+equally by the Venetians, the Milanese, and the Roman mannerists. The
+Campi family covered those grave Lombard vaults with stucco, fresco, and
+gilding in a style only just removed from the _barocco_.[407] Brescia and
+Bergamo remained within the influence of Venice, producing work of nearly
+first-rate quality in Moretto, Romanino, and Lorenzo Lotto. Moroni, the
+pupil of Moretto, was destined to become one of the most powerful
+character painters of the modern world, and to enrich the studies of
+historians and artists with a series of portraits impressive by their
+fidelity to the spirit of the sixteenth century at its conclusion. Venice
+herself at this period was still producing masterpieces of the genuine
+Renaissance. But the decline into mannerism, caused by circumstances
+similar to those of Rome, was not far distant.
+
+It may seem strange to those who have visited the picture galleries of
+Italy, and have noticed how very large a number of the painters flourished
+after 1550, that I should have persistently spoken of the last half of the
+sixteenth century as a period of decadence. This it was, however, in a
+deep and true sense of the word. The force of the Renaissance was
+exhausted, and a time of relaxation had to be passed through, before the
+reaction known as the Counter-Reformation could make itself felt in art.
+Then, and not till then, a new spiritual impulse produced a new style.
+This secondary growth of painting began to flourish at Bologna in
+accordance with fresh laws of taste. Religious sentiments of a different
+order had to be expressed; society had undergone a change, and the arts
+were governed by a genuine, if far inferior, inspiration. Meanwhile, the
+Renaissance, so far as Italy is concerned, was ended.
+
+It is one of the sad features of this subject, that each section has to
+end in lamentation. Servitude in the sphere of politics; literary
+feebleness in scholarship; decadence in art:--to shun these conclusions is
+impossible. He who has undertaken to describe the parabola of a
+projectile, cannot be satisfied with tracing its gradual rise and
+determining its culmination. He must follow its spent force, and watch it
+slowly sink with ever dwindling impetus to earth. Intellectual movements,
+when we isolate them in a special country, observing the causes that set
+them in motion and calculating their retarding influences, may, not
+unreasonably, be compared to the parabola of a projectile. To shrink from
+studying the decline of mental vigour in Italy upon the close of the
+Renaissance, would be therefore weak; though the task of tracing the
+impulse communicated by her previous energy to other nations, and their
+stirring under a like movement, might be more agreeable.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[389] Frescoes in the Brera and at Lugano.
+
+[390] S. Maurizio, on the Screen, inner church. Lugano in the Angeli.
+
+[391] In the Brera. See also the Madonna, with Infant Christ, S. John,
+and a Lamb, at Lugano.
+
+[392] Side chapel of S. Maurizio at Milan. These frescoes are, in my
+opinion, Luini's very best. The whole church is a wonderful monument of
+Lombard art.
+
+[393] "Crucifixion" at Lugano.
+
+[394] See, for example, the oil-paintings in the cathedral of Como, so
+fascinating in their details, so lame in composition.
+
+[395] In the Brera.
+
+[396] Frescoes at Saronno and in the Sacro Monte at Varallo.
+
+[397] The whole lake-district of Italy, where the valleys of Monte Rosa
+and the Simplon descend upon the plain of Lombardy, is rich in works of
+this school. At Luino and Lugano, on the island of San Giulio, and in the
+hill-set chapels of the Val Sesia, may be found traces of frescoes of
+incomparable beauty. One of these sites deserves special mention. Just at
+the point where the pathway of the Colma leaves the chestnut groves and
+meadows to join the road leading to Varallo, there stands a little
+chapel, with an open loggia of round Renaissance arches, designed and
+painted, according to tradition, by Ferrari, and without doubt
+representative of his manner. The harmony between its colours, so mellow
+in their ruin, its graceful arcades and quiet roofing, and the glowing
+tones of those granite mountains, with their wealth of vineyards, and
+their forests of immemorial chestnut trees, is perfect beyond words.
+
+[398] This, the last of the Stanze, was only in part designed by Raphael.
+In spite of what I have said above, the "Battle of Constantine," planned
+by Raphael, and executed by Giulio, is a grand example of a pupil's power
+to carry out his master's scheme.
+
+[399] Baroccio had great authority at Florence in the seventeenth
+century, when the cult of Correggio had overspread all Italy.
+
+[400] Pitti Palace.
+
+[401] Franciabigio's and Rosso's frescoes stand beside Del Sarto's in the
+atrium of the Annunziata at Florence. Pontormo's portraits of Cosimo and
+Lorenzo de' Medici in the Uffizzi, though painted from busts and
+medallions, have a real historical value.
+
+[402] The "Christ in Limbo" in S. Lorenzo at Florence, and the detestable
+picture of "Time, Beauty, Love, and Folly," in our National Gallery.
+
+[403] _Opere Burlesche_, vol. iii. pp. 39-46.
+
+[404] Near Siena. These pictures are a series of twenty-four subjects
+from the life of S. Benedict.
+
+[405] In the church of S. Domenico, Siena.
+
+[406] In the Uffizzi. See also Sodoma's "Sacrifice of Isaac" in the
+cathedral of Pisa, and the "Christ Bound to the Pillar" in the Academy at
+Siena.
+
+[407] The church of S. Sigismondo, outside Cremona, is very interesting
+for the unity of style in its architecture and decoration.
+
+
+
+
+APPENDICES
+
+
+
+APPENDIX I
+
+_The Pulpits of Pisa and Ravello_
+
+
+Having tried to characterise Niccola Pisano's relation to early Italian
+art in the second chapter of this volume, I adverted to the recent doubts
+which have been thrown by very competent authorities upon Vasari's legend
+of this master. Messrs. Crowe and Cavalcaselle, while discussing the
+question of his birthplace and his early training, observe, what is no
+doubt true, that there are no traces of good sculpture in Pisa antecedent
+to the Baptistery pulpit of 1260, and remark that for such a phenomenon as
+the sudden appearance of this masterpiece it is needful to seek some
+antecedents elsewhere.[408] This leads them to ask whether Niccola did not
+owe his origin and education to some other part of Italy. Finding at
+Ravello, near Amain, a pulpit sculptured in 1272 by Niccola di Bartolommeo
+da Foggia, they suggest that a school of stone-carvers may have flourished
+at Foggia, and that Niccola Pisano, in spite of his signing himself
+_Pisanus_ on the Baptistery pulpit, may have been an Apulian trained in
+that school. The arguments adduced in favour of that hypothesis are that
+Niccola's father, though commonly believed to have been Ser Pietro da
+Siena, was perhaps called Pietro di Apulia,[409] and that meritorious
+artists certainly existed at Foggia and Trani. Yet the resemblance of
+style between the pulpits at Ravello [1272] and Pisa [1260], if that
+indeed exists (whereof hereafter more must be said), might be used to
+prove that Niccola da Foggia learned his art from Niccola Pisano, instead
+of the contrary; nor again, supposing the Apulian school to have
+flourished before 1260, is it inconsistent with the tradition of Niccola's
+life that he should have learned the sculptor's craft while working in his
+youth at Naples. For the rest, Messrs. Crowe and Cavalcaselle dismiss the
+story of Pisano's studying the antique bas-reliefs at Pisa with
+contempt;[410] but they omit to notice the actual transcripts from those
+marbles introduced into his first pulpit. Again, they assume that the
+lunette at Lucca was one of his latest works, giving precedence to the
+pulpits of Pisa and Siena and the fountain of Perugia. A comparison of
+style no doubt renders this view plausible; for the lunette at Lucca is
+superior to any other of Pisano's works as a composition.
+
+The full discussion of these points is rendered impossible by the want of
+contemporary information, and each student must, therefore, remain
+contented with his own hypothesis. Yet something can be said with regard
+to the Ravello pulpit that plays so important a part in the argument of
+the learned historians of Italian painting. Unless a strong similarity
+between it and Pisano's pulpits can be proved, their hypothesis carries
+with it no persuasion.
+
+The pulpit in the cathedral of Ravello is formed like an ambo of the
+antique type. That is to say, it is a long parallelogram with flat sides,
+raised upon pillars, and approached by a flight of steps. These steps are
+enclosed within richly-ornamented walls, and stand distinct from the
+pulpit; a short bridge connects the two. The six pillars supporting the
+ambo itself are slender twisted columns with classic capitals. Three rest
+on lions, three on lionesses, admirably carved in different attitudes. A
+small projection on the north side of the pulpit sustains an eagle
+standing on a pillar, and spreading out his wings to bear an open book. On
+the arch over the entrance to the staircase projects the head of
+Sigelgaita, wife of Niccola Rufolo, the donor of the pulpit to the church,
+sculptured in the style of the Roman decadence, between two profile
+medallions in low relief.[411] The material of the whole is fair white
+marble, enriched with mosaics, and wrought into beautiful scroll-work of
+acanthus leaves and other Romanesque adornments. An inscription, "_Ego
+Magister Nicolaus de Bartholomeo de Fogia Marmorarius hoc opus feci_;" and
+another, "_Lapsis millenis bis centum bisque trigenis XPI. bissenis annis
+ab origine plenis_," indicate the artist's name and the date of the work.
+
+It is difficult to understand how anyone could trace such a resemblance
+between this rectangular ambo and the hexagonal structure in the Pisan
+Baptistery as would justify them in asserting both to be the products of
+the same school. The pulpit of Niccola da Foggia does not materially
+differ from other ambones in Italy--from several, for instance, in Amalfi
+and Ravello; while the distinctive features of Niccola Pisano's work--the
+combination of classically studied bas-reliefs with Gothic principles of
+construction, the feeling for artistic unity in the composition of groups,
+the mastery over plastic form, and the detached allegorical figures--are
+noticeable only by their total absence from it. What is left by way of
+similarity is a sculpturesque refinement in Sigelgaita's portrait, not
+unworthy of Pisano's own chisel. This, however, is but a slender point
+whereon to base so large a pyramid of pure conjecture. Surely we must look
+elsewhere than at Ravello or at Foggia for the origin of Niccola Pisano.
+
+Why then should we reject tradition in this instance? Messrs. Crowe and
+Cavalcaselle reply; because the sculpture of no Tuscan city before his
+period is good enough to have led up to him. Yet this may be contested;
+and at all events it will not be easy to prove from the Ravello head of
+Sigelgaita that a more advanced school existed in the south. The fact is
+that the art of the stone-carvers or _marmorarii_ had never entirely died
+out since the days of Roman greatness; nor was Niccola without respectable
+predecessors in the very town of Lucca, where he produced the first
+masterpiece of modern sculpture. The circular font of S. Frediano, for
+example, carved with figures in high relief by a certain Robertus of the
+twelfth century, combines the Romanesque mannerism with the _naïveté_ of
+mediaeval fancy. I might point in particular to two knights seated on one
+horse in what I take to be the company of Pharaoh crossing the Red Sea, as
+an instance of a successful attempt to escape from the formalism of a
+decayed style. At the same time the general effect of the embossed work of
+this font is fine; nor do we fail to perceive that the artist retained
+some portion of the classic feeling for grandiose and monumental
+composition. Far less noteworthy, yet still not utterly despicable, is
+the bas-relief of Biduinus over the side-door of S. Salvatore at Lucca.
+What Niccola added of indefeasibly his own to the style of these
+continuators of a dead tradition, was feeling for the beauty of classical
+work in a good age, and through that feeling a more perfect sympathy with
+nature. It is just at this point that the old tale about the sarcophagus
+of the Countess Beatrice conveys not only the letter but the spirit of the
+fact. Niccola's genius, no less vivid and life-giving than that of Giotto,
+infused into the hard and formal manner of his immediate predecessors true
+nature and true art. Between the bas-relief of S. Salvatore and the
+bas-relief over the north door of the Duomo at Lucca, there is indeed a
+broad gulf, yet such as might have been passed at one bound by a master
+into whose soul the beauty of a fragment of Greek art had sunk, and who
+had received at his birth the gift of a creative genius.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[408] _History of Painting in Italy_, vol. i. chap. iv.
+
+[409] _Loc. cit_. p. 127, note.
+
+[410] _Loc. cit._ p. 127.
+
+[411] Mr. Perkins, following the suggestion of Panza, in his _Istoria
+dell' Antica Republica d'Amalfi_, is inclined to think that this head
+represents, not Sigelgaita, but Joanna II. of Naples, and is therefore
+more than a century later in date than the pulpit. See _Italian
+Sculptors_, p. 51.
+
+
+
+
+APPENDIX II
+
+_Michael Angelo's Sonnets_
+
+
+After the death of Michael Angelo, the manuscripts of his sonnets,
+madrigals, and other poems, written at various periods of his life, and
+well known to his intimate friends, passed into the hands of his nephew,
+Lionardo Buonarroti. From Lionardo they descended to his son, Michael
+Angelo, who was himself a poet of some mark. This grand-nephew of the
+sculptor prepared them for the press, and gave them to the world in 1623.
+On his redaction the commonly received version of the poems rested until
+1863, when Signor Cesare Guasti of Florence, having gained access to the
+original manuscripts, published a critical edition, preserving every
+peculiarity of the autograph, and adding a prose paraphrase for the
+explanation of the text.
+
+The younger Michael Angelo, working in an age of literary pedantry and
+moral prudery, fancied that it was his duty to refine the style of his
+great ancestor, and to remove allusions open to ignorant misconstruction.
+Instead, therefore, of giving an exact transcript of the original poems,
+he set himself to soften down their harshness, to clear away their
+obscurity, to amplify, transpose, and mutilate according to his own ideas
+of syntax, taste, and rhetoric. On the Dantesque ruggedness of Michael
+Angelo he engrafted the prettiness of the seventeenth Petrarchisti; and
+where he thought the morality of the poems was questionable, especially in
+the case of those addressed to Cavalieri, he did not hesitate to introduce
+such alterations as destroyed their obvious intention. In order to
+understand the effect of this method, it is only necessary to compare the
+autograph as printed by Guasti with the version of 1623. In Sonnet xxxi.,
+for example, the two copies agree in only one line, while the remaining
+thirteen are distorted and adorned with superfluous conceits by the
+over-scrupulous but not too conscientious editor of 1623.[412]
+
+Michael Angelo's poems, even after his grand-nephew had tried to reduce
+them to lucidity and order, have always been considered obscure and
+crabbed. Nor can it be pretended that they gain in smoothness and
+clearness by the restoration of the true readings. On the contrary,
+instances of defective grammar, harsh elisions, strained metaphors, and
+incomplete expressions are multiplied. The difficulty of comprehending the
+sense is rather increased than diminished, and the obstacles to a
+translator become still more insurmountable than Wordsworth found
+them.[413] This being undoubtedly the case, the value of Guasti's edition
+for students of Michael Angelo is nevertheless inestimable. We read now
+for the first time what the greatest man of the sixteenth century actually
+wrote, and are able to enter, without the interference of a fictitious
+veil, into the shrine of his own thought and feeling. His sonnets form the
+best commentary on Michael Angelo's solitary life and on his sublime ideal
+of art. This reflection has guided me in the choice of those now offered
+in English, as an illustration of the chapter in this volume devoted to
+their author's biography.
+
+Though the dates of Michael Angelo's compositions are conjectural, it may
+be assumed that the two sonnets on Dante were written when he was himself
+in exile. We know that, while sojourning in the house of Gian Francesco
+Aldovrandini at Bologna, he used to spend a portion of his time in reading
+Dante aloud to his protector;[414] and the indignation expressed against
+Florence, then as ever fickle and ungrateful, the _gente avara, invidiosa,
+e superba_, to use Dante's own words, seems proper to a period of just
+resentment. Still there is no certainty that they belong to 1495; for
+throughout his long life Michael Angelo was occupied with Dante. A story
+told of him in 1506, together with the dialogues reported by Donato
+Giannotti, prove that he was regarded by his fellow-citizens as an
+authority upon the meaning of the "Divine Comedy."[415] In 1518, when the
+Florentine Academy petitioned Leo X. to transport the bones of Dante from
+Ravenna to Florence, Michael Angelo subscribed the document and offered to
+erect a statue worthy of the poet.[416] How deeply the study of Dante
+influenced his art, appears not only in the lower part of the "Last
+Judgment:" we feel that source of stern and lofty inspiration in his style
+at large; nor can we reckon what the world lost when his volume of
+drawings in illustration of the "Divine Comedy" perished at sea.[417] The
+two following sonnets, therefore, whenever written, may be taken as
+expressing his settled feeling about the first and greatest of Italian
+poets:[418]--
+
+DAL CIEL DISCESE
+
+    From heaven his spirit came, and robed in clay
+      The realms of justice and of mercy trod,
+      Then rose a living man to gaze on God,
+    That he might make the truth as clear as day.
+    For that pure star that brightened with his ray
+      The ill-deserving nest where I was born,
+      The whole wide world would be a prize to scorn;
+    None but his Maker can due guerdon pay.
+
+    I speak of Dante, whose high work remains
+      Unknown, unhonoured by that thankless brood,
+      Who only to just men deny their wage.
+    Were I but he! Born for like lingering pains,
+      Against his exile coupled with his good
+      I'd gladly change the world's best heritage!
+
+
+QUANTE DIRNI SI DE'
+
+    No tongue can tell of him what should be told,
+      For on blind eyes his splendour shines too strong;
+      'Twere easier to blame those who wrought him wrong,
+    Than sound his least praise with a mouth of gold.
+
+    He to explore the place of pain was bold,
+      Then soared to God, to teach our souls by song;
+      The gates heaven oped to bear his feet along,
+    Against his just desire his country rolled.
+
+    Thankless I call her, and to her own pain
+      The nurse of fell mischance; for sign take this,
+      That ever to the best she deals more scorn:
+    Among a thousand proofs let one remain;
+      Though ne'er was fortune more unjust than his,
+      His equal or his better ne'er was born.
+
+About the date of the two next sonnets there is less doubt. The first was
+clearly written when Michael Angelo was smarting under a sense of the
+ill-treatment he received from Julius. The second, composed at Rome, is
+interesting as the only proof we possess of the impression made upon his
+mind by the anomalies of the Papal rule. Here, in the capital of
+Christendom, he writes, holy things are sold for money to be used in
+warfare, and the pontiff, _quel nel manto_, paralyses the powers of the
+sculptor by refusing him employment.[419]
+
+SIGNOR, SE VERO È
+
+    My Lord! if ever ancient saw spake sooth,
+      Hear this which saith: Who can, doth never will.
+      Lo! thou hast lent thine ear to fables still,
+    Rewarding those who hate the name of truth.
+    I am thy drudge and have been from my youth--
+      Thine, like the rays which the sun's circle fill;
+      Yet of my dear time's waste thou think'st no ills
+    The more I toil, the less I move thy ruth.
+
+    Once 'twas my hope to raise me by thy height;
+      But 'tis the balance and the powerful sword
+      Of Justice, not false Echo, that we need.
+    Heaven, as it seems, plants virtue in despite
+      Here on the earth, if this be our reward--
+      To seek for fruit on trees too dry to breed.
+
+
+QUA SI FA ELMI
+
+    Here helms and swords are made of chalices:
+      The blood of Christ is sold so much the quart:
+      His cross and thorns are spears and shields; and short
+    Must be the time ere even his patience cease.
+    Nay let Him come no more to raise the fees
+      Of fraud and sacrilege beyond report!
+      For Rome still slays and sells Him at the court,
+    Where paths are closed to virtue's fair increase.
+
+    Now were fit time for me to scrape a treasure,
+      Seeing that work and gain are gone; while he
+      Who wears the robe, is my Medusa still.
+    Perchance in heaven poverty is a pleasure:
+      But of that better life what hope have we,
+      When the blessed banner leads to nought but ill?
+
+A third sonnet of this period is intended to be half burlesque, and,
+therefore, is composed _a coda_, as the Italians describe the lengthened
+form of the conclusion. It was written while Michael Angelo was painting
+the roof of the Sistine, and was sent to his friend Giovanni da Pistoja.
+The effect of this work, as Vasari tells us, on his eyesight was so
+injurious, that, for some time after its completion, he could only read by
+placing the book or manuscript above his head and looking up.[420]
+
+I' HO GIÀ FATTO UN GOZZO
+
+    I've grown a goitre by dwelling in this den--
+      As cats from stagnant streams in Lombardy,
+      Or in what other land they hap to be--
+    Which drives the belly close beneath the chin:
+    My beard turns up to heaven; my nape falls in,
+      Fixed on my spine: my breast-bone visibly
+      Grows like a harp: a rich embroidery
+    Bedews my face from brush-drops thick and thin.
+    My loins into my paunch like levers grind;
+      My buttock like a crupper bears my weight;
+      My feet unguided wander to and fro;
+
+    In front my skin grows loose and long; behind,
+      By bending it becomes more taut and strait;
+      Backward I strain me like a Syrian bow:
+      Whence false and quaint, I know,
+      Must be the fruit of squinting brain and eye;
+      For ill can aim the gun that bends awry.
+          Come then, Giovanni, try
+      To succour my dead pictures and my fame;
+      Since foul I fare and painting is my shame.
+
+The majority of the sonnets are devoted to love and beauty, conceived in
+the spirit of exalted Platonism. They are supposed to have been written in
+the latter period of his life, when he was about sixty years of age; and
+though we do not know for certain to whom they were in every case
+addressed, they may be used in confirmation of what I have said about his
+admiration for Vittoria Colonna and Tommaso Cavalieri.[421] The following,
+with its somewhat obscure adaptation of a Platonic theory of creation to
+his own art, was probably composed soon after Vittoria Colonna's
+death.[422]
+
+SE 'L MIO ROZZO MARTELLO
+
+    When my rude hammer to the stubborn stone
+      Gives human shape, now that, now this, at will,
+      Following his hand who wields and guides it still,
+    It moves upon another's feet alone.
+    But He who dwells in heaven all things doth fill
+      With beauty by pure motions of his own;
+      And since tools fashion tools which else were none,
+    His life makes all that lives with living skill.
+
+    Now, for that every stroke excels the more
+      The closer to the forge it still ascend,
+      Her soul that quickened mine hath sought the skies:
+    Wherefore I find my toil will never end,
+      If God, the great artificer, denies
+      That tool which was my only aid before.
+
+The next is peculiarly valuable, as proving with what intense and
+religious fervour Michael Angelo addressed himself to the worship of
+intellectual beauty. He alone, in that age of sensuality and animalism,
+pierced through the form of flesh and sought the divine idea it
+imprisoned:[423]--
+
+PER RITORNAR LÀ
+
+    As one who will reseek her home of light,
+      Thy form immortal to this prison-house
+      Descended, like an angel piteous,
+    To heal all hearts and make the whole world bright.
+    'Tis this that thralls my heart in love's delight,
+      Not thy clear face of beauty glorious;
+      For he who harbours virtue, still will choose
+    To love what neither years nor death can blight.
+
+    So fares it ever with things high and rare,
+      Wrought in the sweat of nature; heaven above
+      Showers on their birth the blessings of her prime;
+    Nor hath God deigned to show Himself elsewhere
+      More clearly than in human forms sublime;
+      Which, since they image Him, compel my love.
+
+The same Platonic theme is slightly varied in the two following
+sonnets:[424]--
+
+SPIRTO BEN NATO
+
+    Choice soul, in whom, as in a glass, we see,
+      Mirrored in thy pure form and delicate,
+      What beauties heaven and nature can create,
+    The paragon of all their works to be!
+    Fair soul, in whom love, pity, piety,
+      Have found a home, as from thy outward state
+      We clearly read, and are so rare and great
+    That they adorn none other like to thee!
+
+    Love takes me captive; beauty binds my soul;
+      Pity and mercy with their gentle eyes
+      Wake in my heart a hope that cannot cheat.
+    What law, what destiny, what fell control,
+      What cruelty, or late or soon, denies
+      That death should spare perfection so complete?
+
+
+DAI DOLCE PIANTO
+
+    From sweet laments to bitter joys, from peace
+      Eternal to a brief and hollow truce,
+      How have I fallen!--when 'tis truth we lose,
+    Mere sense survives our reason's dear decease.
+    I know not if my heart bred this disease,
+      That still more pleasing grows with growing use;
+      Or else thy face, thine eyes, in which the hues
+    And fires of Paradise dart ecstasies.
+
+    Thy beauty is no mortal thing; 'twas sent
+      From heaven on high to make our earth divine:
+      Wherefore, though wasting, burning, I'm content;
+    For in thy sight what could I do but pine?
+      If God Himself thus rules my destiny,
+      Who, when I die, can lay the blame on thee?
+
+The next is saddened by old age and death. Love has yielded to piety, and
+is only remembered as what used to be. Yet in form and feeling this is
+quite one of the most beautiful in the series supposed to refer to
+Vittoria Colonna:[425]--
+
+TORNAMI AL TEMPO
+
+    Bring back the time when blind desire ran free,
+      With bit and rein too loose to curb his flight;
+      Give back the buried face, once angel-bright,
+    That hides in earth all comely things from me;
+    Bring back those journeys ta'en so toilsomely,
+      So toilsome-slow to him whose hairs are white;
+      Those tears and flames that in one breast unite;
+    If thou wilt once more take thy fill of me!
+
+    Yet Love! Suppose it true that thou dost thrive
+      Only on bitter honey-dews of tears,
+      Small profit hast thou of a weak old man.
+    My soul that toward the other shore doth strive,
+      Wards off thy darts with shafts of holier fears;
+      And fire feeds ill on brands no breath can fan.
+
+After this it only remains to quote the celebrated sonnet used by Varchi
+for his dissertation, the best known of all Michael Angelo's poems.[426]
+The thought is this: just as a sculptor hews from a block of marble the
+form that lies concealed within, so the lover has to extract from his
+lady's heart the life or death of his soul,
+
+NON HA L'OTTIMO ARTISTA
+
+    The best of artists hath no thought to show
+      Which the rough stone in its superfluous shell
+      Doth not include: to break the marble spell
+    Is all the hand that serves the brain can do.
+    The ill I shun, the good I seek, even so
+      In thee, fair lady, proud, ineffable,
+      Lies hidden: but the art I wield so well
+    Works adverse to my wish, and lays me low.
+
+    Therefore not love, nor thy transcendent face,
+      Nor cruelty, nor fortune, nor disdain,
+      Cause my mischance, nor fate, nor destiny:
+    Since in thy heart thou carriest death and grace
+      Enclosed together, and my worthless brain
+      Can draw forth only death to feed on me.
+
+The fire of youth was not extinct, we feel, after reading these last
+sonnets. There is, indeed, an almost pathetic intensity of passion in the
+recurrence of Michael Angelo's thoughts to a sublime love on the verge of
+the grave. Not less important in their bearing on his state of feeling are
+the sonnets addressed to Cavalieri; and though his modern editor shrinks
+from putting a literal interpretation upon them, I am convinced that we
+must accept them simply as an expression of the artist's homage for the
+worth and beauty of an excellent young man. The two sonnets I intend to
+quote next[427] were written, according to Varchi's direct testimony, for
+Tommaso Cavalieri, "in whom"--the words are Varchi's--"I discovered,
+besides incomparable personal beauty, so much charm of nature, such
+excellent abilities, and such a graceful manner, that he deserved, and
+still deserves, to be the better loved the more he is known." The play of
+words upon Cavalieri's name in the last line of the first sonnet, the
+evidence of Varchi, and the indirect witness of Condivi, together with
+Michael Angelo's own letters,[428] are sufficient in my judgment to
+warrant the explanation I have given above. Nor do I think that the doubts
+expressed by Guasti about the intention of the sonnets,[429] or Gotti's
+curious theory that the letters, though addressed to Cavalieri, were meant
+for Vittoria Colonna,[430] are much more honourable to Michael Angelo's
+reputation than the garbling process whereby the verses were rendered
+unintelligible in the edition of 1623.
+
+A CHE PIÙ DEBB' IO
+
+    Why should I seek to ease intense desire
+      With still more tears and windy words of grief,
+      When heaven, or late or soon, sends no relief
+    To souls whom love hath robed around with fire?
+    Why need my aching heart to death aspire
+      When all must die? Nay, death beyond belief
+      Unto these eyes would be both sweet and brief,
+    Since in my sum of woes all joys expire!
+
+    Therefore because I cannot shun the blow
+      I rather seek, say who must rule my breast,
+      Gliding between her gladness and her woe?
+    If only chains and bands can make me blest,
+      No marvel if alone and bare I go
+      An armed Knight's captive and slave confessed.
+
+VEGGIO CO' BEI VOSTRI OCCHI
+
+    With your fair eyes a charming light I see,
+      For which my own blind eyes would peer in vain;
+      Stayed by your feet the burden I sustain
+    Which my lame feet find all too strong for me;
+    Wingless upon your pinions forth I fly;
+      Heavenward your spirit stirreth me to strain;
+      E'en as you will, I blush and blanch again,
+    Freeze in the sun, burn 'neath a frosty sky.
+
+    Your will includes and is the lord of mine;
+      Life to my thoughts within your heart is given;
+      My words begin to breathe upon your breath:
+    Like to the moon am I, that cannot shine
+      Alone; for lo! our eyes see nought in heaven
+      Save what the living sun illumineth.
+
+Whether we are justified in assigning the following pair to the Cavalieri
+series is more doubtful. They seem, however, to proceed from a similar
+mood of the poet's mind.[431]
+
+S' UN CASTO AMOR
+
+    If love be chaste, if virtue conquer ill,
+      If fortune bind both lovers in one bond,
+      If either at the other's grief despond,
+    If both be governed by one life, one will;
+    If in two bodies one soul triumph still,
+      Raising the twain from earth to heaven beyond,
+      If love with one blow and one golden wand
+    Have power both smitten breasts to pierce and thrill;
+
+    If each the other love, himself foregoing,
+      With such delight, such savour, and so well,
+      That both to one sole end their wills combine;
+    If thousands of these thoughts all thought outgoing
+      Fail the least part of their firm love to tell;
+      Say, can mere angry spite this knot untwine?
+
+COLUI CHE FECE
+
+    He who ordained, when first the world began,
+      Time that was not before creation's hour,
+      Divided it, and gave the sun's high power
+    To rule the one, the moon the other span:
+    Thence fate and changeful chance and fortune's ban
+      Did in one moment down on mortals shower:
+      To me they portioned darkness for a dower;
+    Dark hath my lot been since I was a man.
+
+    Myself am ever mine own counterfeit;
+      And as deep night grows still more dim and dun,
+      So still of more mis-doing must I rue:
+    Meanwhile this solace to my soul is sweet,
+      That my black night doth make more clear the sun
+      Which at your birth was given to wait on you.
+
+A sonnet written for Luigi del Riccio, on the death of his friend Cecchino
+Bracci, is curious on account of its conceit.[432] Michael Angelo says:
+"Cecchino, whom you loved, is dead; and if I am to make his portrait, I
+can only do so by drawing you, in whom he still lives." Here, again, we
+trace the Platonic conception of love as nothing if not spiritual, and of
+beauty as a form that finds its immortality within the lover's soul. This
+Cecchino was a boy who died at the age of seventeen. Michael Angelo wrote
+his epicedion in several centuries of verses, distributed among his
+friends in the form of what he terms _polizzini_, as though they were
+trifles.
+
+A PENA PRIMA
+
+    Scarce had I seen for the first time his eyes
+      Which to thy living eyes are life and light,
+      When closed at last in death's injurious night
+    He opened them on God in Paradise.
+    I know it and I weep, too late made wise:
+      Yet was the fault not mine; for death's fell spite
+      Robbed my desire of that supreme delight,
+    Which in thy better memory never dies.
+
+    Therefore, Luigi, if the task be mine
+      To make unique Cecchino smile in stone
+      For ever, now that earth hath made him dim,
+    If the beloved within the lover shine,
+      Since art without him cannot work alone,
+      Thee must I carve to tell the world of him.
+
+In contrast with the philosophical obscurity of many of the sonnets
+hitherto quoted, I place the following address to Night--one, certainly,
+of Michael Angelo's most beautiful and characteristic compositions, as it
+is also the most transparent in style[433]:--
+
+O NOTT', O DOLCE TEMPO
+
+    O night, O sweet though sombre span of time!--
+      All things find rest upon their journey's end--
+      Whoso hath praised thee, well doth apprehend;
+    And whoso honours thee, hath wisdom's prime.
+    Our cares thou canst to quietude sublime,
+      For dews and darkness are of peace the friend;
+      Often by thee in dreams upborne I wend
+    From earth to heaven, where yet I hope to climb.
+
+    Thou shade of Death, through whom the soul at length
+      Shuns pain and sadness hostile to the heart,
+      Whom mourners find their last and sure relief!
+    Thou dost restore our suffering flesh to strength,
+      Driest our tears, assuagest every smart,
+      Purging the spirits of the pure from grief.
+
+The religious sonnets have been reserved to the last. These were composed
+in old age, when the early impressions of Savonarola's teaching revived,
+and when Michael Angelo had grown to regard even his art and the beauty he
+had loved go purely, as a snare. If we did not bear in mind the piety
+expressed throughout his correspondence, their ascetic tone, and the
+remorse they seem to indicate, would convey a painful sense of
+cheerlessness and disappointment. As it is, they strike me as the natural
+utterance of a profoundly devout and somewhat melancholy man, in whom
+religion has survived all other interests, and who, reviewing his past
+life of fame and toil, finds that the sole reality is God. The two first
+of these compositions are addressed to Giorgio Vasari.[434]
+
+GIUNIO È GIÀ
+
+    Now hath my life across a stormy sea
+      Like a frail bark reached that wide port where all
+      Are bidden ere the final judgment fall,
+    Of good or evil deeds to pay the fee.
+    Now know I well how that fond phantasy
+      Which made my soul the worshipper and thrall
+      Of earthly art, is vain; how criminal
+    Is that which all men seek unwillingly.
+
+    Those amorous thoughts which were so lightly dressed,
+      What are they when the double death is nigh?
+      The one I know for sure, the other dread.
+    Painting nor sculpture now can lull to rest
+      My soul that turns to His great love on high,
+      Whose arms to clasp us on the cross were spread.
+
+LE FAVOLE DEL MONDO
+
+    The fables of the world have filched away
+      The time I had for thinking upon God;
+      His grace lies buried deep 'neath oblivion's sod,
+    Whence springs an evil-crop of sins alway.
+    What makes another wise, leads me astray,
+      Slow to discern the bad path I have trod:
+      Hope fades; but still desire ascends that God
+    May free me from self-love, my sure decay.
+
+    Shorten half-way my road to heaven from earth?
+      Dear Lord, I cannot even half-way rise,
+      Unless Thou help me on this pilgrimage:
+    Teach me to hate the world so little worth,
+      And all the lovely things I once did prize;
+      That endless life, not death, may be my wage.
+
+The same note is struck in the following, which breathes the spirit of a
+Penitential Psalm:[435]--
+
+CARICO D' ANNI
+
+    Burdened with years and full of sinfulness,
+      With evil custom grown inveterate,
+      Both deaths I dread that close before me wait,
+    Yet feed my heart on poisonous thoughts no less.
+    No strength I find in mine own feebleness
+      To change or life or love or use or fate,
+      Unless Thy heavenly guidance come, though late,
+    Which only helps and stays our nothingness.
+
+    'Tis not enough, dear Lord, to make me yearn
+      For that celestial home, where yet my soul
+      May be new made, and not, as erst, of nought:
+    Nay, ere Thou strip her mortal vestment, turn
+      My steps toward the steep ascent, that whole
+      And pure before Thy face she may be brought.
+
+In reading the two next, we may remember that, at the end of his life,
+Michael Angelo was occupied with designs for a picture of the Crucifixion,
+which he never executed, though he gave a drawing of Christ upon the cross
+to Vittoria Colonna; and that his last work in marble was the unfinished
+"Pietà" in the Duomo at Florence.[436]
+
+
+SCARCO D' UN IMPORTUNA
+
+    Freed from a burden sore and grievous band,
+      Dear Lord, and from this wearying world untied,
+      Like a frail bark I turn me to Thy side,
+    As from a fierce storm to a tranquil land.
+    Thy thorns, Thy nails, and either bleeding hand,
+      With Thy mild gentle piteous face, provide
+      Promise of help and mercies multiplied,
+    And hope that yet my soul secure may stand.
+
+    Let not Thy holy eyes be just to see
+      My evil past, Thy chastened ears to hear
+      And stretch the arm of judgment to my crime:
+    Let Thy blood only lave and succour me,
+      Yielding more perfect pardon, better cheer
+      As older still I grow with lengthening time.
+
+NON FUR MEN LIETI
+
+    Not less elate than smitten with wild woe
+      To see not them but Thee by death undone,
+      Were those blest souls, when Thou above the sun
+    Didst raise, by dying, men that lay so low:
+    Elate, since freedom from all ills that flow
+      From their first fault for Adam's race was won;
+      Sore smitten, since in torment fierce God's son
+    Served servants on the cruel cross below.
+
+    Heaven showed she knew Thee, who Thou wert and whence,
+      Veiling her eyes above the riven earth;
+      The mountains trembled and the seas were troubled:
+    He took the Fathers from hell's darkness dense:
+      The torments of the damned fiends redoubled:
+      Man only joyed, who gained baptismal birth.
+
+The collection of his poems is closed with yet another sonnet in the same
+lofty strain of prayer, and faith, and hope in God.[437]
+
+MENTRE M' ATTRISTA
+
+    Mid weariness and woe I find some cheer
+      In thinking of the past, when I recall
+      My weakness and my sins and reckon all
+    The vain expense of days that disappear:
+    This cheers by making, ere I die, more clear
+      The frailty of what men delight miscall;
+      But saddens me to think how rarely fall
+    God's grace and mercies in life's latest year.
+
+    For though Thy promises our faith compel,
+      Yet, Lord, what man shall venture to maintain
+      That pity will condone our long neglect?
+    Still, from Thy blood poured forth we know full well
+      How without measure was Thy martyr's pain,
+      How measureless the gifts we dare expect.
+
+From the thought of Dante, through Plato, to the thought of Christ: so our
+study of Michael Angelo's sonnets has carried us. In communion with these
+highest souls Michael Angelo habitually lived; for he was born of their
+lineage, and was like them a lifelong alien on the earth.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[412] See Guasti's _Rime di Michel Agnolo Buonarrote_, Firenzi, 1863, p.
+189. The future references will be made to that edition.
+
+[413] "I can translate, and have translated, two books of Ariosto at the
+rate nearly of one hundred lines a day; but so much meaning has been put
+by Michael Angelo into so little room, and that meaning sometimes so
+excellent in itself, that I found the difficulty of translating him
+insurmountable."--Note to Wordsworth's English version of some sonnets of
+Michael Angelo.
+
+[414] See above, Chapter VIII, The Pietà.
+
+[415] See Gotti's Life, p. 48, and Giannotti's works (Firenze, Le
+Monnier, 1850), quoted by Gotti, pp. 249-257.
+
+[416] See Appendix to Gotti's Life, No. 25.
+
+[417] See Gotti's Life, p. 256.
+
+[418] Guasti, pp. 153-155.
+
+[419] Guasti, pp. 156, 167.
+
+[420] Guasti, p. 158.
+
+[421] See above, Chapter VIII, Vittoria Colonna.
+
+[422] Guasti, p. 226.
+
+[423] Guasti, p. 218.
+
+[424] _Ib._ pp. 182, 210.
+
+[425] Guasti, p. 212.
+
+[426] Delivered before the Florentine Academy in 1546. See Guasti, p.
+173, for the sonnet, and p. lxxv. for the dissertation. See also Gotti,
+p. 249, for Michael Angelo's remarks upon the latter.
+
+[427] Guasti, pp. 189, 188.
+
+[428] See _Archivio Buonarroti_; and above, p. 318, note 2.
+
+[429] _Rime_, p. xlv.
+
+[430] Gotti's Life, pp. 231-233.
+
+[431] Guasti, pp. 190-202.
+
+[432] Ib. p. 162.
+
+[433] Guasti, p. 205.
+
+[434] Guasti, pp. 230-232.
+
+[435] Guasti, pp. 244, 245.
+
+[436] Ib. pp. 241-245.
+
+[437] Guasti, p. 246.
+
+
+
+
+APPENDIX III
+
+_Chronological Tables of the Principal Artists mentioned in this Volume_
+
+
+The lists which follow have been, drawn up with a view to assisting the
+reader of my chapters on Architecture, Sculpture, and Painting. I have
+only included the more prominent names; and these I have placed in the
+order of their occurrence in the foregoing pages. In compiling them, I
+have consulted the Index to Le Monnier's edition of Vasari (1870), Crowe
+and Cavalcaselle's "History of Painting," and Milizia's "Dictionary of
+Architects."
+
+
+_ARCHITECTS_
+
+Name                          Born        Died
+Arnolfo di Cambio             1210        1311
+Giotto di Bondone             1276        1337
+Andrea Orcagna                 --   about 1369
+Filippo Brunelleschi          1377        1446
+Leo Battista Alberti          1405        1472
+Michellozzo Michellozzi       1391        1472
+Benedetto da Majano           1442        1497
+Giuliano di San Gallo         1445        1516
+Antonio di San Gallo          1455        1534?
+Antonio Filarete               --         1465?
+Bramante Lazzari              1444        1514
+Cristoforo Rocchi              --          --
+Ventura Vitoni                 --          --
+Raffaello Santi               1483        1520
+Giulio Romano                 1499        1546
+Baldassare Peruzzi            1481        1536
+Jacopo Sansovino              1477        1570
+Michele Sanmicheli            1484        1559
+Baccio d'Agnolo               1462        1543
+Michael Angelo Buonarroti     1475        1564
+Andrea Palladio               1518        1580
+Giacomo Barozzi               1507        1573
+Vincenzo Scamozzi             1552        1616
+Galeazzo Alessi               1500        1572
+Bartolommeo Ammanati          1511        1592
+
+
+_SCULPTORS_
+
+Name                          Born        Died
+Niccola Pisano          after 1200        1278
+Giovanni Pisano         about 1240        1320
+Lorenzo Maitani                --         1330
+Andrea Pisano           about 1273  about 1349
+Giotto di Bondone             1276        1337
+Nino Pisano                    --   about 1360
+Giovanni Balduccio      about 1300  about 1347
+Filippo Calendario             --         1355
+Andrea Orcagna                 --   about 1369
+Lorenzo Ghiberti              1378        1455
+Giacomo della Quercia         1374        1438
+Filippo Brunelleschi          1377        1446
+Donatello                     1366        1466
+Andrea Verocchio              1435        1488
+Alessandro Leopardi            --   after 1522
+Antonio Pollajuolo            1429        1498
+Piero Pollajuolo              1441        1489?
+Luca della Robbia             1400        1482
+Agostino di Duccio             --   after 1461
+Antonio Rossellino            1427        1478?
+Matteo Civitali               1435        1501
+Mino da Fiesole               1431        1484
+Desiderio da Settignano       1428        1464
+Guido Mazzoni                  --         1518
+Antonio Begarelli             1479  about 1565
+Antonio Amadeo                1447? about 1520
+Andrea Contucci               1460        1529
+Jacopo Sansovino              1477        1570
+Michael Angelo Buonarroti     1475        1564
+Raffaello da Montelupo        1505        1567
+Giovanni Angelo Montorsoli    1507        1563
+Baccio Bandinelli             1493        1560
+Bartolommeo Ammanati          1511        1592
+Benvenuto Cellini             1500        1571
+Gian Bologna                  1524        1608
+
+_PAINTERS_
+
+Name                          Born        Died
+Giovanni Cimabue              1240?       1302?
+Giotto di Bondone             1276        1337
+Andrea Orcagna                 --   about 1369
+Ambrogio Lorenzetti            --   about 1348
+Pietro Lorenzetti              --   about 1350
+Taddeo Gaddi            about 1300        1366
+Francesco Traini               --   after 1378
+Duccio di Buoninsegna          --   about 1320
+Simone Martini                1285?       1344
+Taddeo di Bartolo       about 1362        1422
+Spinello Aretino               --         1410
+Masolino da Panicale          1384        1447?
+Masaccio                      1402        1429
+Paolo Uccello                 1397        1475
+Andrea del Castagno           1396        1457
+Piero della Francesca         1420?       1506?
+Melozzo da Forli        about 1438        1494
+Francesco Squarcione          1394        1474
+Gentile da Fabriano     about 1370  about 1450
+Fra Angelico                  1387        1455
+Benozzo Gozzoli               1420        1498
+Lippo Lippi                   1412?       1469
+Filippino Lippi               1457        1504
+Sandro Botticelli             1447        1510
+Piero di Cosimo               1462        1521?
+Domenico Ghirlandajo          1449 before 1498
+Andrea Mantegna               1431        1506
+Luca Signorelli         about 1441        1523
+Pietro Perugino               1446        1524
+Bernardo Pinturicchio         1454        1513
+Francesco Francia             1450        1517
+Fra Bartolommeo               1475        1517
+Mariotto Albertinelli         1474        1515
+Lionardo da Vinci             1452        1519
+Raffaello Santi               1483        1520
+Antonio Allegri da Correggio  1494?       1534
+Michael Angelo Buonarroti     1475        1564
+Bartolommeo Vivarini           --   after 1499
+Jacopo Bellini                1400?       1464?
+Gentile Bellini               1426        1507
+Vittore Carpaccio              --   after 1519
+Giovanni Bellini              1427        1516
+Giorgione                     1478        1511
+Tiziano Vecelli               1477        1576
+Paolo Veronese                1530        1588
+Tintoretto                    1512        1594
+Giovanni Antonio Beltraffio   1467        1516
+Marco d' Oggiono        about 1470        1530
+Cesare da Sesto                --   about 1524
+Bernardino Luini        about 1460  after 1530
+Gaudenzio Ferrari             1484        1549
+Giulio Romano                 1499        1546
+Giovanni da Udine             1487        1564
+Perino del Vaga               1499        1547
+Marcello Venusti               --   about 1584
+Sebastian del Piombo          1485        1547
+Daniele da Volterra     about 1509        1566
+Il Parmigianino               1504        1540
+Federigo Baroccio             1528        1612
+Andrea del Sarto              1487        1531
+Jacopo Pontormo               1494        1557
+Angelo Bronzino               1502        1572
+Il Sodoma                     1477        1549
+Baldassare Peruzzi            1481        1536
+Domenico Beccafumi            1486        1551
+Benvenuto Garofalo            1481        1559
+Dosso Dossi             about 1479        1542
+Il Moretto              about 1500  after 1556
+Giovanni Battista Moroni      1510        1578
+Giorgio Vasari                1511        1574
+
+
+[Transcribers Note: The references in the Footnotes which contain the text
+"See Chapter" were depicted in the original text as page numbers. They
+have been changed to the paragraph heading for that page as marked in
+the Chapter Headings in this text version.]
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3
+by John Addington Symonds
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